January Map Pools for Masters and Tiberium League

Every month, the god of random selects new maps for the Masters and Tiberium league map pools. Let's have a look at what we're going to play in January!

I actually like the new Masters Map pool a lot. A big reason for that is a map that many people dislike: Middle Oasis. It's not my favorite map in a vacuum, but I love how different it is from basically all the other maps because of how the Tiberium is placed.

One nice side effect of this map is that blind double harvester tech decks will have a much harder time. This will both help non-Tech players in Masters a bit, as well as provide Tech players a learning experience on how to adapt their build order / play style or even deck composition.

The other maps are very solid:

• Battlefield as a 2-pad map that is well known from the Crate Challenge events. It's pretty good for dual harv.
• Stone Wall is interesting as on the one hand, it's relatively good for dual harv, but on the other hand, the pads are distant from each other, which favors fast decks like Nod air.
• The Needle and Slot Canyon are all-around solid "standard" 3-pad maps that also are played often in tournaments.

In Tiberium, we have two maps that are identical to Masters: Middle Oasis and Stonewall. A bit suboptimal, but that's what happens when it's random. On the other hand, in the Tiberium map pool, where you have a wide range of map, I also like the salt that Middle Oasis adds to the mix quite a lot. Yes, Nod air (Venom/Shade) might be even more toxic here compared to other maps, as harvesters need to move upfront and light infantry might need to move through Tiberium. But Shade is overpowered anyways, and hopefully gets nerfed soon. So should not be the yardstick by which we judge the map pool.

The other maps:

• Two Fuses, a 2-pad map that's good for 2-range like Giga/MLRS but also where it's relatively easy to stall (i.e. good for 2 harv)
• Great Divide, possibly the 2-pad map that gets played in tournaments the most and gets complained about the least
• The Bullseye, an excellent Strongarm map. We'll of course see mostly Liang in the event, but that's why I like this goodie for the few Strongarm players
• Twin Pillars, Tiberium Stripes and Cracked Ice are more 3-pad maps that are pretty different from each other

Video of the day: Wheels & Lasers

Streamers 13lade and Nukin had a fun competition: Who can win more games playing just Wheels and Laser Troopers in a fixed set of events? Nukin won 107-102, and here's a video of Nukin doing a run with it.