! [G] Walling

            Ahh walling. The most classic of all Terran artforms, the barrier protecting a handful of marines and whatever else you may be planning behind it from just about everything that uses the ground to move. Although the recent innovations in TvZ have caused some to take a second look at the art, still, many masses of uninformed Terran players remain, simply unaware of the raw power and beauty that constitutes a perfectly crafted Terran wall, and as a result, the walling technique still goes drastically underused.

The purpose of this guide is to encourage the usage of walling by Terran players through education and demonstration via images of premade walls.

To you Zerg and Protoss fellows, fuck you you can utilize this guide as well, using the knowledge it provides to punish a leaky wall whenever you see one.


In the main..

Pros- (Assuming the wall is built correctly)

• Overall it limits your opponents scouting, thus keeping them guessing about what tech you have, thus resulting in a psychological advantage.
  
• Makes defending vs zerglings and zealots a WHOLE lot easier, making fast expand builds with CC's built inside the main that much safer.
  
• It may cause your opponent to react in a more certain way, either safer, resulting in an economic advantage for you, or more agressive.
  
• Walling is basically free.

Cons-

• May not be able to wall every map
  
• Unit pathing while going down the ramp may suck (especially when transferring workers)
  
• Need to pull scvs when under attack, resulting in economic loss.
  
• Rarely has a purpose after early game / Fast DTs.
  
• Tank vs Goons attacking wall is annoying as hell.
  
• Scouting workers get in if scouted first / early.
  
• During Muta harass, walls can get in the way / become targets for the mutas.

At the Natural..

Very Similar pros and cons to walling in the main, save for a few differences.

Pros-

• Safer from attacks to the natural (obviously)
  
• Compliments TvZ mech builds well.

Cons-

• Greater distance, may not be able to repair in time from goons.
  
• Not as useful in TvP and nearly useless in TvT
  
• A large of maps are not able to wall correctly at the natural.

When to Wall

A couple basic rules, if it takes only 2 buildings, wall. If its a 4 player map, wall. Reasoning behind these rules are simple, it's very likely that your opponent will not be able to get his scout inside your base before your wall completes. This is a major advantage.

If you're facing a random player, wall, as in this case the defense it provides vs cheese is priceless.

When doing something cheesy / risky, wall. The off chance that stuff gets into your base and scouts your stuff can seriously screw up anything cute you had planned.

For everything else, it's up to you, but personally I always wall if I'm able to. Especially on ICCup, damn cheesers.

When to Wall.. At the Natural

In TvZ.. walling at the natural is a perfect compliment to any mech or fast expansion build, as you can use few to no marines to defend effectively vs zerglings.

In TvP.. There aren't many benefits to doing this early on, as its more likely to lose you the game vs goon pressure than help you win it. Furthermore, a perfectly sealed wall isn't that necessary for dealing with mid game attacks, when you can already form a "good enough" wall with a turret, engineering bay, barracks etc. If you're going to wall here in TvP, I'd say build it just before or during midgame to get the full benefit.

In TvT.. Nigh useless. Probably will actually hinder you in tank battles around your nat. Only use if your opponent only builds vultures or something.


Walling Tips

• Lift your barracks and send it somewhere to scout or block your natural after Early / Midgame if you walled at your main. It's not going to be doing anything else just floating there.
  
• If the natural is really close to your main, and even closer to your main entrance, it probably isn't a bad idea to wall at the natural if you can when compared to other maps.
  
• If you feel goon pressure or cheese coming, hotkey a couple scvs in a group and location hotkey your wall for quick repairing.

Zergling Tight

• Depots directly over each other vertically
  
• Depots over barracks.

Zealot Tight

• Everything that is Zergling tight
  
• If 2 depots touch each other, they block zealots.
  
• Depot to the right of barracks.
  
• Depot to the top right corner of barracks

Marine Tight

• Same as Zergling Tight

Construction
Ideally, you want:

• No leaks obviously
  
• Marines to spawn on the safe side and not be trapped.
  
• Good unit pathfinding down ramp.
  
• The ability to repair quickly and the ability to repair each building with multiple SCVs.
  
• As little room for protoss Dragoons to stand as possible.
  
• Marines to be able to walk through in Anti-Protoss walls.
  
• Even surface on both supply depots so more zerglings can not attack one more than the other.

Testing
If marines can walk through, zerglings can too.
If SCVs can get through, so can zealots.

*Note:
It has come to my attention that in some circumstances, even if a marine can not walk through a wall, a zergling may be able to. This is rare and from what I understand, only happens around terrain that uses square tiles next to where you build your building (such as the square tiles found in bounds). For complete accuracy, test with zerglings with walls up against square style terrain, but normal marine testing should work for everything else.

Wall Information
+ Show Spoiler +
The followings walls are built upon the foundations laid down in section 2. I've organized each wall by Main / Natural, then player number, and finally map name in alphabetical order.

If you do not find specifically Zergling-Tight or Zealot-Tight walls for a certain position, you will have to adapt accordingly. Often times Z walls are suitable for TvP use, however marines may spawn on the wrong side, and are unable to pass freely through the wall. To adapt P walls for TvZ usage, simply plug the gaps with scvs as zerglings approach, and if possible, change the wall so that only 1 zergling passable opening exists. Note that this drastically reduces the effectiveness of a wall.

All images the work of myself, unless stated otherwise.

Mains
+ Show Spoiler +
Naturals
+ Show Spoiler +
The Hunters / BGH
+ Show Spoiler +

Wall Image Pack
For those who don't want to load 100000 images every time they go into this thread, I've created a package that basically contains everything found in section 3, all in this handy zip file that can be found here. (Let me know if you guys want other mirrors, post which site you would like to see)
http://www.mediafire.com/?qioyo2hzmmm
It's about 86MB. This is out of date and contains errors, but should be mostly right, especially for the old maps


What YOU Can Do
I am not perfect, and likely have made errors somewhere along the making of this guide. If you see any errors or anything that looks wrong, out of place, or something, please notify me via pm and I will fix it as soon as I possibly can.

On that note, it would also be helpful to know if any updates to a map render any of my walls useless, or if any of my walls don't work (Test it yourself, don't just say it looks wrong). Again, pm works best to contact me about these issues.

As I don't keep up with OSL / MSL / Proleague, I'll eventually be out of date with the current maps, or probably won't know of the new ones right away. If you want to see a map walled, new or old, post in this thread and I'll get around to it, eventually. Alternatively, create walls of your own, and I'll credit them to you, and add them with the rest of the pack.