shitty rabble myth strategy?

[Zak]

Anyone care to write a guide for capping newbs in rabble 2 team games? Some players are able to manage a positive win:loss ratio when they cap rabble, what advice do they have?

Please include these areas:

• Unit distribution (is it really worth giving bad players any units? Do you give trow to your best players? On a map like Caer, is it more important the good players have the fetch or the soul packs? )

• Flanks (Should you trust a player in a rabble game to be able to pull off a bait and rush with his warr pack? Can your team really pull off a 2 prong?)

• Unit detaching (At what point is it okay to take a player's shit or control it? Many people think never. Obviously MWC is a different animal due to the competitive nature and comraderie)

• Communication (Does it really work in rabble games?)

Feel free to add your own aspects of rabble games that you feel are relevant. I hope THOR weighs in on this subject.

[NewMutator]

I'd say that, if you know anything about the players on your team, you're best off tailoring the distribution to them. This takes some skill though because there's a lot of analysis that goes into this.

For instance, trow on some maps are really not that important, since the objective is to shadow the opposing trow while not losing your own. I think most players can be capable of this. The heavy-hitting artillery in such a case, such as fetch, are better off in the hands of your most skilled players since losing them is a bit more traumatic for the team.

Soulless are good for players that tend to tunnel because of their quick rate of fire. Just be sure they also read chat.

In rabble games you can probably control units. Depends on the situation, of course. I take a more hands-off approach to Captaining though and would rather give players units I feel confident they can use, and want to use.

I think it's ok to give bad players units as long as you make it clear what you expect of them. I don't think giving bad players flag defense is appropriate. I would say limit their unit types and let them tagteam on a flank with more experienced players so they can learn firsthand. It's not guaranteed to always work but at least nobody is completely unhappy.

[Pogue]

Just don't play a 2t game unless there at least 6 ppl in the game you want to play with. Then you don't have to answer those questions.

[Zak]

1. For instance, trow on some maps are really not that important, since the objective is to shadow the opposing trow while not losing your own. I think most players can be capable of this. The heavy-hitting artillery in such a case, such as fetch, are better off in the hands of your most skilled players since losing them is a bit more traumatic for the team.

2. Soulless are good for players that tend to tunnel because of their quick rate of fire. Just be sure they also read chat.

3. In rabble games you can probably control units. Depends on the situation, of course. I take a more hands-off approach to Captaining though and would rather give players units I feel confident they can use, and want to use.

I think it's ok to give bad players units as long as you make it clear what you expect of them. I don't think giving bad players flag defense is appropriate. I would say limit their unit types and let them tagteam on a flank with more experienced players so they can learn firsthand. It's not guaranteed to always work but at least nobody is completely unhappy.

1. Even when its a map with just 1 trow, most players don't know how to properly shadow or avoid getting trapped. You can't give this job to most rabble players.

2. I have never seen a newb use soulless properly. They almost always leave them on some hill and sit afk while trow and fetch demolish the units underneath them. This can make a bigger difference than giving trow or fetch to a newb, sometimes.

3. Some players go ballistic if they even think you touched their units. Others have a philosophy that in rabble games you should never touch anybody's stuff. Often a captain will find that if he wants to win, he will have to take every unit away from a bad/misbehaving player, or micro his units while he is tunnel visioned.

4. Often planning time is so short that once you've distributed units you don't have time to explain jobs in detail and just have to tell players what flank they are on. If you baby a new player you are distracted from the overall game and will not do as good a job as captain.

[NewMutator]

1. you're best off tailoring the distribution to them

2. make it clear what you expect of them.

Maybe that's too vague but I think a lot of problems can be avoided if you "set up your team for success" as GKG would say.

[Zak]

Well this thread is about the subtleties of setting up your shitty rabble team for success over the other shitty rabble team.

[adrenaline]

My philosophy is to give bad players the units that will do the least harm to their own team, or something that won't be game changing if they die. i.e. don't give newbs warlocks... chances are they will auto into your mellee or something at some point in the game... give them a mortar instead... can still auto, but less chance of doing serious damage. Souls should ALWAYS be given to someone competent... they are so so important on most maps. And trow should always be given to someone who knows how to use them, regardless of the map. Trust me, even most decent players are terrible at trowing.
Anyways... sometimes random teams are just brutal... if you can't trust ANYONE on your team with good units... well, just shrug it off and try to put up a good fight.

The quality (poor) of 2 team games during non-MWC season is why I play FFA almost exclusively.

[Zak]

So according to adren, souls, locks, and trow should go to competent people. If you only have one other competent player on the team, should he get 2 trow, 12 souls, and 4 locks?

[NewMutator]

Give us a hypothetical here. How many people on the team. How would you rate them in terms of skill. Or get more specific. Name some hypothetical players (besides noobs) that might be on your team, and a game map/type. Some real examples could ground the discussion. Maybe someone will even get offended, that would definitely add to the discussion, too.

[Zak]

Each hypothetical situation is different. I was thinking someone could write a general guide, that works for most maps. I'm sure GKG and THOR have some grab-bag of rabble game strats and distributions that work for them most of the time. I've found that for me, camping works the best because the other team gets impatient and pushes when they shouldn't, giving us a % advantage that we can utilize to BC them.

Here is an example: You're a captain on dead of winter CTF. You have kidlat, maxell, renwood, dom, blorg, and vieforpower on your team. You ask if any of them can rush, and dom says he can. You realize on a map like this, somebody has to be aggressive and try to take their flag, even if nobody has the skill set to do so. You give him and renwood an aggressive south rush flank with 5 pus. You give the rest of the guys a mix of dwarves/melee/1 pus. As the game progresses, this south flank is stopped by a smaller melee force that possesses a dwarf. You're too busy fighting/managing the other players you can't explain to your offensive flank what they're doing wrong. The opposing team's mid comes to pinch south and your mid is too slow to shadow them. South gets surrounded and engages instead of retreating and surviving. After the fight the other team has a 20% advantage and its a matter of time before you are picked off and they take your flag.

The other team had: THOR (captain), shinco, cremisi, bob, godines, edulus, yolo, rebel

[Zak]

Another hypothetical: you, renwood, ratking, king carnage, and dom are playing caer cadarn dark ctf. You know that fetch are really important, but you also know that soulless are a huge factor on this map as well. Not to mention a spider flank can win a game singlehandedly. So lets say you give renwood and ratking the 8 fetch. Does this mean you have to trust dom and king carnage are going to adequately use their soulless to protect our fetch and/or kill theirs? In this particular game, they kept them on land, next to our fetch, rather than on the water. They also let soulless flank us on our hill, with no opposition, and rain javelins on our fetch. How would you have handled this?

Opposing team is karma (captain), mally mall, thor, and cremisi

[NewMutator]

Yeah, the issue with generalities is that you can always think up exceptions. It's maybe better to make concrete examples.

I'm not sure what I would have done in that scenario. I'm not sure I know a lot of those players. I probably would go into it expecting a loss and just trying to have fun at that point. If you're going to lose, might as well try to use it constructively by working to build the skills of the other players.

[Zak]

Yeah, the issue with generalities is that you can always think up exceptions. It's maybe better to make concrete examples.

I'm not sure what I would have done in that scenario. I'm not sure I know a lot of those players. I probably would go into it expecting a loss and just trying to have fun at that point. If you're going to lose, might as well try to use it constructively by working to build the skills of the other players.

If I am playing to lose I think up a crazy strategy that should not work at all, and sometimes the other team will be so bad that we will win in a dramatic fashion. I have probably won a couple dozen games where my teammates all gave up in the planning time but played on anyways.

However I enjoy playing to win too. That is why I would like to find a way to maximize the potential of my awful teammates without having to babysit them or give too many units to the few players I can rely on.

[Dantski]

First off you need to find out what makes the game most enjoyable to you, is it flat out winning? Is it pulling off ghol bombs/wightings? Is it running around with all 5 trow getting 400 damage yelling "LOL"?

Once you have the answer to that you can plan for your game.

When I captain a team that looks roughly equal to the other (and both are bad) I throw most common sense out the window and do whatever the hell I want. Often I give anyone who asks for Trow or other units, whatever they want. Other times I give less distinguished players more or better units than they are used to (see me giving Father Xmas a rush pack). What units I take can vary drastically, sometimes I'll have flag defence and a pus ghol, other times I'll take mid flank on top of that.

To directly answer your questions

• Unit distribution (is it really worth giving bad players any units? Do you give trow to your best players? On a map like Caer, is it more important the good players have the fetch or the soul packs? )

Bad players play badly with any units, if you really want to win its best to maximise the potential of your best players first. Give them the units they are best with and you will win more than 50% of games you captain. You should be able to leave the good players to do their own thing after PT is over and focus on giving orders/advice etc to the weaker players during the game. As for what units to give them, it depends on the map so can't give a very good general answer. I feel like you shouldn't give them more than 3 types of units and no more than 10-12% of those. Don't give the good players soulless unless you want to lose.

• Flanks (Should you trust a player in a rabble game to be able to pull off a bait and rush with his warr pack? Can your team really pull off a 2 prong?)

Sure you can, it depends on the player and frankly on the opposing players being dumb in the case of a baited rush. 2 prong is actually something I used to do a lot in terries games where there's no need to spread over the map when killing matters more. Just keep an eye on players and make sure they are going the right way. If not tell them once more where to go and if they still don't go the right way take their units. If they complain tell them where to go and only after you've done that give them the units back. If they still go the wrong way just take their units because they are clearly braindead. This is partly why I don't like taking a lot of units sometimes so I can deal with this situation.

• Unit detaching (At what point is it okay to take a player's shit or control it? Many people think never. Obviously MWC is a different animal due to the competitive nature and comraderie)

1. When they have been told what to do repeatedly and ignore you.
2. When they are clearly going to suicide.
3. When they are not moving or AFK.
4. When you have lost your 40% that you gave yourself and decide you need to suicide more units (this only applies to kirk and liger).
5. When someone else has no units and splitting the units up makes logical sense.

• Communication (Does it really work in rabble games?)

Hell yes! One of the biggest differences in LoL (League of Legends) is when one player asks for help and another doesn't. The one that asks for help sometimes will get helped and that'll help them win more often, the guy who says nothing gets less assistance and has a more difficult on his hands. In myth you should be telling people where to go even if it seems obvious, if someone goes the wrong way you should tell them where to go. If someone is outnumbered sometimes they need to know that they should make a fighting retreat or just plain run away ASAP and so on and so forth.


Even if you do everything right as a captain you will not win every game, if you do your absolute best to win you'll come out ahead more than 50% of the time. Law of averages says you'll have winning streaks and losing streaks and sometimes the other captain will be better than you.