After playing through the pools of maps all weekend they dont seem so bad in general. Yes, sometimes golds and stones end up more forwards than I would like, or its a bit harder to wall yourself off, a bit unbalanced at times, but usually workable.
Maps with frozen lakes though are complete crap to play and should be taken out of ranked for now, until they get fixed. I had 2 games last night on these maps. The first I won after 3 minutes when the other guy realized a giant lake bordered the entire bottom side of his TC. He had space for about 2 farms then the lake, so no way to keep me out. I on the other hand was on the other side of the map deep in a forest with no ice at all. The next there was some ice not too far from my TC which I assume killed my stone, as the closest stone I had was in the middle of the map. Next closest was on the other side of the empty part of the map…not a fun game playing as Teutons 
Not sure if there are other maps that maybe I just never got tossed into that create fairly unplayable circumstances, but these ones really are just a roll of the dice to see who is gonna get boned.