Athena: Download Athena

Athena, one of the new maps used in the Arena MSL 2008. This map has been played a little over 10 times in the Proscene so for now it's still too hard to determine if the map is imbalanced in anyway, or favours certain matchups. So from here on in it's all speculation and observation.

The map Athena contains 3 spawn points, 1 at 2 o'clock, at 6 o'clock and at 10 o'clock. Similar to Python these spawns have a natural right below the ramp along with some leg room behind the naturals. Also in a "Peace" like shaped object, you have 3 more expos per main, the ones at 3 o'clock going to the spawner at 6, the ones at 7 o'clock going to the spawner at 10, and the ones at 12 o'clock going to the spawner at 2.

Your all-in-all generally speaking balanced sort of map, with the exception of those 3 expos in mid that are on the high ground with only a small ramp entrance to them and since they are in the open only from air, Tanks might be extremely useful in this situation.

But, T's have won the most matches on this map, but then again I haven't actually watched the matches on Athena so I would suggest take a look at them and it might help your play on this one :P

Tiamat: Download Tiamat

Next in line is Tiamat, a Blue Storm sized map with the spawn points being at the top left and the bottom right. Same dealio as Athena with that ramp leading down to the natural but this time the natural has no back space so drops may get tough here.

Just by looking at it the 2nd expo for most would be the mineral only outside the main, but there IS a gas with 2 mineral patch slightly up ahead so some ZvZ's would be interesting to watch on this since they tend to get that quick gas when they can.

Another thing i noticed was the giant "S" in the middle of the map (kind of looks like the Python in Python .. :P) and everything is on level here. Lots of ability to shoot across since the gaps are fairly thin, and I guess this one may also favour Terran and Zerg. But we'll just have to wait until this map is played out more to see how it turns out!

Faoi: Download Faoi

Not much of a change from the old version, just a little extra room here and there. The most noticable thing I see here would be the buildings in the middle of the map. On the old one it had 2 huge ones at the North and South, but now the sizes were shrunk and another 2 were added to the East and West. At the 12 natural and 6 natural it seems as if the room behind the mineral line was minimized while the one at 9 seems like it got bigger.

The general placement of the expansions are the same as the old one, so I guess from a beginners POV it basically just has a few minor changes, and nothing that will have too much of an effect to change which matchups dominate on this map.