Eclipse's Maps (Freya's Temple 1/4/2010)

[Eclipse]

Uploaded Freya's Temple to the gallery and updated the first post. I'll get around to doing my big preview sometime tomorrow when I have time. Enjoy!

[Eclipse]

Freya's Temple (Download)



Deep in the forests of Lindesfarme lies a temple dedicated to the great kyrie Freya. Built upon the pond in which her body was laid to rest, it draws great power into the waters, bringing life to the surrounding land and all who drink of it. It is for the life giving spring that armies often stop to replenish their fallen, often brining unfortunate conflict to these sacred lands.

Setup: Each player is given a 24 hex grass tile to use as their starting zone in this scenario. This tile may be placed anywhere along the marked edge. If desired, additional hexes may be added to expand this start zone further, but must be added to the original 24 hexer.

I really don't know where this map came from to be honest. The filename is actually minilaga.hsc so apparently at some point I was trying to distill a few of the ideas from the Wellspring of Laga megamap into something a little more reasonable. I think moreso I really just started grafting a temple design onto the center bridge area of the checkpoint and let it go wherever it took me. I'm really happy with the final product and have had about a dozen games so far on it that have all turned out pretty great.

There were a couple of challenges I wanted to tackle with this map. For one, I've wanted to be better about incorporating proper glyph placement on my maps. There's three random Glyphs here, each of which create a nice conflict zone. Two are pretty well guarded behind a tree with the third in the center of the temple, but all 3 sit in a crevice to make them fairly easy to pick off.



Much like the checkpoint map, the focus here is on various avenues of attack. Mainly, you have the option of sending a flyer over the wall to open the main door, or send units up the side hills to enter the temple from the bridge. What's worked out well in my experience is that the hills are generally a better area to stage an attack and hold position, since there's a general downslope inside the temple. The variable pathways the doors create have given some cool moments. A lot of times the battle will start with armies amassing outside the door while scouting parties secure the hills. These two will meet in the middle and get the doors open, unleashing big melee rushes. We've had some good fun on it.



Also, for what its worth, the bridges are raised just enough to let small figures (minus the Omnicrons who are 4, not 3 regardless of what the card says) run under. It's a fun little option to send the dwarves on a run to see what damage they can do.

The variable start zone has worked well in my experience. One thing it does well is sort of allow players to commit to a strategy and protect their units from the other side. I expect it to be something I continue to use in future maps. Note that the extra 24 hexers still fit within the 3 MS restriction, so it shouldn't affect your ability to make this map. I actually did a pretty massive shuffle of parts to make this 3/2/2, so hopefully more people can enjoy it.

So that's it for now. As soon as I get my hands on some dungeon terrain I'll be adding another little Colosseum using that and I really need to toy with the whole campaign idea more. Esenwein Manor is still hacking away at me. I just need to finish the stupid thing. I should also get around to revamping my Moridan Village map. That could be greatly improved with more of a Left 4 Dead style layout. We'll see where I go with it I guess. Enjoy.

[1Mmirg]

This is a truly beautiful map, Eclipse. An elegant, playable, large castle map. Thanks for sharing it.

Have you run it in a 2v2 setting? Seems like it would nicely accommodate 4 players well and I can easily see each player adding their own starting hexes. It looks like a wonderful team map. This one will definitely be on my table soon.

[Eclipse]

Originally Posted by 1Mmirg

This is a truly beautiful map, Eclipse. An elegant, playable, large castle map. Thanks for sharing it.

Have you run it in a 2v2 setting? Seems like it would nicely accommodate 4 players well and I can easily see each player adding their own starting hexes. It looks like a wonderful team map. This one will definitely be on my table soon.

Thanks.

I haven't tried it in 2v2, but I'm sure it would work just fine. The one thing I'd worry about is that too much of the action would take place on the hills rather than being driven towards the center. It'd be interesting to see how players coordinate such a thing to keep it from being adjacent battles on identical hills.

[1Mmirg]

Right. I was thinking of ensuring the central glyph was of particular importance, so that neither side can ignore it. This might be one of those rare times I pull out the Def+2 glyph. With it in the middle and the ends as Att+1 and Wound, I don't think either team could afford to ignore any part of the map. Jalgard does slow a game down a bit, but in this case, I think the game will be active and interesting, no matter what.

I look forward to giving this one a run. Thanks again for publishing it.

[Darkmage7a]

I'm gonna need a bigger table.

[tcglkn]

Love the maps. They seem so realistic. I especially like your unique rules.