First of all, let me say that I have always been skeptical of strategy guides for games. I thought I would never have to use a strategy guide. “Come on, what do I need a strategy guide for? Everything I need to know is somewhere in the manual or in the game tutorial,” I thought. Oh boy, was I wrong! It started with Starcraft 2 that I changed my mind about strategy guides. I was playing a lot of action games, and I also played Civilization and Command & Conquer occasionally. I wasn’t a total newbie when it came to strategy games, but I wasn’t a buff either. So when most of my online buddies bought Starcraft 2, I went along and bought it, too. What could go wrong? Well, a lot, actually. Sure, the game itself is great, but there sure is a lot to learn. I felt pretty embarrassed when I couldn’t get through some of the single player missions the first time. “Wow,” I thought, “this is harder than I thought it would be.” My buddies wanted me to play online with them, but I didn’t even know the basics from the single player mode. Subsequently, I got crushed many, many times. People were rushing my base and there wasn’t much I could do. And then it hit me: I needed a Starcraft 2 strategy guide! At first I thought, discussion boards might help me, but to be honest: I don’t want to browse through thousands of threads to find the right answer to my problem! So while I was reading the Starcraft 2 strategy guide, I had a lot of a-ha moments, and afterwards I thought that this could have been so much easier. There were so many things I’ve done wrong. It turned out that I pretty much messed up my build orders, and finally I was able to fully use the skills of my reapers. And with the campaign guide, I suddenly got through the whole single player ordeal. Well, it wasn’t an ordeal anymore with the guide, obviously.