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We all hate baneling/ling in ZvZ, it creates boring games where neither player does anything different and eventually one player wins. However, if you know how to counter baneling/ling, its fairly easy to beat. Some would argue there is no counter to baneling/ling, because the only other unit zerg can build early game, besides banelings and zerglings is roaches, and roaches can't beat baneling/ling. If you go roaches, your opponent can expand, mass zerglings, and safely tech to lair, knowing if you push out with your roaches his zerglings can run into your main and kill your base, or he can simply have enough zerglings to kill your roaches. However, there is a way to beat zergling/baneling with roaches.
The strategy: Open with roaches, if you see your opponent is going baneling/ling, when he sees you go roaches he will most likely expand and mass zerglings. When you can tell he is going for a lot of zerglings, throw down a baneling nest, build about six banelings, and spend the rest of your money on roaches. Push out with four banelings and almost all of your roaches, maybe leave 2-3 behind along with the 2 banelings to defend from a counterattack, more units should be building from your hatchery anyways to defend from this. Don't waste banelings in your push, don't a-move them, if he tries to pick them off with a few zerglings, your roaches will annihilate his lings in small numbers, if he engages you with a large zergling force, your banelings will blow up most of his force and your roaches can clean everything else up and move on to his base.
-I just started playing zerg recently, so I could post a build order, but I am afraid it might not be the ideal way to play my strategy. Basically, I throw down a pool at 14, get a quick roach warren and a quick queen, along with 4 lings to hold until I get some roaches. If my opponent appears to be building a fair amount of zerglings, I throw down a baneling nest, and mix in a very small number of zerglings with my roaches. You can tell very early in a zvz whether or not your opponent is making a lot of lings, so you can throw down a baneling nest very early on. The baneling nest is very cheap, so this won't hurt your economy much. Also, you only need to make several banelings along with your roaches to completely negate ling/baneling.
Replays of this strategy:
me vs Looky :
goswser vs Looky
-I lost this game, because I played pretty horribly, but this shows how hard it can be for ling/baneling to deal with this.
me vs gankthoven :
goswser vs gankthoven
-he didn't go baneling/ling, but this game shows how easy it is to transition into lair tech and secure an expo with this
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this isn't really needed when all you have to do is get a quick + 1 armor upgrade and then you dominate for about 4 minutes, giving you plenty of time to tech out of ling bling and get a macro advantage.
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As Z I often open up with a good simcity, to block one half of my base and leave a tiny escape hatch which will be blocked by a queen hold positioning.
I open roaches and put those at my ramp, it is not so much the baneling/zergling I have trouble with, its the muta followup. And banelings do not counter muta' s unfortunally. I like being on the defensive as Z, getting loads of queens to combat the muta' s, however those are slow and require creep. So the opponent is free to expand almost everywhere until I can transition into hydra' s.
A zergling/baneling player can freely expand against a roach player. And that alone gives a huuuge advantage to Z/Bling .
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It's allin because what happens if muta are out, or enough crawlers are up, or what if he transitions to mass roach himself and just has more stuff cause he expanded and droned freely? Do you have good relative timings on the attacks or replays to back this up? You can't just say make 'x' unit and you win, it doesn't work like that.
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17054 Posts
This is very interesting theory and has the potential to promote some good discussion, but could you perhaps provide examples of replays where you beat ling/baneling with your roach strategy?
Also, perhaps a specific build or set of build suggestions would be helpful. More detailed discussion of the strategy could also be warranted. At the moment, this looks more like a [D] or [I] thread than a guide, which one would expect to contain guidelines and more detail on specific situations.
I'll leave this open for now, but please edit in some of the suggestions I mentioned or I will close it. You're welcome to open a new discussion thread, of course (because it's actually quite an interesting issue).
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On July 17 2010 04:24 PrinceXizor wrote:
this isn't really needed when all you have to do is get a quick + 1 armor upgrade and then you dominate for about 4 minutes, giving you plenty of time to tech out of ling bling and get a macro advantage.
+1 attack for roaches 2 shots lings so is better than +1 armour vs lings.
OP:
Your main problem is people who go mutalisks or people who mass spinecrawler with queen+lings since he can power off 2 base really hard once he can hold your attack
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How to beat a player who rushes with 6 banelings and 12 zerglings: build 7 banelings.
The defender has the advantage because he doesn't need to have zerglings left when all the banelings are gone. Just match his baneling numbers and squeeze in an extra couple drones. If he can't break your banelings, you have the better economy and you win.
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On July 17 2010 04:49 Slayer91 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 17 2010 04:24 PrinceXizor wrote:
this isn't really needed when all you have to do is get a quick + 1 armor upgrade and then you dominate for about 4 minutes, giving you plenty of time to tech out of ling bling and get a macro advantage. +1 attack for roaches 2 shots lings so is better than +1 armour vs lings. OP: Your main problem is people who go mutalisks or people who mass spinecrawler with queen+lings since he can power off 2 base really hard once he can hold your attack
But +1 armor means your lings beat Bling-ling. which is what i was talking about. you don't need roaches at all.
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The problem with this strat is that the ling player is given free control on the map when you choose to turtle on your tier 1.5 units for a bit. He can expand and get lair tech and doesn't even need to make lings until your slow roaches are half way across the map. He can also have 4-5 sunkens up at his nat by the time you get there and then just finish you off with muta.
The moment he sees your roach warren he can throw down an expansion, if he hasn't already.
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What do you think about a Hatch/Spine or Hatch/Evo/Spine walloff in to 1 base Mutas? If he has invested much gas into banelings you will certainly be ahead in the Muta count at 8 minutes.
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On July 17 2010 05:08 Demi9OD wrote:
What do you think about a Hatch/Spine or Hatch/Evo/Spine walloff in to 1 base Mutas? If he has invested much gas into banelings you will certainly be ahead in the Muta count at 8 minutes.
if you skip banelings you risk getting swarmed by mass ling while your spire is going up
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I know a full wall can be created with Hatch/Evo, but I don't know if throwing a spine into the ramp wall will full block with plans to move it later to expo. But in this case he'd actually have to bust the spine with his banes to be able to swarm the slings in. It's still very all in since you deny yourself the natural, give him map control, and could be easily countered by mass queens or a couple spore crawlers if he scouts your spire with OL.
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On July 17 2010 05:05 CharlieMurphy wrote:
The problem with this strat is that the ling player is given free control on the map when you choose to turtle on your tier 1.5 units for a bit. He can expand and get lair tech and doesn't even need to make lings until your slow roaches are half way across the map. He can also have 4-5 sunkens up at his nat by the time you get there and then just finish you off with muta.
The moment he sees your roach warren he can throw down an expansion, if he hasn't already.
You aren't giving your opponent map control with this build, because as soon as you make your first few banelings you can push out aggressively, and a player who goes ling/baneling will have a hard time stopping this if you do it right.
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17054 Posts
A potential issue I see with the strategy is that with the low number of Banelings you have with the build, you have to both protect them and use them wisely. Having a Baneling explode on, say, two or three Zerglings would simply be disastrous. Additionally, you'd have to protect your own Banelings from enemy Banelings who are targeting them.
From a cost-effectiveness standpoint, I think that Ling/Baneling is more cost effective than Roach/Baneling, even in head-to-head encounters.
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On July 17 2010 05:59 Empyrean wrote:
A potential issue I see with the strategy is that with the low number of Banelings you have with the build, you have to both protect them and use them wisely. Having a Baneling explode on, say, two or three Zerglings would simply be disastrous. Additionally, you'd have to protect your own Banelings from enemy Banelings who are targeting them.
From a cost-effectiveness standpoint, I think that Ling/Baneling is more cost effective than Roach/Baneling, even in head-to-head encounters.
I haven't tested it, but I kind of doubt that ling/baneling would beat roach/baneling for cost given good micro on both sides.
Banelings are useless against roaches, and lings need to get up and surround roaches to be cost-effective. It just takes 1 or 2 banelings to make that impossible.
Sure, if you can weave a couple zerglings around into the banelings to make them detonate early, that will swing the tide, but if you can do that, you've out-microed your opponent and deserve to win. Something to consider with roach-baneling to make the micro a little less all-or-nothing is to research burrow and burrow the banelings to keep them alive. If the lings get up on the roaches, unburrow and win. Also, do banelings detonate if they're ordered to follow? If not, a simple follow command would make roach-baneling micro super easy. If 1 or 2 lings attack your banelings, keep the banelings on follow and pick them off with your roaches. If 5 or 6 lings attack your banelings, select ONE of the banelings and give it an attack command.
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If you go roach, you forfeit mapcontrol he can expand earlier, gets lair earlier because he didnt spend gas on roaches and you loose, just not to ling baneling but to ling muta baneling. ;D
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Funny I just played a game where opponent went roach baneling. Idra posted his reaction to fast roach and it is pretty simple. After confirming roaches, stop baneling production (either cancel baneling nest or morphing banelings), pump a round of drones, and go roaches with a better economy then your opponent.
If they speedling expand then this works wonders but people will catch on pretty soon.
edit: I actually was using this strategy quite a lot before. Just attack move roaches through the center and manually control your own banelings. He can't send individual speed/banelings to detonate yours because you have range. Only attack his zerglings with your banes when they try to surround.
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I love ZvZ's as long as it moves away from the darned Baneling battles. It's just so senseless.
At kNyTTyM, the problem is the timing of your roaches. Obviously, if he goes fast roach, and you have a better economy, you'll pull ahead. The problem is when you will pull ahead. I found that a timing attack, after your 2nd batch of roaches come out, giving you possibly 6-7 roaches is very difficult to defend, especially coupled with your initial set of zerglings. Defending is possible, but this is merely to push you back, so that you can't sit on your better economy and you're forced to make more roaches, while I can safely set up an expo or pump more drones. You can't just say go roaches with a better economy. 
I always avoid Baneling wars if possible by going either 2 queen or 4 roach early to clog up the ramp. I lose 100% on Scrap Station though.
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On July 17 2010 06:53 kNyTTyM wrote:
Funny I just played a game where opponent went roach baneling. Idra posted his reaction to fast roach and it is pretty simple. After confirming roaches, stop baneling production (either cancel baneling nest or morphing banelings), pump a round of drones, and go roaches with a better economy then your opponent.
If they speedling expand then this works wonders but people will catch on pretty soon.
edit: I actually was using this strategy quite a lot before. Just attack move roaches through the center and manually control your own banelings. He can't send individual speed/banelings to detonate yours because you have range. Only attack his zerglings with your banes when they try to surround.
Hmm that's actually pretty clever, I should try that in some game.
I'm surprised I missed it, I'm usually all over IdrA's posts :/
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oh hey, is this the zvz baneling thread of the week?
here is cost effectiveness: it takes 8 banelings to kill 1 roach. an equal amount of roaches to banelings will kill some banelings before they attack allowing your roach army to survive. the enemy zerg player will have to invest massively in banelings to kill your roach army. fire up galaxy editor and test it yourself.
as op says, when enemy goes mass speedlings, get roaches up and then get banelings up, and a couple banelings will annihilate your enemy.
I lose 100% on Scrap Station though.
1. build two spine crawlers to block off your mineral line and 2. have one or two roaches behind the mineral line to draw enemy attack.
navigate your roaches around the map by sticking to the edge of the platform, this way zerglings will not get a surround.
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EPT
