Welcome to my second article in the Building a Battleground series. For this map concept I want to take you back to your Warcraft days, into the Arathi Basin. This area of land is known for its frequent Horde vs Alliance battles, and it’s very strategically placed Blacksmith. So what would this map look like in Heroes? Let’s find out!

Lore: A new realm is born. With a crack, and a spark of power, the world of Arathi Basin crashes into existence, and with it, those who look to claim dominance over this untouched plane. The Harvest Lord and the Constructor rush to establish a base of power in the Basin, and have recruited their own champions to lend them aid...

Setting: Arathi Basin is a very iconic Warcraft battleground. In its Heroes transition, it will become a two lane battleground, with a Hall of Storms on each end, and will keep much of the current Arathi Basin look, with all five original points of interest: Farm (close to Red Starting Area), Lumber Mill (Middle North), Mine (Middle South), Blacksmith (Middle on an island surrounded by water), and Stables (close to Blue Starting Area).

Gameplay: Arathi Basin will be a unique battleground that follows in the footsteps of Towers of Doom, in that the Core will not be directly attackable, and in fact, the Core at the beginning of the game will not even be constructed! The objective of Arathi Basin will be to control Resource Points to acquire enough materials to be the first to finish building your Core and kick the opposing Realm Lord off your land!

Objective Points: As mentioned above, there are five main Resource Points on the map in various locations. At the beginning of the game, all Resource Points will be inactive. Shortly into the game, the Blacksmith Point will give a 30 second warning before becoming active. Once active, the area surrounding the active Resource Point will have a capture range indicator similar to those found on Volskaya Foundry. A Hero will have to be in the area for a short time to “capture” the point (signified by a Horde or Alliance Flag raising during/while the point is captured depending on Red/Blue side). Each spawn point has a certain amount of “Resource” that will begin to deplete and be credited to the capturing team. Once the full amount of Resource depletes, the Resource Point will become inactive. A single team could foreseeably take all the Resource from a point, though more likely, each team will be able to capture a portion of it. After the initial Blacksmith spawn, subsequent Resource Point spawns (only one Resource Point will be active at a time) will be randomized with 30 second warning timers preceding the point activating. All Resource Points must spawn before the cycle can start again.

Each Resource Point will offer a different area layout, and potentially a different sized capture area (here is a *very rough* approximate map of all the points of interest and Resource Point capture area shapes. The map would of course be modified somewhat to keep things fair for both sides in regards to tower placement and Farm/Stables accessibility, and spacing/travel time between Resource Points):

Farm: The Farm will be the most straight forward point in terms of area layout. The capture point will be in a large open area with the Farm building on the left side towards Red Team starting area.

Lumber Mill: The Lumber mill will be a longer, thinner area layout with “notches” on either side of the Lumber Mill, the building itself providing a moderate amount of blocking on either side of the notches. As in the Warcraft Arathi Basin, each team will have an upper path leading around to the lumber mill, with an unpathable ledge below the Lumber Mill to imitate the cliff from the original map (as Heroes does not have varying heights).

Blacksmith: The Blacksmith will be on the center island between the two lanes with a path from each side leading up to the center area. The Blacksmith itself will be in the middle of the Resource Point with the capturable area being the circle around the Blacksmith itself. All the edges of the Blacksmith island except the two paths leading to it will be surrounded by water and will be unpathable.

Mine: The Mine will be a U shape with a path from each side leading down to it. The capture area of the Resource Point itself will be half oval shaped with various rocks and choke point obstacles in and around the capture point.

Stables: The Stable will be relatively open like the Farm, but with fencing that splits the relatively circular capture area in two, with small breaks in the fencing to change sides.

Mercs: There are two merc camps on Arathi Basin, one located past the Farm on the Lumber Mill side, and the other is located past the Stables on the Mine side. This new type of Merc camp will be populated with three archers, who when defeated, will drop a Defense Token. This Defense Token can be used at active Resource Points to spawn three archer defenders around the capture point that do minor damage and will last a certain amount of time, or until killed. Only one set of defenders can be active at a time.

Buildings: Buildings, and to an extent, lane minions, play an interesting role in Arathi Basin. There are only four towers on the map, one on each side leading up to the Farm and the Stable respectively. These do not block off the enemy teams access to the Farm and the Stable, but do cause the need for the enemy team to be more cautious while assaulting one of these Resource Points so close the the opposing team's base. Each Fort that is intact for a team grants a small, continuous Resource trickle. Destroying these Forts will not only open up the enemy team’s inner Resource Point, but also deprive them of the extra Resource they are gaining. Once destroyed, the minions of the Harvest Lord and Constructor will begin rebuilding the fallen Fort, though it will take X minutes for it to be completed.

Strategy: Team fighting is an integral part of Arathi Basin’s objective. Having a team with good self sustain, or one that can poke an enemy team and get them to retreat from the objective point so you can harvest more Resource than them will be crucial. A wide variety of abilities and strategies will potentially be viable because of the unique layout of each Resource Point. Alternately, making sure to keep the enemies Forts destroyed may give you a needed Resource boost over an enemy team that isn’t able to take your towers down. This could also be a good counter play if your team is down members and you know you aren’t able to fight on the Resource Point, but taking down Forts may be a viable secondary objective while the enemy team is distracted. As with Towers of Doom, be prepared for lots of action, as there will not be large amounts of downtime between Resource Point spawns.

Final Thoughts: To wrap things up, I just wanted to talk a little about balance and flavor. You may have noticed that I didn’t put many hard numbers in here, like amount of Resource needed to win, how much Resource Points gave, what the trickle from Forts is, etc, and that’s intentional. Without lots of testing, anything I put could be argued on and picked apart endlessly. The point of this is to provide a tight framework, that once created, could have numbers plugged into it, and then be tweaked as needed.

From a flavor standpoint, I mentioned up top that part of the fun, graphically, will be to see your Core go from a foundation, to fully built over the course of the game if you reach your needed amount of resources first. At the end of the game, the Harvest Lord or the Constructor will then take vengeance upon the other, using their newly built Core to bombard the unfinished Core of the defeated team, and destroy it.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my Arathi Basin concept and as always I’d love to hear feedback in the comments below. If you want to see some of my other map concept work you can check out my newly updated Alterac Valley concept here on HeroesHearth as well!