2P-60 Antipode Map, AKA "Australia", despite its lack of airports, has become my favorite pack-in map to play on. Here it is in all its glory:

Days: 30 (originally 40)
Timer: 2:00 (originally 3:00; I am handicapping myself because my opponent gets the full 3:00)
My random wi-fi gauntlet had also consisted of 2P-47 Beaker River and 2P-69 Clown Island. However, it became apparent early in the week that neither of those maps created games that were as epic as the ones on 2P-60 Australia. This is because Australia is arguably one of the best designed maps. It's actually better designed than most of the custom maps on AWBW. So I forced my game to always load this map. (See here for instructions on how to change the random wi-fi rotation)
An asymmetric map, Australia is notable for having no airports and a central position that is slightly left of center, where the mountain range is. 2P begins with a 10-9 property lead. These two factors mean that 1P's first-turn advantage is virtually neutralized. Due to Australia having 39 total properties, there can never be a draw. The lack of airports, as well as the defensive mountain range, cause many of the niche metagame units to see play. Rockets, recons, war tanks, and even the carrier and battleship have all seen play from me on this map. The seaports are nicely implemented here. By not making sea the focus of the map, the seaports become a tech supplement, rather than forcing a slippery slope gunboat battle.
The map is large enough that there's plenty of tempo opportunities, though not too large for turtling (slow, defensive play with mechs) to become useless. The black partition indicates the natural split of the map. If both players capture all of their properties on their side of the split, 1P comes out on top 20-19. It is up to 2P to use his initial property lead to either capture the city left of position "3", or hold the extra city in the center. This can be done with initial aggression and bike hopping, followed up by a strategically-placed rockets. If the map becomes split, both sides will accumulate a sizable army, and one player will be forced to blink first.
Position 1 is 13mp away from 2P's lower base, which means a tank will be unable to reach it in 2 days. Position 2 is 18mp away, so when 1P is bringing up a bike to capture, if 2P is pressuring with an early tank and 1P is not, 1P must take the city 2 spaces to the right of position 2. Position 3 is 15mp away, which means that there's a possibility of 2P disrupting with a recon. Note that if a unit is placed on position 3, 1P cannot disrupt the city to the left with a bike, as the wasteland south of the right city prevents the bike from doing so.
-
Me (Waylon) vs. Brenner (Potter)
Day 19/30. I'm at 11/12 meter, while Potter is at 1/12, having lost his CO earlier. The battle lines had been set for a while, which allowed me to tech to seaplanes. His antiair were built late, so this was a perfect time to initiate a bust. What should I have done?

Here's the optimal set of plays:
- Zone seaplane + md tank will 2hko his CO
- 110A tank will deal 93% to 100D rockets
- If rockets is 1hko'd, cripple north arty with tank
- 4 arty put into range 3 of south city arty
- Rockets 3N
- Move remaining tanks behind arty
It seems obvious, but when you're playing with a 2 minute timer, you don't always make the best plays due to mental and psychological factors. I did the first three plays, but then advance my useless mechs, thus blocking the rockets. My rockets only moved 1N, which meant that 5 indirects covered only a single square. I then placed a tank on the city south of the mountains, which was a silly mistake. I learned that mechs aren't too good when you need to perform a bust.
So this was what I did:

On his turn, he did the best possible set of plays, which was spread crippling my artillery instead of focus firing. Now, despite my misplay on the previous day, the bust can still be successful if I make the right plays here.

- Fire with outer artillery
- Invoke COP
- Target wisely with the two seaplanes (explained below)
- Move up with tanks
- Move up remaining artillery, join if possible
- Drop a mech into the mountains
You can see that the rockets misplay from the previous day had cost me, as its only good target is the 8hp artillery after I poked with the outer artillery. As for the seaplane targets, the north rockets is an obvious one, as it'll be 1hko'd. But then I horribly misplay by targeting the south rockets instead of an artillery or a tank/md tank. The south rockets seems like a juicy target until you realize it can't even fire at anything. I wasted an important seaplane shot. To make matters worse, I didn't use my fresh artillery to join. As you can see below, my bust is about to run out of steam because 1) my rockets no longer has any targets and 2) all my front-line artillery are crippled.

He eventually got COP and fended off the assault. One seaplane was blasted, another ran out of gas, and the remaining were crippled. I was forced to retreat. However, he had to capture a city, and so he sacrificed his CO antiair to launch his final push. (My indirects were forced to target it over the md tanks.) It looked like he might actually take a city.

But wait! I had placed my remaining seaplanes in my carrier for a 1-day heal. They were at 8hp and 4hp, and with my COP ready again, I was going to ride them to victory.

After sniping his final bike (which I didn't really need to do since it was day 29), I immediately ended my turn. He got the message and surrendered.

Woo woo! I barely pulled out the victory. Hopefully you got some insight as to how to manage a bust with many units.
I had some other good games on this map, so stay tuned for more analysis!