Just a quick question, I apologize in advance for anyone who thought this was HOTS related but I honestly didn’t know where else I could post this. So a while back I was playing HOTS with my friend and he brought up, who would win in a fight, the scourge or the zerg. I thought this would bring some fun debait, please post if you’re interested.
First, this would be better on the SC or WoW Forums.
Second, The Scourge obviously, because they can turn anything into scourge after they kill it. Yeah the zerg can infect the living, but undead are not living and can not be infected, thus the zerg do not get new forces while the Scourge do.
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Also Zerg because they are cooler than skelley undead zombies.
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Meh this deserves a thread off its own
I think it’s clearly hots related . So ty. For real.
Personally idk Zerg lore As I do Warcraft so I’m biased. (I’ need to sc in rl still . ) But, I know how the undead Pwn anything alive including Azeroth ZergIsh creeps. so against scourge in equal numbers With Arthas in command or bett3r every Zerg is soon to bescourge. Don’t you ever post anywhere else but hots please ty
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I mean, the scourge has trouble defeating sticks-and-stones Alliance and Horde.
Whereas Zergs casually take down advanced Protoss and Terran fleets and conquer entire planets.
Zerg would decimate the scourge in the same manner that a single Protoss Carrier would decimate an Alliance army.
I fail to see how a common steel sword in the hands of a zombie will deal much damage to a zerg that casually shrugs off high-caliber assault rifle rounds.
Those zergling claws also tear down high-tech marine armor like butter.
I also fail to see what an undead army can do about a buried Crawler, or a mobile ranged Roach army.
Zerg’s aerial force is also much more impressive. Sure the Scourge has undead dragons, but they’d get blown up by a couple of bat swarms.
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I know this is a necro, but Zerg. Easily.
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I agree. This is definitely HotS related. We have a lot of experience with scourge vs. zerg battles. It’s a tough call. I think I would have to go with zerg though; they seem pretty hardy compared to a bunch of ghouls and skeletons. and they got scourge for any frost dragons, of course.
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At first glance, Zerg.
At second glance, also Zerg.
At third glance, we have to recognize the rules behind magic use. Can magic only be defeated with magic? Because still probably Zerg.
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Pshht. Even with my mediocre I. Q I think i can take out the Zerg! Fosho if I gotta 6demonbag and know their habits they’re creatures of habit All they do is bite scream sense life repeat
ZZ… Zerg. Zombies. Ppl, wake up! The Scourge is not just skeletons, it’s a zombie apocalypse only held back thanks to the Helm of Domination (rip).
Slowly the Zerg would be raised in their ranks and it’s not natural, so they can’t evolve against it.
If the zerg come with a big swarm and go for a quick all out frontal attack they would win or if they attack from orbit.
If they try to slowly colonise the world they would slowly but surely get raised and then the zerg could lose.
It remains to see if mages can disrupt the zerg’s psynonic link which would spell trouble for many broodmother.
And if arthas can bullshift wrath of frostmourne and rip every living creature souls from them instantly. All bets are off.
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why can’t both win?
I won a medal for attending
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Zerg, no contest. The Scourge don’t stand a chance, for a multitude of reasons.
1. The Zerg vastly outnumber the Scourge.
Let’s be very generous and assume that the Scourge number in the millions (1,000,000). The Zerg would outnumber them by at least 6 orders of magnitude, as the most conservative estimates for their population usually land in the trillions (1,000,000,000,000)!
Of course, that many Zerg are spread out over hundreds or thousands of planets and moons, so it’s not fair to assume that they would all show up on Azeroth at once.
Instead, let’s assume that only a single Leviathan pack shows up.
That’s still easily millions of Zerg, enough to match the most generous estimate for the global Scourge population at its highest, and this is just Tuesday for the Zerg.
This brings us to our second point.
2. The Zerg can multiply significantly faster than the Scourge.
In order to multiply, the Scourge must reanimate corpses that are sufficiently intact that they can be raised. They can either raise slain enemies or they can dig up graves, but either way they must have access to corpses.
Whether they’d be able to reanimate Zerg depends on whether the corpse is intact enough. Zerg physiology has a tendency to quite literally explode when they die (while fire seems to avoid this issue, I don’t see the Scourge using that too much), and anything left intact tends to decay away rapidly anyway. The Scourge would have fairly limited luck in converting slain Zerg to their side.
The Zerg can take any material with the requisite materials they need, break it down into those base materials, restructure them as needed, and then use that as the building blocks for sustenance via Creep or for reproduction. In other words, they can basically eat anything, ranging from organic matter to solid rocks. This allows them to begin multiplying basically anywhere they can survive in the first place, and there’s not a lot of places they can’t survive.
As a result, they would easily be able to take dismembered Scourge corpses and recycle them as fodder for more Zerg.
Additionally, a single fully grown and sufficiently supplied Hatchery can pump out hundreds of Zerg in a single day. If it manages to grow into a Lair, or, even worse, a Hive, it can pump out thousands a day. Furthermore, with every stage of development comes bigger and badder Zerg bioforms, and the Zerg are more than willing to grow multiple of these on a single planet.
There is no way the Scourge could match that breakneck pace of production, let alone maintain it constantly like the Zerg can.
3. Per-capita, the Zerg are far more lethal than the Scourge.
The Scourge are mostly zombies and skeletons of various creatures, most commonly humanoids. They are usually poorly equipped and are weaker and slower than in life, though their undead state means that otherwise mortal wounds are insufficient to disable them. You practically have to dismember them entirely to put them down for good.
They do have some higher-level fighters, such as powerful Death Knights and Liches. They are powerful, but they are fairly few.
The Zerg are a race literally genetically bred for war. “Evolution” is technically the wrong term to describe Zerg development, as evolution is a slow and incidental process. The Zerg are designed to be biological weapons, specifically made to be as lethal and combat-effective as possible.
Zerglings: Imagine if a cheetah had the bite-strength of an industrial hydraulic press, the mass of a tiger, the armored hide of an armadillo proportional to its size, the aggression of a coked-up Canadian goose and a rabid raccoon combined, and the self-preservation instinct of a bee.
Now imagine hundreds of them charging full-speed ahead at you.
If a man equipped with plate mail and a sword and shield can face that down without breaking ranks, then he is not brave, he is an idiot. A single one of these these would tear through multiple of them before being brought down.
And it only gets worse from here.
Banelings: Ever wondered what would happen if the Xenomorphs decided to fill an exercise ball with their acidic blood and stick legs on it?
Wonder no more! Banelings are basically exactly that.
And watch your footing. Banelings can bury themselves into the ground and pop when you walk over them.
Roaches: Large as a car’s passenger compartment and armored like a tank, these guys are basically impervious to small-arms fire. Their armor is thick enough to absorb or deflect Gauss rifle rounds, which is like deflecting literal modern tank shells. Even more, they aren’t just walking bullet sponges, they are also capable of spewing acid corrosive enough to eat straight through just about any metal in seconds.
And as if overgrown crabs more durable than the president’s personal limo weren’t bad enough at that, they can also burrow through the ground just as fast as they can run on it.
Hydralisks: These suckers are about as honed for combat as biology gets, short of giving them psionic abilities. They can launch their needlespines, razor-sharp spines the length of your forearm and covered in barbs dripping with neurotoxins, at over mach 2, and can penetrate through several inches of neosteel from over a kilometer away. You ever wanted to know what it would feel like to get shot with a poisoned 50-cal round, these guys would be more than happy to give you the chance to experience that first hand. You never wanted to know that, doesn’t matter – Hydralisks are very aggressive salesmen of this particular service, so these free trials are not optional.
However, just because they’re so lethal at range does not mean it’s safe to go thinking their arm scythes and teeth are just for show. As the Starcraft wiki says,
“Can’t block these with your rifles. Lenny tried, (RIP Lenny.)”
Ultralisks: Ultralisks are what you get when someone asks, “What would happen if we gave this mountain legs and some big-
arm blades?”
Ultralisks can shrug off direct hits from artillery. They can literally face-tank tactical nuclear strikes. There’s really not much more to say here.
Oh wait, I forgot that after assimilating the radiation from those nukes, they can literally revive themselves again and again. I don’t think the Scourge can reanimate what literally won’t die.
And we haven’t even touched the flying or more exotic and support-oriented Zerg, like Mutalisks, Brood Lords, Infestors, or Swarm Hosts.
Short of Arthas himself, his most powerful Death Knights and Liches, and Sindragosa, there is literally nothing the Scourge has that could stand up to any of that.
Zerglings, Roaches, and Hydralisks would tear through the typical zombies and skeletons like paper, and enough of them would easily overwhelm a Death Knight or Lich. Ultralisks would literally just trample over everything, almost nothing being big enough to warrant using its arm blades. Even Sindragosa would be quickly brought down by swarming Mutalisks and Corruptors.
Even Arthas would inevitably fall under an endless tide of Zerg, even more easily than he did to a couple dozen adventurers.
If for some reason you need any more evidence to convince you that the Zerg would absolutely thrash the Scourge, you can just compare their track records for confirmation.
The Scourge have failed on multiple occasions to overrun Azeroth, a world defended by medieval era tech and some magic, and very occasionally one of their normally apathetic deity-level beings, like a god or a Dragon Aspect.
The Zerg have successfully overrun dozens, potentially hundreds, of worlds defended by civilizations so technologically advanced they could raze the entirety of Azeroth’s mortal armies to the ground without a single loss.
When the Zerg invaded Tarsonis, Korhal, Aiur, and Shakuras, the capitals and most heavily defended worlds of the Terran Confederacy, the Terran Dominion, the Khalai Protoss, and the Nerazim Protoss respectively, every single one of those planets fell in days or less.
The Zerg overrun entire solar systems in the same amount of time it takes the Scourge to overrun a single city.
Forget the Zerg vs. the Scourge, the Zerg could stomp literally all of Azeroth’s forces, including most of their deity-level entities. If the Zerg Swarm sets its sights firmly upon a world, there is little that can stand in its way.
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Lol, I’d say with a ton of magic and some medieval tech (also, WC tech is waaay beyond medieval btw, gnome and goblin engineering, also rifles and stuff).
They can just plague the food like they did with Stratholme.
Also you don’t know about it, but it is mentioned multiple times that the Scourge is “weak” because the Lich King. That’s why there must always be one. Otherwise the Scourge is uncontainable.
Purely biological entities has no chance against undeath.
If you want to go “SC beats WC raynor noises”, than pick at least the Protoss. Now they can realistically destroy a magical “virus”.
(Yea, the Nerubians were immune to the Plague so you could say the Zerg could also be, but… the most likely reason why the Nerubians were immune to it is… magic, since they’re created by a race close to Shadow and Death magic.)
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They already have.
Ground army: banelings
Air army : scourges
Problem solved ! You cant zombify something if nothing is left and melted with highly corrosive acid 
I think anyway … Can they 
??
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Zerg VS Magic? Magic would stomp. Unless Zerg has some nuclear firepower
Some of it is, but the vast majority of their weapons are swords and bows, and their armor (when and where they actually wear it) is mostly plate.
Even Gnome and Goblin tech is far behind anything in the SC universe. Their rifles are piddly compared to C-14 Gauss rifles, which themselves are on the low-end of firepower in the SC universe. Their armor doesn’t even come close to matching CMC-400 powered armor that is standard issue for Marines. They also don’t have anything comparable to Siege Tanks or Vikings, let alone Battlecruisers.
And yet, those gnomes and goblins and their sticks-and-stones armed allies are able to fend off the Scourge while the far more advanced and numerous Terrans struggle and often fail against the Zerg.
Scourge < Horde/Alliance < Terrans < Protoss/Zerg.
Therefore, Scourge < Zerg
Diseases don’t work against the Zerg, at least not for long. After a couple of them are exposed, whatever causes the plague is diagnosed and the rest all “evolve” immunity to it. They’ve literally demonstrated this ability against biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons. If it can be survived by some biological thing, the Zerg will figure out how and adopt that trait.
Is there a tangible reason the Zerg would not be able to evolve immunity (other than the default, “tthbbt, it’s magic, IAGES”)?
But the Scourge is not “undeath” itself. It’s a bunch of undead. Literally just walking corpses. Destroy those, which the Zerg could do easily, and you destroy the Scourge.
Yeah, they wouldn’t even need to make planetfall like the Zerg. They could just bombard it from orbit.
And yet the Zerg still push the Protoss to their limits. Unless we’re talking superweapons like the Forge of Origination, there’s nothing on Azeroth that would be able to stop the Swarm if it really wanted to conquer Azeroth. Problem there is that the Forge of Origination would also kill everything else on Azeroth as well.
So the Zerg kill and assimilate some Nerubians. Boom. Now they have immunity to the plague, even if they couldn’t develop it on their own bcuz majik.
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The thing is Warcraft world has access to magic which is a big unknow.
People in WC can do things even amon didn’t pull off.
Demons and titans are some equivalent to aliens and magic repelled/sealed them away in the past.
If psyonics are no wards against magic mind controlling broodmothers like a psi disruptor or outright sealing even a xel’naga is not out of the equation.
A shard of medivh consciouness teleported fleets of demons and ensures they would not be able to find the planet again in legion.
There also is a big unknown for SC beings.
Can a big invasion be maintained or even possible without minerals and vespene?
Both in BW and HOTS kerrigan had to stall for time and amass enormous amount of ressources to able to invade khoral.
Of course the push a button from afar and have the planet destroyed is valid game over strategy but no one bar tassadar when he was purging worlds used that.
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In general, when it comes to magic it’s not safe to make assumptions about what it can potentially do. You can only stick with what you’ve seen it do, otherwise it just becomes wild speculation because magic without a hard ruleset can just hand-wave away anything.
That’s part of why comparing magic systems is so hard, it usually just devolves into a wand-measuring contest over whose magic is the most magicky.
Based on what we’ve seen the Scourge and its fighters do, there’s not much they could do that would actually stop the Swarm. They could slow it down with mass-area magics like Frost Novas, but there’d always be more Zerg coming.
“Minerals” is a vague stand-in for raw materials usually mined from the earth. Vespene gas is much more particular, but the Zerg have been known in-canon to morph in units that cost Vespene in-game without any access to Vespene in-canon, as they have done with Banelings and Mutalisks. We also know that they are able to consume and recycle basically all organic matter to use as resources.
As for the Korhal invasions, having the “economy” necessary to produce your army is pretty important when you are attacking the single most heavily defended Terran world in the entire history of the Koprulu sector. And even then Korhal still fell within a matter of days.
The Confederacy of Man did when they blasted Korhal into an irradiated hellscape early in Mengsk’s rebellion, and the Khalai Protoss did that on a regular basis to purge worlds of the Zerg.
Destroying planets (not Deathstar-style, more Exterminatus-style) is not exactly uncommon in the SC universe (though at least one planet, Shakuras, did get Alderaan’d).
And wouldn’t you know it, it’s almost always done on planets where the Zerg have successfully established a foothold, because most other options for removing them would be too costly. When it comes to the Zerg, the literal Nuclear Option is often the optimal Plan A.
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