Snow Fort

Description
The concept? A 2v2 showdown. Two players man the fort, two players are left in the frozen wastes outside. The fort is surrounded by a fortified wall with only one entry point, the armies outside have no such defense. The only point where the two armies clash is the lone gate leading into the fort.

Well, sounds more exciting than it was. My experience as a former Battlefront II player has taught me one thing: walls are no match for a jetpack. My tactical response was to lure the Chaos troops to the gate, pin them down there between some Fire Warriors and stealthsuits, and use artillery to prevent them from retreating. Meanwhile, I slipped some Vespids over the wall and attacked the defenseless base. Heh, only an AI would be stupid enough to allow their entire force to be lured into a maneuver that functions as both a pincer attack and a death alley.

But I shall digress.

The sad thing about this map, is that so much of the space is wasted. The southern half of the map has nothing at all in it, and even the northern half is virtually empty. Aside from the wall, you've got four tight groupings of six SPs each, a critical location, a relic inside the fort and another outside, a splattering of corpses at the gate and a big crater. Aside from that, the landscape is flat and barren.

While the map works out well for gameplay, it could look a lot better, both by adding terrain variety and more features, and utilising the whole of the space available.

For a first map, though... well. It's typical first map material, and with the first of anything, there's only one thing a modder should be aiming for. Okay, that's a lie, it's more like two. Number one is practice, number two is getting the damn thing to actually work. You people are just lucky DoW isn't built on the Source SDK, that's a beginner's nightmare....

All I can say to commando543 in the way of advice, at this early stage, is that practice makes perfect, and don't be afraid to experiment. The best tip by far is to head to our forums, post lots of WIP materials, and get feedback from those with more experience.

Y'all should try this map at least once, since it presents something of an interesting puzzle for the attacking player which has either an incredibly simple solution, or an incredibly complex one, depending on how your opponent works. Not exactly freeform tactics, more like the rock-paper-scissors approach, but the map is good for a few games at the very least.

~ Kouen