Hello folks. Please take a moment to wish a happy birthday to the greatest real-time strategy game there ever was, Total Annihilation, which was originally released 27 years ago, this week.


The front page of our website is largely dormant and most ongoing conversation lives on in Discord servers these days, but it can be assured that mods like TA: Escalation, ProTA, Total Mayhem and TA: Twilight continue to see development and online competitive gaming to this day, and that one of the best ways to check out the community's current progress at honing the metal that is Total Annihilation is to visit our friends at the all-encompassing TA community/online gaming lobby TA Forever!

If you have any old war stories you'd like to share or would like links directly to the best places for the Total Annihilation modding scene, please feel free to leave a comment.

Here be a last-minute call to action: if you're interested in testing your skills against some of the best TA talent, you might want to put your name in for this.

ProTA tournaments run quarterly, run by the dilligent and discerning AidanNaut. There is a list of 10 maps that all tournament games are played on, and each slot is decided by a best-of series of games.

There is a small cash prize for the top 3 placers.

Interested in finding out more, and if you want to enter? Visit this forum post.

After months of work by a group of top end players, the map pack with arguably the highest quality gameplay maps, is here! Maker of the map mega-pack [V] Maps that became the default map pack for years and part-time symbiote TAG_Venom started a new map project with a focus on maps worthy of top level ranked and tournament matches, that will also be great fun for players of all levels. He had help with balancing, bug fixing and indeed map making from a number of members of the TA community.

PRO MAPS is now the map pack used for the ProTA leaderboard on TAF. A huge variety of different gameplay situations on these maps, on all the available biomes, every one of them well balanced for tournament level gameplay.

• Reworks of classic Cavedog maps with well-known imbalances such as Ror Shock, The Bayou, and a new balanced dark version of Comet Catcher (yes, better gameplay than Dark Comet)
  
• Reworks of well-loved 3rd-party maps such as Chilly Rivers
  
• A bunch of brand new maps some of them lovingly rendered by the team especially the one and only TAG_ROCK.
  
• Over 100 top quality maps in total!

This map pack is now available in the vault for automatic download through the TAF client. Note: In the TAF client, you may need to search [PRO] to find them. Haven't got the TAF client yet? Get it at www.taforever.com.

This has been in development and rigorously tested for months now by many players, so it's long overdue for its own news post.

TA Forever is a fork of the main 3rd-party online playing service for Supreme Commander. It has been excellently tailored for the TA experience by longtime SupCom AND TA player Axle1975.

What makes it the best? Here is a very impressive list of very impressive features you won't get on other online services:

• Auto-download of 3rd-party maps when you join a game lobby!
  
• Replay vault with (almost) every game ever played on TAF since Sept 2021 which you can replay through the TAF client!
  
• One-click-replay integration with TADA!
  
• Live replay so you can still watch if you were too late to join!
  
• Late joining so you don't have to rehost a game if someone didn't make it into the battleroom!
  
• Leaderboards for competitive play, and player ratings so you can track your progress!
  
• Main chat for the whole commmunity!
  
• Robust network tunnelling so you don't have to mess with router port forwarding!
  
• Support for multiple mods!
  
• No Ads!

As you can tell by all the exclamation points !!!! we're pretty excited about it.

TA:Escalation has just announced a new Spring release with a new strategy - the ability to select the version of Escalation you want to play. Just the balance and amazing ESC visuals, but only OTA units? Basic is for you. Play all the way up to T4 with all of Escalation's units? Ultimate! Wotan has all the news in this announcement.

Go download it and then, join the ESC Discord to find a game!

Our friends in the Total Annihilation Escalation community have a tournament coming up - the ESC 2021 Championship Tourney! Some details have yet to be finalized but the tournament is scheduled to take place the weekends of August 7th/8th and 14th/15th, with games probably taking place on both the Gameranger and TA Forever platforms. There will be prize winnings available for the top four contenders of the tournament, and dozens of Commanders are expected.


For more information and to gain entry to the tournament, please visit the Total Annihilation Escalation Discord Server!

The first chapters are being written of a project to bring Total Annihilation Kingdoms to a new game engine! The new project, tentatively titled Kingdoms Reborn, is being constructed on the Unity software engine and the first teaser video has been released!


The project is at an early stage but there is very high interest for it within the Total Annihilation Kingdoms community, so feel free to join the TAK Discord server and visit channel #kingdoms-reborn for progress updates!

Time to put on that favorite pair of combat boots and prepare for new battles on familiar terrain! TAG_Venom's long-awaited Total Annihilation mod, ProTA has reached the milestone of its first official release!


From the beginning, the raison d'�tre of ProTA was to take the original framework of Total Annihilation competitive gameplay and make delicate, surgical tweaks to that framework in order to enable new strategies for both Arm and Core that would be viable alongside the battle-plans of yesteryear, while still retaining that original cataclysmic feel. The list of alterations includes:

• Careful, thoughtful and considerate balance changes for both Arm and Core units and structures,


• Assorted gameplay tweaks and bug fixes,


• Quality-of-life improvements including alterations to the construction and unit orders menus,


• Build hotkeys for quick-queueing fresh units,


• Visual improvements including to mini-map dot colors, team colors, plus to unit models and textures!

ProTA has been extensively play-tested during every step of its development by some of the most valiant and legendary of Total Annhilation commanders, alongside the wisdom, advice and support of fellow mod developers from both present-day and our community's past. Your download link can be found at this location and if you need troubleshooting help or would like to arrange an online game, feel free to stop by the #prota channel on our very own TAUniverse Discord server!

Total Annhilation community jack-of-all-trades Postal has returned from a short hiatus and has uploaded a new Total Annihilation Replays commentary!


Continuing his series of uploads for the famous (and remarkably pretty for its age) Total Annhilation map Painted Desert, and featuring A_Novice_ToS & TAG_Mastah opposing TAG_Souledge & Gnug115, this match clocks in around 30 minutes long and goes great with a coffee and a snack. If you haven't already, definitely get your D-Gun ready and aim for that subscribe button!

We have received word that competitive gamers from three different Total Annihilation-inspired game communities are on a collision course!

A series of tournament-style multiplayer matches that have been dubbed the RTS Triathalon will take place on June 5th 2021, that will be casted live on the Forged Alliance Forever Twitch channel, with players from the Forged Alliance Forever, Planetary Annihilation, and Beyond All Reason fandoms taking part across all three separate gaming canvases.


Further information and a list of participants for these glorious battles can be found here, and if you wish to closely follow and discuss the event, there has been an Official Discord set up for the occasion! We would like to wish the Commanders good luck and good shooting.

The Total Annihilation Escalation team recently upped the ante with the release of their Tier-4 collection of ultra-destructive weaponry! Currently available are twenty new units and structures for Arm and Core, enhancing combat on land, in the air, and on the sea! Showcased below are some of the awesome air and naval units that you can expect to play with!


Of course, there are other topics to speak of as well! ESC main-man Wotan has been hard at work expanding the battlegrounds of Total Annihilation with an upcoming tileset and some new maps! The map on the left is entitled Dark Prime Rising and it is the test-bed map for the new Dark Prime tileset. The map on the right is tentatively titled Wotan's Gambit. Both maps promise to provide a fitting canvas for whatever style of gameplay you prefer.


I also have a replay of recent TA Escalation gameplay to share! This quick and explosive match is fought between ESC community members Harald and N3XT_R[A]cE.


High-resolution versions of all these pictures, gameplay discussion, download links and upcoming previews can all be found on the Total Annihilation Escalation Discord server!

Community veteran and your local Ubercrack dealer BLITZ_MOLLOY has opened up shop on his very own Youtube channel for streaming and commentating competitive Total Annihilation games! His channel is entitled Better Than Starcraft and his casts are resplendent with BLITZ_MOLLOY's irreverent brand of humor.

Of special note is his recent Valentine's Day cast, where he added in a bit of smooth jazz to get you in the mood to love TA just a little bit more. Definitely worth checking out!

Another exhibition match recently took place showcasing the Supreme Commander Total Annihilation (or SCTA) project, which featured Forged Alliance community member Boom facing legendary competitive Total Annihilation online player, TAG_ROCK! The footage is over two hours long, so grab a beverage and click below.

TAUniverse would like to extend the warmest holiday greetings to all who will read this message. We hope that your holidays will contain the same spirit of graciousness and good cheer regardless of the things that have happened around us, and hope for good tidings - and good gaming, in the New Year.

If you will allow a flashback and a question, I found this treasured momento while doing some spring cleaning recently, and want to share because I received it as a gift for Christmas of 1999. Do you have any treasured Total Annihilation momentos or holiday season gaming memories that you'd like to share? Feel free to comment on the forum.