Thursday night, Karkand, Daqing

[SgtHoman]

Daqinq was fun as it always is, even though i got on a great squad and was then disconected. Man, i hate that bug sooooo much. Anyway, once I got back in i had to switch sides to the chinese, but still a fun round trying to keep the west oil field and refinery blue.

But that's not what this post is about.

When the map changed to Karkand, i hopped into Beatnik's squad on the US side. After a few minutes though, no one stepped up to be a commander. We needed one badly, in fact Beatnik kept on saying that we needed one and was wondering why no one was stepping up to it. I've only done CO a few times on that map, in fact only a few times at all, but he had a full squad so I figured i'd try my hand at sending our troops out.

First of all, nice job all of the SLs for trying their best to do what I had in mind. One of the things i noticed i need to work on as CO is communicating my ideas clearly. Thanks for trying to work with me instead of just generally telling me to piss off, which when I thought about it, is what I might have said to me.

Once we had taken over teh entire west side of the map is where i got stuck and made the biggest mistake. I set up the river battle and tried to make rediculous attempts to break through their line. That hardly ever works, and i wasted alot of tickets trying it. Then I had the (I thought good) idea to back off, and let them take the train accident back. This gave us the advantage for one of shooting them as they came across, and also mowing them down as they tried to advance on our other western positions.

I think it would have worked if I had given my SLs a better idea of what i wanted to do. A few squads got the picture, but i still had others who tried to hold onto the Train Accident and who didn't back up enough. we eventually got driven back to the suburb, but the squads I had defending that area just would not give it up, i was amazed how long they held on to it. Our tickets stayed at a steady -50 to the MEC, but once we drove them back across teh river, they lost quite a bit, and in the last minutes we were within five tickets. I ordered the troops back a little bit, so we didn't take the train accident back. It was too little too late, though, and we slipped back to -20 and stayed there for the rest of the round.

A hearty thanks to the men, though, for bearing with me and sticking through to the end. I thought it was still a pretty good round- I just took a risk because i didn't want a boring river standoff the entire game.

[DrunkenSoul]

Daqing was horrible, i recieved too many presents from Mr. Santa Claus.

Karkand was a blast, even though squads on the MEC side were not listening to our commander when he repeatedly told all squads to move back to the eastern side.

My squad did a pretty good job in the beginning of the round holding that hotel flag as long as we could until we were told to pull back.

[James315]

I was on the MEC side, and I could see the effects of your plane to cede the Train Accident, though I didn't know whether it was intentional or not. It looked intentional. MEC was doing very well prior to that, with about a 70 ticket lead, but after gaining the Train Accident, MEC started to lose its lead until we about broke even. I told my SL what was up, and I think other SLs started petitioning our CO, and he eventually told us to back off and let you guys have the Train Accident back. Then our lead started to recover and we won. The squad I was in mentioned that it looked like neither team wanted the Train Accident.

[Beatnik]

You did a good job on Karkand Homan. Especially the little Train Accident Tango we had with the East. It was my bad for trying to break through to the Factory repeatedly. We just could never get all the resources we needed (i.e. all the UCB armor) to make a solid punch through their armor on the east.

You're almost always going to have a squad or two resist the plan to pull off the train station, especially with new SLs playing. Having the high ground at the suburb creates (literally) an uphill battle for spawning MEC at the Train Accident, and always results in a ton of kills for the defenders.

BTW - we were down almost 200 points just after you took over. Bringing the game within 5 points is an accomplishment.

Pushing back to take the Train Accident at the very end actually gave us a fighting chance, just because so many of their guys were 'exposed' on the middle northern bridge and their shoreline. In hindsight, we probably should've taken it, gotten kills, then pulled back right away.

Either way it was a good game. Nice job.

[Santa]

I was in beatniks squad and i was talking about how we should just pull everyone back to the square, suburb, and hotel. Then about a minute later beatnik told me that that was exactly what Homan was doing.

About the uphill battle beatnik was tlaking about. The usmc not only have advantage in terms of uphill at the suburb, but if you pull everyone back tot he confines of the square, you have the height advantage there as well. Everywhere the MEC attempt to attack at, they have a considerable disadvantage in terrain and the fact that your on defense rather than on offense.

[Kilrogg]

Which is why imo we need bleed back in Karkand >< Teams don't even have to try and capture CPs they can just sit at a easily defendable CP and get kills

[Santa]

Originally Posted by Kilrogg

Which is why imo we need bleed back in Karkand >< Teams don't even have to try and capture CPs they can just sit at a easily defendable CP and get kills

And whats not tactical about getting the superior defensive position?

[Kilrogg]

Originally Posted by TG_Santa

And whats not tactical about getting the superior defensive position?

You don't even have to worry about capping flags or defending multiple points at once. The bleed stops the moment USMC gets one flag. For example they can just take the Suburbs and camp it for the whole round and win because it's easily defendable.

[Santa]

Originally Posted by Kilrogg

You don't even have to worry about capping flags or defending multiple points at once. The bleed stops the moment USMC gets one flag. For example they can just take the Suburbs and camp it for the whole round and win because it's easily defendable.

Even if they did that, theyd be a huge arty target and a sane MEC commander wouldnt attack that base at that moment because it would be suicide. I think the bleedless style we have now makes it so more COs try to create ruses and try to bait the other team into falling into a trap of attacking a very hard to capture point. A good example of this would be the US having the suburb, square, and hotel, (A difficult set of flags to get to begin with) and letting the MEC come to them. The MEC CO then has to recognize this and come up with a ruse of his own. This creates an environment where you can have very clever and creative strategies, rather than strategies that force you to get any random flag, even if its not very defensible, just to stop or gain bleed.

It would be very difficult to have creative strategies with a setup where you need 4 flags to stop bleed. MEC can hold their 4 easily, and the USMC would have a difficult time getting 4, let alone holding them and then gaining back the lead. Not to mention that this would make the river battle more likely. I think people like the bleed beacuse their turned off by the word "Kill zone", which is just a fancy way of saying that you have a better defensive position, can kill easier, and thus create something very close to a " ticket bleed". Ill just start callling them "Defense Zones" now

Im probably in the minority for people that think bleed is bad for karkand, but i just think it will throw creative strategies completely out the window for this map.

[Beatnik]

It can still allow for creative strategies, just not these particular creative strategies.