Perspectives From Tournament Directors

[Flash_19]

I recently asked some tournament directors within the community about their map preferences. Their answers were very enlightening to me as a mapmaker, and formed the foundation for a map article I wrote for the Heroscape Codex.

You can read that article here.

I would also advise you to check out this interview by @BiggaBullfrog with @OrcElfArmyOne , the selector of maps for GenCon, as I think the two articles complement each other nicely.


Because of the nature of the article, I didn't have as much space to include all of their wonderful insights, so I decided to do so in this thread. I would encourage anyone, especially mapmakers, to take a look at their responses to questions about how they pick maps for their events. If you are an event director and would like to add your perspective, please feel free to send me a PM with your responses to the questions! I think it's valuable for mapmakers to know what tournament directors are looking for as they design maps that they hope will see the tournament table!


The Questions:
- What is your process like for choosing maps for your tournament pool?
- What are some characteristics you look for in the maps you select? What are some characteristics you try to avoid?
- What advice would you give to map designers who aim to create tournament worthy maps?
- What is one of your favorite tournament maps to play on and why?


The Responses:

Chris Perkins

Spoiler Alert!

Here’s my thoughts.

1) Process for choosing maps:
I start with a few maps that I know I want to get in, usually a combination of a favorite map or two along with a few I have seen recently at Gencon or OHS that I liked and want to get more use on. Maps that have been / will be used at Gencon is the biggest factor here, both because I have more experience on those maps in general and because I can save some time by re-using the work the Gencon group does to weed out maps that can become problematic in a tournament setting.
I then see what sets I still have left available from my personal collection and use that to select the remaining maps I need from BoV & ARV. I strive to provide all of the maps I need for a given tournament (usually I shoot for 8, maybe with a few single RotV maps left over in case more people RSVP at the last minute). My goal with this second group of map selection is to get as even a balance as possible between lava/ice/swamp maps so that no one terrain is dominating the pool too much (at least one map of each type and not more than 2 or 3 of any of them).

2) Good map characteristics:
The biggest map characteristic I care about is balance, mainly in the form of ‘do all/most reasonable B- and higher armies have a reasonable shot on this map?’.
Another big point is that the map isn’t too large. In a tournament setting, you generally only have 50 minutes for a round, and I don’t want to penalize players who play cautiously (which is not the same thing as slow) by putting them on too large of a map. Also, the larger the map the bigger advantage ranged units like the 10th/4th/Q9 tend to have.
Looking awesome. Eye candy can be useful, especially when trying to get other people walking by in the game shop to stop by and ask questions (maybe they’ll play themselves next time). This is rather low on my priority list, but everything else being equal I’ll take the map that looks better thematically.

3) Bad map characteristics:
If the map is not relatively square, I try to avoid it. This is due to the logistical issues of transporting the map though rather than playability/balance. I transport my maps on flattened shipping boxes like these:
https://www.homedepot.com/p/The-Home...MBOX/303635806
I have 10 of them (like ~$8 for all the boxes) that I keep in my closet and use to transport maps on. I can’t really use a map that extends more than an inch or so over the edge of it just because it would fall apart on the way to the tournament location.
There are a few other big red flags for maps, like having glyphs on high ground / having 2 hills very near each other / having TJ or shadow on height, but I only tend to pull maps from BoV & ARV so I don’t see these problems often in the maps I pull from.

4) Advice to map designers:
Try to avoid using two sets of Ticalla jungle on your map if your goal is to get tournament play. I have 3 sets of Ticalla myself, and I’d much prefer to have 3 different maps each with Ticalla on it than just one of the 8 maps having a lot of Ticalla and I try to pick maps with only 1x Ticalla as a requirement in order to accomplish that.
There’s a tough balance between ‘this map will get used at tournaments a lot’ and ‘this is the best map I can make’. Maps that use 3 of TJ, BftU, FotA, & VW can be awesome, but they aren’t likely to make it into my pool because of tile restrictions. Neither goal (tournament use or just awesome 1 v 1 map) is necessarily better, but keep whatever your goal for a particular map is in mind when designing it and figuring out the set requirements.

5) One favorite map to play:
I absolutely love ‘The Borogoves’ by Typhon2222. Most maps give defense +1 boosts in the form of jungle or shadow in the low ground of the map, but ‘The Borogoves’ gives both, which can actually give the person defending at lower ground the advantage compared to if both figures were on even height un-boosted. I like the way that this map changes some incentive structures as a result of that probability change. It also makes it easier to keep both cheerleader units and mele squad units alive longer to progress across the map, which as far as I’m concerned is a good thing for local tournament maps because it gives more people a chance to win games (i.e. everyone has Raelin because she came in the first Master Set and is cheap to buy now and tends to have 1 or 2 sets of Knights, Heavies, and other bonding mele units from the early releases. Not everyone has 10th Reg x4, and it’s nice to have a map that slightly lowers the dominance of the 10th/4th x a lot type armies).

For what it’s worth, the next tournament I’m planning is for mid-November rather than National Heroscape Day because I’m going to be too busy in the month of October to pull off an event; the maps I’m discussion below are the ones I am using for the November tournament.

1) The Borogoves – discussed earlier, so I won’t add much here. But this was the first map I chose, which limited by ability to run more BftU maps (I have 3x BftU, which only leaves me with one after Borogoves, but it’s worth it).
2) Highways and Dieways – a great map that both rewards good slow play as well as does not use any of my limited TJ/BftU (since those tend to be the sets I run out of first given their propensity for use in top tournament maps)
3) Fulcrum – I love this map for it’s efficiency – high tactical map essentially using just TJ x1. This is a perfect example of how TJ x1 by itself can make a map great and avoid using up too many tiles.
4) Dance of the Dryads – The main thing I look for in lava maps is a good use of lava as the high ground. I also like the juxtaposition of shadow next to high ground lava to slightly minimize the strength of the high ground spots.
5) April – I’ve never played on this map before, and it’s a bit larger map than I tend to use, but I’m always in search of a good Ice map. I don’t love any Ice map I’ve ever really played on, to be honest. They tend to use SotM as the base, which can work but glaciers in a swamp looks wrong to me aesthetically and one of my goals at a tournament is for players who don’t have a ton of experience to look at my maps and say ‘wow, that looks cool’ even if they don’t quite understand why/how map balance works. I think April looks thematically awesome and the kind of Ice map that could attract people at the game store who’ve never heard of Heroscape, and I’m excited to try it out.
6) Invasion – I had a lot of SotM left over after the first 5 maps in the pool, and so I went with an old reliable map to get some swamp in the pool.
7) Fire Isles – I try to have at least 2 lava maps in my pools and so I was looking for another lava map that didn’t use BftU (due to personal tile restrictions) for this map. I haven’t played on Fire Isles before myself, but it looks like a good fit and I’m excited to try it out.
8 ) Remains of Clionesia – I hadn’t really used much FotA in this pool yet, and wanted to remedy that with the last map. I like this map for it’s use of line of sight blockers, as well as the fact that you tend to have to leave highground to walk around the ruins to reach the same high ground on the far side; this can make it more important for early movements to be correct and reward them as such. I also try to get FotA maps without other terrain expansions on them to avoid running maps that are just RotV x1 by the end of the map pool (I like some RotV x1 maps quite a bit, but many players in my area want to play on the terrain sets that they don’t own themselves and I try to accommodate that at events I host).

Dad_Scaper

Spoiler Alert!

It's interesting to see that my mind immediately went to different places from where these other guys' minds went, because we all have different restrictions in our microclimates.

- What is your process like for choosing maps for your tournament pool?
1. I have to believe it is really and truly a *good* map. Superior balance for competitive play. That has to be first, for reasons I describe in my "How To Host Your First Tournament" thread, linked in my signature block, below.

[Access that link here]

2. Some of the Masters. I will always have a couple of traditional-style maps from guys like dignan and gamebear. This is to balance out the more experimental ones I also want to try out: I can't go all-in for new stuff, and risk the possibility of more than one or two that leave a bad taste in people's mouths.

3. I make an effort to honor the guys making maps *now*. In my NHSD event coming up Saturday, I have maps from @Sir Heroscape , @BiggaBullfrog , and maybe @this guy . They do great work, and I want to encourage them, and their maps are worthy (subject to the testing we are now doing ).

4. I want some maps that are real eye candy on the table. Part of what we do at tournaments is sell the hobby to passersby, and to remind our own contestants that what we do is just not like other board games. So I value maps that look special on the table, like dignan's Trepidation:

It takes up a whole table. It uses a lot of terrain. But it is *gorgeous*, and it's balanced, and so I have selected it many times. It is a centerpiece.

- What are some characteristics you look for in the maps you select? What are some characteristics you try to avoid?

I try to avoid maps that look like the pathing is open. That's tricky, because my events also do not use glyphs, so maps that need the glyphs to open all the way up are also not good for me.

I also try to avoid maps with high ground away from road. For me, when I'm flipping through lots of choices quickly, that's a signal that there might be a problem with station-to-station pitched battles, which I don't care for. So I tend not to pick those, maybe unfairly, because I don't like to play that way.

I try to balance maps for terrain usage across the whole event. I've noticed that most people, myself included, have only one BftU. So a map that needs 2 of them is no good, but otherwise map restrictions are not an issue. Though I suppose more than 2 RttFFs might be a disqualifier, too.

- What advice would you give to map designers who aim to create tournament worthy maps?
The hardest maps for me to find are 4 player free-for-all style maps. That's what I want, for my multiplayer FFA events. I am aware that I might be marching in a Parade of One, though, looking for that particular thing.

- What is one of your favorite tournament maps to play on and why?
This one:

Because I made it. I haven't selected it in a tournament in years, but an excellent player recently told me he thought it was good, so I am blowing the dust off and building it for this weekend's event.

itsbuzzi

Spoiler Alert!

In order of questions, although the first and second question seem to interconnect, I try to make enough maps for how many people I expect to attend my events and have created a very rough work in progress sheet that includes all of my pieces and all maps that have been deemed tourney worthy in the past. This includes all maps from WoS (3 I believe), BOV, ARV of course and Gencon (there are some maps used at Gencon that fall in no other category but because it is use at the highest level of event I consider it tourney worthy).

My terrain pool is limited compared to some other players but I can make a few combinations of maps maxing out to 6. That doesn't seem like too many players attending but it's what the numbers are showing over here in New England for now until participation increases. I pick maps *pretty* much from what I can build but from being over so many maps I try to get myself accustomed to every one of them so I use a map then rotate it back in the pool and try to pick other maps. I have noticed some maps just don't hold up to standards anymore, mainly the older maps one in particular is Arctic Divide by BOV. Much more thought is put into maps from ARV than before as much more combinations of armies are used that need to be taken into consideration. Arctic Divide has a plateau in the middle that whomever reaches it first if they have range units they pretty much win. I try not to use maps that have these big trump cards and there are none from ARV as I believe that is looked into and most likely playtested more vigorously than previous iterations of map making groups.

Also seeing the pieces used in new maps are very creative and simply pieces I just want to use. Two maps I used most recently, because castle walls as LOS blockers just seem underused, are Valledonn Fortress and The Crypt made by yours truly lol. I wanted to use those maps because it was interesting to actually use the fortress door wall piece as no other map has done so and like I said the castle wall LOS blockers are under used but The Crypt uses a great deal of them and they work out very well.

So to summarize that question I mainly look for maps that can utilize my pieces while still having enough maps for the players expected to attend. I also look for maps that do not seem fit for today's meta. These are most likely few and far between but I keep a look out because an unhealthy choice in map can lead to a game being called before it starts. Depending on the army choices that could happen on many maps but not to the degree of others.

The third question about advice for designers for tourney worthy maps. I like to look for different maps, as I have seen all of them, all the tourney worthy maps from my list, I'm sure there are more made by others but for a list for myself it's the most complete I will get, but yes I like to look for different maps as once you've seen a lot, which I'm sure many have, they can pretty much understand where to go without playing on said map yet even if it's brand new. So I try to pull some maps from years before as people may have forgotten and new maps that are vastly different than what players are used to. The standard pathing can be used but I can tell when a map like Highways and Dieways came out nothing like that existed as of yet. New innovations can be risky as it can be easy to overlook something when you are so far outside the box. Like a map can be so new but have a single flaw, like Arctic Divide mentioned earlier, and be unusable.

So to sum that question up I like to look for new and interesting things such as new pieces not typically used or new ways in which to path, just something to spice things up a bit.

To answer the last question with full confidence would be unethical for me as I have not played on every map on my list but I can point out one in particular that catches my eye, although I have not played on it it looks very interesting and almost made my map pool last event just because. The map is Common Ground. A very basic map with enough spice to season a chicken. It can play very similar to Dry Season with the opening in the middle but the starting zone next to the glyph can really make a match. I first like the map because of these reasons and another, the terrain restrictions are pretty much nonexistent. To be able to make a map that uses so little pieces, and special pieces that I have a very limited amount of, is uncanny. But back to the start zones. Both teams can choose to not use the space near initiative or it can be used to the fullest. It drags the play away from the middle where it typically takes place in maps like Dry Season and takes it to the side where another front can be seen. Most maps have at least 2 fronts and one side can be avoided based off of army composition but in this way having a start zone deep within a front placing one figure can change the whole game. Playing knights do I place Sir Gilbert in that spot to allow for faster play than usual with knights or do I play regularly and go for the move +2 glyph. Either could work, all depending of course.

NecroBlade

Spoiler Alert!

- What is your process like for choosing maps for your tournament pool?
If it's around GenCon season, then we're usually looking at those maps for practice. That pool usually tends to be mostly good maps, and we might end up using some for a while. There is usually a classic staple or two, like Dry Season by @Killometer. Lately I like to look at ARV for new ideas. I'll also sometimes peruse the downloads section if there's a particular terrain requirement I'm looking for (like Tundra).

- What are some characteristics you look for in the maps you select? What are some characteristics you try to avoid?
"Balance" is a broad term. But it can include a lot of things. Glyphs placed as evenly as possible between start zones. No obvious camping grounds for ranged figure. LoS blockers, jungle, shadow scattered to provide plenty of cover. If road is available to assist movement, it should access most of the map and especially come into contact with height that ranged pieces might like to sit on. Relative lack of choke points that can be occupied by a single figure.

- What advice would you give to map designers who aim to create tournament worthy maps?
Most of the above, IMO, creates maps that don't provide too much advantage to any particular type of figure. But don't be afraid to get creative! Split start zones create an interesting twist in a pool with other maps. Reflective symmetry rather than rotational can be difficult to achieve, but is certainly unique. Throw in a few treasure glyphs for the heroes!

- What is one of your favorite tournament maps to play on and why?
Right now, I've been enjoying Ashfall by @Flash_19 since it was put in this year's GenCon pool. Shoutout there for cleverly placing the level 2 7-hexers centered atop the level 1 holes. I built the map several times before I realized this, but it's a cool visual aid to building a map! I was also looking for a lava map to test personal customs, and so far it hasn't disappointed. It can be tricky to play (in a good way). Just watch out for Moltenclaw.

Scytale

Spoiler Alert!

There is a "normal" when it comes to tournament maps. Stuff that deviates outside of that tends to favor certain units. Large maps favor range, as does excessive height changes. Unusually small, flat maps favor melee. Poorly-designed hills can screw over double-spaced figures. Overuse of heavy snow and slippery ice can make a battlefield miserable (and again, better for range). Towers are absurdly good for ranged fliers.

Xotli

Spoiler Alert!

- What is your process like for choosing maps for your tournament pool?

It usually goes something like this:

1. Try to convince someone else to do it this year.
2. Fail.
3. Go looking for any new maps that have appeared since last year. My starting pool is always the entire set of both BoV-approved and ARV-approved tourney-style maps, except for the ones that have uncapped towers, because I'm still not okay with that. My list last year was 41 maps; I'm just about to go update it for this year.
4. Review my notes on last year's maps and see if I still feel the same way about them. I try to at least look at the pictures for each map to remind myself what they look like.
5. Review my spreadsheet where I keep track of which maps we've used in years past. Maps that we've used many years in a row we may be getting tired of; contrariwise, a map we haven't used in several years might be ripe for re-examination.
6. Rank 10 – 15 maps from "best" to "least best." Always remembering, as per the points above, that "best" really means "best for our group, for this year" ... it's not an absolute or objective assessment by any means.
7. Figure out how many maps we need. Basically, my formula is roughly: (number of projected attendees) / 2, rounded up, and add one just in case of last minute respondents.
8. Go through a very complex process of figuring out which maps to choose out of the ranked ones.

So, that last one needs to be explained. Basically, it doesn't matter how cool a map is if we can't scrounge up enough terrain to build it. This is where my spreadsheet does its real work. Just from doing this so many years, I prety much know who's going to volunteer to bring terrain, and I also keep track of what sets they each have. So I know whether they can build any given map or not. Now, most of our builders (myself included) have plenty of terrain, so building any one map is easy (maybe a certain person doesn't have any RttFFs, or any BftUs, or so forth, but usually one map is no problem). But inevitably I need at least a few people to be able to build multiple maps. So not only does my spreadsheet know how much of each set each potential builder has, it knows how much of each set each BoV or ARV map requires. The spreadsheet doesn't actually help me make assignments, but it does alert me if I've assigned more terrain to a person than they actually have. So then I have to juggle around assignments until it all fits. If I can't make it fit, then I might have to throw out a map that was higher-ranked for a lower-ranked one, just because it doesn't work logistically.

So, overall, it's kind of a pain-in-the-***, trial-and-error sort of process. Also, it involves a fair amount of data entry. But it gets easier every year, for the most part.

- What are some characteristics you look for in the maps you select? What are some characteristics you try to avoid?

Honestly, I'm the worst person to be picking maps (which is one of the reasons I'm constantly trying to talk someone else into doing it). I'm not looking for which maps are the fairest, or the most balanced, or any of that stuff. I'm just looking for something exciting. I gotta be honest with you: I find tourney aps to be terribly boring, for the most part. They're not very big, they're hardly ever any taller than 4 levels, they're 99% symmetrical, which means that you only really have half a map's worth of variety, etc. But I understand that that's what you need for fairness in the tourney.

Still, I'm looking for things that are different, or mixing it up. I like seeing wacky combos, like fire and ice on the same map. Personally, I'm judging your map quite a bit by its picture, so I'm looking for creative use of different types of terrain, creative use of height and blockers, and especially use of terrain that enables terrain-specific units (which you almost never see in tourneys, unfortunately): lava, shadow, water, bushes, etc. Give my obsidians somewhere to throw from, my darkclaws somewhere to pounce from, my Microcorp agents somewhere to snipe from, my eilan sidhe somewhere to teleport from. Most people would never bring any of those units to a tourney, but in case someone does, why not reward them? There could at least be one map they won't get absolutely crushed on.

For me personally, the ultimate negative is "boring." Maps that are too flat, too "samey" in terms of terrain, too open (no line-of-sight blockers to hide behind), too "everyone line up on either side in a nice straight line and we'll try to slaughter each other like civilized people," too "well, we're all just get on this one road and charge at each other, because there's nothing else interesting to do" ... those are the maps that make me go "meh" and move on to the next one. And there are plenty of others to choose from.

What advice would you give to map designers who aim to create tournament worthy maps?

Okay, remembering what I said above (that I'm totally the wrong person to be offering an opinion on this), here's some thoughts in no particular order:

• Please, for the love of all that is holy, if you're going to put ice and snow on your map, make sure the instructions say whether it's heavy snow and/or slippery ice. I know I just said these were in no particular order, but this really is my number one request. With a bullet. Every year we have a big fight about whether to do heavy snow and/or slippery ice on any number of maps and often we pretty much end up doing the equivalent of flipping a coin. Please: save us from ourselves.
• You should make sure your maps are playable without glyphs, because sometimes we don't use them. But you should also make sure your maps are playable with glyphs, because sometimes we do use them. If the glyphs are the only things making anyone want to go way out there to the sides of the map, then the map becomes super-boring without the glyphs. If the glyphs are just an afterthought with no cogent plan, then they could end up making the game easy for one player and nearly impossible for another.
• Yes, make sure the maps are fair. Symmetrical is the easiest way to do that, but there are a few maps out there that accomplish it even without that. As long as one starting zone isn't clearly better than another, then it's okay for the left side and right side to be different (Ticalla Sunrise employs this to good effect). Keep it interesting.
• Give me options. My least favorite maps to play on are the ones that almost force you to bunch up into a few, narrow corridors. I'm somewhat notorious in my group for a rabid dislike of Ember Canyon Road—it seems like there's an option to go up on the hill, but it's so difficult and punishing that the net effect is that nearly no one will. So you both end up just standing on the road in the canyon, shooting each other in the face. Joy. Blackroot is another map that's very claustrophobic to me: the heights are hardly ever worth the effort, as they're so far removed from the action (perhaps glyphs would help ... ), so we always end up sticking to the road, trying to shoot around the trees, desperately trying to figure out how to place those large and huge double-spaced figures. Remember: choices are not inherently interesting. They're only interesting if one of the choices doesn't completely suck.
• Strive for balance. Too little room to maneuver is bad, yes, but too open is not better. Too much height is bad (ranged flyers will dominate), but too flat is just hella boring. Too little diversity of terrain is also boring, but then trying to jam every single kind into one map is not going to win you any prizes either. Balance is key.
• Always give me a picture on the downloads page. Make it one that makes me want to use your map. A crappy, low-res pic, or no pic at all, makes it likely that I'll just move on to the next one. I've got a limited amount of time to evaluate these, so I can't really take extra time to hunt down what the map is going to look like.
• Ditto set requirements. I've gotta do all that logistical stuff that I mentioned up above, and it's bad enough I have to re-enter the data into my spreadsheet; don't make me go hunting for it.

What is one of your favorite tournament maps to play on and why?

Well, as I say, it can change from year to year. As far as I'm concerned, being the person who gets stuck with picking the maps means I get to only pick maps I like, so let's look at which maps we've chosen (not necessarily used) in our SoCal tourneys the most often, for the past six years (2013 – 2018), which are the ones where I've done the picking:

• Four times: Ice Blossom and Sirocco.
• Three times: Ticalla Sunrise, Quasatch Playground, If you can't take the heat ..., Burial Marsh, Bad Moon Rising, Stygian Rift, Draugur, and Dance of the Dryads.

Of course, the newer maps have a disadvantage in such a ranking, so it's not completely fair. But it does give an idea of which ones consistently rise to the top again and again.

But, just going off my gut feelings, I would say the following are my top picks, at least before looking at the latest newcomers:

• I still love Dance of the Dryads a lot. It's a simple map, but it's got water, lava, shadow, road, trees, sufficient height, and decent glyph placement. And I feel like I have good options on angles of attack.
• Sirocco is pretty cool. Water, shadow, jungle, dungeon, and rocks. The low center is attractive, because of the shadow, but it's also dangerous, because it provides the most opportunity for crossfire. Also decent glyph placement.
• Draugur is probably my favorite ice map right now (despite not specifying heavy snow/slippery ice), just because I got way sick of Ice Blossom. It's a little claustrophobic, but the shadow in amongst the snow is a nice touch, the glaciers give the yetis something to do, but there's also rocks mixed in so they can't really dominate, and I think the glyph placement is just about optimal.
• Ticalla Sunrise is an oldie but a goodie. Only bilaterally symmetrical, lots of swamp water and jungle, good glyph placement, and the hive as a line-of-sight blocker ... probably still my favorite swamp map.
• Honorable mentions: Bad Moon Rising, Stygian Rift, Quasatch Playground, Burial Marsh.

What do they all have in common? They're not only fun to play on, but they look cool as well. Nothing wrong with the map being attractive as well as balanced.

I know that's more than one, but I can't help it: I'm a data guy. I like to over-analyze things.

Quick addendum ... one of the shortcuts I use when gathering all the data is to use a SQL query on the database to get all the links to the maps. That means that maps that aren't hosted on the site (i.e. in the downloads section) don't get into my list.

Other director's perspectives will be added as I receive permission to post their responses.