Welcome back to the Soop StarCraft League ASL! With the main event starting on March 24, it’s time to take a look at this season’s map pool! Special thanks to Hawk for collaborating and giving us his thoughts on the balance of each map.

Liquipedia

Death Valley, Eclipse, Dominator SE, Deja Vu SE, Metropolis, Pole Star, Radeon

The map pool features 2 2p maps, 1 3p map, and 4 4p maps, with 3 new maps and 4 returning maps with some revisions. Only one standout map, Death Valley, is featured as the “experimental map” while all others are fairly standard, with Metropolis being the only standout in terms of attempting a new design for a 4p map. Let’s jump right into it!
2 player maps:



We start off with a bang, as Death Valley is the spiritual successor of Third World. The map plays on the idea of two areas of control, the normal, shorter and less resource concentrated top side with access narrowed by Troy-like assimilators, while the bottom side takes up almost 3/4s of the map with more bases, but requires you to mine out the Monty Hall-style mineral wall. I think the idea is actually a good improvement on Third Word, as the creator likely saw the issues of Third World not having any real way to get to the other side of the map, and added the backdoor as a means to accessing the wider area. Of course, there comes a cost with it, which is that some games will feature more greedy openers, as the backdoor is much more difficult to attack. The map also encourages more air play, as trying to go from one natural to the other will be difficult with ground units, and air units can abuse the immobility of ground forces. Overall, I think the map will feature some really creative and unique mirror matchups, as the essentially free backdoor natural will encourage players to potentially deviate from the norm with greedier openers. The map seems to also be quite good for Zerg, as mutalisk control will be crucial for Zerg to take control of the skies.


Eclipse makes a return as the standard 2p map of the map pool. The map hasn’t seen any balance changes recently, so all the same ideas on this map will still play out, though the last time this map featured was back in 2022 in ASL13, so meta shifts may impact the balance of this map. However, I am excited to see this map return, as well balanced 2p maps are always a good inclusion into any map pool (although Terrans will be cursing the fact that they’ll have to deal with the gas steal in TvP). Nothing really to add, the map is still very good and I anticipate some really exciting games on it.



Dominator makes a return to the map pool after a reasonable showing from last season. It’s been a comfortable Terran map, while Zerg and Protoss have both shown weakness in their respective unfavorable matchups (ZvT and PvZ). However, some changes were made that hopefully will help get the map into a bit more of a balanced state and reduce Terran’s stranglehold on the map. First, higher walls were added near the mineral only expansions to prevent Terrans from freely sieging into the mains with tanks. Now, it’ll require a building or air unit to allow them to shell a main. In essence, it’s asking Terrans to actually push forward rather than taking an overly safe position while still posing as a threat, reducing the low risk, high reward strategies that Terrans can abuse. Second, Terran can no longer full wall at 3 or 7 spawns. This was a big concern for Zergs in the matchup, and this new change will make it so that Terrans can’t feel overly comfortable with CC-first against Zerg (though FlaSh has started showing some modified walls with CC at the wall instead of on location). Finally, the front yard to the natural was modified to add a little bit more building area to defend your natural’s pizza slice as Terran. Overall, these three changes will greatly reduce Terran’s dominance in both matchups, though it doesn’t exactly do much to help the ZvP matchup, which will likely still be Zerg favored.



If Dominator was a Terran map, then Deja Vu’s first iteration was criminal. Terran boasted over 55% in both matchups, making it a very solid Terran map. But once again, changes were made to help curtail Terrans and hopefully make the map more playable for the other two races. First, the dreaded buildable terrain on the donut high ground was removed entirely. No more free turrets and depots for Terrans to comfortably sit with tanks to siege a helpless Protoss. This change is similar to Dominator in a way where it’s asking Terran to have to commit and take more risk rather than sitting comfortably from a low risk-high reward position. This change will also hopefully reduce how much stalemate can occur on this map in TvT, where turret building on the donut encourages more defensive posturing rather than actively seeking to gain territory on the map. Finally, the center was opened up more compared to the first iteration of the map, so that there’s more freedom to move rather than having such a constrained middle.Once again, this should help against Terrans who like to turtle by taking the center base, making attacks into the center more viable and less costly for a Protoss. At the very least, hopefully Protoss can have some more reprieve on this map compared to the previous version.



An Elon Musk-inspired map and Sniper Ridge’s cousin, Pole Star is a new 4p map that uses a similar layout to maps like Vermeer, featuring a close, narrow third and standard 12/3/6/9 expansions. Similar to Vermeer, Pole Star seems to be a very bad ZvT map, with a 37.5% winrate so far over 110 games. While the close 3rd does offer Zerg the option to play hydra/defiler style, it also gives Terrans an easier base to secure before taking another corner and playing for late game tanks. It’s possible that we may see some small adjustments to the buildable terrain in front of the naturals and just below the center ramps, but I predict that this map will end up much like Vermeer.



I’d say that Metropolis was a new attempt to get a different design to 4p standard maps. Metropolis offers a very large main, similar to Beltway, with a tucked natural that is susceptible to air harass. Zergs have definitely enjoyed the more exposed mains with mutalisk play, as they’ve seen the best ZvT winrate on a standard 4p map, sitting at nearly 50% over 100 games. Terrans definitely dislike the main layouts, as they are susceptible to heavy shuttle player and arbiter recalls, but they’ve still managed fine winrates in both matchups. The third is reasonably close, though rotational symmetry means that getting the wrong spawn might force a player to taking the farther, more exposed third base (for example, Protoss spawning 1 while Terran spawns 11 might force Protoss to take the farther 3 as the 3rd base instead of 12). Finally, the center offers a gas expansion (compared to other maps like Deja Vu, Pole Star, and Retro that only have minerals in the center), so this feature likely favors Terran as they’re more capable of taking center bases compared to the other races. Overall, I think the map layout, while a bit strange at first, helps to create a more balanced approach to the map and may offer us insight as to how to better balance the TvZ matchup, though Protoss still struggle on this map with near 45% winrates in both matchups.



Radeon has had no changes and has been a staple in the pro scene for some time now. Statistically, it is the most balanced standard 4p map, and one of the most balanced maps in history (though Protoss probably wishes there were some small changes to help their 47% winrate on the map). Overall, because the map is the most frequently used today, not much can be said, I’m excited for this map to feature in the tournament again.


Based on the map pool and looking at the statistics of each, Zergs are finally getting some reprieve from the ZvT nightmare, while Protoss players are still floundering a bit with sub-50% winrates across pretty much all maps. Here’s hoping that the modifications to Deja Vu and Dominator will be enough to balance out some of their weaknesses, but with the PvZ metagame still being incredibly difficult, it feels like this will be a Zerg and Terran favored tournament.

Favorite: Soulkey

It’s hard to pick anyone else here to be the pre-tournament favorite. While Soulkey has struggled sometimes in proleague (mostly to Flash, who’s not even in the tournament), he’s still going to be the leading favorite to win yet another ASL, especially when the maps this time are a bit better for Zerg (Death Valley, Metropolis, Dominator SE and Deja Vu SE). Realistically, the only way I see him lose this tournament is a fluke loss in a ZvZ.

Darkhorse: SpeeD

I think a lot of people are on the Speed train after his pretty solid performance last ASL, while yes, Speed didn’t even make it to the bracket, many feel like he’s been improving at a very rapid pace and is going to follow in the footsteps of various other Terrans who have made that push to winning an ASL, like Royal, JyJ, and Rush. He’s got one of the more unique TvP styles amongst Terrans which also carries over into TvT as well. A way too early prediction from me has Speed making it to the semifinals.

Likely to underperform: Queen

It’s sort of easy to pick on Queen constantly, who lost to BCM in qualifiers two ASLs ago (BCM actually beat hero in the qualifiers on day 1 btw), and then got knocked out in the Ro24 last ASL. Plus, he had that massive shock loss to Shuttle in a proleague ace match that spawned pages upon pages of debate and controversy over the state of PvZ. Overall, the former ASL champ is just not up to form I think, and for someone who has such a big name in the scene, I don’t have high hopes that he’ll advance very far, with likely another group exit.

Notable missing players: Flash, JyJ, Shine

FlaSh is out for a hand/wrist surgery. JyJ had the unfortunate run of losing to both BarrackS and Tyson in the finals, though the latter he should’ve won. Shine ended up losing to Rush in a final and getting knocked out early by a Terran named Hammer on Day 2.

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Writers: FlashFTW, Hawk
Graphics: v1
Editors: BLinD-RawR