I don't have a good idea of how often the competitive skirmish maps are changed. About how often has that happened and would you expect Courscant Landfill to be retired before Worlds in May?

Possibly. It would be around world's the new rotation. For people going to world's I hope it's afterwards but both the newest maps have been before.

I'm really confused about why maps would be retired. They aren't cheap so it seems weird for them to magically become unofficial. Are old ones ever brought back into use?

4 times a year lately, a bit too fast for my liking

Indeed, I'd like to know this before I finish tracking down those official neoprene playmats. Especially if I have to pay extra since they appear out of stock everywhere (Except for Coruscant Landfill, naturally).

My money is on them rotating a new map in a week or two before worlds. They did it last year. It levels the playing field a little bit with a map that no one has had considerable experience on and I think they like that.

Now if they could just get ahead of the game with actually having the printed map available on time of the announcement that'd be great....

My dates may be off a little, but this is what I believe to be the rotation up to this point.

I mean I guess it doesn't matter since I have all the maps in carboard tile form, unless they require something from The Bespin Gambit. The rubber mats just seem so much more convenient. But if their legality is in a state of flux I won't try a "collect them all" approach with rubber mats. I'll probably top out at a collection of 3 or so. 1 each of Snow, desert, and forest should about do me.

It's to bad they cant get the rotation down to core tiles only, a lot of the people in my skirmish scene want to play but don't want to go all in so I've had to get creative with our map choices. At least we can use Anchorhead/Landfill for now but I imagine the next map rotation will be a JR's map. I suppose I could take it upon myself to just introduce Greedo's map instead.. at least then we can build it off of my hand out sheet.

But I would say that has hands down been the biggest problem with growing skirmish in my area, everyone hates the map rotation idea.

3 hours ago, Syntaxair said:

My dates may be off a little, but this is what I believe to be the rotation up to this point.

Thanks for compiling those dates.

Looks lie the initial maps are dragging down the average in your table. Might be worth excluding them and calculating the average only since the establishment of a regular rotation.

I mean I guess it doesn't matter since I have all the maps in carboard tile form, unless they require something from The Bespin Gambit. The rubber mats just seem so much more convenient. But if their legality is in a state of flux I won't try a "collect them all" approach with rubber mats. I'll probably top out at a collection of 3 or so. 1 each of Snow, desert, and forest should about do me.

My thing with maps is atmoshpere. If I'm using a Hoth themed army I want to use snowy maps. If I am using my Sandtrooperarmy I want to use desert maps, etc. So having them rotate out is something I'm happy to ignore in non-tournament games. Expecting to have scenery match my army in a multi-round tournament would be unrealistic on my part. But for home games, I want that. Maybe the best bet is to wait until they are no longer in rotation and then buy them.

1 hour ago, nickv2002 said:

Thanks for compiling those dates.

Looks lie the initial maps are dragging down the average in your table. Might be worth excluding them and calculating the average only since the establishment of a regular rotation.

No problem.
Yeah - I thought about it, but even taking out those outliers it doesn't change terribly much 273 days vice the 228. The landfill has been in rotation for 248 days. If they don't rotate it out it will have been in rotation for 304 days as of May 1st. That 300 day mark is right about where the last two rotated maps were at before they disappeared into the Disney Vault.

I like them using the new maps, I'm afraid the real problem is that some really cool maps get skipped and they don't really have an inexpensive map replacement. They should just print the maps on a poster sized sheet of thick paper and sell them for 5$. Then it doesn't matter which tiles you're using, or if you have the core set or not.

5 hours ago, buckero0 said:

I like them using the new maps, I'm afraid the real problem is that some really cool maps get skipped and they don't really have an inexpensive map replacement. They should just print the maps on a poster sized sheet of thick paper and sell them for 5$. Then it doesn't matter which tiles you're using, or if you have the core set or not.

This a thousand times!

I've only got like a year worth of experience with FFG but are they the type of company that can admit when they were wrong and scrap something? Or will they drag it out until its been dead for a few months with flys buzzing around it ?

Going to sidestep a small bit;
We know Coruscant Landfill will leave the tournament scene first (for better or worse...)
What map will replace it?

Looking at the available options, I don't see a huge amount of them...
Of the 'old' (non Jabba wave) ones, I only see Greedo's map as a potential: It has 2 unique missions (one featuring killing objectives, like the Dianoga was) and the one about choosing an enemy deployment card is strategically interesting and rewards experienced players more probably.

Of the new Jabba wave (which probably also have a high chance):
Luke and Ranger's Map both have clunky missions (one of Luke's missions is also too close to one of the missions in the Bar)
Jabba's Map is possible, the crate mission has some similarities to the Crate mission on Landfill (which is rotating out). The second mission also seems pretty interesting and the map has an interesting layout with corners.
Terro's Map is possible and unique with 3 terminals, most objectives are far away, but the fight can be really close, combination of long hallways and corners. Decent mission.

There is a chance it will be one of the new pack missions as well of course, but that will have cut back on the testing of the maps I think and probably not worth it.
What do you guys think?

1 hour ago, Soulflame said:

Going to sidestep a small bit;
We know Coruscant Landfill will leave the tournament scene first (for better or worse...)
What map will replace it?

I suspect Terro's map. It's much more balanced than the kind of ridiculous Rangers map and it would mark the first Imperial map we've seen since Training Grounds. It's a larger map as well, which we lack, and it has enough cover to ensure snipers can't just stay put and shoot. Nor is it as easy to play Jedi Luke without over-committing.

Yeah, money's on Terro.

For a guy who isn't at home to look on TTS, Vassal, or at the printed maps.....where can I look at the Terro and Jabba map online?

1 hour ago, Syntaxair said:

For a guy who isn't at home to look on TTS, Vassal, or at the printed maps.....where can I look at the Terro and Jabba map online?

Maybe some spoiler pics of people who got the first copies somewhere but there's no real good resource for maps until @ibsh creates his but those have not been updated with the Jabba wave yet.

I don't have a problem with the map rotation and really enjoy the fact that it keeps everyone on their toes, the meta never gets stale that way.

I do think they need to catch up with the production though. We still can't get the Anchorhead map in Europe and I got hold of my ISB map the day they announced the Anchorhead map so we're so far behind it "almost" makes it not worth buying them by the time they come out.

11 hours ago, Syntaxair said:

For a guy who isn't at home to look on TTS, Vassal, or at the printed maps.....where can I look at the Terro and Jabba map online?

Here you go! (Scroll to top of that thread for links to all the Jabba Wave maps)

I really don't think it will be Greedo's map. 15 spaces between deployment zones and 3 very long straight hallways with no hiding spots tilts the meta too much in favor of the already powerful sniper units like e Rebel Rangers and HK's. 18 spaces to the objectives on "fortifications" is too long for 1 hour games that go to time way too much as it is. "The Hunted" doesn't have enough points available for objectives. You could potentially get 12 VPs if your opponent is running Jedi Luke, but if they're running a Scum list and their biggest unit is Onar that's a max of 6 VPs from objectives. Having the amount of potential objective points be different for each side is also bad.

Based on the faction rotation and the fact that the maps have all come from ally/villain packs I'd say Jabba's map is the most likely candidate. But I also suspect the next wave will arrive before May, so maybe it will be the Jawa map.

3 hours ago, brettpkelly said:

I really don't think it will be Greedo's map. 15 spaces between deployment zones and 3 very long straight hallways with no hiding spots tilts the meta too much in favor of the already powerful sniper units like e Rebel Rangers and HK's. 18 spaces to the objectives on "fortifications" is too long for 1 hour games that go to time way too much as it is. "The Hunted" doesn't have enough points available for objectives. You could potentially get 12 VPs if your opponent is running Jedi Luke, but if they're running a Scum list and their biggest unit is Onar that's a max of 6 VPs from objectives. Having the amount of potential objective points be different for each side is also bad.

I played Greedo's map one time for fun (not enough time to play out of tourney rotation maps for me) and it took forever. My immediate thought was "This map is cool, but it's way too spread out for a tourney map. I could see lots of games never making it past two rounds."

My favoirte map so far is Bossk. Many interesting position and strategies that can be played on that map.