The Devil's Playground

"Lava and Zerg. My two favorite things."

- Jim Raynor

The Devil's Playground is a StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty mission. Raynor's Raiders were contracted to mine minerals by the mysterious pirate, Gabriel Tosh.

Background
Gabriel Tosh, an anti-Dominion spectre, sought to start his own spectre program. To do this, he needed to acquire jorium, terrazine, and suitable candidates. The Second Great War worked to his advantage. When the Kel-Morian Combine abandoned Redstone III due to the zerg invasion, Tosh contracted miners to harvest the planet's minerals for their jorium content. Communications with the contractors were lost, although they remained alive.

The re-emergence of Raynor's Raiders, another anti-Dominion group, provided Tosh with another opportunity. The spectre hired the Raiders to go and mine Redstone's minerals as well. Tosh sold the operation as a way for the rebels to make badly needed money, and did not reveal his ulterior motive. The planet's frequent lava surges and zerg presence made this an unconventional mining operation.

The Mission
Tosh provided assistance remotely. He reinforced the Raiders with reapers; additional units were operating in the vicinity and waiting top link up as well. The spectre provided directions to the last known location of the contracted miners and additional mineral fields. Even with these additional resources, Matt Horner reminded Raynor to carefully manage expenditures to avoid drawing too deeply from minerals being amassed. The rebels promptly departed once their quota was reached.

Aftermath

 * See: Campaign quotations

Tosh was pleased with the Raiders' efficacy and went aboard the rebel flagship Hyperion; he hoped to entice Jim Raynor into recovering terrazine from the Tal'darim on Bel'shir. Raynor took a tentative liking to Tosh after learning of the spectres' anti-Dominion views.

Gameplay & Video Walkthrough
The lower map areas where the minerals are is flooded by lava at regular intervals, destroying units and structures on the ground quickly. On all difficulties except brutal a timer will display the time before the next surge. Even without the timer, the area will glow brightly and warning sirens will sound when the lava floods are coming. The player should evacuate their units and lift off their structures at this time and wait for the lava to subside. The zerg don't attack in great force but can include mutalisks, so use a force of s, marauders and medics to defend. The zerg bases do not need to be destroyed to win the mission, but the hatcheries spawn resources when destroyed. On brutal, infestors and a brood lord appear in the zerg base at the top right corner of the map. As the player expands from their initial base defenders should be moved to protect the new location accordingly, but remember to withdraw when the lava begins to rise.

A period of time into the mission, Tosh will dispatch four reapers to the player's base. They can be used to scout out the area, as the map holds other reapers from Tosh that can be rescued as well as many resource palettes to speed up collection. Their ability to jump up and down cliffs also lets the reapers quickly move around the map's multi-level terrain. Tosh requests the player investigate another force of his to the north, which can be approached with the reapers to find another command center with five SCVs. They can be put to work immediately, and as there is only five of them the player can load them into the command center and lift it off to save them from zerg or lava floods. To the north-east of where the command center is found there are reapers to be rescued. With two command centers to mine it should not take the player long to reach their quota, especially if the reapers explore for more resources. They can easily handle outlying zerg alone, but against the zerg bases and mutalisks should be pulled back.

The brutalisk is in the southwest corner of the map guarding some resource caches. Killing it yields research points, and an achievement if killed by the lava. It can easily be killed with a balanced force of marines, marauders and medics. To kill it with the lava, the player should attack the brutalisk and then flee, pausing regularly to attack again and keep the brutalisk pursuing them to lure it to the low ground. The player will likely lose the unit(s) antagonizing the brutalisk in this fashion so only use a couple. The brutalisk will flee back to its lair if this is not done properly and will not chase the player's units too far, so it can take a few tries to time this properly with the lava rising.

thumb|625px|left|Brutal Mode Walkthrough

Trivia



 * Diablo, from Blizzard's Diablo series, is on an island at the south-east corner of the map. It is unselectable and can be seen only by moving a flying structure, air unit, placing a scanner sweep or placing a unit at the right point on the cliff border.


 * This mission was previously known as Mining Your Own Business.