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Man. I'm really blown away by how well this works.
This is a game I played with one of my toss practice buddies:
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/101820-1v1-protoss-zerg-xelnaga-caverns
We're both around the 2100 Diamond skill range.
I know my macro slipped pretty badly once I picked up my 3rd, and I know my army control was pretty shitty in comparison to the Korean pros, but the results blew me away.
Roach/Hydra has always been a great early-mid game option that keeps us safe from any sort of cutesy plays like the blink stalker build that will probably start showing up everywhere. (thanks a lot, Nazgul)
But its always suffered during the mid-late game transition, as colossi and high templar pretty thoroughly wreck hydra.
The baneling drops completely change that dynamic.
Colossus have to run, taking them out of fights completely, and slow HTs have no choice but to just die...
Plus, baneling drops are just fucking cool, man.
Definitely gonna' continue working on this strat. I can see it becoming a cornerstone play style.
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Banelings are pretty expensive.
You should try to drop raoches instead of banelings, I don't think it would be much worse, and they don't suicide instantly.
Anywayss that's pretty cool, would work wonders on zealot/sentry heave army.
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On November 08 2010 16:00 MrBitter wrote:Man. I'm really blown away by how well this works. This is a game I played with one of my toss practice buddies: http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/101820-1v1-protoss-zerg-xelnaga-cavernsWe're both around the 2100 Diamond skill range. I know my macro slipped pretty badly once I picked up my 3rd, and I know my army control was pretty shitty in comparison to the Korean pros, but the results blew me away. Roach/Hydra has always been a great early-mid game option that keeps us safe from any sort of cutesy plays like the blink stalker build that will probably start showing up everywhere. (thanks a lot, Nazgul) But its always suffered during the mid-late game transition, as colossi and high templar pretty thoroughly wreck hydra. The baneling drops completely change that dynamic. Colossus have to run, taking them out of fights completely, and slow HTs have no choice but to just die... Plus, baneling drops are just fucking cool, man. Definitely gonna' continue working on this strat. I can see it becoming a cornerstone play style.
I think Mrbitter summed up my thoughts perfectly. Roach-Hydra has always suffered from transitioning to lategame if protoss gets up a few colossus, while corrupter transition is always very risky, especially if you don't get the numbers right. Banelings, on the other hand, can be used to harass (bomb) mineral line, and potentially deal with the protoss deathball disregarding colossus numbers. Of course, I'm just speculating, but it seems worth a try, and maybe this is viable only in the short term, before toss start spreading out his units before your overlord hits. But still, worth a try.
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I made some unit testing and vs colossi the baneling drop is just barely economically worthwhile. The enemy needs at least 5 colossi clumped together and you need 20+ banelings
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Zerg users are really getting to understand that banelings are great for things other than MMM balls, especially when combined with overlords for baneling carpet bombings. I still feel they're rather undervalued, however, and people are getting caught up in the roach madness post-1.1.2. Roach-heavy builds are getting eaten up by smart protoss players who can FF and lots of roaches just forces terran into the turtle into hard-to-counter mech play even faster. Sure ZvZ battles can be won easily without making air units, but banelings being used mid-late game can still see some growth.
Infestors are also units that I believe everyone knows their use, but aren't used enough. Similar to banelings, I wouldn't advocate anyone to use infestors without roaches/lings to tank damage for them, but getting more than the 1-2 infestors can spell disaster for many of the late game protoss and terran unit compositions.
Having 1:1 infestors to Thor/Collosi with neural parasites on as many as you can reach, plus FG on their ground armies allows zerg to demolish armies. If they're slow-pushing terrans with lots of tanks and an MMM ball, nydusing or dropping into expos whereever possible can slow down the charge, and baneling carpet bombing with several empty OLs in front to tank marine hits works wonders.
Against protoss who are protecting their collosi too much makes their stalker/zealot army far more vulnerable to hit and run FGs to lower shields. With enough infestors you can waste the damage on their shields as long as you're still macroing up an army. If you're maxxed I'd recommend FGing into a push and keep enough corruptors to counteract collosi.
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Question: why not just drop lings instead of banes? Is it really that useful to have banes to kill the collosii?
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On November 08 2010 18:44 Douillos wrote:
Question: why not just drop lings instead of banes? Is it really that useful to have banes to kill the collosii?
Because when they get killed they don't blow up and do ridiculous damage to the (usually) clumped up protoss army. If you can force your opponent to micro his stalkers away from his collosi so they don't take splash damage the battlefield can open up to you being able to get a better surround with your lings up front.
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I have a question about the micro aspect of this, are you individually selecting an olord and spamming d? fruitdealer does this so well, what's cooler than an overlord pooping creep and banelings!?
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On November 08 2010 16:00 MrBitter wrote:Man. I'm really blown away by how well this works. This is a game I played with one of my toss practice buddies: http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/101820-1v1-protoss-zerg-xelnaga-cavernsWe're both around the 2100 Diamond skill range. I know my macro slipped pretty badly once I picked up my 3rd, and I know my army control was pretty shitty in comparison to the Korean pros, but the results blew me away. Roach/Hydra has always been a great early-mid game option that keeps us safe from any sort of cutesy plays like the blink stalker build that will probably start showing up everywhere. (thanks a lot, Nazgul) But its always suffered during the mid-late game transition, as colossi and high templar pretty thoroughly wreck hydra. The baneling drops completely change that dynamic. Colossus have to run, taking them out of fights completely, and slow HTs have no choice but to just die... Plus, baneling drops are just fucking cool, man. Definitely gonna' continue working on this strat. I can see it becoming a cornerstone play style.
Nice game! Tho I kinda missed the ling and bailing speed, when he ktied you you could see bailings and lings running straight behind them insted fo attacking, speed for those two units cost so little well worth it.
I think this would be best using muta ling (game 2), more damage for the bailings and mutas raping running colluses, oh man GG.
I'm going to try out muta ling with bailing drops vs protos right away!
What about infestors aswell? One good fungal growth on the back on his army, lmao.
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Banelings w/drop is a really good and underrused strat. Im gonna start to add this to my gameplay
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I think a lot of people, once they hit maxed, will start to convert some of their lings into banelings in overlords. Once your maxed, you cant make your army any stronger by building units, so why not make your army stronger by making more banelings? 1 banelings is cleraly going to do more damage then 1 zergling.
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On November 08 2010 16:00 MrBitter wrote:Man. I'm really blown away by how well this works. This is a game I played with one of my toss practice buddies: http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/101820-1v1-protoss-zerg-xelnaga-cavernsWe're both around the 2100 Diamond skill range. I know my macro slipped pretty badly once I picked up my 3rd, and I know my army control was pretty shitty in comparison to the Korean pros, but the results blew me away. Roach/Hydra has always been a great early-mid game option that keeps us safe from any sort of cutesy plays like the blink stalker build that will probably start showing up everywhere. (thanks a lot, Nazgul) But its always suffered during the mid-late game transition, as colossi and high templar pretty thoroughly wreck hydra. The baneling drops completely change that dynamic. Colossus have to run, taking them out of fights completely, and slow HTs have no choice but to just die... Plus, baneling drops are just fucking cool, man. Definitely gonna' continue working on this strat. I can see it becoming a cornerstone play style.
Thanks for posting the replay, it really put a big grin on my face :D Just so much fun to see Protoss run away their big, mighty Colossi from some Overlords filled with T1.5 units. It forces his units to either move (and moving units are great since they don't attack), thus surrendering an potentially important position (like their direly needed 3rd to bring lategame-rape) or to stay and fight but also ... die. 
What's even cooler is that if you've done it a few times you can just lead with empty overlords forcing him to run away for no reason, allowing your roach/hydra to get in free hits. How cool is that?!
As you mentioned, you made some micro mistakes, like leading with your army instead of the overlords, allowing them to get in free hit and dropping slowlings on his army^^
On November 08 2010 16:03 Alpina wrote:
Banelings are pretty expensive.
You should try to drop raoches instead of banelings, I don't think it would be much worse, and they don't suicide instantly.
Anywayss that's pretty cool, would work wonders on zealot/sentry heave army.
Banelings work so well since they do direct and - i repeat - guaranteed damage. So you drop a roach. Its gonna do 14 damage (1 armor, 2 GS) and then wait for what 2 seconds? Meanwhile it's dead already. The one baneling that is dropped costs a quarter the supply to get and it does anywhere from 80-140 damage instantly. Also that's the point of the idea. Banelings are expensive in comparison to their supply and thus work wonders in a maxed army. They allow you to kick a similiar supply army totally in the balls. Something almost impossible with Zerg as we see them in pro games.
On November 08 2010 16:21 ayadew wrote:
I made some unit testing and vs colossi the baneling drop is just barely economically worthwhile. The enemy needs at least 5 colossi clumped together and you need 20+ banelings
Just pure unit testing is worthless. Test real-game scenarios where you have a crapload of units underneath the colossus. Also if something is barely cost-efficient against colossus, and it is T2 (overlord drop and speed) that is a fucking revelation for Zerg gameplay. It works so well in a real game since it either forces retreat or death. Normally roach/hydra is forced to do both when it encounters Colossus. Now the tables have turned :D
On November 08 2010 18:44 Douillos wrote:
Question: why not just drop lings instead of banes? Is it really that useful to have banes to kill the collosii?
Meh. Lings aren't so scary. They aren't so great in the cost/supply department either and they take way too long to actually kill colossus. If he has 7 colossus ripping apart your ground army, do you want to get rid of them instantly or put lings on them one by one? The DPS is so ridiculously high with Colossus that every single second counts.
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I remember how Day9 said that some units are great for breaking entrenched positions, something that to do this day Zerg could only really do in Tier 3. When your opponent takes his third and you only have a comparable amount of ground forces (whether it consists of ling or roach or hydra or a combination thereof) you're in tough luck, you essentially have to take your 4th immediately and your 5th shortly thereafter to compete with the imbalanced strong AoE that Protoss can throw so easily at you with 6 gas geysers running.
Now with baneling drops you can just fly the overlords into his third and he either stays to defend, losing all expensive expensive gas units that will take him a long time to rebuild or he retreats and is stuck on 2 gas.
Everything that Zerg has so much trouble with fighting is very expensive in gas, sentries, colossus and High Templar. If you repeatedly wipe his gas units out he will only have a very small and easy to engange army. Imagine a few sentries that had all game long to collect energy with a crapload of stalkers that never die due to their mobility + blink and Colossus + HT added in. That ball takes a long time to make but if you can fight a battle of attrition you can plainly overrun him with roach/hydra since it reproduces much faster and actually is able to fight a more mineral heavy P army (mainly Zealots and Stalkers).
gonna log on and play Zerg now :D
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Do you get bane speed if you are doing this? It seems kind of unnecessary if you are just using them in conjunction with ovies anyway.
Also, you can also use 4 banes + ovie to baneling bomb mineral lines, which is especially good against P.
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drops like that dont work on stalker/colossus/sentry ball
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i feel like it works mostly since people see overlords and think (food)
i had so many games in zvt where my enemy was just walking there ignoring my overlords and all his marines died
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I am curious as to if you would suggest bling bombs when you are behind(either army count or econ base wise). This seems like a great tactic to hold down the p army untill your hive tech gets going, but I have always been under the assumption that blings hitting p armies, especially nonzealots isn't cost effective.
These tactics do have enough basis for players to give it a shot though.
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how do you drop from all the overlords at once? whenever i try this and i click D to drop i have to select where each overlord drops individually
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On November 09 2010 01:40 RedHelix wrote:
how do you drop from all the overlords at once? whenever i try this and i click D to drop i have to select where each overlord drops individually
hit d-> click on the overlord.
Instructional Video:
+ Show Spoiler +
Neat concept, seems like a good way to deal with turtling protoss where you have the economic advantage, but run the risk of being run over by a Protoss death ball.
I am curious as to if you would suggest bling bombs when you are behind(either army count or econ base wise). This seems like a great tactic to hold down the p army untill your hive tech gets going, but I have always been under the assumption that blings hitting p armies, especially nonzealots isn't cost effective.
Yeah I really wouldn't recommend this when behind or even on bases. Even ZvT blings as a comeback mechanic are pretty crappy. You can win a battle, but very rarely cost effectively and you'll lack the forces to counter attack or pressure.
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Seems like banelings are zerg's answer to almost everything lol. I definitely need to incorporate more baneling drops into my play again. Thanks for this great find.
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On November 09 2010 01:40 RedHelix wrote:
how do you drop from all the overlords at once? whenever i try this and i click D to drop i have to select where each overlord drops individually
You are actually selecting all the OLs and clicking D on each of them. This causes them to start dropping immediately but they are still able to move so you get the carpet bomb affect.
-ninja'd
On November 09 2010 01:22 ZomgTossRush wrote:
I am curious as to if you would suggest bling bombs when you are behind(either army count or econ base wise). This seems like a great tactic to hold down the p army untill your hive tech gets going, but I have always been under the assumption that blings hitting p armies, especially nonzealots isn't cost effective.
These tactics do have enough basis for players to give it a shot though.
It seems like the whole point of this is to break a defensive opponent when you are supply capped and can't build a larger army since yours is less efficient supply for supply. Most likely if you were not at supply cap or were behind this wouldn't be a beneficial play.
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EPT
