While I’m here, I’m going to drop a slightly conflicted
to induct on Pigeonhole.
If you look at Pigeonhole with any scrutiny for any length of time, you can tell the great care that went into most every aspect of the map, maximizing glyph distances, pairing up rock/sand where possible, massaging the start zone areas so there’s a clear line at the front.
And all that pays off to make Pigeonhole the best 1x BftU map I’ve played. But I still think it’s too small (135 hexes[!], ~30 smaller than existing small tournament maps) for a general recommendation, for a few reasons:
- The difference between paths and perches is flattened
- The three corridors of the map feel too narrow
- If either army claims the height, it snowballs very quickly
Armies that rely on height advantage usually hate Pigeonhole, because there’s only one hex above level 2, and that means you get a lot of even ground shots, assuming your opponent is also able to get to level 2.
In the center, the map is 11 hexes wide, but it plays narrower than that, as LoS blockers and glyphs reduce that to 8 or 9. In fact, as the level 0 is almost only ever used to get an extra melee attack up onto level 2 (it is not really part of the map’s pathing), there’s about 6 hexes (three sets of two) available to use when crossing the map.
Once the center is controlled, that player has likely won the game, and there’s not much of a way to claw back a foothold against a strong central setup.
If you really need a 1x BftU map, you could do a lot worse than Pigeonhole, and I’m not sure you could do better. But if I ever got to give input on a physical map pool where Pigeonhole was one of the options, I’d strongly recommend reshuffling expansions to add another expansion or two to get yourself Odin Wept or Dance of the Dryads or even one of the many good non-WoS maps with a single dungeon and two expansion sets.
Like if your three maps were Yngvild Pass, Fire Isles OEAO, and Pigeonhole, you’re going to be better served by running Origin, Compact/Framework/Dry Season, and Odin Wept.Or Ice Thistle, Fire Isles, Origin…