History FanNickname / StarCraft

* Winter calls it a "Venn Dia-Scan" when a Terran player uses multiple Orbital Command scans in the same area.

* "Tarson medal", for situations when Terran Command Centre or Orbital Command gets destroyed by units with no anti-air attack (particularly, zerglings); given that those can lift off, it usually can only happen due to neglect by the player. Named after Polish player Tarson, who, while isn't the first to make such mistake, is the most (in)famous for doing it.

* "Deathball" refers to any sufficiently large cluster of units that simply attack-moves across the map to destroy everything. Can be applied to any race, but most commonly associated with Protoss.

** “Bane Rain” is the tactic of using overlords with ventral sacs to drop banelings on top of the enemy, frequently their mineral line.
** A "Baneling Bust" is using a large number of banelings to quickly break open the wall-off of a Terran or Protoss base. It's not an ideal tactic, as the number of banelings required makes for a cost-inefficent trade, but sometimes you're just so desperate or impatient to break an opponent who's turtling.

** A "Pervert Pillar" is any pillar-like object around the opponent's base whose top is inaccessible to ground units, which an overlord can float above while keeping an eye on the enemy. The pillar acts as high ground, and prevents any ground units from shooting the overlord unless they have a scan or a flyer of their own to grant them vision.
** A "Doom Drop" refers to loading up a large number of Overlords with upgraded Zerglings and dumping them on the opponent's head.
** When using their Lair-tech ability to generate creep, Overlords appear to spew purple liquid out of their undersides. Needless to say, the scatological jokes abound, chief among them, "Diarrhea".

* "Shield-Toss" refers to a Protoss who plays cautiously and defensively in order to build up their strength, while "YOLO-Toss" is one who tries to grab the initiative and deal damage to their opponent as quickly as possible. The fact that Protoss is the race with the most expensive tech and units essentially forces a player to choose between these two very distinct styles, unlike Terran or Zerg who have more flexibly and cannot be so easily categorized.
* A "Super Pylon" is a pylon which stands next to a Gateway or a Nexus, which reduces the time it takes to warp in units within its psionic matrix. Warp-ins that use a non-super pylon are called "slow warp-ins" because they take a lot longer.

** The energy blasts that the High Templars shoot out of their hands when they auto attack are called "water balloons" because of the psi energy’s resemblance to splashing water, and because this attack barely inflicts more damage than throwing water balloons at the enemy would. Indeed, this weak, ranged auto attack was added in a patch for the sole purpose of preventing the SquishyWizard High Templar from suicidally gliding into the enemy army whenever a player attack-moved with High Templars selected, which these units used to do when they had no means of attacking except their spells.

* "Skytoss" is the nickname for a late game Protoss army that's heavily weighted towards air units, such as void rays, carriers, tempests, and maybe even a mothership.

* The "Archon Toilet" was a tactic in the ''Wings of Liberty'' version of multiplayer which involved using the Mothership's Vortex ability in combination with Archon splash damage. Vortex was a spell resembling a black hole which sucked any units that got too close into the hole at its center; this sucking action combined with the swirling energy funnel resembled a toilet flushing. The vortex would prevent units inside from doing anything or being attacked for 20 seconds, then spit them out again. The intended use of this spell was to, for example, temporarily remove half of your enemy's army from play so that you could defeat the two halves in detail. That's why it was often in the enemy's interest to deliberately send the rest of their army into the vortex after, in order to protect them and make sure their army would all come back out at the same time. However, if the mothership player had a bunch of Archons prepared and sent them into the vortex/toilet with the enemy, the Archons would zap the enemy to smithereens with their splash damage at the instant when all the units started to come out of the vortex, during which the enemy units and Archons would all be compressed together in an overlapping splash damage zone. Patch 1.3.0 nerfed this tactic out of existence by giving the units coming out of the vortex 1.5 seconds of MercyInvincibility, which gave them time to spread out again and not take splash damage from all the archons at once. Eventually the Mothership had the Vortex spell replaced with a different ability.

* A "Turtle Terran" is a player who just stays at home and digs in, using the strong defensive measures available to Terran (such as bunkers, missile turrets, Planetary Fortresses, Siege Tanks, and Liberators) to make it very annoying for the opponent to try and break in.

* Similarly to Brood War, the Marine / Marauder / Medivac unit composition is called “MMM”. It's also referred to as the "Bioball" (a deathball of biological units).

* "Bio" is a Terran play style focused on the MMM unit composition, while "Mech" play is an alternative that focuses on mechanical units such as hellions, cyclones, siege tanks, and Thors.

* "Battlemech" is the name of a high-mobility mech composition based on cyclones and hellions, which is especially good at countering Nydus Worms and Swarm Hosts.

* Using a DropShip to move units up to high ground or vice versa is called “Elevatoring”.
* A "Maka Rax", named after Korean Terran player Maka, is a barracks built in a strange place where it won't be immediately scouted, but close enough to the home base that it can be floated back in if needed. This can trick the opponent into thinking a proxy barracks rush is happening, so that they’ll go into panic mode over a false alarm.

* The Liberator's circular kill-zone in Defender mode is often referred to as a "freedom zone" or a "liberation zone"; Winter Starcraft calls a bunch of overlapping liberators zones "The Venn Diagram of Freedom". Furthermore, since defender mode works like the siege mode of siege tanks, players use the same verbs to talk about "sieging" and "un-sieging" their Liberators.
* Winter also calls it a "Venn Dia-Scan" when a Terran player uses multiple Orbital Command scans in the same area.

* "Artosis Pylon" is a single pylon supporting multiple key buildings (so shutting it down would shut down the entire infrastructure); a newbie mistake. Term was coined by [=IdrA=], who said it as a joke during one of his casts, referencing how the player named Artosis once made a similar mistake.
* "Tarson medal", for situations when Terran Command Centre or Orbital Command gets destroyed by units with no anti-air attack (particularly, zerglings); given that those can lift off, it can only happen due to neglect by the player. Named after Polish player Tarson, who, while isn't the first to make such mistake, is the most (in)famous for doing it.

* "Artosis Pylon" is a single pylon supporting multiple key buildings (so shutting it down would shut down the entire infrastructure); a newbie mistake. Term was coined by [=IdrA=], who said it as a joke during one of his casts, referencing how the player named Artosis once made a similar mistake.

* A "Parade Push" is an offensive in which the attacker has a stretched-out stream of units moving across the map, with newly produced units being rallied to reinforce the attack.

* Carriers are called "Cars" (Short for carriers) or "Bananas" (They're long and yellow)

* [[CoolStarship Battlecruisers]] are nicknamed "Flying Cows" by some in reference to the ultralisk's nickname, as both have a massive amount of HP. Similarly, they may be called Cattlebruisers

* [[CoolStarship Battlecruisers]] are nicknamed "Flying Cows" by some in reference to the ultralisk's nickname, as both have a massive amount of HP.

* While Sentries themselves don’t have many nicknames, their most useful ability has lent itself to other nicknames – Nukes are known as the "Terran Forcefield", and in the right situation, Fungal Growth is the "Zerg Forcefield".

* Due to their enormous, bulbous head and the way they tend to gently nudge each other when clumped up, [[TripodTerror Colossi]] are known as Walking Blimps. The extremely tall yellow mechs are also known as "Giraffes" and "Laser Giraffes", due in large part to WebVideo/LifesAGlitchTV. Finally, a group of them can be called "'lossi" for short.

* Battlecruisers are abbreviated as [=BCs=].

* Zerglings with the move speed upgrade, but not the attack speed upgrade are called Speedlings or Slings for short, while fully upgrade zerglings remain Cracklings despite Blizzard’s best efforts to [[PoliticalCorrectnessGoneMad change the lexicon]].

* Joona Sotala (Serral), a Finnish Zerg Player, is also called "The Finnisher" and "The Finnish Phenom" in reference to his nationality, and "The King of the Circuit" for his dominance of the tournament scene.

* Florencio, an American who started with Protoss but also plays Zerg and Terran, is "The Sewer Mermaid". Commentator [=PiG=] gave Florencio this nickname for constantly using "dirty" and [[RefugeInAudacity audacious]] cheese strategies that he seems to pull out of the depths of the sewers.

* Koh Byung-jae ([=GuMiho=]), a South Korean Terran player, was nicknamed "Towel Terran" by Artosis because he had sweaty hands, and therefore played with a towel over his mouse.

** A "Pervert Pillar" is any pillar-like object around the opponents base whose top is inaccessible to ground units, which an overlord can float above while keeping an eye on the enemy. The pillar acts as high ground, and prevents any ground units from shooting the overlord unless they have a scan or a flyer of their own to grant them vision.

* Void Rays were once known as "Void Ras" due to professional player White-Ra’s tendency to use them during the beta.

** A "Baneling Bust" is using a large number of banelings to quickly break the wall-off of a Terran or Protoss base. It's not an ideal tactic, as the number of banelings required makes for a cost-inefficent trade, but sometimes you're just so desperate or impatient to break an opponent who's turtling.

* Whichever Queen is the center of attention is called "Brenda" and characterized as a grumpy ApronMatron; the darts she fires at flying enemies are called "Knitting Needles", and a group of Queens is "Brenda and her Knitting Crew". Her Queen friends include "Karen" and "Susan".

* Whichever Queen is the center of attention is called "Brenda" and characterized as a grumpy ApronMatron; the darts she fires at flying enemies are called "Knitting Needles", and a group of Queens is "Brenda and her Knitting Crew".

* Gabriel Raffaele Segat ([=HeRoMaRinE=]), a Terran player from Germany, is called "Big Gabe".

* "Cheeto Dust" is what Winter Starcraft calls the orange coloring that appears on units struck by the Raven's anti-armor missle.

* Shoutcaster Husky Starcraft called opening with one barracks, one factory, and one starport a "Destiny Cloudfist Build" because he thought the normal build name of "1-1-1" was not exciting enough.

* "Shield-Toss" refers to a Protoss who plays cautiously and defensively, while "YOLO-Toss" is one who goes for fierce, even reckless aggression.
* Zealots with their speed upgrade are called "Chargelots" or "Speedlots".

** The energy blasts that the High Templars shoot out of their hands when they auto attack are called "water balloons" because of the psi energy’s resemblance to splashing water, and because this attack barely inflicts more damage than throwing water balloons at the enemy would. Indeed, this weak ranged auto attack was added in a patch for the sole purpose of preventing the SquishyWizard High Templar from suicidally gliding into the enemy army whenever a player attack-moved with Templars selected, which they used to do when they had no means of attacking except their spells.

* Void Rays were once known as Void Ra's due to professional player White-Ra’s tendency to use them during the beta.

* A "Maka Rax", named after Korean Terran player Maka, is a barracks built in a strange place where it won't be immediately scouted, but close enough to the home base that it can be floated back in if needed. This can trick the opponent into a false alarm over a proxy barracks rush.

* "Bastard Probe", as probes are arguably the most annoying unit in the game to deal with, and certainly the most annoying worker due to their ability to harass the enemy.

** A "Baneling Bust" is using a large number of banelings to quickly break down a wall of buildings, or perhaps a Planetary Fortress, which is obstructing the Zerg army from entering the enemy base. It's not an ideal tactic, as the number of banelings required makes for a cost-inefficent trade, but sometimes you're just that desperate to break an opponent who's turtling.

* ''VideoGame/StarCraft'':
** Among players in the Korean professional leagues, standouts will invariably earn themselves a nickname to go with their real name (used by the leagues for records) and in-game alias. Some examples:
*** Lee Jae Dong (Jaedong) “The Legend Killer”
*** Lee Yeong Ho (Flash) “The Ultimate Weapon”
*** Ma Jae Yoon (savior) “The Maestro”
*** Lim Yo Hwan ([=SlayerS=]_Boxer) “The Emperor”
** Particularly good or entertaining foreign players also receive nicknames:
*** Greg Fields ([=EGIdrA=]) “The Gracken”
*** Chris Loranger ([=EG.HuK=]) “[=HuK=] Norris”
** ''VideoGame/{{StarCraft|I}}: Brood War'' units:
*** Zergling is usually shortened to just "'ling". Zerglings with the metabolic boost move speed upgrade are called "Speedlings", and when the adrenal glands attack speed upgrade is added they're called "Cracklings" because they fight as if they're high on crack.
*** Ultralisks are "Ultras", "Imbalisks" (Imbalanced-Ultralisks), or "Cows" (they're big quadrupeds with hooves, and curved blades on their arms that stick out on either side like cow horns).
*** Mutalisks are shortened to "Mutas".
*** Hydralisks are shortened to "Hydras".
*** [[CoolStarship Battlecruisers]] are nicknamed "Flying Cows" by some in reference to the ultralisk's nickname, as both have a massive amount of HP.
*** "Bastard Probe", as probes are arguably the most annoying unit in the game to deal with, and certainly the most annoying worker due to their ability to harass the enemy.
*** "Darchons", short for Dark Archons.
*** Carriers are called "Cars" (Short for carriers) or "Bananas" (They're long and yellow)
*** "[=M&Ms=]": Marines & Medics. A devastating combination of units if used properly.
* ''VideoGame/{{StarCraft II}}'':
** Famous players:
*** Joona Sotala (Serral), a Finnish Zerg Player, is also called "The Finnisher" and "The Finnish Phenom" in reference to his nationality, and "The King of the Circuit" for his dominance of the tournament scene.
*** Sasha Hostyn (Scarlett), a Canadian Zerg Player, is also called "The Queen of Blades" (Sarah Kerrigan's epithet in the game) for her Zerg prowess and being one of the few female pros, though she says she doesn't like this nickname.
*** Riccardo Romiti (Reynor), an Italian Zerg player, is also called "[[Film/{{Rocky}} The Itallian Stallion]]" and "Little Caesar" in reference to his nationality and his TeenGenius talent.
*** Florencio, an American who started with Protoss but also plays Zerg and Terran, is "The Sewer Mermaid". Commentator [=PiG=] gave Florencio this nickname for constantly using "dirty" and [[RefugeInAudacity audacious]] cheese strategies that he seems to pull out of the depths of the sewers.
*** Kim Dae Yeob (Stats), a Protoss player, is called "The Shield of Aiur" (the name of Artanis's mothership in the ''Wings of Liberty'' level "In Utter Darkness") in reference to his defensive play style.
*** Gabriel Raffaele Segat ([=HeRoMaRinE=]), a Terran player from Germany, is called "Big Gabe".
*** Koh Byung-jae ([=GuMiho=]), a South Korean Terran player, was nicknamed "Towel Terran" by Artosis because he had sweaty hands, and therefore played with a towel over his mouse.
** units:
*** "Deathball" refers to any sufficiently large cluster of units that simply attack-moves across the map to destroy everything. Can be applied to any race, but most commonly associated with Protoss.
*** Zerglings with the move speed upgrade, but not the attack speed upgrade are called Speedlings or Slings for short, while fully upgrade zerglings remain Cracklings despite Blizzard’s best efforts to [[PoliticalCorrectnessGoneMad change the lexicon]].
*** Zerg units without their movement speed upgrades are called "slow 'lings", "slow roaches", and so on.
*** Banelings are called "Blings" or "Banes", with the latter lending itself to “Bane Rain” when paired with [[DropShip upgraded overlords]].
*** When cast, Infested Terran eggs (eventually removed from multiplayer) lay on the ground for some seconds before hatching, and are referred to as "Beach Balls". Unlike actual beach balls, these can seriously mess with unit pathing.
*** In addition to being shortened to "Mutas", Mutalisks are sometimes referred to as "T-Rexes" or "Dinosaurs" in ''Starcraft II'' because of how the wireframe icon looks in the user interface; its right wing looks like a dinosaur tail because of the edge-on angle it's shown from, while its actual tail looks like the dinosaur's leg, and its right wing looks like the dinosaur's head. They are also "The Flappy Boys" for their bat-like animated flapping wings.
*** Overlords are "Ovies", and with the ventral sacs upgrade to carry units they become "Dropperlords".
*** A "Pervert Pillar" is any pillar-like object around the opponents base whose top is inaccessible to ground units, which an overlord can float above while keeping an eye on the enemy. The pillar acts as high ground, and prevents any ground units from shooting the overlord unless they have a scan or a flyer of their own to grant them vision.
*** A "Doom Drop" refers to loading up a large number of Overlords with upgraded Zerglings and dumping them on the opponent's head.
*** When using their Lair-tech ability to generate creep, Overlords appear to spew purple liquid out of their undersides. Needless to say, the scatological jokes abound, chief among them, "Diarrhea".
*** Spine Crawlers and Spore Crawlers can be shortened to just "Spines" and "Spores".
*** A bunch of building nicknames are just shortening the name so it's quicker to say. Barracks may be shortened to "Rax", Engineering Bay to "Engie Bay", Orbital Command to "Orbital", Spawning Pool to "Pool", Hatchery to "Hatch", Evolution Chamber to "Evo Chamber", Gateway to "Gate", Robotics Facility to "Robo", and so on. Refinery, Extractor, and Assimilator are the proper names of each race's vespene gas-extracting building, but it's quicker to just call any of these "a gas".
*** The Broodlings thrown by the Brood Lords are called "The Nibbly Boys" by Winter Starcraft for their method of attack.
*** Whichever Queen is the center of attention is called "Brenda" and characterized as a grumpy ApronMatron; the darts she fires at flying enemies are called "Knitting Needles", and a group of Queens is "Brenda and her Knitting Crew".
*** Zealots with their speed upgrade are called "Chargelots" or "Speedlots".
*** While Sentries themselves don’t have many nicknames, their most useful ability has lent itself to other nicknames – Nukes are known as the "Terran Forcefield", and in the right situation, Fungal Growth is the "Zerg Forcefield".
*** The ranged attack of the Sentry is called the "Tickle Beam" because it barely does any damage, being an afterthought compared to the Sentry's spell abilities.
*** High Templars are shortened to "[=HTs=]", or sometimes just "Templars".
*** The energy blasts that the High Templars shoot out of their hands when they auto attack are called "water balloons" because of the psi energy’s resemblance to splashing water, and because this attack barely inflicts more damage than throwing water balloons at the enemy would. Indeed, this weak ranged auto attack was added in a patch for the sole purpose of preventing the SquishyWizard High Templar from suicidally gliding into the enemy army whenever a player attack-moved with Templars selected, which they used to do when they had no means of attacking except their spells.
*** Dark Templar are called "[=DTs=]", "Deets", "Dank Templar", or "Cape Boys". Their Shadow Stride Ability is often just called "Blink" or "DT Blink" because it works exactly the same as a Stalker's Blink ability.
*** Due to their enormous, bulbous head and the way they tend to gently nudge each other when clumped up, [[TripodTerror Colossi]] are known as Walking Blimps. The extremely tall yellow mechs are also known as "Giraffes" and "Laser Giraffes", due in large part to WebVideo/LifesAGlitchTV. Finally, a group of them can be called "'lossi" for short.
*** Warp Prisms were called "paper planes" early in the ''Wings of Liberty'' era because they had 100 health and only 40 shields, making them overly delicate and easy to kill. Patch 1.4 made them far more viable by buffing their shields from 40 to 100; eventually, patch 3.8.0 made a slight tweak by reducing their health from 100 to 80.
*** Void Rays were once known as Void Ra's due to professional player White-Ra’s tendency to use them during the beta.
*** "Skytoss" is the nickname for a late game Protoss army that's heavily weighted towards air units, such as void rays, carriers, tempests, and maybe even a mothership.
*** Disruptors are shortened to "'ruptors".
*** The "Archon Toilet" was a tactic in the ''Wings of Liberty'' version of multiplayer which involved using the Mothership's Vortex ability in combination with Archon splash damage. Vortex was a spell resembling a black hole which sucked any units that got too close into the hole at its center; this sucking action combined with the swirling energy funnel resembled a toilet flushing. The vortex would prevent units inside from doing anything or being attacked for 20 seconds, then spit them out again. The intended use of this spell was to, for example, temporarily remove half of your enemy's army from play so that you could defeat the two halves in detail. That's why it was often in the enemy's interest to deliberately send the rest of their army into the vortex after, in order to protect them and make sure their army would all come back out at the same time. However, if the mothership player had a bunch of Archons prepared and sent them into the vortex/toilet with the enemy, the Archons would zap the enemy to smithereens with their splash damage at the instant when all the units started to come out of the vortex, during which the enemy units and Archons would all be compressed together in an overlapping splash damage zone. Patch 1.3.0 nerfed this tactic out of existence by giving the units coming out of the vortex 1.5 seconds of MercyInvincibility, which gave them time to spread out again and not take splash damage from all the archons at once. Eventually the Mothership had the Vortex spell replaced with a different ability.
*** The Corrupter's Caustic Spray ability added in ''Legacy of the Void'' is often referred to as "Corruptor Piss" in less-formal environments.
*** Similarly to Brood War, the Marine / Marauder / Medivac unit composition is called “MMM”. It's also referred to as the "Bioball" (a deathball of biological units).
*** "Bio" is a Terran play style focused on the MMM unit composition, while "Mech" play is an alternative that focuses on mechanical units such as hellions, cyclones, siege tanks, and Thors.
*** The Infernal Pre-Igniter upgrade to the Hellion/Hellbat's damage against light units is simply called "Blue Flame," because it changes the color of the vehicle’s flamethrower from orange to blue. Hellions with this upgrade are called "Blue Flame Hellions".
*** "Battlemech" is the name of a high-mobility mech composition based on cyclones and hellions, which is especially good at countering Nydus Worms and Swarm Hosts.
*** Battlecruisers are abbreviated as [=BCs=].
*** A [[DropShip Medivac]] carrying eight marines is commonly called an Octodrop.
*** Using a DropShip to move units up to high ground or vice versa is called “Elevatoring”.
*** A "Maka Rax", named after Korean Terran player Maka, is a barracks built in a strange place where it won't be immediately scouted, but close enough to the home base that it can be floated back in if needed. This can trick the opponent into a false alarm over a proxy barracks rush.
*** Workers in general and Terran [=SCVs=] in particular are simply "The Boys", especially when in the context of being pressed into combat.
*** "Cheeto Dust" is what Winter Starcraft calls the orange coloring that appears on units struck by the Raven's anti-armor missle.
*** Cyclones are shortened to "'clones".
*** The Liberator's circular kill-zone in Defender mode is often referred to as a "freedom zone" or a "liberation zone"; Winter Starcraft calls a bunch of overlapping liberators zones "The Venn Diagram of Freedom". Furthermore, since defender mode works like the siege mode of siege tanks, players use the same verbs to talk about "sieging" and "un-sieging" their Liberators.
*** Winter also calls it a "Venn Dia-Scan" when a Terran player uses multiple Orbital Command scans in the same area.
*** Shoutcaster Husky Starcraft called opening with one barracks, one factory, and one starport a "Destiny Cloudfist Build" because he thought the normal build name of "1-1-1" was not exciting enough.

*** Zergling is usually shortened to just ‘ling. Zerglings with the metabolic boost move speed upgrade are called "speedlings", and when the adrenal glands attack speed upgrade is added they're called "cracklings" because they attack as if they're high on crack.
*** Ultralisks are Ultras, Imbalisks (Imbalanced-Ultralisks), or cows (they're big quadrupeds with hooves, and curved blades on their arms that stick out on either side like cow horns).
*** Mutalisks are shortened to Mutas.
*** Hydralisks are shortened to Hydras.
*** [[CoolStarship Battlecruisers]] are nicknamed flying cows by some in reference to the ultralisk's nickname, as both have a massive amount of HP.
*** Bastard Probe, as probes are arguably the most annoying unit in the game to deal with, and certainly the most annoying worker due to their ability to harass the enemy.
*** Darchons, short for Dark Archons.
*** Carriers are called Cars (Short for carriers) or Bananas (They're long and yellow)
*** M&M's: Marines & Medics. A devastating combination of units if used properly.