Starcraft 2 Zerg Strategy - Baneling Guide  | read this item

Everyone loves explosions.  This is especially true when its your opponents that is exploding.  While Starcraft 2 Zerg lack the certain overkill flair of a Tactical Nuke, they have their own impressive explosions in the form of Zerg Banelings.  These little mutated Zerglings ram head first into their target and in the blink of an eye, their target is suddenly missing a huge amount of health.  Granted, the Baneling doesn’t survive the fun, but its still a ton of fun to watch.

Papp has given us several awesome guides on utilizing Zerg units to their full potential.  His Baneling guide is no different.  He goes through and explains how to best utilize a Baneling group and goes over the advanced tactics involved in using them with other units.  Everything from a Mass Baneling steam-roller, to the Overlord Bomber, its all here.  Enjoy this awesome guide from Papp.  Also remember to check out our awesome Guide Forums for even more great Starcraft 2 Strategies.

From Papp:

Banelings, are they right for you?

Banelings are a scary unit to use because of the simple reason that they only have one shot to justify their purchase. Once you have a baneling nest, you will only need a handful in each squad and it helps to remember that each baneling only costs 50min 25gas. Having a few banelings can be helpful (TvZ) to outright game-changing (ZvZ), but having them is only half the battle, you have to use em like a pro

Baneling Tips

Banelings are morphed out of Zergling, as a crafty zerg player, you might have noticed that units that exit a morph stage always come out at full health. If you just attacked and want to move in quickly with your baneling force, morph only the injured lings, then you will have a fully healed army in 20 seconds (morph time).

The baneling speed is a great upgrade, but you need a lair to start it, so use your speedlings to rush to enemy base and morph there. Obviously try to do this out of his sight, but if you want to be sneaky you can let him see that you have a large force of zerglings, and then morph to banelings when you are hidden. He might build zealots/marines/zerglings that can be juicy targets for your new banelings.

Banelings can be used defensively as well, if you have the uncanny ability to watch that minimap like a hawk, burrow a few banelings where you think he’ll run over and wait for enemies to tread over top. But if you are like most of us and miss what goes on in that minimap, you can set the banelings to auto-unburrow by right clicking on theunburrow button. This will make them unburrow and scurry at enemies that come too close. If you are using the auto function to defend your base, I find that players will realize what’s going on and stop advancing pretty fast, this is because they are currently watching their army. You need to place the banelings in spots where the player will tell them to walk past and not watch his army go, routine spots that wont get his attention. how many times have you just attack-moved your entire army somewhere and tended to your base? That’s where you need to set the trap.

You want to get the drop on enemies without burrowing? Hide a few banelings on top of high ground, or behind a shrubbery wall. They’ll never see that coming.

Baneling drops are exactly what they sound like, drop a ton of banelings from overlords on some helpless units. I personally don’t do this too often, but baneling drops can be a viable option in later stages of the game. The trick to doing max damage with this tactic is to have another attack going on, and just drop the banelings into the fray. To spread the pain even more you can do a moving overlord drop by clicking Unload All, and instead of clicking on a location, click on the moving overlord itself.

If you are planning on using banelings to disrupt resource gathering, i would suggest using either a speedy overlord drop or a nydus attack. I don’t really like these options though as they are easily defended by good players.

In zerg 1v1, banelings are what will make or break you. In the early-game, all you want to do is catch his zerglings with the baneling, and avoid his banelings. When defending micro your units and sacrifice one ling at a time to take out his banelings. When attacking, move in banelings 1 or 2 at a time and don’t attack-move, instead hover your hand over the X key and chase down his swarm, manually detonate when the opportunity presents.

Source: http://starcrafting.com/forums/showthread.php?t=293