[ASL21] Potential Map Candidates

On January 14 2026 07:21 G5 wrote:
I really hope Jane Doe and Hellbound get in. Jane Doe looks super fun and Hellbound looks pretty boring but I miss that tile set so much that I'd love to see it nevertheless.

On January 14 2026 05:59 [sc1f]eonzerg wrote:
Overall nothing innovative. They are not even good maps to watch . I can tell Hellbound is not making it from that list already. Why bring sylphid to make 1 mineral patch change ? This mp also spoils that Roaring Currents is most likely coming back next season. Since they usually use 2 2 players map and litmus is not coming back next season.

On January 14 2026 07:21 G5 wrote:
I really hope Jane Doe and Hellbound get in. Jane Doe looks super fun and Hellbound looks pretty boring but I miss that tile set so much that I'd love to see it nevertheless.

On January 14 2026 03:42 FlaShFTW wrote:
Looks like the only change to Sylphid was reducing the extra patch in the natural from 720 to 360. Neo Sylphid had a huge issue with TvZ, looking to see if anything else will be done to change that.

Jane Doe looks interesting, its a Crossing Field variant but I'm worried about all the buildable Terrain. Rush distance looks short, PvT is gonna be a nightmare.

Hellbound feels like a 2009/2010 map with no real easy 3rd. Could be a push back to 2 base style gameplay. The outer ring concept with a small hill to secure the center seems interesting, but the map is extremely chokey with no real large area to assist with flanks.

Attitude is quite literally just Polypoid without the high ground mineral only.

Octagon seems similar again to Polypoid, but curiously has the entrance to the 3/6/9/12 right next to the natural, making those bases a little easier to take, but also brings in issues of rotational imbalance from spawns. Also curious that they've gone away from the mineral patch at the main ramp and instead are using a chrysalis.

Overall, map pool seems a little bland, and it's curious we aren't reusing the Knock Out ditch on any of these maps. Feels like it would be easy enough to add to Hellbound at the very least.

On January 14 2026 19:50 Peeano wrote:
Imo you need at least one map with a new concept (or not seen in a long time), then another map that takes a previous new concept map, preferably from last season, that didn't do terrible and develop it further. Then the rest can be fillers. This way you can keep innovating and keep BW fresh for both the players and viewers.

On January 14 2026 18:14 [sc1f]eonzerg wrote:


Well from all the new maps there is not crazy map proposed. So there is a chance Roaring currents is coming back. Specially when Litmus and Jane Doe are in the same line.

On January 14 2026 20:11 RogerChillingworth wrote:


I completely agree, and there is no reason to not do it this way. If it's players pushing back then it's like actors telling a director what to do on a movie set. If it's not the players but Afreeca, or the map makers, then I truly wonder what the thinking is. If anyone knows what the deal is, I'd love to be enlightened.

What we really need is a snow map. Just a giant plain of snow with no pathing or ramps or anything. With polar bears roaming around that maul your ass and random spots where you fall into an ice lake. And then every few minutes someone at the studio shakes your chair violently and screams and like covers your eyes and calls you terrible, maybe even unplugs your keyboard.
Propose this knowing that the compromise is more interesting maps. It might be the only way.

On January 15 2026 01:24 [sc1f]eonzerg wrote:
Apparently the idea for the Mappool is this :

source 910 stream.

So that means that in fact roaring etc are not returning. Only pole star and Knock out are coming back.Kinda shocking since they always have stick to atleast 1 meme map each season.

Is an extremely heavy Terran mappool as of now.

I cant help but thinking that hellbound is such a weak 3 players when you compare it to the likes of Ascension. Apocalypse. Dominator. I get that sylphid is coming back i think Apocalypse is Superior.

On January 15 2026 01:30 [sc1f]eonzerg wrote:

Is this actually part of the map ? cuz i have seen them blocking spawns before to avoid AI leaving their mains. I think it happened famously in some Stork game LMAO. ANyway if this is the case then is actually interesting to see a map maker openly doing this. Artosis gonna be so happy LOL

On January 15 2026 07:51 Kraekkling wrote:
regarding Hellbound, I think it will turn out either more interesting than people expect, or it's gonna be broken

it looks to me like a very low resource map because the center expoes are too vulnerable in many cases

so there's only 9 viable expansions in several matchups - we don't ever have maps with that few expansions

On January 16 2026 02:11 FlaShFTW wrote:
Hellbound makes me think about Merry Go Round from SC2

On January 15 2026 01:24 [sc1f]eonzerg wrote:
Apparently the idea for the Mappool is this :

source 910 stream.

So that means that in fact roaring etc are not returning. Only pole star and Knock out are coming back.Kinda shocking since they always have stick to atleast 1 meme map each season.

Is an extremely heavy Terran mappool as of now.

I cant help but thinking that hellbound is such a weak 3 players when you compare it to the likes of Ascension. Apocalypse. Dominator. I get that sylphid is coming back i think Apocalypse is Superior.

On January 16 2026 11:32 Kanzzer wrote:


Speaking of SC2, are 3-player maps played over there at all?

On January 17 2026 01:12 Ideas wrote:


I thought SC2 only does 2-player maps for some reason, but maybe I'm wrong and just didnt pay much attention lol

On January 17 2026 14:35 RogerChillingworth wrote:
I love Brood War and think more creative maps are necessary, but it's all quite limited by the very spatially basic nature of the economy: a command center next to a c-shape of minerals with a gas next to it. It's familiar and even comforting, but there's only so much you can do with it. Relative to how economy could function in RTS, all StarCraft maps inevitably feel like some variation of Sylphid.

On January 18 2026 03:10 Excalibur wrote:
I'd really like to see someone from ASL try to justify this map pool. More circle jerking and a refusal to work with the foreign parts of the remaining mapping community for no good reason, and worse maps and thus games as a result.

We need the people in charge of these leagues to start giving a fuck or we're going to lose what little we have left.

On January 18 2026 03:10 Excalibur wrote:

We need the people in charge of these leagues to start giving a fuck or we're going to lose what little we have left.

On January 19 2026 04:32 Kraekkling wrote:
We had at least 1 experimental map per season for the last 15 years or so.

I never see public lobbys for Neo Arkanoid or Optimizer or Death Valley or Minstrel or Troy or Nemesis or Metaverse or Lemon or Plasma or 76 or HItch Hiker or Inner Coven or ...


Why does noone on bnet play those?

On January 19 2026 06:31 [sc1f]eonzerg wrote:
Ir it could be just simple explained as the mid was causing issues. I wonder if an overlord is now safe from being killed with this modification.

On January 19 2026 04:32 Kraekkling wrote:
We had at least 1 experimental map per season for the last 15 years or so.

I never see public lobbys for Neo Arkanoid or Optimizer or Death Valley or Minstrel or Troy or Nemesis or Metaverse or Lemon or Plasma or 76 or HItch Hiker or Inner Coven or ...


Why does noone on bnet play those?

On January 20 2026 03:42 FlaShFTW wrote:
Interesting that Octagon and Hellbound both have 8 mineral patches in the natural compared to the default 7. Maybe to start trying to aid Protoss a bit with their economy. Same with 10 patches in the main on Hellbound as well, so really pushing better mineral rates.

On January 20 2026 04:53 FlaShFTW wrote:

What do you think would be better then for addressing balance concerns without completely altering standard map design? What about more gas, as it seems like Zerg is the one who wants more gas duration in ZvT, same with Protoss in PvZ. What about bumping main and natural gas up to 6k?

On January 21 2026 11:59 seRapH wrote:
petition to ban the chrysalis object: the animation is freaky af. there must be something else they could block the octogon ramps with.

On January 21 2026 15:29 BLinD-RawR wrote:
+ Show Spoiler +

it do be freaky like that, weird throbbing potato.

On January 22 2026 17:34 fLyiNgDroNe wrote:
hey guys sorry for a little off-topic, any preliminary information when ASL21 starts?

On January 21 2026 20:18 Kanzzer wrote:




Y'all don't like to watch Kerrigan sleeping?

On January 23 2026 06:00 Ideas wrote:


I dont know if theres been an official announcement yet but prelims usually happen in late Feb or early March IIRC

On January 24 2026 09:49 RJBTVYOUTUBE wrote:
Match Point got added, Hellbound seems to be out of the map testing pool.

On January 24 2026 19:02 [sc1f]eonzerg wrote:
The reason give to use match point is that there was already 2 3 players map. And that Match point is one of the most balanced 2 players map. Is that real ? Dark origin has been the most balanced map i have seen by stats. But MP is actually zvt hell lol.

On January 24 2026 20:54 Kraekkling wrote:I also really like that Match Point has only 10 expansions. For several matchups, when both players are about to max out at 200/200, most of the map is taken and it feels like we are heading towards a climax. Its like the very last stage of the game, where resources are scarce and often one of the players is on a clock.

This is in contrast to 16 expansion maps, where it takes like 10 more minutes to reach that stage of the game after both players approach max supply. feels kinda awkward

On January 25 2026 21:03 oxKnu wrote:
Told you guys this multiple times. And will repeat it again:

The guy that picks the maps is a MASSIVE Terran fanboy. Almost Artosis' level, without the drama. Any chance he has in selecting, trimming off and correcting the map-pool he will go back to to insanely unbalanced maps in favor of Terran.

Matchpoint is another example.

After that last ASL where Protoss looked probably at its worst we get AGAIN a map that demolishes both P and Z in the most important match-ups.

On January 24 2026 16:10 GTR wrote:
wish they'd just take classic maps and remaster them for the modern day

On January 26 2026 09:09 seRapH wrote:
all 4p maps are remasters of lost temple

On January 27 2026 13:40 seRapH wrote:
The "experimental" maps tend to be 2p or 3p maps, don't they? Wonder if them being easier to balance is why that is or if its just that 4p maps are just too locked into the same frameworks.

On January 28 2026 03:10 FlaShFTW wrote:
Some updates, maps were updated to 0.9 for Jane Doe and Attitude. Jane Doe saw the front yard egg removed and ramps changed to north-south ramps rather than diagonal.

Attitude just some natural mineral changes and mining optimizations.

Still waiting on them to fix Match Point so the map is entirely symmetrical. As it stands I don't think keeping the ramps as they are qualifies this as a tournament level map by today's standards.

On January 28 2026 03:10 FlaShFTW wrote:
Some updates, maps were updated to 0.9 for Jane Doe and Attitude. Jane Doe saw the front yard egg removed and ramps changed to north-south ramps rather than diagonal.

Attitude just some natural mineral changes and mining optimizations.

Still waiting on them to fix Match Point so the map is entirely symmetrical. As it stands I don't think keeping the ramps as they are qualifies this as a tournament level map by today's standards.

On January 28 2026 10:18 RJBTVYOUTUBE wrote:


That Jane doe ramp change was specifically because you could make the scouting worker clip into the marine by sending it back to your own minerals and immediately canceling the command IF you had placed your worker on the far side of the marine on the ramp relative to your own base. This would make it "mineral" walk into the marine, and if canceled, the game would force BOTH units to move. This effectively made the marine+medic block completely useless.

On January 29 2026 00:54 [sc1f]eonzerg wrote:
This MP is so terran that im expecting minimum 3 terrans in ASL semis.

And this is me without seeing FlaSh playing lol.

You can see Royal/ Rush / Barracks are so buffed.

On January 29 2026 02:04 Kraekkling wrote:

actually funny as fuck, its like Terrans are someones favourite child and if they have to live one more season without winning ASL they're going to commit mass suicide

just look at the map WRs LOL

Neo Sylphid
overall: (54.8%)
TvZ: 892 wins, 619 losses (59.0%)
TvP: 907 wins, 862 losses (51.3%)

Pole Star
overall: (59.1%)
TvZ: 636 wins, 418 losses (60.3%)
TvP: 443 wins, 329 losses (57.4%)

Knock Out
overall: (55.1%)
TvZ: 259 wins, 212 losses (55.0%)
TvP: 182 wins, 147 losses (55.3%)


and really it's not like ANY of the newly added maps look bad for Terran

if there was a single season of maps which were anywhere close to being this Zerg favoured, we'd see multiple progamers stop playing

+ Show Spoiler +

On January 24 2026 16:10 GTR wrote:
wish they'd just take classic maps and remaster them for the modern day - i would love to see something like peaks of baekdu or ride of valkyries reimagined for modern play.

edit: a lot of concepts that were submitted in the new worlds map contest a few years ago would be perfect.

On January 15 2026 01:55 [sc1f]eonzerg wrote:
Metropolis yes.

On February 04 2026 03:19 FlaShFTW wrote:

Metropolis is far better than Retro in the sense that the main/nat layouts give a lot more play to mutalisks, as well as right outside the natural. Metropolis's center also feels more dynamic than Retros which gives more flanking and counter play to Zerg.

On February 04 2026 05:38 FlaShFTW wrote:

Metropolis is just a dogshit map for Protoss at top levels. 45% PZ and 41% PT. Not entirely sure the reason for such a bad PZ matchup, my guess is that 1-1 pushes are super strong because of the chokes. PT is bad because Terran takes the center as a 4th base and once they set up tanks there, Protoss can't move around the edges because of how the map layout is without taking significant losses.

Retro is actually a super balanced map outside of ZvT. All the other matchups are within 2.5%. It's possible if we ever get a 2.0, we could look to make the mineral lines more vulnerable at the naturals for muta harass. Not sure what else the map needs after that but that would be a good place to start.

On February 04 2026 23:44 iopq wrote:


No, just put overlord posts everywhere.

On February 04 2026 23:31 M3t4PhYzX wrote:
Gotta be by far the most boring ASL map pool we've ever had. I'll probably be skipping this edition, honestly. It's a shame,

On February 05 2026 01:40 ahwala wrote:


Sad but true.
I may not be skipping it entirely, but I'm also not excited like I usually am.

On February 04 2026 05:38 FlaShFTW wrote:

Metropolis is just a dogshit map for Protoss at top levels. 45% PZ and 41% PT. Not entirely sure the reason for such a bad PZ matchup, my guess is that 1-1 pushes are super strong because of the chokes. PT is bad because Terran takes the center as a 4th base and once they set up tanks there, Protoss can't move around the edges because of how the map layout is without taking significant losses.

On February 04 2026 05:38 FlaShFTW wrote:


Retro is actually a super balanced map outside of ZvT. All the other matchups are within 2.5%. It's possible if we ever get a 2.0, we could look to make the mineral lines more vulnerable at the naturals for muta harass. Not sure what else the map needs after that but that would be a good place to start.

On February 05 2026 01:55 Rainalcar wrote:


And it's getting worse with time.

On February 05 2026 04:02 Kanzzer wrote:

I compared top Zergs' ZvT performance between Retro & Metropolis.

soma
81W-67L on Retro
57W-32L on Metropolis

effort
40W-30L on Retro
32W-21L on Metropolis

JD
112W-115L on Retro
29W-40L on Metropolis

Queen
88W-91L on Retro
89W-68L on Metropolis

Action
96W-105L on Retro
43W-29L on Metropolis

Larva
11W-19L on Retro
26W-56L on Metropolis

SoulKey
58W-51L on Retro
16W-10L on Metropolis

herO
95W-90L on Retro
52W-51L on Metropolis

Two things I can deduce from this:
1. soma, effort, Queen, Action and SoulKey have better ZvT winrates on Metropolis, especially when Queen & Action both had losing records on Retrom
2. However, Jaedong & Larva both have worse ZvT winrates on Metropolis. Whereas herO's ZvT performances on both maps look identical.
3. Despite the 43% total ZvT winrate on the aggregate spon records, it seems none of the top Zergs straight up die in ZvT on Retro except for Larva. JD, Action & Queen were all only a handful of wins away from tying up their TvZ records. This is supported by the 3 ASL seasons too, where Zergs lead Terran 10-8, and out of 11 times Retro was up for vetoes in ZvT, Zerg only vetoed it twice.

So all in all, I would say Retro is a challenging map for ZvT, but still within reasonable fairness. Certainly not as tough as PvT in Metropolis, where only the absolute best of the best PvT gods can win.

On February 05 2026 01:23 Kanzzer wrote:


I believe both Retro & Metropolis have sufficient amount of Overlord spots.

On February 06 2026 04:48 RouaF wrote:
So no crazy map this season ?

On February 10 2026 22:03 goody153 wrote:

apparently not

kinda sad we dont have at least one island or semi-island map. ngl like meta was developing into people starting to experiment with air units regularly

And now we back to the usual

On January 20 2026 08:49 Kraekkling wrote:
lol they were playing on the new maps today and there is a bug on the ash map where one spawn gets 4 eggs instead of 2

it was relevant to the game because the resulting choke is much smaller



the bug is something which can happen quite easily in the map editor. when you place the eggs it's very easy to accidently place more than one at a time, and they remain stacked in the editor.

it only becomes apparent in-game, because they spawn unstacked. but this also means that no one bothered to check the map in-game before it got uploaded?? super lazy wtf

On February 10 2026 23:39 seRapH wrote:
Did you download the sandbox version(s)?

https://910map.tistory.com/238 is right link to download the 1v1 and obs, 239 are the sandbox versions.

Not the same type of map.

On February 10 2026 22:25 IceWall wrote:


I created a local lobby with MatchPoint 1.4 and I saw 3 spawn locations instead of 2 (for a 2 players map). IDK if this is a bug similar to the egg spawn lol. Very new to this problem. I even wondered if I did something wrong creating the lobby (which didn't happen before).