Rento 
Level 61
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I'm just happy we call them 'judges' and not 'experts'.
Generally speaking, when some people give 1 or 2 to a thing and others give it 9 or 10, then at least some of them have no idea what they are talking about.
Unless it's about something very subjective, like ice cream flavour.
Since there's no stream recordings and all we have is the ratings, I though I would post my own ratings. Perhaps as a discussion starter, since this is what the forum is all about, no? Having constructive, insightful, civilised discussions. Like in the Harmony thread.
I don't consider myself an elite player, but I don't consider half of the panel to be elite players either, so why not.
Tarabonia - 6
The cards settings are unique. You and your opponent get to secretly keep one of the cards.
The cards available aren't that impactful. It's probably a good thing.
However, apart from that one single card, the settings are vanilla as hell. To make things even less interesting, it's light fog, so counters and safe picking are not an issue. At least there are chokepoints and wastelands.
MME clone with a tiny gimmick. It's a solid 6/10 from me, but I don't quite get why people love it so much.
Aseridith - 8
Another solid INSS. I like it more than Gotham or Master Mania.
Not sure we need another one though. So 8/10 is the highest I can give.
How about we replace Master Mania with this?
Fogless Fighting- 9
I played a lot of this and it turned into my favourite WR template.
The 'fogless' part is imo the least important part here, could've been light fog with no spy cards, it would hardly make a difference.
Both the smallest and the biggest of bonuses see play here. The big ones can be pretty hard to take, but are much more efficient. You nailed the balance here.
The Emergency Blockades add an interesting flavour. They are actually pretty weak, my opponents often seem to overuse them. But they have potential to swing the game.
Some people say it's bad. That it's luck based, or prediction based. Well, so is attacking double borders. I never understood this argument. And it's not like EBs are the core of this template.
The map is seriously awful for the eyes though, so I substract 1 point.
alexclusive's ME - 2
First, I'm not a fan of having just another template on this map. But this is a minor concern.
Then, you turned the FTBs into a 51,2% coinflip. This is an objective flaw. As the template creator you shouldn't enable strategies that work only half the time. Making them less efficient is already a deterrent.
And then you made the map perfectly balanced. The map is bigger, your opponent could be anywhere.
MME is a fantastic map. A lot of inefficient bonuses are used during gameplay, even if they are never picked and are rarely taken completely. So it's not like they are useless in game. Middle East with Iran is a prime example. No need to fix what isn't broken.
Sorry, but I'm not sure what's the benefit of all of this?
Someone tried a similar thing with Slow Burn on BIV map, and I think they achieved what you were trying to achieve.
Blind Buccaneers - 6
The trick with gifting a terr to enemy and immediately taking it back in order to get a reinf card a turn earlier is genius. In exchange you give your opponent some intel.
Complete fog with indefinite recon cards is just as great.
My only concern is the map size. I could see games turn into 35vs35 attrition wars.
This is a big concern though, so I give "only" 6/10.
I would love to see a bigger sample size. Like a tournament or something.
Island of Ruins - 7
The mod adds some novelty, otherwise it's a pretty standard vanilla template. I like the unbalanced map, conquerable wastelands and chokepoints.
Picky Picks - 1
On every template the number of picks is tailored to fit the setting and map size. Having this randomised is not a benefit.
The map is too artsy and too laggy.
I struggle to find any positives here, sorry.
Lampuria Swap - 10?
This looks very interesting, unfortunately I never played it, so I give it a question mark next to the score.
It could be the first Swapped Picks template where neither picks nor gameplay are forced, leaving room for creativity, mistakes and interesting plays.
Lombardy Swap - 4
The picking here is super interesting. You must be careful to not combo your opponents picks.
But the gameplay after picks is too forced. Too little income or space to expand. You're stuck in a brawl on very low income, base income even.
I got reasonably far into a tournament on this template, but I surrendered out of boredom.
Africa Ultima - 8
A Guiromaish and Malviaish template with bonus income of n-2, which is a bigger change than it sounds at first. Makes players focus on bigger bonuses. These are always riskier to take and easier to break. The dynamic of the game changes.
It's vanilla but I like it.
Benelux - 6
Not a great example game where a player just clusters all his picks in one place and wins.
This aside, striking the balance between expansion and fighting is the core of a lot of templates we already have. Yes, this one is a bit different, since it's a big map, 5 picks etc. It is some kind of novelty but not quite. An averagish score seems fitting.
Romania - 5
The most boring blob of perfectly balanced bonuses. Looks repetitive. The semi-interesting gimmick can only get you that far.
Not exactly the same thing, but Landria looks superior in every way.
G0A - 5
Just like the other semi-interesting gimmicks, I give it a 5. Prone to stalemates, very focused on FTBs, not sure about having just 4 picks.
It's clearly a brawl. Would you play this over any other brawl template from MTL? I don't think I would.
Battle of Peleliu - 3
The thing I dislike about randomised bonuses is that you can't just set the changes to {0, +1}. Only to {-1, 0, +1}. This makes good and bad bonuses a bit too obvious imo, especially on maps that aren't perfectly balanced in the first place, like ME.
And here you have an even more imbalanced map. These 1-territory +2s are just too gamebreaking. It takes no skill to notice how good they are.
Trippel-Tafl - 6
Very unique and fun concept. Can't really say a bad thing about it.
Except one.
Please, PLEASE change the wastelands from 5s to 4s. Having all these 2s and 5s together is confusing. It really is. I'd give it a higher score if not for this. I really would.
Tiny Troubles - 4
A template for quick games. Looks fine for QM. But I don't think it's good enough for MTL.
I'm not even sure if it has higher skill ceiling than SE1W.
Just a very basic 3-pick brawl.
Recurrence - 0?
Never played it, but it looks so bad it makes me think I'm missing something. So for now I give it a terrible score but I'm not certain.
First of all, I was playing around with the map itself when I was creating a template of my own, and let me tell you, it lags like hell. It has the same problem as Pangea Ultima. Too much artwork, making it annoying to play on. And I've heard it from my playtesters too so it's not just me.
And then there's this custom distribution, turning it into an AD template except it's the same thing every time.
I'm really not certain what's the benefit of it all.
When I first read the description, I thought there were 5 different picking sets and each player would get a random one of these 5, and this at least did sound interesting, but here it appears to just be the same thing over and over again?
Someone please enlighten me.
Succesion Wars - 9
It has much higher skill ceiling than what people realize at first glance. If I were to name the most similar template to Succession Wars, I'd say Elitist Africa.
The picking pattern is simple: just like on EA you generally focus on the red ones, in SW you generally pick around the centre.
Like on EA, you have 7 picks per player. And every one matters. Small changes can make notable differences.
But then there's gameplay, unlike any other template I've seen. The combination of +1 bonuses, LD and extra armies per territory make a really fun combination.
It's a brawl template where you're forced to think turns ahead. After all, it takes a few turns for reinforcements to come.
You want to conquer castles, but these +1 castles aren't created equal. Some are positioned better and this is important in LD.
Normal territories are important too since they give base income, and flanking just before the reinf card turn is a powerful tactic.
Man I could write an essay on this template but this is enough. I love it. It does take effort to play though. A bit of a calculator template.
Beren's Commanders - 6
It would be cool to have one commander template on the MTL. Commanders add an extra win condition to the game and I like the general idea but I'm not so enamoured by this setting to lobby for it that much.
6/10 is a fitting score here. Add it or leave it.
Commanders LD - 4
MME is imo a bit too big of a map for LD settings (unless you add MA). Games can drag pretty long. However, it is the most well known Commander template, featured in QM and Clan Wars.
Slow Burn - 6
I was skeptical at first, and seriously I'd prefer template makers to make use of the wide variety of maps that WL has to offer, instead of reusing BIV for the 3rd time.
But this aside, this template looks surprisingly solid. These few simple changes incentivise players to make use of the whole map, while the standard BIV settings are imo too heavily oriented around FTBs.
I wouldn't even be sad if this template replaced the standard BIV.
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