eXodus eSports presents December Deadlock - 1v1 with £50/$78 prize

And we're finished. Thank you to everyone who participated or came to watch. I think we can all agree as well that Team Genesis made some fantastic maps. VODs will be uploaded over the course of the week.

Watched my first game-related stream just now. Sad I missed the first round though, would have been interesting to see how that played out. Could be that I actually might try online matches again after being active with offline/private matches

Really liked the matches I watched, keep it up guys!

-Bastian Forge

Sorry, but I liked only r5 card, on all other important mass aircraft only.

R4 should be updated for the next build, one of my favorite maps.

Nice matches. Some of them were really interesting with commanders encirlcled by boom boots, matiz only air play. A lot of variety there was. Now we just need some naval maps for the tournaments. At least im learning how to micro faster from these streams

Match of the tournament: Semi-final AL

Congrats to the winner! There were some fantastic games this tournament - it's great to see both new players entering the competitive scene and people we haven't seen for a while getting involved again.

Thanks for the feedback! If you have any suggestions for changes to the maps, I'd love to hear them. You're both miles better at the game than I am, I'm sure there's things I've missed that you've picked up on.

This map will be even better when PTE is released to stable soon, if you add metal to the lake area. It will then become a battle for that rich metal cluster island in the lake, and naval will be very important to fight for it.

Can't wait for this update.

I think it should also get points just for being such a beautiful map.

it reminds me of sherbert icecream

Round 1 - Match C: Sootn vs. [RLM] Marncore is now available.

Round 2 - Match W (the ice one)

Round 3 - Match Z (the hourglass one)

Quarter-Final - Match AI

31 minute low eco game between matiz and yaegz? kool

My entire strategy with that map revolved around being more cost effective with vehicles then bots and air. I hadn't practiced it which was stupid because I assumed it would cost him more metal in bombers to take out my antiaircraft. I wanted to take a quick lead by not losing ground and making his air useless. However, on several occasions in the game he killed my anti-air with bombers without losing anything. Then my tanks were undefended. This makes no sense from a balance perspective, but Uber realizes that. Anti air cant even be cost effective against the very thing it is meant to counter. Imo an anti-air should be able to kill a bomber before it can release it's bombs and be able to survive 1 bomber run from a single bomber. I had already created the factories I could support before I realized that anti air is actually useless. Otherwise, I would have never tried this strategy or would have transitioned earlier. But oh well, balance takes a long time to perfect.

Around 5 mins in, the game had already not gone to plan because I lost my first tank forces because he sniped my anti air with bombers... cost efficiently I might add. I was even target firing his bombers but anti air is too fragile and takes too long to kill any air unit. I wanted to show a different strategy rather than having every player do the exact same thing every game but I got punished for it.

What I'm hearing here is AA UP pls buff?

Correct, and uber is buffing AA, which is great because then more strategies become viable.

Just watched the replay and it was pretty fun. Matiz could have bomber sniped your commander early on, or you could have added in more spinners and pushed him, as well as move around his walls later on.

I don't want to turn this into like a balance thread, but i kinda disagree about metal efficiency. Air is problem, but not for that reason. You just overbuilt tanks in your composition. Uber's solution for bomber prioritisation will be problematic, and that'll become apparent when the change hits live.

In your game, it was like only 2 spinners at a time (300 metal), vs perhaps 10 fighters and 3 bombers (2500 metal), which is alot of metal invested that people conveniently overlook. And of that 2500, only 720 can interact with the ground, the rest becomes waste.

Without fighters, that 300 metal could beat the 720 metal at over 200% efficiency. And once there is 4 spinners (600 metal) to one shot bombers, that efficiency rate skyrockets to the moon.

Looking at sc2, air is well designed with support and raiding functions. They are not target prioritised but instead act to support, harass, and lend 'critical mass' to land forces. Muta, or Vikings in tvt for example are a great case example.

PA doesn't seem to understand this, and tries to design air as a third unit type powerhouse to sit along side bot/vehicles instead of a synergistic force. So instead of suggesting solutions to the current paradigm, i think they just need to overhaul the whole thing. The fiasco of t2 air shows this need.

*Anyway it was a fun game to watch, wish it was a b05 or something.

Keep in mind that air is able to attack wherever

Keep in mind that I made enough spinners overall but they were spread out in different locations. My total investment in spinners probably exceeded his investment in bombers. But they are slow and air can decide when and where to engage because they are so much faster. This means AA has to be very cost efficient because they are so immobile. If I have to make 4+ spinners for every small army I have it is no longer viable to consider not going air at all. The amount of spinners needed to control an area increases greatly as i gain more metal. I can make 30 spinners that are spread out but they will die to his lesser investment of bombers because his bombers are fighting together, which ia not a luxury i have. In hindsight, I should have went air at least to supplement my AA, but I still think a vehicle only strategy should be possible but it's no longer viable if I need 4+ spinners to defend each mex I have. The whole idea was to dominate the ground and if I am making AA half the time then what was the point of even going a ground only strategy, which imo should be a very strong strat on such a small map.

Matiz built 93 bombers during the game and you built only 75 spinners