I think generally the life cycle of any new map goes from a) incredibly quick rounds because engies don’t know where to put sentries, to b) incredibly slow rounds when no-one’s learnt how to attack the awesome sentry positions the engies have found, to c) schizophrenic flitting from one extreme to the other as morons and pros join and leave.

I just had my first long round on it, with Seniath and Dan, and it was because Blue had four or so engies with sentries on the middle cap, but too weak an offense to push past our second. They weren’t actually hard to take down, I just couldn’t do more than two at a time with Seniath around. At one point there were so many Spies on each team, all taking the same path between the middle cap and the second, that it was just a mini Spy-war of us trying to shoot or backstab each other before we carried on.

It ended in a stalemate, but I would have rather kept playing. Maybe servers should be able to specify an ‘ideal match time’ (independently of a hard map time limit), to make capping more volatile and time bonuses lower once the match goes past it. I thought time bonuses already did decrease with each successive re-cap, but forty-five minutes seems steep.

The second-to-last point isn’t that hard to capture, but it’s incredibly difficult to hold. We’d get it, they’d take it back. We’d get it, they’d take it back. Occasionally, the tides would switch and they’d fight back, getting as far as capturing our second-to-last point. Then we’d take it back, and then they’d take it again. On and on.

This wasn’t dramatic or tense. It was just flat and repetitive. It was a stalemate without the game being able to end and just call it that.

However, I do detest Granary and rather like Well, which I guess is a tad odd.