Getting the 2009 build
You only need this build to play Nova (opens in a new tab). Most people who need it already own it and do not know where it is. This page finds it.
Install the launcher and press Find My Game. If the 2009 build is anywhere on your computer, it finds it, checks it is the right one and sets it up. You do not have to know where it lives or what version you have.
Where your copy probably already is
This build shipped on every disc and in every digital copy sold before 2017, so almost everybody who played StarCraft before then still has it somewhere. In rough order of how often it turns up:
- An old install folder Left behind by a Windows upgrade, usually under Program Files or Program Files (x86). Nothing removes it, so it survives years of reinstalls.
- The previous computer Or its hard drive, in a drawer. The whole folder copies across and works: nothing is registered anywhere and there is no installer to re-run.
- Your own backups Search a backup drive for the game folder rather than for an installer. What you want is the folder with StarCraft.exe in it.
- The disc If you kept it. Any StarCraft or Brood War disc from before 2017 is this build, and it installs on a modern machine.
- Your Blizzard account If you bought it digitally. What is offered there is Blizzard's to decide and it changes, so check rather than assume, and read the next section before you install what you find.
How to tell which build you found
Start the game and look at the bottom of the first screen. It prints its version there. There are only two answers and they behave completely differently here.
What Nova needs
1.16.1
The 2009 build. Plays the weekly brackets against people, and it is the only thing the bots can run on. If the screen says this, you are done: point the launcher at it.
The current game
1.18 +
Anything from 1.18 upwards, including Remastered. Good for every bracket against people, no good against Nova. Keep it: most of what the league runs happens here.
If you do not have it
Then we cannot give you one, and we would rather say so than leave you waiting on an email. The game is Blizzard's. OPLeague does not host it, copy it, mirror it or send it to anybody, and no part of a subscription here is payment for a game.
What is actually out there
People ask us where to look, so here is the honest state of it. We are describing what exists, not recommending it, and we do not link any of it.
- Blizzard, free, but not this build Blizzard gives StarCraft and Brood War away at no cost. What you get is the current client, which is the one Nova cannot use. This is the only first-party download there is, and it is worth having anyway.
- 1.16.1 is a patch, not a game This matters more than anything else on the page. The thing called 1.16.1 was a patch file for a game you already owned. That is why the whole of this page is about finding your own copy: a patch is only worth anything applied to one.
- Blizzard's own patch server is gone The company published its patches on a public file server for years, and that was the one place anybody could point at without an argument. It stopped answering. We checked, rather than assuming.
- Community archives: no rights statement Search for the patch and you will find preservation archives, mod sites and wikis holding old Blizzard files. Those are third-party uploads. Nobody has published permission for them, so we are not calling them legal and we are not sending you to them. Whether you use one is your call and your risk.
- Repackaged ladder builds A lot of what circulates is a whole game folder repackaged by an old ladder community, with their server list baked in. It is the version the bot scene runs on. It is also a complete copy of somebody else's game, handed out by people with no right to hand it out, and we will not put the league behind that.
What you can still do, today, without that build: play every weekly bracket against people on the current game, enter every tournament, appear on the ladder, and be backed by fans. The 2009 build only ever unlocks one thing, which is practice against Nova.