Flank: Armies side. When flanking, you would be hitting the enemy from a different direction than it is facing/fighting. Rush: An agressive tactic used to catch enemy units that are too far to retreat to safety using speedier units to overcome them. Ambush: A surprise attack from an unseen waiting area usually cutting off the enmies chance of escape. Part I Strategies. Elements usually contained in an effective strategy: 1). Compatability. Try to know your teamates strengths and weaknesses and decide on unit trades depending on what they/you think they are best handling. Often you will have players that are better to hold and some that are better being aggresive, keep this in mind when you are setting up your splits and initial orders as to keep your players in situations they are familiar with. The map must be taken into consideration here as well. Strategical areas are present on all maps we play, and you should place careful consideration as to who you send where and with what. Heres an example using our team, The 12" Club: Henry: Sucks with everything, and is in NZ. Flatline: Sucks with everything, and is in Australia. Myrk: Sucks with everything, especially being defensive because of his short attention span. Kap: Sucks with everything except melee, and WW2 units. Reg: Sucks with everything, but is American I think. RS: Yes, he sucks bad too, but I think hes American also. Well, ok then. Besides the 12", these boys aint got much to go with. The map is hmmm... let's use Desert Stampede. Sein as how Henry and Flatline are both gunna lag hard cause of thier sucky birthplaces, we'll put them together someplace where they might have a chance to hold the enemy, like the hill on a flank.I would give them half the arcs/warrs/puss/duffs on that flank because they suck with everything and it don't much matter what i give em. Though this might not always be the best case. Some people are much better with just one unit type than three unit types. In fact, maybe I'm onto something here, and I should give Henry the archers and Flatline the duff and warriors. Bah, they suck, don't matter. Myrk and Kap are basically useless unless they rush, so that's what we'll do. Myrk and Kap will get a group of warriors and ghols to rush the opposite flank. Reg and RS can go to the middle and play there because they are Americans and have NO LAG and the best chances at winning an archer/puss battle which often is what middle on desert becomes. Ill give them half the middle archers and warrs n duffs n puss, because they, like Henry and Flat, suck and it dont matter what I give them. Anyway the short of the story is that i gave units that they are all capable(right...) of handling and situations that they maybe best suited for. Also I decided on a three way split to guard all the river crossings on the map. Hopefully you will have more than ... size to work with. 2). Surprise/agression: In our example strategy, we are rushing a flank. Hopefully our enemy wont be ready for it and we catch them before they retreat to a larger, possibly safer group.A rush isn't the only agressive tactic available to us though. We could have sent Henry with a his small band of mixed units to lure a larger enemy flank back towards middle for Flatline to ambush. The main thing is to have some agression someplace. It keeps your opponents resources busy and can often pressure them into some silly mistake. There are many ways to be agressive and spontaneous, be creative. 3). Safety: Try to have as many safeguards as you can. Much of this comes down to basic tactics. Don't send archers far without sufficent protection with dwarfs or warriors or both. Don't cross a river without scouting across first. Have ideas like ... if they rush our north flank, our north goes to our mid, and our mid goes towars our north to combine. Sounds simple, but many teams will just lose all thier flank units to a rush. Having a "base" isn't a bad thing either, a place to go when your outnumbered, or out of artillery, or other things. Think of it as chess. The more possibilities you can think of happening and you can make responses for, the better. 4) Adaptability: This one is sorta in conjunction with safety, but it is more along the lines of the unexpected or unforseen circumstances. It is also a sorta frame of mind. But a strategy that can take a flank loss and still turn it around by quickly adapting to the new situation is somthing that is often a deciding factor in a game. Let's say for example, our rushing flank, meets a rushing flank in our game. What do we do? We adapt. In middle Reg and Rat have an even split on the units. One of them can go to help be the deciding factor in the rush vs rush flank and the other can hold of middle from crossing. Sounds simple right, but why dont people do that stuff more? 5). Point System Cosiderations: MWC has a point system in place to decide match winners. I am not going to go into detail on this, but if I were you, I would definately look at that scoring system. It should dictate the way you play the games after your first game. For example, if you win the first game, you may want to be defensive in the next game, trying to force your opponent into some agressive mistakes. Now of course, this isn't all there is to know about mking a strategy, but hopefully it gives you a little insight. "Ask and ye shall recieve." | Seeing all these new faces prompted the issuing of this guide in the interest of competitive play. Please listen carefully, or die horribly. Here's some terminology (not exact definitions, but you get the idea).