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In this thread I would like to discuss the tactical Use of burrow banelings in TvZ,
In the past when we have see burrow banelings use, it is normally 2 to 4 burrowed at a choke close to the Terran players natural. Then the zerg hopes the Terran walks over them by chance and hope the zerg spots it on the minimap.
The Tactic I have been using is to kite marines with my Mutas over top awaiting banelings.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/hVLj5.jpg)
To do this, I first in place my banelings close to a location I know I want to try to engage with my mutas, Many times I place them where the Terran would want their army to be.
Then I Pace a spotter ling out in fount of my banelings to act as a alarm. when the ling dies I know the Terran is moving out.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/kdv8E.jpg)
I grab a scary amount of my mutas and try to poke at his tanks,
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/qRnLg.jpg)
The Terran would then stim and chase my mutas away safely form his tanks.
At this time I unburrow 4 banelings and a few lings killing off the set of marines, Delaying or weakling his push.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Vz34E.jpg)
Next
The 2nd why I make use of burrow is it flank,
I place my army inbetween his base and the location where he would prefer to push.
I burrow a small set of 16 lings and 4ish banelings about 14 to 15 game spaces ahead of my army. This is close to where Terran like to siege up before a push.
Terran normally siege up their tanks just out of range of your army, then push up with marines to bait your units in to siege tank fire. This puts the Terran siege line close to, or on top of my small burrowed army.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/S9ht9.jpg)
As we all know Terrans will stim and pull their marines back when they seen banelings and lings charging in, They will micro their tanks to take out banelings before thay can land.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/eLU5C.jpg)
This is when I unburrow my small group of lings and banelings to prevent kiting.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/xmkX1.jpg)
I have not worked out what is the best time to get burrow.
I have been getting it right after i stare my Spire. before I get baneling speed.
off a 15 hach, 15 gas, 15 pool.
I have not worked out timings as to when I should have this vs specif pushes. such as a +1 with stim and tank push.
Scan finding my small set of lings / banelings is not such a big issue. They can unburrow and pull back rather fast. and then reset.
When I bit marines with mutas, it is important that i keep 6 or so back home to prevent drops.
One last thing. Can burrow banelings be used in a manner like lurkers to allow you to take a 4th safely.
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We saw some of the muta baiting in IPL3 and it's a really good strategy if you can set it up well enough. I've also started burrowing 3-4 banelings when I roll in to engage the terran army. Even if I pull my force back I then have banes in front when he decides to move up. Typically in the couple of seconds that a quick poke takes, the terran won't notice the few banelings that I do manage to burrow in his path.
Another nice use of banes is burrowing them in mineral lines before they set up a command center there. 2 in the mineral line is enough to put a major dent in their economy (especially if you catch them transferring a lot of SCVs from a previous base). They're nasty little units if you use them correctly.
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Aniother use would be the Stephano trick to burrow during fights, then retreat - quite effective if you can pull it off. But for flanks, why not directly burrow lings right under where you think their army will be ?
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Would love to see Burrow utilized more often, in ways such as this. Burrowed play can be so exciting to watch! The tension as an army moves towards a huge group of burrowed lings or blings is just so much fun to sit through in a replay. Do you notice much of a difference in this burrow-type strategy against heavy drop play?
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On October 12 2011 05:36 Pwnisher wrote:
Would love to see Burrow utilized more often, in ways such as this. Burrowed play can be so exciting to watch! The tension as an army moves towards a huge group of burrowed lings or blings is just so much fun to sit through in a replay. Do you notice much of a difference in this burrow-type strategy against heavy drop play?
This is not a strategy, Just a tactic one should work in to their play. Kinda like spreading your army out before and engagement. Vs Drop heavy play, The over all unit mix I get is still very strong, Mutas ling, baneling with ups and burrow until I have my 8th gas then use T3.
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This sounds like an interesting tactic, but I feel like most of the time with flanks, it would require a bit of luck for them to set up where you ideally want them to, unless I didn't read carefully.
And 1 raven will ruin your day :D
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On October 12 2011 05:34 ArcticRaven wrote:
Aniother use would be the Stephano trick to burrow during fights, then retreat - quite effective if you can pull it off. But for flanks, why not directly burrow lings right under where you think their army will be ?
The first time i saw this was actually when MC used it ... I was like nooo don't show em this trick. As a terran right now i get a raven while i research medivac energy, the mules i get for that are well worth the raven heh. (and thats no cloak fake ... well its a nice banshee fake often triggering an overseer but i actually want medivac energy (my medivacs never reach max energy and they sometimes drop to 0 so the upgrade is worth it))
There are many more tricks though.
Like the mentioned "Put 4 banes on an extra control group and burrow them while engaging". Or the burrow 2 banes at one middle patch of the terran 3rd, when the slide comes it often is only on one patch unburrow and do a jackpot roll.
Another nice thing is the auto magic box. Few banes on auto follow on the different lings, Tank focus fire who cares. When you reach the first tank you will select the extra group on autofollow and move them by hand chasing the marines. (Or not depends on the situation)
As long as there are banes mutas can do nice damage and marines will have to run if they clumped up. Its really painful to see a giant blob of banelings or spell casters in generall, while its so easy to not do it.
Good old bw players should also know about how to abuse terrain to form attack lines etc. Here its units on hold position/attack to declump units also.
Oh I like to get burrow right after t2 is finished, as in "saves my butt until speed and mutas are there". And if i feel my opponent is a bit more passive i also like to get drop hehe. Don't worry just a scout ... poof 40 workers gone and people think hellions are imba. (sadly burrow and drop doesn't work together they will just run you over.)
Can't always hope on your luck killing all their workers and then their army runs directly over the burrowed banes hehe. (it works often but its total cheese)
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Leenock is a pretty big user of burrow tactics. The first one, I've seen him do for a while now. I've thought about using the 2nd type for a while, but I just never actually execute it for some reason. One thing I would like to add though, for any burrow tactics, is to not do them on or near creep. The Terran is almost certainly going to scan to kill the creep tumors during a push, so you're only running an unnecessary (and pretty certain) risk to do so.
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Doesn't terran scan to look for your army position before moving out unsieged anyway, even if he's nowhere near creep?
it seems like there's a much bigger risk of getting steamrolled while unsieged than there is of walking over a burrowed baneling so they scan ahead anyway just to see if you are waiting to pounce on them.
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On October 12 2011 10:49 deathtrance wrote:
This sounds like an interesting tactic, but I feel like most of the time with flanks, it would require a bit of luck for them to set up where you ideally want them to, unless I didn't read carefully.
And 1 raven will ruin your day :D
Muta ravens. sniping
As for scan terrain would have to scan every single location before they moved.
Why do you all seem to think Detection will some how kill my army? I unburrow and pull back.
I lose 2-3 banleings and 3-4 lings tops. when you are 140/200 or 200/200 that is nothing. in fact the scan would cost them more than the units they pick off
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I've always felt that the most effective thing to do with banelings is to bane rain the scv/worker lines, every time that I have seen that it has been completely devastating.
However, I have been using them more and more as just burrowed banelings to scare the terran out of moving out, and they have been proving fairly amazing. Also, I never even thought to use mutilasks as bait for them - that seems like a pretty awesome strategy.
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Leenock imo is the best at using burrowed banes and he really pioneered the burrow during fight. One thing zergs do is overuse burrowed banes though. As a terran if you see or lose units to burrowed banes once its gonna become your top prioty to scan for them so zergs should not be using more than 2 groups of banes or use them at like 5 min intervals.
One burrowed bane strategy that i've never seen used is burrowed bane tactics to deal with drop harrass. I dont know how effective it could be but im sure there are ways to make it work. Like either burrow in a common spot for rine drops to go like behind center of min line, or maby putting them to the side of your hatch and run your drones by them and draw the rines over them in the same way you would with mutas.
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I've always thought that Quick burrow for "containment Banes" would become standard. This happened with lurkers all the time in BroodWar. You got them quick to keep terran in their base until they had a vessel. My thought was zerg would rush to burrow with banes and burrow them in front of a terran base so terran can't move out until he has a raven, which delays the standard timing push and allows you to get into a better position. I haven't played around with it enough because I don't get to play anywhere near the amount I want, but it still (in my mind) seems to make sense.
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The difference between lurkers and bane mines is that lurkers are actively attacking while burrowed. So, even if a Terran scanned, they aren't nullified, right? I'm pretty ignorant to BW, so correct me if I'm wrong. But with bane mines, if they're scanned, they're nullfied. Given that scans aren't exactly in short supply, seems pretty useless to me to try to contain with them.
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Also, scan wasn't an early-game ability in BW.
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Keeping 2-3 banelings burrowed inside your bases/naturals for drops is a pretty good use too.
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Awesome point and well spoken.
This is in fact a great use of burrow and very scary.
Been seeing the bait with mutas often lately in pro play.
I think the other method will require a lot of fore thought and tied up resources and is at risk of getting scanned.
One of those things that makes you look like a genious when it works but could result in you getting way behind if they get a lucky scan.
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On October 12 2011 13:07 ComaDose wrote:
Awesome point and well spoken.
This is in fact a great use of burrow and very scary
One of those things that makes you look like a genious when it works but could result in you getting way behind if they get a lucky scan.
Do We All Know That We Can Unburrow Right? See scan? Unburrow and pull back,
"but what if they are too close" Grate if they are close, your banelings can hit their army.
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Burrowed banelings should be used wayy more. If you think about it, they will always be cost-efficient. They will either kill a bunch of marines, or they will get scanned and taken out. However, even if they get scanned, they will still be worth it, because scanning is basically 270 less minerals for the Terran, while you just lose 2 banelings, which is 150 resources. Also, once terran sees that burrowed banelings are a threat, they will have to scan everytime they are moving out, which can mean using as much as 3 scans, so 810 minerals.
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Yes, Scan is not a cost effective way to deal with burrow, Zerg will lose less then the cost of the 2 or 3 scan need for Terran to move a cross the map, even in you are using a flank like I did.
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If you burrow banelings while an engagement, the Terran can't spot it. I HSC3 I faced Stephano on Tal'
Darim and I won a big engagement and had quiet a few marines left over. When I wanted to attack all my marine suddenly died due to 3 burrowed banes.
I told him that I had missed him burrowing banelings, but in fact, when I checked the replay I had no way of seeing that he burrowed them. There was no animation shown nor could you notice what happened to those banelings because tankfire / exploding banes covers (overlaps) that animation.
It should be standard in ZvT to use it.
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On October 12 2011 22:35 mTw|NarutO wrote:
If you burrow banelings while an engagement, the Terran can't spot it. I HSC3 I faced Stephano on Tal'
Darim and I won a big engagement and had quiet a few marines left over. When I wanted to attack all my marine suddenly died due to 3 burrowed banes.
I told him that I had missed him burrowing banelings, but in fact, when I checked the replay I had no way of seeing that he burrowed them. There was no animation shown nor could you notice what happened to those banelings because tankfire / exploding banes covers (overlaps) that animation.
It should be standard in ZvT to use it.
Love it,
I now have my control groups set up to do just this
#1 - My Ling/bane army
#3 - is 4-6 of my banes form control group #1,
When I get ready to roll in, I select #3 to pull my select banes to the back of my army so they will survive tank fire, then select #1 to send them all in after spreading them out. then click #3 and tell them to burrow when they are about to the tanks
I find this will be where the marines will most likely move to when he regroups or is pushing in the future,
When he dose move back if his marines are not close enough I will get my mutas to kindly ask his marines to move over a bit to the place that will be their mess green-goo grave 
Then #'s 6-8 are groups of flanks/bane-mines starting with 6 being the first Terran would run it to and 8 being the last, farthest, or a secondary attack root he may use (like to my 3rd)
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EPT
