My first match was Mana and I think ZvP requires good knowledge of the maps and all the attack paths so I practiced with my friend at least 2 games on each map. I feel like it was not enough to understand how to play on every map since some of them can get pretty complicated but overall I got a good feel of all of them. By the end of the tournament I played almost 4 times on every map and I can say I was starting to feel confident playing on them.

It's hard to prepare for 15 maps and the veto process for a bo9 so I created a text file with short descriptions of each map like "Good", "Bad", "Weird" etc. which helped me choose which to veto and which felt good for Zerg. I think the most standard map is Annihilation Station and the feel was pretty similar to many maps that we have played over the years. I feel like it could replace the old maps that Blizzard is trying to bring back like King Sejong Station or Overgrowth. There is no need to bring them back when we have other good maps on our hands. I also liked Shiva but I feel like we didn't explore it's potential in the tournament because other players didn't prepare enough to understand the map and every race was taking the same 3rd base. Paladino terminal was a nice mix of aggression and macro and I felt like anything could happen on that map, I only disliked the long cliff area around the main and area around third base.

I feel like Namaste could be a decent map but the upper area of the map is pretty dense(?) without too much place to maneuver which favors Terran and Zerg have a tough time stopping certain timings (like me vs uThermal). Eris was a little bit boring but it's hard to say that the map was lacking anything, I think it also could be used as another macro map. Gojira Greenhouse had some really nice design and ideas but I feel like there is too much area blocked around the map by minerals and it limits the movement too much. It forces you to move to the middle and there is not much potential to counterattack. Aiur Plateau also had some nice design but unfortunately I didn't play enough to talk about the map. I have a feeling it would be a little bit lacking when it comes to mid and late game which we could see in Puck vs Harstem series.

There is a reason on most ladder maps we don't have a lot of long cliffs for reapers to jump up that's why I think all the maps just be adjusted to that (Paladino Terminal is probably the best example). Dasan Station is an obvious one, I think the base layout on this map doesn't allow you to defend your bases from the drops and if you give up the middle to Terran you're basically dead.

I think there would have to be a lot of changes to Dasan Station to make it different but maybe playing around with the gold base in the middle so it connects better to the back bases would work. It feels like the creator wanted to make a map similar to Ulrena but I don't see any macro potential in the map unlike on Ulrena since 2 medivacs jumping between the middle and the sides would be unstoppable.

So I will go from left to right: I am not a fan of huge maps and Apothesis is one of them. I guess it could be alright and would maybe lead to some interesting games(There is a lot of bases and place to run around so you can't defend all the bases sitting in 1 spot). Frozen Zone's minimap was pretty unclear and I wasn't exactly sure how to play on that map, the watch tower gives too big of an advantage I believe. Galactic Process felt like it was a little bit too easy to turtle but maybe it just brought not so good memories from cloud kingdom and taking 4th base leading to the center of the map feels hard for Zerg. I liked the design of the rocks on the 3rd base though! Korhal Killzone is considered to be a rush map but would probably end up as one of the macro maps because there is not much potential to attack until someone takes a 4th base. There is maybe too many bushes around the top and bottom of the map. New Gettysburg is alright but island bases in bigger numbers have no place in Starcraft2 I believe because it's too hard to transfer workers efficiently to those bases. Caldeum Plateau was interesting but I am not sure if it wouldn't turn into a 5 base turtle fest if people figured out the map. Flame Juggler was interesting but a little bit too small for my taste since you can get to your opponents base really quickly. I am not sure if all the cliffs wouldn't be easily abusable by Terrans.

I think there shouldn't be a map that is played for longer than 6 months. On the other hand we only have 3 seasons of big WCS and coming up with 7 maps every 3 months is probably not possible so I think rotating 50% of the map pool and bringing in another 50% would be a good deal.

Since maps affect the changes in the meta game as well it's important to keep it fresh otherwise we end up with Heart-of-the-swarm-like gameplay which wasn't really exciting.

Not really but I can give some advice like avoiding maps with many island bases (Ulrena-like is fine) since they don't really have place in the game no matter how you look at it and sky armies in SC2 don't produce good games too often. I think people came up with interesting ideas in this TLMC but maybe there should be more iterations of those maps. I think Aiur Plateau was going in a good direction but in the end was a little bit too crazy. Caldeum Plateau had an interesting base layout and many bases to choose from while being fairly standard which was interesting as well.

I feel like the tournament was pretty succesful but I wish there would be more players preparing for the maps(especially Protoss and Terran since Zerg in this meta game is fairly straight-forward). Maybe getting pro players involved in playing the tournament vote or talk after the games would be cool as well.

Hmm, I think everybody knows Avex and I know one more since he's coming from polish community - th0t. The last one is IeZaeL since I remember him playing in 2v2 (I think).

Ah. That doesn't change anything. xD Don't remember other anymore.

Thanks to all the map makers that decided to take part in the TLMC and to all that are trying to bring some fresh maps to Starcraft2!

Thanks! I looked at each map for about 5-10 minutes (in game) and just thought about the maps and how they would play out, didn't play any actual games on them. I thought there were a lot of spots that were abusable in TvZ and TvP, not so much in TvT though since it's a mirror match. Some games I didn't want to go into the late game, so I just decided it's best to allin on those maps, others like New Gettysburg I thought sky Terran would be pretty good (rip sky Terran).

It was a bit of both. I've been playing mech for a while now and it works pretty well in TvT. New patch helped a lot with the Thor anti-air armored attack versus liberators, sadly it didn't do much in the other two matchups. Most of the maps in this tournament were actually pretty decent for Mech, even against Zerg. They had a lot of chokes and high ground which is really good for tank positioning, if these kind of maps would be introduced to the ladder, it would be indirect buff to the siege tank which is something I'd really like to happen. Also, I love mech

There's a few things in my opinion, I'll talk from Terran perspective since that is my main race. Zerg tier 3 is ridiculously strong right now. I think anyone that ever played Terran knows the feeling of dying to ultras or how strong broodlords now are as well due to the liberator anti air damage nerf. Terran simply has no options to effectively deal with Zerg tier 3 units and it's been a problem for a while now. Win rates are skewed because Terrans never win the late game, it's mostly early or mid game pushes and as a player that loves going for the late game, it doesn't make the game as enjoyable for me as it could be. Protoss is just... well Protoss. Problem with TvP right now is that Protoss has no weak point in the game. In hots you would try to deal damage to the Protoss player as they are getting colossus or getting a third base, now that's not really possible since Adepts beat pretty much all Terran units in under 100 supply engagements. You can lose to Protoss from early oracles, dts, warp prism drops, die to mid game mass adept blink stalker pushes or just lose to Protoss air in the super late game. Biggest problems are pylon overcharge, adepts, warp prism and tempests being 4 supply, which to me makes no sense. Any nerf or change to those units would help Terran quite a lot. If Tempests cost 6 supply, then Terran can suddenly aim for the late game and accept that we are weaker early to mid game vs Protoss, but right now there is no point in the game where Terran is stronger. I'd love to see siege tank and/or ghost buffs to help vs both races.

As far as the maps go, cliffs and just terrain that is hard to reach with the ground army would enable more siege tank usage, third bases that are not as close to the natural, so they are a bit more exposed and harder to take.

There were quite a few good maps, the ones I enjoyed the most were Galactic Process, Korhal Killzone (with a bit of work), Namaste (bottom side of the map needs some work), and my favorite one New Gettysburg. The maps I think might make it into ladder are New Gettysburg, Dasan Station, Namaste, Korhal Killzone, Annihilation Station and Galactic Process.

The two most interesting maps that really made me think about them, what strategies would be good are Dasan Station and Aiur Plateau. I think they are super interesting, but also the maps that would need a bit of work to make them fully ready for competitive play. Both of these maps create unique and interesting games and the game just looked different.

Initially I didn't like Korhal Killzone, but after playing on it I changed my mind, I liked the unit pathing on this map, because it's a small map but it still takes kinda long time to get to the opponents base. I like Dasan and Korhal for the same reason, they are small maps and that's something we lack in the competetive map pool. Galactic Process is more or less Cloud Kingdom that's transfored into LotV Cloud Kingdom a bit bigger and more suitable for LotV playstyles. Namaste has an interesting map layout, where your innitial bases are close, but as the game goes on the bases are farther away. Cliffs on the middle would make for some interesting games with unit positioning and holding those areas with your army. And last but not least, New Gettysburg is a map like we haven't seen so far, island bases create for some interesting plays, it can be a rush map through the middle, but if you get control of that it turns into this really big macro map.

One thing I wanted to mention is that current and previous map pools did a terrible job at making gold bases hard to take. Gold bases are extra income and they SHOULD be more difficult to take, because it's a risk and it should allow your opponent to punish you for it. Example of this is Prion Terraces, not only the natural is easy to take, but taking the second gold base as a third is no problem..which is just wrong to me. TLMC 7 map pool has almost every map with hard to take gold bases, Apotheosis has fairly "easy" gold base that's extremely easy to siege up from below and put pressure on it, Namaste has really close gold base that's really hard to defend against Terran..you get the point. That's one thing I really like about the new maps compared to the old ones, I hope this becomes a norm in the future.

This is again me talking as a Terran player, other races may have different opinions.

• Apotheosis isn't bad, just feels there's too many attack paths and counterattacks.
  
• Frozen Zone is too big.
  
• Paladino Terminal would give me serious PTSD from warp prism adept and blink stalker allins..do not want. The main base is way too open, natural hard to take.
  
• Shiva too many attack paths and it feels it would be a pain to play vs Zerg.
  
• Eris is too open, it's a big map that would favor Zerg too much in mid-late game, once you take 3 bases every base is just open and it would be extremely hard engaging the Zerg army.
  
• Caldeum Plateau, I haven't played any games on this map due to it being vetoed, I don't like it or dislike it (it's better than the maps I just mentioned above).
  
• Flame Juggler same as Caldeum Plateau.
  
• Gojira Greenhouse looks nice, but it feels its super hard to take good engagements due to having to go through chokes to get to the 3rd and fourth base from the games I've seen.

For the maps that have too many counter attack paths, close 1 or 2 and the map is way better, 2-3 attack paths are ok but 4+ becomes too many and annoying to play on. The maps that I said are too open, just put some cliffs (NOT more rocks), something to create at least some chokes, high grounds about bases etc. Maps that are too big..well i'm not sure how to fix that since making it smaller would mess with the map layout quite a lot.

I'd like to see New Gettysburg fixed air blockers in some way, either remove them or fix the ai of the units somehow when trying to move near them. I'd like to maybe see rocks on the middle of Dasan Station and open the back rocks (where the natural is). Aiur Plateau, I like the idea, but make it a tiny bit more open (the paths) and just make it a bit less complicated to know what the hell is going on while playing and where your units are going. Make bottom side of Namaste somehow interesting and worth fighting for, don't have an actual idea what to do though. Galactic Process has too many damn rocks/ramps/openings.

I'd like to see them rotated faster to be honest. Games become really boring to play and watch really fast, after 2 months I know how each match will play out and which strategies are viable and which aren't. After two months maps seem like a mindless grind and a battle of who can micro and macro better, instead the actual strategy which is something I really dislike. I'd like to see 4 maps being changed every 2 months and see how that would work out.

Hmm..that's a hard question. First map that comes to mind is Daybreak. I'd like to play on Shakuras Plateau, Antiga Shipyard, Tal'darim Altar, Metalopolis, Orbital Shipyard, Entombed Valley.

I hated Overgrowth and Cloud Kingdom, it was very painful to play vs Protosses on it.

I'm thinking...Only Jacky and Avex

Always! I enjoyed playing the tournament quite a lot, I wish it was set up differently though. Perhaps 32 or 16 man invitational starting from group stage into single (or double) elimination 8 man bracket. I'd like to see perhaps less maps next time, even though I got to semi finals, I didn't get to play like 4-5 out of the 15 maps. 11 sounds like a good number.

I hope to see maps changed more often in the future and have this kind of tournament for each map pool season, not sure how viable that is..but it would give us a lot better maps to play on. Thanks to BasetradeTV and Blizzard for organizing the tournament and for inviting me to participate in it, I had a lot of fun Thanks to everyone who was cheering for me.

As of today I'm no longer part of team TeS and I wanted to use this opportunity to thank them for their support last 2 years. I'm excited what the future brings and for the new opportunities If people are interested to see more of my games, you can watch me on www.twitch.tv/beastyqt - streaming every day for couple of hours!
Last but not least thank you for the interview!