If you cap a rabble game, you're best off going with one of The Two Myth Strategies: Go Your Ways or All Mid. Ten years into the game, most players recognize the contingencies that evolve from those strats. Some players know what to do about them. A handful will notice what is happening and respond accordingly. At this point, it's fair to say that a majority of players will respond to an order to deal with a contingency that they recognize once it has been pointed out to them.

If you go beyond The Two Strats to something wild, like All North, then hordes of players no longer have any idea how the game is likely to flow. They are entirely dependent on you, their cap, to direct their efforts. They expect you to lead them.

(Actually, each of them expects you to lead the entire team in such a way as to maximize his personal ratios. Many players ar now immine to the "pssst" and even the "hey!" Very few, though, are immune to "units detached." (Yes I am fully aware of the irony inherent in the fact that it is me writing this. I relish it. I owe each of you thousands of ignored chat messages. AHAHA HHHAHA BWAHHAHHAHAHHAA...Whoa, headrush.))

It's pretty obvious that there are a lot of other things to try. A couple of the more common freak strats are a hidden flank on desert (which is a trap), or a ghol pack around the far north of the river (a flanking maneuver). Which ones you can pull off depends on you and your team.

It's obvious that the quality of communication has a big impact on the outcome, but another critical factor is how much patience you and your teammates have with each other. Learning to deal with the contingencies that flow from a strategy--the opportunities that it is likey to create, the threats that it entails--is likely to involve a lot of undignified losing. This is why Myth has become strategically stale: the majority of the players want to win this game right now, they cry like little babies when they don't, and it doesn't even occur to them to try to learn something from from the loss.

Rabble Games - Day To Day Mything

Currently, the only players that I am aware of who routinely insist on trying nonstandard strats in rabble games are Ruin and Se7eN. I've seen you all flame them to hell for it, and call them n00bs. Se7eN is laughing at you for being brain dead idiots: I've heard it on team speak. Ruin probably is too, but he might just be torturing you.

Raz will make the effort now and then, but I think he's just exhausted. I was pretty disappointed to see him using rabble strats in the match vs RMA though. CKCSS is certainly capable of better stuff than that. Step it up Raz!

I see signs that THOR is heading that way too, but he is bottlenecked by the need to communicate in--well--his own special way. If he is capping you in a rabble game, notice that he is getting pretty good at telling people where to go. He's always had a good eye for the game flow, which he is getting better at communicating to his team. If he THOR's you , then there's a better than even chance that you really did have your head up your ass. (look for the words NOOB, TUTORIAL, and ANUS. They closely reflect the degree to which he believes you to have been viewing your own innards. We now know that the word GATA relates to your ability to handle units, rather than how aware you are of the game.)

Nemesis gave up on rabble teams a couple of years ago. Seeker's gossip column mentions infighting on Nem's team. I can only hope that it comes from losing while attempting something clever. Give em hell nem!

On behalf of everyone who ever tries anything unusual in a rabble game, I say this: The difference between an unusual strategy and a shitty trade is almost entirely the quality of the team. I'll make it clearer: Se7eN' trades don't suck, YOU do!

TCOX - Juggernaut from Hell (NERF! NERF! NERF!)

I'm not really sure of the extent to which Arzenic or Rabican rely on pre-imagined game flows (ie, strategies). That combined team--and the separate teams from which it came--is full of very game aware chatterboxes. If they cared to try a double back flip with twist and tuck, they have an excellent chance of pulling it off. Unfortunately, their players are also frigging BC machines: they don't have to bother if they don't want to.

12 Tasks - We Can Do Anything We Put Our Minds To

A stable core, excellent players, solid cap. They actively discuss strategy, and they practice incessantly. I'm REALLY looking forward to seeing what they do. I will be profoundly disappointed if they don't try six hidden flanks and a sacrificial goat at least once each match. It would greatly please me if Adrenaline was the goat.

Anal Bleachers - No, Really, This Will Fucking Work

Plenty of potential to win games, obviously, but the strategic situation is pretty complex. There is no core here, which bodes ill in that regard. I frankly don't have much hope for them. They were certainly dull in QR.

There ARE two guys on this squad that have The Strategy Bug: nemesis and browning. If either of them intends to make things interesting, then they might be able to get somewhere by subverting each other, plus Noodles and Flatline. Otherwise, best of luck to you!

Wu Tang Clan - Uh, guys?

Ducky is certainly devious and knowledgeable enough to imagine some trick shit. His team is new, though, and I don't see any practice happening. I suspect that they will have to use this mwc as a trust building exercise, and just let the strategic elements go by the boards. I do hope that Ducky tries to push them just a little down the strategy path, though.

CobraKongCommandos: Castlefight Series - ALL MID!

I've long considered Raz one of myth's best captains, but he's grown lazy. BC did a more than competent job of dismantling us yesterday, but he had no cause to get clever about it. I hear that, after our match, they attended the 12 tasks school of getting pwnt--a curriculum with which a great many teams will become acquainted--and that's not much of a thing. If that led to infighting though, well, that would be bad.

CKCSS has a captain that I know is capable of some true evil. They have a backup captain that I suspect is capable of serious mischief. There's a stable core of solid players, and a contingency of top notch mercenaries. The only things that could hold this team back from a thorough exploration of the strategic side of the game would be care and trust. If that happens, on your own heads be it.

The Syndicate - Care Card is Trump

The most impressive victory in the QR for this team is the one vs TBH, but you'll have to read what I say about TBH to see why I think that.

There is plenty of myth awareness on this team, and the core is as stable as helium gas. With a couple of exceptions, the players are MWC only. This team ought to be capable of a little stunting, but i'm afraid it won't even try.

Hannibal: the accumulated myth experience of your players, their faith in each other, and their trust in you are valuable assets. You might be able to reap some big dividends from those assets by trying something a little amusing every match.

Wacky Delly - Frankenstein's Team

Autumn Demon constructed this team from body parts he found lying around on the ground. We have no history with each other--in fact, many of our players haven't got much history at all. I'm the cap, and he recruited me specifically for that job.

We did nothing particularly adventuresome versus RMA--but compared to most of the strats that people used in the QR it was wild and crazy shit. Strategically, RMA did exactly what I expected them to do at every moment of every game. They're a BC/Flex squad, and since they were shorthanded versus us they really couldn't escape that way either. The strats worked as intended. *yawn* I wasn't gonna do anything clever versus mic either.

Oh, the plans I had for CKCSS! Sadly, they were five player plans and we only had four, so I reverted to the four player trades and splits that I intended to use versus RMA and MIC, they weren't nearly good enought to overcome CKCSS's many advantages over us, and we lost. I have, however, discovered that there are at least three people on my team who 1) show up, 2) pay attention, 3) keep it together even after being thoroughly trounced twice. A mad strategizer can do a lot with guys like that Smile

(Just as an amusing historical note: what I intended to do on lichen was battle cry WIGHT!!!, delay our heals for 2m, defend either both east or both west flags, then puss rush through the mid. It would have been much more entertaining than what actually happened. Oh well.)

Myth Blooper Allstars - Flat Feet

I'm afraid I don't see anything happening here strategy wise. I think THOR could do something entertaining in that regard, but he sure didn't show it in the Lichen game vs ABS. Looks like Rodek1ll is their cap, but I'm sorry to say that I've never gotten the slightest hint from him that he is interested in clever plans. MBA is doomed to be a BC/adjust team, I guess. Shame really.

The Nine - Holy Shit, They're Winning!!!

I watched the films of IX vs WTC in the hope of discovering a new strategic phenomenon, and those hopes faded as I watched games one and two. The strategies that Bartek used were certainly competent, and a shade more intelligent than all mid, but the surprise for me was that IX was able to take full advantage of their superiority in number of players. Before that match, I'd have thought Ducky could take them down 1v7. It is not so. These guys showed more teamwork and coordinated BC than anyone has any right to expect.

What truly delighted me, though, is game three. Bartek had both the wisdom and the cojones to call out a full camp. His team had the discipline and faith to do it. Well done!

There's some potential here, I think. I suspect that they're limited in their strategic options by their relative inexperience, but I might be just as wrong about that as I was about their BC potential. I do hope they make the effort. Now that Oxi's on their team, Bartek has a reliable person to hand "thinking" jobs to. (You might want to tap him for devious plans too Bartek. I think you might find that Two Smoking Guns is useful in that way as well.)

The Twisted Brotherhood - We Fucking Care!

Another team from nowhere, and they are coming together with blazing speed.

I realized one day that they were using teamspeak and coordinating with each other closely. This happened in a putative FFA Gimble KOTH, and what they were coordinating to do was prevent me from winning the game. Fascinated that anyone cared enough to cheat in an FFA, I hung around for many games. At that point their skills and teamwork weren't all that good, but they still managed to hold me down to 2nd place finishes.

Since then, they have practiced diligently on both pm.net and m.net. It shows. In a rabble game last week, GeneralX conclusively proved to me that his team can now execute a less-than-obvious strategy by playing FR Lichen for a 5 flag win. In three successive games, I found my team in the position of either taking that 6th flag or losing. Good stuff!

I've been so fascinated by this phenomenon that I've talked to GeneralX several times, and to some of his team too.

GeneralX: I respect what you are doing, but you are making a serious mistake. You are training your team to rely on you entirely. If you do not let them off the leash, then you are going to get absolutely rolled by every decent BC/adjust team that you come up against. You simply cannot micromanage six players at a time. You are crushing their initiative. STOOOOOOOP IIIIIIIIIT!

Order of HPak - Band Of Brothers

I love you guys, I really do. Here's some advice that I hope you'll take in the right spirit.

Let Zak cap. Not only does he care a trillion times more than the rest of you combined, but he has a perspective on your players that none of the rest of you can achieve: their potential value as cut throat mythers. He's quite aware of the nasty little tricks that your players have mastered too, which I will refrain from spelling out in the hope that he is able to exploit them for MWC game glory!

You have remarkable team unity. It's the real deal, and it's pure gold. You're also a pretty experimental, devious bunch (eheheh). You have a team that would almost certainly have more fun, and very likely improve its performance, by trying some genuinely wild strategies. Do it guys, you know you wanaa!

I've skipped a lot of teams. Maybe I'll get to them later.