Baneling

The Baneling is a suicide bomber unit morphed from Zerglings after a Baneling Nest has been constructed. Similar to the Infested Terran from Brood War, the Baneling is a suicidal unit that deals significant splash damage.

Banelings have a splash radius of 2.2 and do not deal friendly fire damage to either your units or those of your allies. However, their attack range – unless manually detonated – is only 0.25, which is basically melee range and too short to go off from second row by themselves. But they can be detonated manually, and they will also perform their “attack” upon death.

Banelings are a very effective unit against Light units due to their high damage bonuses in combination with splash damage. Correctly using a group of Banelings can deal massive damage to a hostile army and allow other units to clean up any remaining army much more easily. Because of their low survivability, getting Banelings to successfully hit groups of enemies is key. There are many options that can help a player use Banelings effectively:

• The Burrow upgrade enables a player to hide his Banelings to act as a trap. When the opponent runs over your Banelings, detonate them while burrowed to wipe out entire groups by surprise.
• The Baneling speed upgrade Centrifugal Hooks is also important for getting your Banelings into the action by cutting the time it takes to reach the front lines.
• Tactical use of Creep Tumors can also help Baneling use by increasing their running speed.
• Tactical placement of Banelings is important too; by flanking opponents you can deal even more damage and leave the opponent with no way to escape.
• By using Overlords you can drop Banelings over an opponent’s army to great effect.
• Using the Infestor’s Fungal Growth, you can keep the enemy from dodging your Banelings.
• It is recommended one avoids attack moving their banelings for as long as possible. Attack moving into an army may cause banelings to focus units inefficiently (e.g. focusing a siege tank instead of a mass of marines or killing only one enemy zergling). Simply boxing or using a separate baneling control group to move command them towards more cost-efficient targets is important.
• It takes two enemy baneling detonations to kill a baneling; therefore, it is beneficial to move banelings in groups of two and move command them when walking near enemy banelings. This can help min/max your unit’s value with respect to total damage dealt and/or potentially cause the enemy to trade cost-inefficiently.

Try to surround and attack, pull back a little and attack again. You don’t want to waste Banelings on tanky units such as Marauders. You want to hit light units, so be wary of good players who will use these Armored units to shield their Light units.

Banelings deal a lot of damage against structures, dealing significantly more damage that scales well with upgrades but they are very cost-ineffective. There are several things to note about Baneling damage vs. structures:

• Exploding Banelings always deal extra damage to a building in range. That is, you do not have to use their Attack Strucure ability on a building to deal the extra damage.
• Baneling damage on buildings is not mitigated by armor, so that the 1 armor that most buildings possess and the Terran Building Armor upgrade that grants +2 armor does not affect Baneling damage.

ZERG

General Information

The Zerg are arguably the youngest race in the Starcraft universe, but as suddenly as they appeared, so rapidly did their numbers and power grow. With sharp claws, teeth and tusks, these savage beasts charge at their opponents and fight to the death without rhyme or reason. This boundless brutality and great willingness to sacrifice, combined with their large numbers, makes almost every opponent tremble.

Even though the organic building structures grow out of order and the attacks of the zerg hordes seem unplanned, it is known that they are commanded by a powerful being – the Overmind – with the help of psi powers. Since the Overmind is under Terran control, its most powerful creation – the assimilation Sarah Kerrigan – has seized command of the swarms.