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I've recently switched from Terran to Zerg (mainly because I want to look forward to late game instead of fearing it) and while getting maxed has always been my goal with Terran, it seems like it is more of a problem with Zerg if roaches and speedlings make up a large part of that maxed army since they are so supply-inefficient (The splash units of T (Hellions and Tanks) and the FF of P render them largely useless).
When my opponent would finally decide to move out with his huge ball of death, he would easily wipe out my entire army, dealing huge damage to my economy since my reinforcements would arive slowly and in non-threatening numbers while he's busy killing my expansions.
Solutions to that seem to be to fight away from your home (so you have reinforcements ready when he arrives at your bases) and to drop/nydus your useless supply into his main so you atleast trade them off somewhat cost-efficiently, while you replenish your army with Tier 3 units.
However I want to have an army that can fight anywhere, not only away from my home. It is also very hard to engage turtling opponents since the defensive capabilities of P and T are so good, rendering the cost-efficiency of your army compared to his even worse. (who hasn't lost a shitton of stuff to tanks + PF or just plain carpet storming)
Drops and Nyduses can be denied by good opponents or map hack (Sensor Towers / Observers), thus relying on the mistake of your opponent. Not a good tactic to employ imo.
Relying on reinforcements also doesn't work very well with our current map-pool. Ultralisks take 70 seconds to build, Broodlords 74 (40+34), any other unit can be dealt with by your standard mid-game T/P composition.
Of course you can keep throwing maxed armies at your defending opponent, however this almost never works when you aren't dramatically ahead of your opponent in economy/tech and is plain suicide if you are behind.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/g2gNq.jpg) Bye bye, Colossi
After hitting a wall in ZvP I decided to download the approx. last 20 ZvP from http://www.sc2.com.cn/ (has more pro-replays than sc2rep.com, is however harder to navigate) to see what the Korean Zergs are doing to beat Protoss. I stumbled across 2 very interesting replays by JookToJung. When he approached the upper limits of the supply cap he would make 20-30 zerglings and morph them into banelings. Since FF still stop everything but Ultralisks on the ground, he would drop them - en masse- directly on his opponent.
Here are the replays.
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-163842.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-163852.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-164396.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-165181.jpg)
In the first replay, Protoss opens 2 gate Phoenix forcing Hydras then transitioning into 2 robo Colossus. I want you to take a look at the last engangement by the 3rd of Z near the end of the game. Both armies are at around 110 supply. Normally those 7 Colossus would rape through the Roach/Hydra composition. (I tested it multiple times in the unit tester, about 6 colossus survive)
However, by dropping the banelings directly onto the colossus, most of them are killed and the remaining ones are cleaned up by the rest of the roach/hydra army. How often do you see a T2 Zerg army absolutely demolish a similiar Protoss army that has colossus in a normal game? That's right never ever in a million years. Once the colossus count gets that high, they become basically untouchable by ground and that's where the banelings really shine, they circumvent anything on the ground and go directly for the Colossus dealing guaranteed damage to them. The unit tester reinforced the tactic that was shown in the first replay. Every single time I used dropped banelings on the Protoss ball (depending on how well I did it), the Zerg army would still stand strong with about 10 Roach / Hydra each. The by far most efficient way to drop banelings is to steer them over the enemy unit ball and then start spamming D+Click onto the overlords so they drop the banelings evenly, maximizing the damage and giving the remaining units a very easy time cleaning up the rest. If I used Speedlings or just directly rolled my banelings in however (and this is even without FF) The combined AoE of the colossus would absolutely crush the Roach / Hydra. Even If I replaced the Zealots with Stalkers, the Protoss ball would die almost instantenously, even though the stalkers killed off a few more Roaches before they died.
The second replay shows a beautiful way to end the game. Instead of having to wait for T3 to finally break the goddamn turtling Protoss you can just drop all your shit on him :D The game was obviously won for Z, however it's a nice showcase of the tactic.
I know what I'm getting in preparation for Tier 3 now  It also gives me a nice incentive to get that overlord speed (which also gives map control and allows delaying expansions) + drop and it finally gives me a way to kill the colossus (and therefore keep their count low) without having to rely on useless corrupters.
What do you think? Are banelings worth the gas to survive until Tier 3? Is there another reliable solution to the problem of max army clashes as Zerg? I'd love to hear your take on it. Please note that the specific strategies or their excution in the replays isn't up for discussion, they are there merely to show the supply-efficiency of banelings. (Note that a baneling is 0.5 supply and guaranteed splash damage once it hits)
EDIT
I've now played tons of games with it, and I can say ZvP is just so much fun with this new technique :D The 3st replay is of the bestest baneling drops I've done so far. Sure, we both make a crapload of mistakes (who doesn't), but the last fight literally (literally) gave me a nerd boner. Enjoy!
EDIT2
I'm just adding replays as I play them. Unfortunately most Protosses all-in me before I can get the tech required to insta-win an engagement of my choice :D
EDIT3
Moar replays. ^_^
Keep posting your experience with this tactic and add replays if you like. It's a lot of fun to watch different people discover new ways to play the game
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ive screwed around with a 400 baneling army before, so i can safely say, assuming you can a) easily afford them in large numbers and can b) remake them relatively quickly they are extremely strong, also; watch out for air
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This sounds really good. I only ever thought of doing Baneling drops on MMM balls. Didn't think it'd work on Colossi too haha. I'm definitely going to have to try this out.
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The only problem I see is that its usualy not a zel/colsi mixture, but a stalker/colsi mixture. Stalkers arnt all that good to hit with banelings (but can be good if you drop them on top of a ball of stalkers). I fear a lot of stalkers with just snipe down the overlords before they even get over the ball.
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I think the second replay showed that banelings are pretty decent even against stalkers. My worry is that if you try to engage on open ground with baneling drop the overlords will get kited by stalkers. In that instance where the stalkers had their backs to their own base it's not an issue though. It's pretty dangerous either way if they actively attempt to kill your overlords.
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On November 08 2010 06:53 ddrddrddrddr wrote:
I think the second replay showed that banelings are pretty decent even against stalkers. My worry is that if you try to engage on open ground with baneling drop the overlords will get kited by stalkers. In that instance where the stalkers had their backs to their own base it's not an issue though. It's pretty dangerous either way if they actively attempt to kill your overlords.
Since this is a mid-lategame-tactic it's probably smart to be on your way to Hive-tech anyway and to put that infestation pit down. If you want to make absolutely sure that he doesnt kite your army in that big engagement you can get 1 infestor out to fungal his units. Infestors are great anyway as showcased by TLO in his series against HuK and KiWiKaKi.
Alternatively you can do a speedling flank which will temporarely stop your opponent from moving back giving your speed ovies enough time to catch up and deplay the banelings. You should always lead with some empty ones so the full ones get through.
Banelings actually deal quite well with stalkers if they are deployed directly onto them (like they also do with marauders. Also if your opponent has stalkers they will generally be in a big perfect clump directly underneath his colossus, allowing your banelings to deal at least 120 damage directly on impact (5-6 stalkers + the colossi above).
So it might sound like a lot but I'd rather expense those banelings + overlords + speedlings/infestor than having my roach/hydra ball endlessly FFed and kited around the map. It allows me to finally kill the goddamn Colo/Stalker, that just continues to grow endlessly, even if I throw army after army at it.
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yes they may be, its like when a toss has 200/200 army and u have lost of speedlings, theyll be really useless, so make them banelings, maybe then can do some damage
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When you upgrade melee attack, does it upgrade damage vs non light for banelings?. If yes, then i can defenitly see this being strong vs a stalker ball + ling flanks
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On November 08 2010 07:41 s1eger wrote:yes they may be, its like when a toss has 200/200 army and u have lost of speedlings, theyll be really useless, so make them banelings, maybe then can do some damage
Indeed. Speedlings are just the most worthless units against a well composed Protoss army. FF + Colossus + Stalker fire makes them just wasted supply, minerals and larvae. Just completely useless.
On November 08 2010 08:02 Adaptation wrote:
When you upgrade melee attack, does it upgrade damage vs non light for banelings?. If yes, then i can defenitly see this being strong vs a stalker ball + ling flanks
Melee does also upgrade baneling damage. So if you are on your way to ultralisks or broodlords (which both need melee upgrades to work well) banelings actually benefit from the upgrades you are getting anyway while making the stalker + colossus ball that much less threatening.
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Wow, that first replay is pretty epic.
TY for sharing, OP.
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On November 08 2010 08:15 MrBitter wrote:
Wow, that first replay is pretty epic.
TY for sharing, OP.
Yeah I was quite amazed when I tested it in the unit tester with 27 speedlings (i.e. he didn't morph them). The Protoss would absolutely smash the Z army with 6-7 colossus left. However when the banelings were dropped onto the colossus ball almost 80% of the Z arny would survive completely wiping the floor with the high colossus count.
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I feel this kind of thing is just too gimmicky to catch on
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On November 08 2010 08:53 dreamend wrote:
I feel this kind of thing is just too gimmicky to catch on
Are you kidding me? Fruitdealer, arguably the best Zerg in the entire world used them in almost every single one of his games (even when he Foxer put him under _constant_ pressure). Dropped banelings work so efficiently since they allow your front units (mainly roaches) to not get totally obliterated and actually walk up to the enemy to do damage.
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On November 08 2010 08:53 dreamend wrote:
I feel this kind of thing is just too gimmicky to catch on
How so? Banelings are hardly that costly and they are clearly pretty freaking effective when dumping from overlords.
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On November 08 2010 08:56 ChickenLips wrote:Show nested quote +On November 08 2010 08:53 dreamend wrote:
I feel this kind of thing is just too gimmicky to catch on Are you kidding me? Fruitdealer, arguably the best Zerg in the entire world used them in almost every single one of his games (even when he Foxer put him under _constant_ pressure). Dropped banelings work so efficiently since they allow your front units (mainly roaches) to not get totally obliterated and actually walk up to the enemy to do damage.
you're comparing dropping a few banelings on tanks/scv lines to dropping 20+ banelings onto packs of colossi? come on
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if you can afford that many banelings in the 1st place i think you've would've won anyways, i thinks perhaps maybe your being far to passive into letting that "ball of death" get to it's wanted point, but the replays were very good to watch and interesting in seeing the effectives past using to counter the bio.
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On November 08 2010 09:14 TibblesEvilCat wrote:
if you can afford that many banelings in the 1st place i think you've would've won anyways, i thinks perhaps maybe your being far to passive into letting that "ball of death" get to it's wanted point, but the replays were very good to watch and interesting in seeing the effectives past using to counter the bio.
This was definitely the case in the 2nd game, but in game 1 I felt like Toss had a solid advantage until the banes came down.
I'll definitely be experimenting with this in my future practice sessions.
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Artosis
United States2140 Posts
excellent post. jooktojung is always one of the most creative zergs. ill definitely be giving this a try.
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Thank you very much for the tip, I'll use it next time against Protoss.
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God i love banelings. This is really simple but seems rather effective. I need to try baneling bombs more on other things (like expos, and quick snipes of important tech buildings)
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EPT![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-167845.jpg)
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