In case you didn’t catch it the first five thousand-odd times everybody in the entire world said it: StarCraft 2 is good. Very good in fact, and one of the most spectacular features of it is the sheer power and flexibility offered by the map editor tool - if you don’t believe me, wander down to the cantina of the Hyperion during the single-player campaign and take the Lost Viking arcade machine for a spin sometime. We gritted our teeth against unbalanced gameplay and un-ironed-out bugs, and plunged into the custom maps section on battle.net to take a look at how the early days of the StarCraft 2 mod community were coming along.

Marine Arena by Crayon
Current version: 9.9

If you ever played Footman Wars back in the glory days of WarCraft III, then you’ll quickly get a handle on how Marine Arena works (hint: replace “Footman” with “Marines”). The aim of the game is to destroy the Command Centers of the enemy teams, but there’s just one problem: they constantly spawn Marines. It may not sound like much, but when you add in the mercenaries, upgradeable base defences and large selections of heroes you can get your hands on, Marine Arena becomes quite the strategic game.

Although it’s still early days for this map, Marine Arena quickly rose to prominence in the beta days and has undergone a considerable number of revisions and balance checks that many of the other popular custom maps are somewhat lacking in. And with its heavy focus on teamwork, good micro and memorised counters, experienced StarCraft 2 players will feel right at home.

Red Circle Tower Defence by Hydr00
Current version: 1.9e

Unfortunately for anybody hoping to get through this article without a mention of tower defence, it turns out that this old staple is still just as phenomenally popular in Blizzard’s new RTS as it was in their last one. The community is having some trouble really settling on a solid map that satisfies all aspects of the protection of towers, but some are definitely rising to prominence above the others. The most popular one at the moment is Red Circle TD, although strangely enough the creator has decided to stop developing it as he doesn’t want to actually buy StarCraft 2.

In terms of gameplay, Red Circle offers a fairly standard tower defence experience without too many glaring balance problems or bugs, and certainly the sight of thousands of Thor mechs stomping furiously along your lane is delightful for the novelty if nothing else. If I had to make one criticism of this map it would be that it feels... well, a bit too safe. Seeing the power of the new map editor used in such a fairly predictable way is slightly disappointing, and while I can appreciate the popularity of the sub-genre, there’s really a lot more that could have been done here.

Nexus Wars by Isospeedrix and Lilman
Current version: 1.18

A bizarre but delightful combination of elements from both DotA and Tower Defence, Nexus Wars charges you with constructing a series of buildings, all of which spawn constant autonomous soldiers who charge mindlessly down a lane towards the enemy base. He is of course doing the exact same thing, and so it quickly becomes a game of rock, paper, scissors as you attempt to figure out what he’s planning and go one better, or to furiously get a counter-unit up before he smashes through into your base.

Pleasingly, after an hour of gameplay with no victor, every unit’s damage goes up by 300% and goes into frenzy mode. If stalemates and long drawn-out games bug you, then this is the custom map for you! Like Marine Arena, Nexus Wars sprung up during the beta and has since garnered a strong following and a pair of dedicated developers. I’m sure it won’t be too long until it’s one of the most plagiarised and talked-about SC2 mods around (though probably not until the current bug where every unit is frenzied, forever, is actually fixed).

There are far more custom maps out there than this, so if this has got your interest piqued, head online and check it out! If you get in early enough, you'll soon be able to tell your friends that you were playing Tower Defence of the Ancients Wars before it was cool.

Actually, if somebody wanted to make a combination DotA/TD map - you know, that could work. That could really work...