Starbow Wiki
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Welcome to the Starbow Wiki!


This wiki contains information about Starbow, a free-to-play StarCraft II mod in the spirit of its predecessor StarCraft: Brood War. It contains up-to-date information about all units, structures, abilities, and mechanics included in the game, as well as change guides highlighting the differences between Starbow and SCBW/SC2.

Starbow can be played by searching the SC2 Arcade — which is accessible through any version of the game, including the Free Starter Edition — for "Starbow". (For beginners, playing on maps marked "Official" is ideal, and Starbow - Fighting Spirit is the most commonly-played and standard map by far.) To find people to play with, join the chat channel "Starbow" in-game by typing "/join Starbow", and/or join the Eros Custom Ladder chat room on http://starbowmod.com. To learn more about the game, explore more pages on the wiki — the Starbow History, Overview, and Strategy Guides are all great places to start!

What is Starbow?

Starbow is a StarCraft: Brood War expansion, made as an Arcade game in the StarCraft II engine. Unlike some other mods (such as SC2BW), Starbow does not aim to recreate the experience of playing Brood War within the SC2 engine; rather, Starbow aims to create a new experience in the spirit of the original. By including the interface and control improvements made possible by SC2, and the game design philosophy of SCBW — as well as some personal flair from the developers and community, in a kind of "open-air" development cycle — Starbow aims to create a new RTS experience with the elegance and strategic depth found in Brood War, and the mechanical accessibility of StarCraft II.

Kabel, Starbow's creator, began development on the mod shortly after StarCraft II's release in 2011. Since that time, Starbow has undergone almost continuous development (and redesign), and is now mostly supervised by Xiphias, the current Lead Developer. A brief history of Starbow's development (from Kabel's and Xiphias's perspectives) can be found here.

Comprehensive lists of the changes in Starbow are provided below — geared towards players familiar with StarCraft: Brood War and StarCraft II, respectively — along with overviews of each race's philosophy and "style" in Starbow. There is currently no single-player campaign or tutorial, so learning the game is largely experienced through cooperation and study. Because the community "meta" is very similar to Brood War's, studying Brood War games and guides can also valuable for learning broad concepts. (Note: The Custom Game AI is also functional on Starbow maps, but it will not properly utilize units' abilities.For an optimal experience set it to "Economic Focus") Links to additional community presence on TeamLiquid, YouTube, and Twitch are also provided, which are used to broadcast and commentate games from community events.

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