BWMN Open - final write-up

Gameplay
This map saw a lot of games, with a good number for each matchup. For the most part it played out as intended, and both players and commentators seemed to like this map the most durign the tourney. What surprised me was, how many players took any other expansions than those at 4 and 10 as their 3rds, and I would like to hear some of the rationale behind it, or whether it was only bad decission making and lack of knowledge of the map's layout.
What kept bothering me, is how easily terran seemed to die time and time against flanks, especially against Zerg, and how little successful agression therefore we saw coming from terran/ how passive most of terrans' play was. Still terrans seemed to like this map, and Zerg players where simply just dominant to begin with, so maybe much of it can be attributed to skill differences again.
On the other hand, TechnicS, of all players, mentioned he felt uncomfortable against T on this map, so maybe I am entirely wrong. I would greatly appreciate, if you could be les vague on the issue, and try to pin down what bothered you, though, TechnicS. That'd be nice.

Balance
As mentioned, terran migh have a hard time, due to the wide open areas, epecially in front of the nat. I tried to improve on it a bit, by extending a cliff wall next to the mineral only, to tighten those areas up. Unfortunately there haven't been any longer TvZs on the map since then, to allow good judgement.
Aside from the doubts I expressed above, Cross Game seems probably very well balanced.

Gameplay
I picked this map for this map pack, because, despite its seemingly very simple structure, it showed some quite unusual and interesting properties. It's rare to see a map that encourages macro heavy mass expanding game to such a degree, yet still strongly discourages turtling.
And I am very happy to have seen this map play out exactly the way I pictured it to.
Especially intitally we could see a lot of cheese play attempts here, non surprisingly, given the seemingly striking combination of known enemy location, rather short rushing distance, multiple scouting paths and a buildable middle.
Something else that players figured out quickly, though, was how to use the easily walled tight main choke to their advantage, and more than one cheese litterally just ran against a wall.
And so we could finally see this map showing its full potential in macro heavy, agressive games, like Bakuryu vs. dsaqwe or Radley vs. Cryoc, where players could make good use of the multiple paths and harrass potetnial of the expansions.
This map also showed good potetial for unusual and creative plays. First of there's TechnicS' use of infested terrans against WandS, of course, but especially worth mentioning are the interesting options that the main chokes offered, both defensivels and offensivaly, especially to terran players, as Radley repetedly demonstrated with his creative use of barack walling at that choke.

Balance
With all the expansions having some kind of wide ramp or choke and the lack of any real far expansion to take, this map seemed a bit imbalanced against Zerg, especially in ZvT, to me. Still, Octzerg picked it as his looser's choice against Radley, but went for what I can probably best call a two base-muta-all-in, which he eventually lost, kind of supporting my point.
Protoss also did poorly against terran here, but that seemed to be mostly due to not practicing the map and knowing its strucutre, and therefore being surprised by terran attacking from an unexpected direction (I think the game I am thinking of right now was Radek vs. TheMarine).

So T>Z is probably the only real concern here.

Gameplay
Noteworthy games I remember where the final game between Bakuryu and dsaqwe, a long-lasting PvZ, where eventually all expansions where taken and the map almost mined out, and a lot of ZvZ, especially during the Semi-Finals bewteen TechnicS and Sziky, where both players secured three bases and TechnicS almost reached his Hive tech.
Unforunately that makes it still somwhat hard to judge overall gameplay, because all the other non-mirror matches seemed ebntirely decided by vast differences in player skills or bad decissions, very early on, by one player, and therefore did not even last long enough to go beyond two-base play.

Balance
Terran players seem to unanimously dislike this map, because of its openness and hard to aquire third gas. However, I still somewhat feel like that terran players simply haven't really figured out this map, yet. What I would have expected is the variant, where you just wall of your nat choke and move out through the backdoor, taking the sfae mineral only as a third and then the narrow-ramped gas expansion next to it as a pretty safe third gas, which would be very similar to how terran expands on maps such as Matchpoint or Aztec, which share the charateristics of a close by mineral only, but a fairly far third gas.
Protoss also seemed to struggle with the expansion layout a bit, but had no trouble taking the open expansion in front of the nat against Zerg with a lot of cannons, and the option of backdoor expanding to the mineral only would probably be a good one, too.

So overall I would say that balance for terran remains questionable, but it's certainly a good map for Zerg and Protoss.

Gameplay
Uh, we knew this would be out of the norm.
ZvZ was by far the most prevalent matchup we saw here, which is unfortunate because it's the matchup which, barring different rush distances, basically degrades any map to a fading background to running lings and flying mutas...
TvZ was, unfortunately, but also not surprisingly, dominated by BBS.
Still, the map is definitely not just a terran graveyard; with all the easily available gas, quick tech and high tank/vessel counts would have been no problem to achieve.
For TvP, we saw only one game, TheMarine vs. Terranos, which proved one of my predictions about gameplay though: Protoss can no longer rely on (oure) goons at all, even if they manage to hold a good defensive position on the force fields, speed vulture raids with mines can easily force them back, out of position, due to the difficulty in sniping mines or vultures. So in TvP it is definitely Protoss who has to play out of their comfort zone and have to develope new, creative, map specific strategies, to compensate for the severely decreased power of goons and the strong threat of tank splash and mine fields on the force fields. Early Speedlot into either templar tech or fast Shuttle and Reaver would probably be the answer here. Zealot bombs would be much stronger, due to dislocated point of impact of tank splash attacks.
The TvT between Cryoc and Radley, though long and tedious, was still interesting to watch, because it produced the use of some nice unstandard units and tactics.
Still, for TvT it's definitely been proven to be the epitome of a turtle map, with map finally decided by who held the last available resources. That's probably not what you want to see as a player, or spectator, in the long term.
ZvP was a huge letdown to me, because of consistently bad decission making on Zerg's side. On this map Hydras or Mutas just aren't a good option against the heavy Zealot/Archon pressure Protoss put out. Maybe Zerg players where unsecure about going Lurker/ling against Protoss, but it's definitely a valid strategy.
So we never saw, how a late game ZvP bewteen Ling/Lurker/Defiler/Ultra and Zealot/Templar/Archon/possibly Reaver would have played out, which is really unfortunate.


Balance
As far as conventional tactics are concerned, with Z>T, T>P and P>Z this map pretty much reverses the usual "comfort relations" of BW, in each case due to forced restrictions in tech choices (Terran needs firebats against lings and later on a lot of splash damage, Zerg cannot use Hydras or Mutas efficiently against Protoss, and Protoss cannot rely on goons vs. terran)
How this would develope, with new, map specific tactics, I can still only speculate about.
Probably Z>T, or even Z>>T.
T>P also seems likely, because Protoss would probably become entirely reliant on good psi storms in the long run.
ZvP would probably be pretty balanced, maybe with a small advantage for one side or the other. It would probably depend on how well Protoss manages to deal with lurkers witout relying on goons.

Gameplay
When I think about this map, what I remember the most are some really nice TvZs. With the rather tight passages and bridges along the outskirts and limited flanking space this was definitely one of the better maps for terran, but the wide ramps to the thirds also have proven to provide great opportunites for agression against them for Zerg. But all the matchups seemed to play out fine here, as well.
As expected, contains on the bridges where strong, and a pretty dominant tactical feature seen on this map. But we could also witness some very nice and successful contain breaks in all matchups, so it really seems to work out as an interesting feature, without causing major imbalance.
What I missed a bit was, players splitting their unit into two control groups and sending them separately across one of the double bridges each, which definitely alow you to move units very fast and efficiently even through those tight chokes.
The only thing that really bothers me a bit, is the bad PvZ statistics, coupled with the fact that Protoss players consistently went for one base builds or gate expands, which is why I want to ask all Protoss players who played on Melting POt: Was this a voluntary tactical decision, because, with the added option of easily defending your natural at the bridges, you considered early gate builds beneficial for early agression, or did you just feel uncomfortable going for a standard forge expand?

Balance
Aside from doubts concerning ZvP, as explained above, Melting Pot seems to have managed to provide some unusual game play, while retaining good balance. It even seems to be the most popular of the four player maps by now.

Gameplay
According to the latest polls, this map, that initially was praised as the next Fighting Spirit, seems to have fallen from grace a bit. The reasons remain mostly obscure to me though. There were a lot of persisiting issues with resource mining, but that has all been fixed up by now.
Players seemed to feel immediately comfortable on Gemlong, though, which is not too surprising, the layout is straight forward enough. The ridges proved to be important to gain the upper hand in engagements, especially in TvP, which in my opinion makes the map especially nice for that matchup, as well as TvT.
Radley, on ICCup, voiced some criticism, however that:
According to him, the thirds were to good for Zerg and the middle to open, making the map hard for terran to play on, which, in direct comparison to Melting Pot, which has very similar thirds, but is much less open, seems fair enough. Maybe shrinking the ramps to the tirds to normal size, to limit the agression potential of Zerg against them, compared to terran would help this issue.
Radley also criticized the distances on the map, which I do not yet fully understand, becasue objectively Gemlong is as big as any other map, pathing is very direct, and rushing distances are even a bit shorter than, for example, on Melting Pot. So I would like to hear, how radley came to that impression.

Balance
Balance seems really good here, initially Protoss faired very well against Zerg, but that was mostly because of bad build order choices I think.