Building placement is a very important thing to get down as a Terran player. The way you set up your buildings can literally mean the difference between a win and a loss, especially against Zerg. Zerg has the most mobile units and the main composition that Terrans use to fight them is very slow (Tanks & Marines).
The way this usually plays out is like this: When the Terran gets a nice army created and moves out, Zerglings, Banelings, or Mutalisks swoop in from a vulnerable location and decimate your expansions, SCVs, and anything else that’s vulnerable. If this has ever happened to you, you know how maddening it is!
To prevent this and/or at least slow it down, place your buildings in key locations to block off troop movement. You’re going to build them anyway, so you might as well get full use out of them. And if you’re worried about them getting destroyed, don’t be. It’s much better to be alerted to a counter-attack early and possibly lose a Supply Depot, then to have a mass of Zerglings in your mineral line out of nowhere.
Plus if the Zerg detonates Banelings on your buildings all the better! Each Baneling costs 50m 25g, and it takes 5 to kill a Supply Depot, and 13 to destroy a Barracks, so it’s a trade-off you should be willing to make. Plus each Baneling that goes down is 1 less that can kill your clustered Marines.
So the map I wanted to talk about today is Xel’Naga Caverns. It’s been around for awhile, and it’s one of the smallest maps in the map pool currently. Here’s a few ideas to help you get better building placement on Xel’Naga Caverns to avoid getting taken by surprise by counter-attacks.
Wall Off Your Expansion
By far one of the most important things you can do in Starcraft 2 is expand. Expanding to new resource locations will help you build bigger armies and win more games! But it can be hard against Zerg where they feel so vulnerable against their fast units. To help with this you can wall off the area between your main and your natural expansion with 4 Supply Depots and a Bunker.
If you’re fast expanding, build the Bunker first, just make sure you leave enough room to put 2 Supply Depots to the left of it to prevent unit movement. Then as you need them, build your Supply Depots to finish the wall off and keep your workers protected.
One of the most common things to do next is build 2 additional Barracks after you’ve got your second CC up and operational (bringing your total to 5 Barracks). A great spot to build these 2 structures is to the right of your CC, completely walling off your mineral line from attack. Note that the wall off won’t be complete until you build addons for the Barracks.
Wall Off Your Third Base
As you keep expanding you’ll inevitably need to keep building Supply Depots so you might as well make them count. On Xel’Naga Caverns, putting 5 Supply Depots at the bottom of the ramp (that leads into your third expo spot) will wall it off and prevent Zergling’s from streaming into your base out of nowhere.
You may want to take this as a fourth base, as the gold expansion makes a great expansion spot for Terrans. Float a Command Center to it, then turn it into a Planetary Fortress immediately. Once that’s up, it is going to be very hard to take down.
Don’t Forget The Back Door
One of the key areas in Xel’Naga Caverns is that pesky back door entrance that leads to your natural expansion. It is an easy place for a Zerg (or any race) to hide units in to perform a counter attack. To prevent getting caught off guard, simply build 2 Supply Depots on the other side of the shrubbery. This will prevent any units from getting through until they’re destroyed, which should give you enough time to get some Marines back there to help defend. As an added benefit, if you walled off your natural expansion mineral line, if they do break through that first wall, they still won’t be able to get in and kill your workers…HAH!
So there you have it, by building the same structures, just in different locations, you can greatly increase your chances of winning and avoid being counter-attacked. Each map has unique spots that you can wall off so be creative!
Most importantly…Leave a comment! Let us know how you use your buildings to protect your workers and your base in the comments below.
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