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What's up teamliquid? I'm ssartor a masters zerg player.
I present to you the Bane Pain Train or Bane Train for short.
What is the Bane Train?
The bane train is a offensive pre-battle micro trick. Similar to pre-splitting your marines before banes come except it will be an offensive maneuver as opposed to a defensive one. This trick is ZvZ specific and will probably not be effective for other match ups. The basic goal is get all your bane micro out of the way before you get to your opponents base. This will allow you to control solely your speedlings and will often cause your opponent to shit his pants and screw his own bane micro up horribly. The reason this is effective is because it is incredibly difficult to micro your banes in groups of two in order to take out the bane train. Your pairs will already be prepared so you don't even need to worry about your banes and you can just focus on your speedling micro.
The setup.
You can set up your own personal Bane Train directly outside your opponents base, in the middle of the map, or at your own base. Personally I like to hide my banes inside my base so my opponent is not expecting them. Also I like to feel the fear emanating from my opponent when the train moves out and he can see it hurdling towards him across the middle of the map.
Banes should be moved into pairs. Banes take two hits from other banes, so for him to kill your banes he must use two of his own or try to kill them with lings. Since you are controlling just your speedlings you will be able to deny his lings from killing your banes.
After your banes are in pairs you want to move them into a line that is increasingly farther from your opponents base. Don't spread them to closely or his bane splash can kill multiple pairs and don't spread them to far or he will have more time to get his bane pairs ready or snipe your banes with his queens.
It should look something like this. (The gap between 2 and 3 is a little bit wide so you want to shrink that in a bit.)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/FhBCs.jpg)
I like to keep my lings near the front of the line in order to pick off single lings that are trying to snipe my banes. This allows them to all get the the opponents base unharmed.
If you are doing it all the way back at your own base you can curl up the ramp in order to have a longer train that doesn't poke all the way into the middle. Something like this:
http://i.imgur.com/uqU7M.jpg
The execution:
After your own personal bane pain train is set up. Just move them into your opponents main base mineral line.  O NOT ATTACK MOVE THEM* A simple move command will allow them to bypass the enemy defenses. Let your speedlings kill queens and distract the opponent. Once your banes make it up the ramp feel free to control them and have fun murdering innocent little drones.
An effective bane train will turn something that looks like this:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Kdnrn.jpg)
Into something that looks like this:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/3F9aW.jpg)
The bane train is not effective when there are queens or roaches blocking the ramp, unless you can manage to clear them out with your front lings. I personally love using the bane train after 15 hatching and when the opponent tries to bane me but I defend with my own banelings. The bane train is a great trick for all non super gosu players who don't the have the apm's to split banes into pairs on the fly.
Hope you all enjoyed my simple little guide and deem it a worthy contribution to this awesome site.
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nice post, a good opponent will also split his defensive banelings into groups of 2, however. but yes, your post is great for people that didnt know this little trick! thanks 
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On October 09 2011 15:32 Malstriks wrote:nice post, a good opponent will also split his defensive banelings into groups of 2, however. but yes, your post is great for people that didnt know this little trick! thanks
very true, but as long as you have more bane pairs than him it can still be highly effective. Also since you are controlling just your lings you can send it single lings to possibly cause his banes to blow up just killing a single ling. and allowing your bane count to become higher than his
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I prefer to have my banelings in pairs of one so it makes it even harder to deal with on the defense. On the defense I do like my 2 pairs of banelings.
Prespreading your banelings is so important in ZvZ sp/bl fights. It just gives you so much more calm during the actual engagement. I've done it in all of my ZvZs and it hurts me to just see an unsplitted amount of banelings in pro play.
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If opponent has only lings and banes himself it's better to separate a little bit baneling pairs so he won't kill 2 banelings with 2 banelings.
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haha this is interesting and looks funny at the same time, a simple but powerful micro trick
Thanks for making
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This is already known for a long time i think... when you are on offense then seperate them in 1s instead of 2s so it takes 2 of their banes to kill 1 of yours.
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On October 09 2011 16:03 birdkicker wrote:
This is already known for a long time i think... when you are on offense then seperate them in 1s instead of 2s so it takes 2 of their banes to kill 1 of yours.
The reason I do two instead of 1 is because I think it's easier to target banes when they are coming 1 at a time. You get overwhelmed faster with pairs and it's much harder to target fire with spines and queens. I've been playing around with it a lot and I've had a little more success with the pairs instead of singles. And yes I know it's been around for a while but some people may not have thought of it/heard of it and I thought I would coin the maneuver with a cool name.
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I thought this was going to be based around pre-emptively splitting up your banelings in to a connected line for ZvT so tanks don't kill 5 banelings at a time with splash damage, but this is a good thing to know for people who already didn't.
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Yes, why not setting up a train with "one baneling wagons"? if they are close enough, it's not easier to face, and you will take much less splash damage from the opponent banelings. Basically, if you gather them in groups of two, your opponent can defend with groups of 2 banelings too; if you send them 1 by 1, then he cannot sacrifice cost efficiently his banelings on yours anymore...
Also, in order to set up the "train", i would recommend morphing banelings when your zerglings are running. That way, banelings will be naturally spread in line, with a good space between them and without effort.
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Interestingly enough, my friend told me about such a technique yesterday. His method was to send first baneling to mineral line and order second baneling to follow first one and construct his vagons that way.
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I like it, but I wanna note that in ZvZ having forward overlords is safer, so you'll easily get spotted if you do this in the wrong place. seems like you can always do it in your base though.
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On October 09 2011 16:25 ssartor wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2011 16:03 birdkicker wrote:
This is already known for a long time i think... when you are on offense then seperate them in 1s instead of 2s so it takes 2 of their banes to kill 1 of yours. The reason I do two instead of 1 is because I think it's easier to target banes when they are coming 1 at a time. You get overwhelmed faster with pairs and it's much harder to target fire with spines and queens. I've been playing around with it a lot and I've had a little more success with the pairs instead of singles. And yes I know it's been around for a while but some people may not have thought of it/heard of it and I thought I would coin the maneuver with a cool name.
If opponent does not has spine it's always better to separate those 2 banelings before opponents banelings hits.
Btw this tip is very old, I remember MrBitter was talking about it with I think Ret in his 12 weeks with pros.
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Any replays of the bane train? Love to see it in action, and also watch the technique for setup - mine's pretty messy...
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I had to read the title about 3x to make sure i had it right lol nice title and write up OP
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EPT
