In Starcraft, the definition for a rush: Any situation in which a player critically sacrifices the building up of their town to get fighting units faster than they would normally. Please note that what you might think are rushes are simply early attacks, not actual rushes. After playing for a while it isn't hard to tell when someone is rushing or just attacking. In a 1 vs 1 situation (on any normal map), there is not one rush that can actually defeat the enemy if they prepare for it. When a player does rush, they will have sacrificed the building up of their town to get fighting units very quickly. When they do get their units they have to move them to the opponent's town, and even if they know where they are, they won't have enough units to kill all the harvesters and ground units the other person has trained. The only reason for this is because the distance between two towns is always great enough for a player to have enough time to build more units than the enemy, and if the rush happens to be extremely early a few harvesters can be lost without detriment, at least in comparison to the other player. I'm sure you are thinking "Gee, this guy is stupid. I've rushed tons of players and kicked their asses." Something else you have to think about is whether or not they were good players. Anyone who gets killed by a rush has to learn a better building order or must have seriously screwed up while they were building, or they are simply very slow builders. If you can beat them rushing, you can almost always beat them without rushing unless you have never played any other way. And if you haven't, you're missing out on a lot of fun. And if you won't play any other way, then you're probably also thinking you paid good money for a crappy game. Rushing is a bad way to play if it is all you do. In 2 vs 2 games, rushing is not as bad as in 1 vs 1 because the two players can rush against one of the opponents, normally killing them. There is a problem with this though, because the rushers are leaving one player alone to build up his town. If the one that's left alone knows any better, he will not save their ally, but will kill one of the rushers - which is not hard to do assuming all the players are of pretty equal skill and the rushers had to sacrifice the building up of their town to get their units. This normally brings it to a 1 vs 1 battle, assuming both of the attacked players got eliminated. If it didn't happen, then it shouldn't take much effort to kill the remains of the town or find where they made their new town. In larger games most players rush because it is almost impossible to stop it from killing at least one or two players. Rushing doesn't involve much skill or thought, it is just a simple building order with a small amount of units to control early in the game. Even the best players cannot stop a rush in a large game, and if the rushers aren't good in long games, it lets them have a much better chance at winning. In a 4 vs 4 rushing will always give you a better chance of beating your opponents if they are generally better than you. Four players who are exceptionally good, knowing who and when to attack when they get rushed, can win any rush game but it is rare to have 4 exceptionally good players on a team.