I just started playing the SCII beta and I'm just not good at the game.  I wasn't good at Starcraft and I'm not good at this game either, but I'd like to be.

Are there any good links to strategy guides out there?  I've looked around but I didn't find much that looked too useful.  I'd really just like basic strategies, build orders, ect, for each race.

Did you watch all the battle reports? They are probably your best bet as of right now.

That guy's channel has a ton of replays that you can learn alot from. You lucky lucky bastard.

go to gamestop and reserve one they are giving keys out..i picked up two today

Hmm, maybe I'm not as terrible as I thought I was.

I played a game as Zerg last night and I only won because the guy quit a few minutes into the match. I spent the rest of the time playing by myself and just learning the tree. I was hopefully slow.

Today, I found a few Terrain strategies and decided to stick with the simple Marine + Marauder and that worked out pretty well for me. The first match today against a Zerg opponent went well, thought it took a while. My first wave ripped through his defenses but I got held up outside his initial base by some pesky air things that I didn't know. Luckily I had a nice money + gas engine and just had a constant flood of stuff going at him. I tried Siege Tanks and the buggy looking things but they didn't do me a lot of good since I didn't upgrade them. Eventually though I wore the guy down and won.

My next game I played against a Protoss opponent who was much worse than me. I took my time building up a good platoon of Marines and about half a platoon of marauders. I sent my small force out as I started rebuilding what I was sure was going to die. I got to his base and his rock wall was still there. I got inside his base and the only offensive unit he built was some really tall spidery looking thing that ripped through my units. I brought it down quickly and I saw him starting to try to build offensive units in his Stargate but I had it destroyed quickly and it was over. He said he wasn't ready and seemed a little pissy.

I like watching the videos, I just get annoyed with those because they generally go too fast and can't really see what's going on.

as a zerg player i can tell you that the basic zerg build is 14 pool 15 hatch, and about the same time as u get your hatch usually get an extractor as well

Pffft, you obviously don't play much zerg.  My usual Zerg build is 4 pool + maphack.

Seriously though, you need to play quite a few matches to get to know the tech tree and standard race matchups.  Once you become familiar with those you'll be a much better player.  Play a lot of games and learn from your mistakes, you'll get better. 

Oh, and LEARN TO MICRO

There was a thread in the Starcraft forums about the basic strategies in SC. I'm pretty sure those things still apply in SCII. I have it saved in a Word document on my old computer, I'll check later if I can find it but from what I remember two of the main points were:

- Constantly make workers units
- Scouting is vital (knowledge of all the races' tech trees is important too, you see them going for a quick Robotics Support Bay, build turrets to prevent a reaver drop in your SCVs)

I'm a little sad seeing some people with SC beta beeing noobs to the game, while progamers who spent 10 years playing it at the highest level have problems getting in.

Anyway, starcraft skill can be divided into 3 categories, first is the knowledge of the game, which can be found on different websites, but since SC II is pretty fresh, you won't find many good tactics and with each patch (and these are frequent) the game changes quiete a bit. The other two categories are macro and micro and are impossible to learn from anything else than experience. So play, play, play, watch your replays and think why you won / lost. Terran is a good race for new players, since it is basicaly a defensive race which shares most features with other races from different RTS games. Both protoss and zerg can be a bit harder for newbies.

Also don't expect to do much better without serious time investment and effort, Starcraft is a sport and there are people who earn hundreds of thousands of dollars by playing it.

If you are really serious, I'd suggest you to watch some live commentary (VOD's) from D9 (striderdoom) or GLHF.tv. They go in depth on profi gamers matches, but these might be a little hard to follow for someone who wasn't into e-sports before.

Um, fuck those people that are upset?  It's not like it was hard to get it, you just send an email.  Now it's even easier, just go preorder it.  It's not my fault they're stupid.

I've been watching the commentaries, reading strategies, and playing and it's helping, but damn, those replays are just too fast for me.  The last few games I've gotten my ass whipped (all TvT) because of reapers.  I just don't know how to defend against them.