Canary Islands Map: The 4000-by-1400 Island Field, 81 Named Places, and the Team-Rotation Board

Direct answer. The Canary Islands is the v0.35 wide island map: a 4000-by-1400 landscape field on 592,368 land tiles, named by 76 Spanish places plus 5 Moroccan settlements, and weighted toward team rotation at a frequency of 10. It is the island map you pick when you want short crossings and a team front rather than a deep open continent.

What the Canary Islands actually is on the board

The clearest way to describe the Canary Islands is as a medium island map, not a world map and not a single dense continent, and that distinction drives every choice that follows. The grid is 4000 tiles wide and 1400 tiles tall, a landscape rectangle that is nearly three times as wide as it is tall, and the playable land totals 592,368 land tiles. That land figure puts it in the middle of the v0.35 set: far larger than the tiny single-layer regional maps and meaningfully smaller than the giant world map and the land-heavy Vancouver Island, so a full game covers a board you can hold in your head without losing track of where your neighbors and your crossing lanes are. The theme is Africa, and the map is built around an archipelago of islands spread across the wide field, which is why it is the natural home for players who specifically want to play from an island starting geography with real ocean between the islands rather than from a generic coastline or a continental landmass. Because the board is wide rather than tall, the long dimension runs horizontally: the two long sides run along the 4000-tile direction and the two short sides run along the 1400-tile direction, and that shape changes how the early game reads compared with the tall portrait maps in the same release. On a tall map you expand along the long vertical axis and the center is a narrow band; on this wide board the center is a broad horizontal band and the long horizontal lanes give you more directions to push in before you run into an enemy. That extra horizontal room is the reason the map rewards players who open up lanes and screen the crossings rather than players who hunker into a dense defensive cluster, and it is also the reason the spawn and crossing decisions in the next sections matter more here than on a compact board, where one good defensive position can carry the whole game. If you have played the taller island maps and want a wider, flatter version of the same idea, the Canary Islands is that version: same ocean-and-island logic, stretched into a board where the horizontal width is the resource you manage, and wrapped around an Atlantic archipelago identity that none of the other new maps use, so the flavor of the board is doing real work on top of the raw geometry.

The nation layer: seventy-six Spanish names and five Moroccan settlements

The defining read of the Canary Islands is the way the engine populates the named place field, and it works in two layers that you need to keep separate. The manifest carries two distinct arrays. The first is the core nation layer, which names exactly seventy-six places and carries the Spanish flag code, so the early-game read of who is your neighbor is a field of recognizably Spanish names spread across the archipelago. That is a deliberate design choice and it is the single most important thing to understand before you play the map, because it changes what a named place feels like to you on the board. On most maps a named place is a generic territory you conquer, a shape with no identity beyond its borders; on the Canary Islands the named national layer is a cultural layer of recognizable place names, so you are not just counting territories, you are reading a field of named entities that carry meaning, and the names give you an intuition for where the dense parts of the board are and where the quiet parts are. The second layer is a set of exactly five additional named settlements that carry the Moroccan flag code, the easternmost names on the field, which sit at the far end of the archipelago and mark the boundary between the Spanish core and the eastern edge. Together the two layers name eighty-one places, and the engine draws from them to seed the match. The practical consequence is that a full Canary Islands game is denser in named places than a small arcade map, even though the core national layer is modest, and the five eastern settlements are a real feature of the board rather than a footnote: they mark the far-eastern anchor of the field and they change what a push toward the eastern edge means compared with a push into the Spanish center. You will see Spanish names across most of the board and the small cluster of eastern names at the far end, and the way they seed determines your opening neighbors and your opening direction. Treat the seventy-six Spanish names as the anchors that define the national layer and the five eastern settlements as the edge marker that tells you where the board ends, and your map read will match what is actually on the screen instead of the smaller number you would expect from a seventy-six-nation count. The reason the distinction matters is that a single number, eighty-one, hides two different roles: the Spanish names are the connective tissue that makes the board feel populated across the width, and the eastern settlements are the boundary that defines the far end of the wide field, so reading them correctly is the difference between planning a push that has a destination and a push that just runs off the board.

The crossings: why the shortened crossings are the whole map

The signature of the Canary Islands is its crossings, and the official framing for the map is that it is an island map with shortened crossings, so the design intent is to keep the water between the islands short enough that you can cross it without a full naval buildout and long enough that the crossing is still a decision rather than a formality. That single phrase is the whole strategic identity of the map, and it is the reason the map feels different from a tall island map or a continent map in your very first game. On a continent map the ocean is an edge you defend; on a deep island map the water between islands can be so wide that a crossing is a major committed naval operation you plan for minutes in advance; on the Canary Islands the crossings are shortened, so the water is a cost you pay in seconds rather than minutes, which means you can afford to cross more often and to re-deploy across the archipelago during the game instead of being locked to the island you started on. The practical read is that your movement range is wider than the raw island geometry suggests, because each crossing is cheap enough to repeat, and that wider movement range is the resource the whole map is built around. It also means that a crossing is still a moment of vulnerability: even a short water gap is a moment where your units are exposed and an adjacent enemy can contest it, so the shortened crossing lowers the cost of moving but does not remove the risk, and the player who reads which crossings are contested and which are open is the player who uses the archipelago while everyone else is stuck on their home island. That is why the map rewards players who screen the crossings and hold the water lanes rather than players who treat the islands as isolated sandboxes, because the value of an island on this board is the set of short crossings out of it, not the land on it. If you can hold the one or two crossings that matter to your side of the field, you control where the game is fought, and the next sections apply that crossing logic to your spawn choice and your team front. The crossing logic is also why the map pairs naturally with the broader water and naval play, so the island defense guide and the map strategy guide both transfer to this board more directly than they do to a continent, because the crossing is the unit of analysis and the map is built so that crossing decisions come up constantly instead of once or twice.

Where to spawn: reading the wide island field

Spawn choice on the Canary Islands is where the community discussion is most useful, and the advice transfers directly rather than being something you have to re-derive from scratch. The dominant read across the spawn threads is that you should not hug the water. A water-hugging spawn looks safe because the ocean blocks one side, but it traps you against that water and gives you fewer usable crossing lanes, which is exactly the opposite of what this map wants from you, because on a board built around short crossings the scarcest resource is not safety, it is the number of open crossings out of your spawn. The advice that repeats across the threads is that the most important property of a spawn is the number of open crossing lanes it has and the amount of open land it can expand into, so a spawn in the middle of a dense cluster of islands with three short crossings radiating out of it beats a spawn on the edge of the field with one crossing and a wall of water on the other side. The second consistent read is that spawning near named places is a real advantage, not a liability, because being adjacent to another player’s starting position gives you immediate trade and pressure options and shortens the distance to your first meaningful decision, so the threads describe proximity to other spawns as almost a built-in advantage, and a spawn that feels isolated on the wide board is usually a spawn that is costing you more than it is protecting you. The third read is about the width of the field: because the board is a 4000-tile-wide landscape, a spawn on the far left or the far right of the field gives you the long horizontal lanes to expand into, while a spawn in the exact center gives you the densest crossing network and the most neighbors, so the left-right position is the first decision and the center-versus-edge trade is the second. The wide shape means that a spawn near the horizontal center is the highest-leverage position on the board, because it has the most crossings in every direction and the shortest distance to the contested middle band where a team front will form, so if you can get a center spawn on this map you should take it before a neighbor takes the same lane. The reason the center is worth fighting for is the same reason the crossings matter: the center is where the short crossings converge, and the player who controls the center controls the set of crossings that connect the whole archipelago, which on a wide board means controlling the board itself. So spend your spawn selection on the number of open crossings and the horizontal position, and if the center is taken, take the nearest position that still gives you at least two usable crossings, because a center-adjacent spawn with two crossings is a far better game than an edge spawn with a wide, open, and unusable coastline.

The team-rotation identity and the version boundary

The most important version and mode boundary on the Canary Islands is the team identity, and it lands at a team rotation frequency of 10, which the v0.35.0 release notes describe as high in team rotation. That framing matters because it means the map is weighted toward team play in the public rotation, so you are more likely to land on this board in a team lobby than in a solo free-for-all, and the map’s design is built around the idea of a team front more than a solo expansion race. The timing and the specific wording matter for another reason: the v0.35.5 release added two-team spawns, but the named maps for that change were Madagascar, Rio de Janeiro, Bab el-Mandeb, and New Zealand, and the Canary Islands was not in that list. So the honest boundary you should hold in your head is that the Canary Islands is a high-rotation team map rather than a dedicated two-team-spawn map, which means the team games you will actually queue on this board are the normal team rotation games where the two teams take spawns across the field and fight for the center, not a fixed two-team split with the two sides opening at opposite edges the way the v0.35.5 maps do. That distinction is the difference between a map where the front is pre-shaped by the spawn split and a map where the front forms organically from where the two teams happen to spawn, and on the Canary Islands the front forms organically, so the team that claims the center of the wide field first controls where the rest of the game is fought. For a squad, that organic front is both the feature and the risk: you get a cleaner read on where the enemy team will press than you get in a chaotic free-for-all, because the enemy is a team with a front rather than a hundred independent players, but you do not get the guaranteed edge separation of the v0.35.5 two-team maps, so your spawn placement in a team lobby on this board matters more, because a team that spawns clustered on one side of the wide field opens a long flank that the enemy team can thread through the open crossings. The version boundary you should hold is the release date: the map first shipped in v0.35.0 and the team behavior has been stable through the maintenance releases, so the team-rotation identity you are reading about is what is in the game now, and the team spawn formation guide and the tall versus wide guide both apply directly to how a squad should place itself on this wide board. If a lobby is set to teams, the front is the unit of analysis for the whole game, and the rest of this guide assumes that team front as the default reading of the board rather than the solo reading, because the rotation weight makes the team reading the more common one you will actually face.

Scenario one: a twenty-player team lobby on the island crossings

Take a concrete situation so the crossing and front logic has a number attached to it. Assume a twenty-player team lobby, so two teams of ten, on the delivered Canary Islands board with the 4000-tile-wide field and the short crossings. The assumptions are that the two teams spawn distributed across the width of the field rather than fixed to opposite edges, because this is a rotation team game and not a v0.35.5 two-team split, and that both teams are trying to build a front across the horizontal center of the board. Under those assumptions the opening is a race to claim the central band of crossings, and the team that anchors the center first controls the set of short crossings that connect the archipelago, which on a twenty-player board with ten live players per side means the center is contested within the first few minutes because ten players per team is dense enough that the central lanes fill quickly. With ten players per team, a single abandoned crossing lane is not a minor gap, it is a real hole in the front, because the enemy team has enough players that one coordinated push through an open crossing can split your front in half and turn a twenty-player team game into a ten-against-eight problem in the space of a single crossing. So the team play here is to distribute your ten players across the front so that no single crossing is left unwatched, and to treat the central crossings as the highest-value real estate, because holding the one or two crossings that connect your side of the field to the center is what keeps your front intact. The failure mode to avoid is the team that clusters all ten players on the center and leaves the wings open, because on a 4000-tile-wide board the wings are the long horizontal lanes, and an enemy team that threads one of those open wings through the short crossings can attack your back and collapse the center without ever fighting the front head-on. The counter is the distribution discipline: keep enough players on the wings to hold the long lanes and enough on the center to hold the crossings, and trade the center deliberately so the enemy cannot pick where the front breaks. If your team is the ten players and you are down eight to ten in the center, do not throw the remaining center players into the crossing one at a time, because the short crossing makes that a coin-flip exchange; instead hold the crossings with your wing players and trade the center as a coordinated push, because a crossing you hold is a crossing the enemy cannot use to split you.

Scenario two: a solo free-for-all chasing the wide lanes

Now take the solo reading of the same board so the two modes are not confused. Assume a solo free-for-all lobby, the board is the delivered Canary Islands with the wide field and the short crossings, and the assumptions are that the field is populated across the width so you have several live neighbors in every direction and that the center band is the most contested part of the board. Under those assumptions the solo game is about picking your expansion lane and holding it, because the wide field gives you more directions to push in than a tall board does, and the short crossings mean you are not locked to your home island, so you can expand, cross, and re-expand across the archipelago as the neighbors around you rearrange. The practical read for a solo free-for-all on this board is that you should be making an expansion decision in the first minutes and committing to it, because with a populated wide field the window where your opening position is recoverable is short, and by the time you realize a lane is closed, the neighbor who took it has already started to build on it. If your spawn has a clear horizontal lane into the center, take it and grow into it before a neighbor closes the gap, because the center is where the short crossings converge and the player who reaches the center first gets to fight from the highest-leverage position on the board. If your spawn is pinched between two neighbors on the dense side of the field, the solo pressure means you should be planning a trade or an early alliance to buy room, not waiting for the board to open up on its own, because on a wide board with several live neighbors in every direction the board does not open up, it only rearranges, and the rearrangement usually closes the lane you were hoping to keep. The solo failure mode is the same as on any open board but sharper here, because the short crossings give the neighbors more cheap ways to reach you than they would have on a deep island map: a solo player who hunkers on their home island and ignores the crossings is a player who lets every neighbor build up cheap crossing pressure against them from multiple directions at once, and on a board where each crossing is a few seconds of exposure, that multi-directional pressure compounds faster than the player can react to it. The counter is the crossing discipline from the community threads, which is to keep at least one open crossing as your escape and expansion direction and to never let a neighbor hold all of your crossings, because a solo player who holds their own crossings holds the board, and the threat assessment guide and the winning overtime guide both apply to how you read those crossing threats and hold the overtime on this wide field.

Failure modes, counters, and the decision table

The most common way players lose on the Canary Islands is the same as the most common way they lose on any island map, but the wide shape and the short crossings make each failure sharper. The first failure mode is the water-hug, where a player spawns against the ocean and treats the coastline as safety, and by the time they turn to expand, the one or two usable crossings out of their spawn are already contested by neighbors who took the open lanes, and the game is now a defensive war on a board that was designed for crossing and expansion. The counter is the spawn discipline from the threads, which is to choose the number of open crossings first and treat the coastline as a fallback rather than a home, and to commit to the expansion direction in the first minutes. The second failure mode is the cluster, where a team puts all of its players on the center and leaves the long horizontal wings open, and the enemy team threads one of those open wings through the short crossings to collapse the back and break the front without a head-on fight. The counter is the distribution discipline: hold the wings with enough players to keep the long lanes and hold the center with enough players to keep the crossings, so the enemy cannot pick where the front breaks. The third failure mode is the crossing coin-flip, where a player trades the contested crossing one unit at a time and bleeds out into the few seconds of exposure the short water gap creates, and the counter is the coordinated crossing, which is to hold the crossing with your screen and trade it as a push rather than a coin-flip, because a crossing you hold is a crossing the enemy cannot use. The fourth failure mode is the misread of the team identity, where a squad walks into the board expecting the v0.35.5 two-team edge separation and plays the rotation team game with that expectation, and then plays into an organic front that the map does not pre-shape. The counter is the version and mode boundary, which is to read the board as a high-rotation team map with an organic front and to place the team so the wings are held rather than assuming the spawn split holds them for you. Use the table below to match your situation to the right Canary Islands play, and treat the team-versus-solo split as the line between the solo advice and the team advice, because the rotation weight makes the team reading the more common one you will face and the solo reading the one you fall back on when a custom lobby is set to free-for-all, so the table is split on that same line and the rows are grouped by mode rather than by topic.