Team Liquid Map Contest #17: Results

5th place

“Cryolysis” by HyperONE

Key points:

• Every base taken, except the triangle 4th, requires defending only one additional choke point.
• The triangle 3rd base has no forward ramp or choke to defend; rather, it has a ramp on the far side of the natural.
• Two narrow horizontal passages lie near the center. You can only feasibly defend one of them at a time. Position your army wisely.
• Although there are no Overlord pillars at the natural expansion, an Overlord can float out of reach of ground units in the dead space near the vespene geysers.

4th place

“Royal Blood” by MiloOnFire

Despite a short rush distance, this map provides a lot of safety early on by restricting movement of armies and allowing players to expand away from the main attack path. Bases are spread horizontally, and become harder to defend the longer the game goes.

Features:

• Short rush distance.
• Two building wall-off at the natural expansion.
• Restricted movement due to destructible rocks.
• A forward aggressive option for an expansion.
• Two gold bases with exposed minerals.

3rd place

“Lazarus Wastes” by HyperONE

Key features:

• The central terrain is inspired by Dreamcatcher. Tanks cannot siege behind a cliff such that they can attack either 3rd base, except near the entrances of that base.
• The first 4 bases for each player are standard, but the remaining 3 bases each have 2 extra mineral patches (10 total patches per base).
• To balance the ability to take these bases (especially considering the rate at which different races expand), they are slightly distant, and blocked by debris which must be cleared prior to taking them. Your army becomes a resource which must be used to clear expansions, in addition to the usual attacking and defending.
• If players do not wish to interact with the blocked expansions, they can simply play off the first 4 bases.

A brief analysis of non-standard resource bases:

• Compared to a standard 8-patch base, a 10-patch super-saturated base has no objective downsides.
• Compared to a 6-patch rich mineral base, a 10-patch super-saturated base provides more total resources and boasts ~14% higher income at full saturation. However, the rich base provides ~40% more income per worker and can be saturated more quickly.

2nd place

“Altitude” by CharactR

A Macro map with a bit of a twist! Rich bases in the center are blocked by destructible Xel’Naga towers leaving 3 options:

• Destroy the tower to gain access to the rich minerals or to keep it from your opponent.
• Use the watchtower.
• Long distance mine the rich base at the risk of toppling towers.

Features:

• 16 bases total.
• 14 standard bases.
• 2 rich bases (8 patches 1 geyser) that are blocked by Xel’Naga towers.
• Killing the rock towers destroys the Xel’Naga towers, but allows the player to be able to place expansions at the gold bases.
• If you want to keep the Xel’Naga tower and long distance mine from an expansion placed slightly further away there you are able to. However, this allows your opponent can also block mining partially by toppling the 500hp towers.

1st place

“Starchild” by Marras

Starchild is a standard map with 14 bases, two of which have double rich gasses. There’s also no Overlord pillars at the naturals. Like a typical standard map there are also two third base options, line of sight blockers and some rocks.