Detonate Burrowed Banelings

[Blazur]

Mind you, the baneling will block the expansion from being put down intially and you'll only have to worry about the harvester.

the downside is it will force the opponent to tech detection early game on you

Not necessarily. If you burrow it closer to the minerals, the enemy could still drop their main unaware of the underground threat. Then you can choose to unburrow and blast apart the peon while constructing the main, or wait a bit until more peons are working to detonate underground.

Either way, you have yourself a scout that doubles as an effective future ambush when the time comes.

[Pandonetho]

the downside is it will force the opponent to tech detection early game on you

Since when is forcing the enemy to do something you know they're going to do a downside?

And yeah, the Zerg totally stole this tactic from the Terrans lol. Except they upgraded the tactic to prevent an expansion from being put down for even longer by killing the peon so it's even better now.

If you're REALLY good you could detonate the baneling the split second a resource building is put up and kill it wasting all their minerals.

[GGTeMpLaR]

Hell yeah!



Excellent strategy. This, combined with the threat of lurkers, makes it even more important to have detection against Zerg.

what? no that's a terrible strategy lol

a burrowed zergling sure

but wasting a baneling on one scouting worker is not an excellent idea lol

maybe if you have a few on the mineral line, and wait until they transfer all the workers to the expansion and then explode them, if that's what you meant then sure

[Sydarm]

Not necessarily. If you burrow it closer to the minerals, the enemy could still drop their main unaware of the underground threat. Then you can choose to unburrow and blast apart the peon while constructing the main, or wait a bit until more peons are working to detonate underground.

Either way, you have yourself a scout that doubles as an effective future ambush when the time comes.

Hell, even planting 4-6 per mineral patch, and once they get about 10-15 peons harvesting, just let em loose. more money loss on there end

[Sydarm]

see, ya what templar said! best idea imo

[Pandonetho]

but wasting a baneling on one scouting worker is not an excellent idea lol

It's completely worth it, if you take into account the fact that they just lost all their time traveling their peon to whatever expansion it is, and killing it, forcing them to send a new one, along with detection.

[screw_ball69]

I wonder if there will be so cool effects to go with a burrowed baneling exploding, dirt and stuff kicked up around it.

[GGTeMpLaR]

a worker costs far less than a single baneling

and most of the time you expand, you'll do it close to your base (so it's easier to defend)

and if you don't do it close to your base, you're probably trying to make it a ninja-expansion in which case you'd probably actually want to let them build it, then go and kill it with your army (which should be relatively undefended)

I'm pretty sure if you're ever in a position where you see a worker making an expansion (or about to) and you have the option to kill it with a baneling, there's at least three better alternatives

[Pandonetho]

a worker costs far less than a single baneling

Not everything is simply "cost" accounted for. Time is more valuable than money, if you just wasted a minute of their time, it would have more than paid for your baneling.

and most of the time you expand, you'll do it close to your base (so it's easier to defend)

That's only early game, the moment you move out of your natural expansion it's already going to be pretty far. And like most Terran players, you should probably be putting a baneling at every expansion to watch them.

and if you don't do it close to your base, you're probably trying to make it a ninja-expansion in which case you'd probably actually want to let them build it, then go and kill it with your army (which should be relatively undefended)

Preventative measures are always better than counter measures. Go watch the Flash vs Jaedong game where Flash completely denied a third expansion everytime Jaedong tried to get it up. He crushed Jaedong like it was an A+ vs B- game.

I'm pretty sure if you're ever in a position where you see a worker making an expansion (or about to) and you have the option to kill it with a baneling, there's at least three better alternatives

Like what? As I said earlier, not everything is "money." In the amount of time that you manage to deny an expansion going up, you prevented more than that single baneling's worth from every probe that could have been mining from an operational expansion earlier. And seriously? I know how everyone loves to take every single mineral into account, but 1 baneling for denying an expansion is more of a loss on the enemy than yours. Seriously? You're actually saying using 1 baneling to deny an expansion is excessive?

I'd rather do that than spend 4-5 banelings to kill off 15 probes when the expansion is A) Already up, B) they already GOT money from it, and C) Protoss players always throw up cannons at expansions so your plan is going to fail anyway.

[GGTeMpLaR]

"Preventative measures are always better than counter measures."

not true. if you know what the enemy is doing, instead of trying to prevent them from doing it, you could choose a strategy that perfectly counters it. let them commit to something you know you can counter, and once you counter it, it will be nothing but too late to recover from. it's not exactly difficult to recover from losing one worker though

"Like what? As I said earlier, not everything is "money." In the amount of time that you manage to deny an expansion going up, you prevented more than that single baneling's worth from every probe that could have been mining from an operational expansion earlier. And seriously? I know how everyone loves to take every single mineral into account, but 1 baneling for denying an expansion is more of a loss on the enemy than yours. Seriously? You're actually saying using 1 baneling to deny an expansion is excessive?

I'd rather do that than spend 4-5 banelings to kill off 15 probes when the expansion is A) Already up, B) they already GOT money from it, and C) Protoss players always throw up cannons at expansions so your plan is going to fail anyway."

ok i'll try to explain it to you

1.) don't deny it with a baneling, deny it with a zergling.
2.) keep a few burrowed and rather than killing one probe, let the expansion finish, and once they have moved about 10-20 workers to mine from it, blow them all up
3.) let them expand, pretend you don't know, time your attack for when the expansion finishes
4.) expand yourself or double expand, or tech, use the knowledge you know and don't let them know you know

you're acting like the only way to stop an expansion is by killing the worker about to build it, and if you do it will delay them a lot (which is not the case)