FFA Masters League

6th: Greenville Woods by Mr.Henci - 80.33

A beautiful blend of forest and water with a nicely varied landscape. It's kind of hard to find any structure at first glance, but it is well balanced in all regards with the exception of the questionable portals. The value they add is scarce and their impact will make for weird games where players have an extreme accessibility to certain players bases. Creeps are a-plenty albeit a bit predictable, the spread and placement of them partly make up for their low variety. A daring effort that is keen to the eyes and with a makeover or two to balance its gameplay it might be here to stay.

The layout of this map is a little maze-like but it doesn't feel difficult to understand when you play the map. The addition of the warpgates definitely add a touch of spice to the map. I do fear that the gates will be abused and that it negatively affects the balance of the map though. Terrain is beautiful and feels very natural and real. Item drops are not great - the level 5 charged on the left expo is a bit much in particular. Overall - map is a blast to play and feels like its only a balance patch away from being truly great.

5th: Purity by blast870 - 80.67

Nice structure, it's symmetrical but in a varied way. I really like the creeps and how they are spread out, also a nice mix of trolls/ogres/dragons/golems that deviates from the standard camps. It seems well balanced considering gold mines and trees.

I have a lot of fun playing on this map! The center of the map drums up a lot of combat due to literally every shop being there. The natural expansions are also in very vulnerable positions which causes you to fight over them constantly. The mines themselves have too few gold in my opinion as they drain very quickly. These factors combined really causes fast paced games and intense action. The terrain work on the map is extremely well done and I honestly love the whole theme - even if its not overly unique. In the end, this is a great map which could see some great league action for seasons to come!

4th: Dragon Island by Tyrant66 - 82.00

Nice map. We were in need of a 8-way summer map. I like the islands with the waygates, especially because normally waygates are bad for undead since destroyers cant go in, but in this case they are not teleporting very far so you can fly your destros the distance. Also he places the unbuildable terrain at the island so they can't be camped heavily. For a map called dragon island I did expect a dragon roost though. Also there is a TON of gold in the mines, for a map with 16 mines that will be played mostly 4-way in FML, that is a lot. Overall I think this will be a fun map, and it's good looking. I think the imbalance of only having 4 mainland natural expos is okay because at least every spawn has equal access to them - so it will be a battle early on or players can opt for the island which is nearly equally easy to access.

Sometimes it pays to spend the little bit of extra time on a map! Tyrant66 worked right up to the deadline on this beauty and I think it paid off. The map has a lot of resemblances to Twilight Ruins but this map is larger and has a lot more caveats. The warpgates to the islands are a nice little touch and keep them feeling balanced. The item drops and creeps feel rather generic and maybe even a bit annoying to creep (dragons are a pain!). Getting a natural expansion on the map is weird. Every other player has a different type of expansion. One gets the island and the next gets one thats part of the main land. Overall though, the map has great terraining and a nice balanced design which leads to a very promising map!

3rd: Freezing Field by Tyrant66 - 82.33

Freezing Field is a 4 player map in the icecrown landscape. The terrain and doodad placement is very natural and the map looks very living. I like the non symmetrical terrain – to me the best ive seen so far in the map contest. Every player has 2 additional expansions in their own corner (14k and 16k). I would like to see this map in the next season. Good job tyrant.

Solid map overall. Great terrain work and excellent use of the tileset. Map feels cold and mysterious. The layout of the map is pretty unique overall, I like that there are a lot of different ways to attack an enemy. What I didn't like was how difficult it was to actually maneuver around the map. Getting my 100 food necrowagon over the bridges was not a whole lot of fun. Item drops felt a bit wonky as well, 4 fairly easy red camp drops level 6 charged items. Mog got 2 infernals in the game I played and killed someone with it right away.Map could use some balancing but is very unique!