Halo Infinite’s new competitive map set removes 2 notorious pain points from the rotation

Halo Infinite’s Winter Update launched today, and with it came some big changes to the map and mode combinations available in the title’s Ranked playlist. As confirmed by HCS coordinator Richie Heinz, these changes to Ranked will also apply to the Halo Championship Series, giving us our first glimpse into the tournament map rotation for next year.

Not only are two new Arena maps joining the map set for year two of the HCS, but Catalyst Slayer and Bazaar CTF—two modes in the current rotation universally criticized by the pros—will be getting removed to make room.

Capture The Flag on Argyle is the first of the new modes arriving to both the Ranked playlist and the HCS. This is one of the two new developer-made Forge maps that launched with the Winter Update. The Forge remake of Halo 3’s The Pit, which was first shown off in the Throwback Tournament during the Orlando Major in September, is still yet to be released but has already been confirmed to feature in Ranked and the HCS when it does. This will go for both its Slayer and Capture The Flag variants.

This marks a promising start to the tournament circuit for year two, already trimming out some of the more disliked elements of the current rotation to provide fresh competitive content. But it’s clear that some pros still hope to see King of the Hill maps removed from the rotation as well based on reactions to it being currently disabled due to a bug.

The full details on the final map rotation for the HCS will be released in December, no doubt around the OpTic Halo Invitational that is currently scheduled to take place from Dec. 9 to 11.