Zeratul Returns, And StarCraft's Next Chapter Is Being Built On A Tabletop

Zeratul Returns, And StarCraft's Next Chapter Is Being Built On A Tabletop

Zeratul, an Immortal, a Siege Tank and a Ravager are joining StarCraft: Tabletop Miniatures Game, the clearest sign yet that Blizzard's space opera is finding a second life away from the PC!

By NateBest - Aug 02, 2026 10:08 AM EST
Filed Under: Games
Source: GameFragger

The Dark Prelate is playable again. Archon Studio has revealed the second wave of expansions for StarCraft: Tabletop Miniatures Game, and Zeratul headlines it alongside a Protoss Immortal, a Terran Siege Tank, a Zerg Ravager, and a slice of the Lost Temple map built as physical terrain.

For a setting that's spent most of the last decade quiet, the Koprulu Sector is having a busy year!

Zeratul is the one worth digging into. He's arguably one of the best characters Blizzard ever wrote into this universe: an exile from a civilization that split over faith and heresy, wandering the sector with prophecy nobody wants to hear, and the closest thing StarCraft has to a tragic hero.

Until now he's existed in this game only as a promo miniature, first handed out at Essen Spiel in October 2025 and sold at conventions since. A shelf piece. Wave 2 finally gives him rules: he moves through shadows, slips past ranged fire, and hunts down the pieces that matter most on the board.

StarCraft Tabletop Game - Wave 2 Units First Look

The Immortal carries the darkest idea in the batch. In StarCraft lore these are Protoss warriors wounded past recovery, sealed inside walking war machines so they can keep serving. Whether that's mercy or a kind of horror is a question the games never quite answer, and the Protoss themselves treat it as an honor. Archon has built it as a Size 3 walker on a 100mm base carrying twin Photon Disruptors, designed to absorb punishment and hold ground.

The Siege Tank is the Terran entry and the physically largest piece in the wave, mounted on a 150mm base and buildable in either tank or siege configuration. The Ravager comes from the Zerg side, mutated up out of the Roach strain, and it lobs corrosive projectiles over obstacles while marking the ground before the shot arrives. Anyone who assumed the swarm just runs at things has been paying the wrong kind of attention.

The terrain set may be the sleeper of the group. High ground, ramps, designated access routes: the chokepoint at the top of a ramp shaped how an entire generation played strategy games, and now it's a physical object sitting on your table that somebody has to climb!

So when can you buy it? Archon hasn't said. The studio has confirmed only that pre-order and release dates will be announced separately, its earlier roadmap had these units penciled in for June, and wave one is still making its way to everyone who ordered it (our sister site GameFragger has the full breakdown on where that leaves the first wave). This is a look at what's coming, and there hasn't been a date attached.

What makes it worth watching is how much this setting has to draw on from the games. StarCraft launched in 1998 with three fully asymmetric factions at a time when strategy games mostly handed everyone the same units in different colors, then built a space opera around them that took itself seriously: a human penal colony flung to the far edge of explored space, a psychic hive intelligence engineered as a weapon, and an ancient civilization tearing itself apart over whether its own religion was a lie. That's a lot of story for a game about harvesting minerals.

Blizzard has been here before. The company's properties have made the jump to tabletop repeatedly over the years, and the results have been mixed: some of those games found devoted audiences, others arrived beautifully produced and then stopped receiving support within a year or two. What Archon has going for it is a license with three factions that are already mechanically distinct, which is close to an ideal starting point for a miniatures line meant to grow in waves.

Blizzard hasn't announced a new StarCraft game, and there's no indication one is coming. But a setting this well built has a way of outlasting its own release schedule, and right now the Koprulu Sector's next chapter is being assembled out of grey plastic.

Which corner of the StarCraft universe would you most want to see get the miniature treatment next?

About The Author:
NateBest
Member Since 1/26/2004
ComicBookMovie.com and Best Little Sites was the brainchild of Nate and a friend way back in 2002. Nate initially focused on the back-end programming and front-end design, but now manages the company and its associated sites as well, with a LOT of help from some very talented contributors.

Nate has loved comics from a very young age and continues to read them on a regular basis thanks to subscriptions to various titles (both Marvel and DC). He also loves movies, as his wife and children will attest. He's not overly critical of movies, so his reviews should be taken with a grain of salt as he's much more interested in being entertained and escaping the "real" world for a couple of hours than finding every conceivable plot-hole and character flaw in a film.

Outside of his guilty "nerdy" pleasures, Nate enjoys spending time with his wife and three boys, CrossFit, playing guitar, coaching youth sports and MMA (he spent a couple of years in the cage as an NHB fighter, but is now MUCH too old).
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