Terran Strategy | Baneling Micro | Starcraft 2

[Kreeper]

As a Zerg player Terran can be a very difficult match up. For the most part the Terran player can go a good mix of Marines and Marauders and counter almost everything you can throw at him. For Zerg it is difficult to win even with some of the hard counters for M&M's.

With todays Nooner I'll have some video and some explanation of the events that you see and why it works. The meat of this Nooner can be found at 5:02 - 5:28 if you are interested in only what I are talking about below.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rYKYJx2Rs4&feature=player_embedded"]YouTube - Daily Nooner: Terran Strat - Baneling Micro[/ame]

So here you see a short game of RedPriest (terran) going M&M's plus a tank verses a bunch of Lings and six Banelings. At this point in the game if one of those banelings hit those Marines all of them would have been a few ling hits from death and the Zerg player would have been able to mass lings to finish off the rest of his force. Freeing himself to expand, build up or even attack RedPriests's base.

So why did this not work out for the zerg player? In the video you can see RedPriest lead in with his Marauders and Tank because he knows where the banelings are. If a baneling does get a hit off of any of these units (Tank or Marauder) nothing is actually going to die, also these units are so large that the baneling most likely will only spash on two units. Where as if a baneling was to hit a group of marines, five marines might be killed in one explosion.

Next you see RedPriest brining his units back as the banelings come in stopping to target a baneling that has gotten two close. He repeats the process until the zerg force gets too close to his marines, then he swaps direction to avoid the baneling explosion. Out of the six banelings that the zerg player brought with him, only two of them got off an actual explosion. One Baneling went off between a Marauder and the tank the other on the tank with no splash, so no Terran units were actually lost in this battle.

In this example we saw the counter for M&M's get beat due to poor timing / planning on the Zerg player's part and good Micro on the terran's part.

What should have the Zerg player done instead? He should have hid his banelings until he knew where the marines were and attack them from an open angle (an angle Marauders weren't Blocking the way).

This can be difficult to do as with any attack it is hard to plan for it, but that is another reason why scouting is so very important in this game. If you know when the terran player is attacking, you can hide your units in a spot he won't suspect and bring in the banelings from behind when your opponent is concentrating on your zerglings.

Another good move to try is when the Terran player is about to press against your zergling force, turn some of your lings to banelings in front of him, and make sure he sees it. This will give him more confidence in his attack as he will think that you have not built any banelings yet. All the while your banelings will be hidden and strike from behind while he has his Marauders out front to prevent your constructing banelings from hitting the marines.


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Source : http://www.starcraft-source.com/stra...e/view/?id=201

[BSOS]

the zerg player here sucked incredibly... at that point in the game when the terran attacked, the zerg player should have had at least 15 more lings... considering he didn't have an expansion or any serious teching going on...
and COMON, a little better baneling micro could've wiped all those marine out