Ephemeron was a good standard map with a layout that was a bit different from the rest of the standard maps in the pool. It had games of all types and lengths and was quite balanced.
Proxima Station was an enormous map with a bit of strange layout that in the end just made people turtle a bit and occasionally nydus/swarmhost. It wasn't very good or balanced. It was also one of the worst 3-rax reapers there was which did not prevent ByuN from beating up Losira and others on it.
The Shattered Temple was a fixed version of Lost Temple. It was actually pretty normal for the time with lots of play revolving around the rocked off third.
Arkanoid's a crazy BW port. It had some hilarious games where players just massed gateways and broke a dozen sets of rocks to kill the opponent rushing to a three base economy.
Purity and Industry was remarkably imbalanced for terran and accordingly heavily vetoed.
Ephemeron stands above the other maps in this pretty weak group.
Group 30:
Tough luck for Habitation Station to end up in a group with the only map that's likely to beat it. With hindsight maybe the maps should've been seeded into the groups (by number of games played on them for example) to avoid this huge disparity in group quality. Habitation Station was a very cool map (in HotS that is. Per usual it sucked in LotV) where the unique style of Gangnam terran was played. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that the legendary match between Scarlett and Bomber was played on it:
Calm Before the Storm was a pretty mediocre map with three bases behind a choke.
Apotheosis was terribly terribly imbalanced due to the enormous rush distances, the gold base that could be cut off with the rock tower. The only good thing that I can think of for Apotheosis is Neeb vs Showtime at IEM Shanghai.
Ah Lost Temple. You'd think that after BW they'd have known that dropping stuff on the cliff was abusive and obnoxious. There's lots of early WoL memories to it, but it wasn't a very good map.
Cloud Kingdom is a brilliant map. It won the first TL map contest. It's probably the only WoL map with such a modern design. It was more influencial than anything else in that era with the possible exception of Daybreak. And it had countless great games. It's difficult to choose just one, so I'll go to one that stuck with me more for being rather quirky than anything else--a two base carrier rush:
We really got to see everything on Cloud Kingdom (and I'm voting for it obviously).
Group 31:
Neo-Tokyo Turbo Cruise '84 was a mistake. The slow zone was used in the most obnoxious way possible, swarmhost were broken on it, it was horribly imbalanced, and even the halfway decent games (some PvTs were okay) felt miserable for being on it.
Lost and Found was a very good map. It was a bit turtly, the game revolved a lot around tank pushing the vertical third, cannon rushes were phenomenally strong, but that's just nitpicking. It gave a lot of great games. The original version of the map, Faded Quarry, also had a very unique 'faded photograph' look that was quite cool, but was a bit hard on the eyes.
World of Sleepers was an overly open map that tried to ruin the rich vespene geyser the way Turbo Cruise tried to ruin the slow zone. The mineral patches were utterly insignificant on it except for those handful of games where they were mined to flood lings into the Protoss natural. It probably did get more hate than it deserved, but it doesn't deserve much one way or another.
Newkirk Precinct is one of the HotS maps that did best in LotV (despite phoenix/adept ruinings its day). The layout was only so and so especially the thirds but it had entertaining games (albeit sometimes a bit too split map) and got its place made in Starcraft history with this game between INnovation and Taeja:
Very tough group between Lost and Found and Newkirk Precinct. In the end I went for Newkirk.
Group 32:
And we round it off with a group of bad maps.
Blistering Sands was a typical early WoL disaster (though maybe one of the more memorable ones).
Para Site was always just overly large and balance suffered due to that.
Korhal Compound was actually pretty decent, but not particularly noteworthy.
Dasan Station was one of the craziest maps we've had. Insanely short rush distances, a gold base natural, spawns that aren't on the edge of the map, and an inside-out layout. It was hated by the pros for its craziness, and involved all manners of cheese, but it was never boring.
Blood Boil was Apotheosis's annoying cousin. There was some interesting experimenting with resources (including an unintentional 8 mineral patch gold base), but really overall it was just too big with too long rush distances and as a result was very unpopular and imbalanced.
There's no good maps here. Might as well vote for Dasan Station.
The ammount of people voting for Yeonsu and Heavy Rain trigger my PTSD of the times when MsCs would be the harbringer of Blinkstalkers and unwinnable TvPs.
G29: Ephemeron was an easy choice for me G30: Cloud Kingdom is a great map and autopick, although Habitation Station was good G31: Newkirk for me, but just over Lost and Found G32: When in doubt, I usually choose a pioneer WoL map but I despise Blistering Sands so went with Para Site
On July 10 2020 20:27 sneakyfox wrote: Would it be an idea to do a wild card round to keep some of the favorites that were eliminated due to tough groups in the tournament?
as much as I'd love it (Terraform / Foxtrot Labs and Habitation Station / Cloud Kingdom were heartbreaking groups) I don't think that should be done. I mean, if Foxtrot Labs (a map I really loved) can't beat Terraform, it won't win the tournament. So I'm okay with it being out before the ro32, even if it pains me to see the likes of Scrap Station and Steppes of War qualified ^^
29 : I hesitated a lot between Ephemeron and Shattered Temple, the eternal history / memories vs actual quality debate. I went for Shattered Temple, but not by much. 30 : it's impossible not to vote for Cloud Kingdom which is seminal and influential if any map ever was, but Habitation Station was a great map and deserves a honourable mention at least. The other maps of the group weren't too memorable imo. 31 : this is actually a very solid group where none of the maps really stands out but without a terrible map (ok Turbo Cruise may be that map). I had to choose between Newkirk Precinct and Lost and Found in the end, went for Newkirk. 32 : what a way to end it ! Terrible group haha. Korhal Compound was not too memorable but it's a map I enjoyed and it was actually pretty solid, so I voted for it.
Can't wait for the ro32, such a hype tournament ! Great idea, kudos and many thanks to Solar424.
Can't forget the marauder and roach rushes on Blistering Sands. Prompted me to go 1-base charge/+1 weapons/4gate, which did surprisingly well on every map in every matchup in early WoL...
Apotheosis was terribly terribly imbalanced due to the enormous rush distances, the gold base that could be cut off with the rock tower. The only good thing that I can think of for Apotheosis is Neeb vs Showtime at IEM Shanghai.
This concludes the group stage of the tournament. The first 4 Ro32 polls will be added to this post once I have finished building the brackets. Seeds for the best map bracket: + Show Spoiler +
1 King Sejong Station 2 Metalopolis 3 Overgrowth 4 Catallena 5 Cloud Kingdom 6 Abyssal Reef 7 Daybreak 8 Tal'Darim Altar 9 Bel'Shir Beach 10 Echo 11 Korhal Floating Island 12 Frost 13 King's Cove 14 Iron Fortress 15 Newkirk Precinct 16 Dasan Station 17 Xel'Naga Caverns 18 Ephemeron 19 Coda 20 Steppes of War 21 Blackpink 22 Whirlwind 23 Bel'Shir Vestige 24 Neo Planet S 25 Nimbus 26 Vaani Research Station 27 Polar Night 28 Acid Plant 29 Terraform 30 Golden Wall 31 Redshift 32 Scrap Station
KSS > Scrap Station Xel'Naga Caverns > Dasan somewhat reluctantly. Dasan was cool, but a bit of a mess. Tal'Darim Altar > Nimbus. Nimbus is an awful terran-favored map. Neo Planet S > Bel'Shir Beach
Howling Peak > Abyssal City . Abyssal City is not a bad map. Daedalus Point > Searing Crater. Daedalus Point is legendarily bad. Slag Pits > Darkness Sanctuary. Darkness Sanctuary has bad balance, but it's not nearly as poor as Slag Pits. Kind of a close one. Turbo Cruise > Ruins of Seras. Ruins of Seras is just normal levels of bad, whereas Turbo Cruise tries hard to be as miserable and imbalanced as possible.
(maybe consider links over images that take ages to charge for slow connexions like mine and it's indeed cool to take winrates in consideration) - KSS wins the duel of the stations handily - XNC for sheer history - TDA beats Nimbus every day - NPS is another easy choice
I care less for the worst map ever tourney, will just mention I voted Daedalus which will probably be a contender for the title (I can see Secret Spring putting it in danger, but Daedalus is so bad this is stuff legends are made of).
another idea though I don't know how feasible that would be : a liquipedia page for the tourney (starting with ro32, would be far too long to do for the group stage I think) with every map linked to its page. Now that would be perfect.
(maybe consider links over images that take ages to charge for slow connexions like mine and it's indeed cool to take winrates in consideration) - KSS wins the duel of the stations handily - XNC for sheer history - TDA beats Nimbus every day - NPS is another easy choice
I care less for the worst map ever tourney, will just mention I voted Daedalus which will probably be a contender for the title (I can see Secret Spring putting it in danger, but Daedalus is so bad this is stuff legends are made of).
Dasan Station is my pick for worst map but Secret Spring was also terrible. Moonlight Madness and Bridgehead are also serious contenders.
EPT
Rogue![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/gzFtqls.png)
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/0CCpDY2.png)
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/9514OlB.png)
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/Nj8sdlx.png)
![[image loading]](https://liquipedia.net/commons/images/7/74/King_Sejong_Station_LE.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://liquipedia.net/commons/images/c/c7/Scrap_Station.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://liquipedia.net/commons/images/d/d0/Dasan_Station_LE_0.3.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://liquipedia.net/commons/images/5/55/Xel%27Naga_Caverns.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://liquipedia.net/commons/images/1/13/Tal%27Darim_Altar.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://liquipedia.net/commons/images/b/ba/Nimbus.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://liquipedia.net/commons/images/a/a5/Bel%27shir_Beach_1.1.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://liquipedia.net/commons/images/3/3c/NeoPlanetS.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://liquipedia.net/commons/images/9/9f/Howling_Peaks.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://liquipedia.net/commons/images/6/69/AbyssalCity.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://liquipedia.net/commons/images/8/85/Daedalus_Point_v2.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://liquipedia.net/commons/images/3/32/Searing_Crater.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://liquipedia.net/commons/images/5/5b/Slag_Pits.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://liquipedia.net/commons/images/c/cf/GSL_Darkness_Sanctuary.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://liquipedia.net/commons/images/d/df/Ruins_of_Seras.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://liquipedia.net/commons/images/c/c0/NeoTokyo_Turbo_Cruise_84.jpg)
