I think many people have a pretty limited view of what a strategy is.

As an illustration, I'll describe what I had hoped (but didn't get) to do vs CKCSS.

My opinion is that Lichen is the most stratable map we played in the QR. Lots of points in play. It's the first game of the match: big loss and morale suffers, big win and Mr. Momentum is at your back, close game and it's a morale push. All good reasons to focus on lichen.

I expected to have 5 players versus CKCSS's 7, I expected Raz to cap, and I expected something deadly dull from him (most likely a two flank rush, but maybe something else.)

First decision is pure gut check: do I want to play for an outright win or a (more or less) draw? It's QR. We've a got an untried team, some of whom are in their first MWC ever. Playing for a draw is dull and boring. Let's try to win the game. It's more fun that way, plus I can learn something about my team. (Later in the tournament, I might make a different decision.)

How to do that?

If it was an even numbers game (7v7) I'd probably have planned for a BC game (played for a material advantage). I'd love to discover that my team can slug it out with an opponent of CKCSS's caliber, or, if CKCSS is unexpectedly tricky, how well we can do at adjusting. If I plan for a BC, though, I'm definitely setting some of my guys up to 2v1 or even 3v1. They'll get clicked apart. Fuck that.

Alright, a flags win then. They'll probably defend two, but I doubt they'll (solidly) defend three. How to find and pocket that easy flag? Easy enough: get a substantial ghol pack and give it to a smart player. Someone who will find the low hanging fruit, collect it, then use any survivors in an intelligent manner.

Will they let us win a 4 flag game? LOL!!!!! How many flags do I want to win with, then? Could I get away with tagging 5 first? Probably not, at least not against CKCSS. That gives them the absolute maximum amount of time to talk to each other and coordinate. I'm quite confident that they will do that well, and allowing them time to do it at leisure is not in my best interest. Gonna have to be six then. (Big decision there, and it also answers the complementary question: how many flags do I want to defend? The answer is one, but I'll leave it to the reader to work that out for himself.)

While my flag napper is out doing his thing, they'll be trying to get my flags. I only want to defend one flag, so I could let them tag two for free. If I do that, though, I'm setting us up to suffer a five flag loss. Do not want.

That leads pretty directly to a solid defense on one flag, and a cheap defense on another. Skipping the boring map analysis, the solid defense (a balanced group w/duff) goes on the most defensible flag for my side (nw or se), and the cheap defense (many thrall and a duff) goes on home. (Some of the map analysis isn't boring I guess. The temples are not a bad choice of defense point. Defending them with thrall is risky though, because enemy wars can hit them at nearly the same time that friendly thrall do. They are also very unhappy places to be vs a puss rush, which I considered the most likely CKCSS strat, because ghols can swarm all over them and pick you to pieces. A big plus is the infinitely abusable healing platform, and for a terries game I might well have tried to build a plan around healing abuse.)

That much is pretty well common to playing for either a draw or a win, but now things diverge rapidly. It is time to build an offense!

I will not stipulate that CKCSS can, player for player, bc us, but I won't claim that we can do it to them either. I must admit that I would expect WD to lose a bc contest vs CKCSS.

Does that seem nonsensical to you? It isn't! A bc contest is a war of attrition. You win it by creating, then exploiting, a brief local advantage. There are many kinds of advantages to play for: material advantage (we have more wars), mobility advantage (we are faster, so can pick the time and place), terrain advantage (arc me up hill, n00b), structural advantage (we have puss, you don't, tough noogies!), analytical advantage (there's five us here, mate, and we're watchin j00), so on, and so on. (Each individual player is a set of such advantages and disadvantages unto himself: when you put him on a team he becomes another such set). If done successfully, it initiates a positive feedback loop: the second iteration is easier than the first, because the enemy has less material to fight back with.

I would expect CKCSS to win that kind of contest because I suspect that they can more gracefully coordinate to create and exploit a fleeting advantage. They chatter more. They hand each other unsolicited units, but much needed, units more often. That kind of thing comes with time and pracice, and they've had more of both. If we're going to win the game, we'll have to create an advantage for ourselves. We need a plan!

My intention was to create a triple advantage on one part of the field, probably in the middle, perhaps on a flank, about three or four minutes into the game.

The first part of the advantage that I wanted was material. In service of that, we were going to do two things. We were going to keep a concentrated force of similarly mobile units somewhere (hi rush), and we were going to encourage the opposition to spread out (by not allowing them to see anything other than the cherry picking gholpack.) Would they have sniffed out our hidden rush? Would they have come together to fend it off? Where? Perhaps, perhaps not.

The second part of the advantage that I wanted to create was analytical. That rush would have been evenly split between leadbelly, propaghandi, and kalmar. Each would have had three wars and a puss, and I'd have had the fourth puss. Could we have set up an won a 4v1 before the opponent could respond? Perhaps, perhaps not.

The third part of the advantage that I wanted to create was psychological. This is the really amusing part of the plan. CKCSS got wighted to hell by RMA. I expected them to be very wight sensitive (their chat in the actual match bears this out). I intended to enhance that sensitivity by using "WIGHT!!!!!" as a battle cry. I also intended to delay healing our wights as long as I possibly could, in order to give them as much time as possible to settle on two conclusions: we had wights (reinforced both by the fact of our gholpack, which they had already seen, and the fact that we are apparently camping), and that we did not have puss. I wanted their chat filled with false and useless things like "they have wights", "watch out for wights", "the fags are camping." Most of all, I wanted them believing with all their hearts that we had no puss. I did not want them saying things like "find their rush quick." Would that have worked? Who knows.

I thought that plan had a fair shot of actually producing at least one of those three advantages, and that my team would be able to exploit it. If so, we could win the game. There are some pretty ugly disadvantages built in too, though. For instance, it leaves me responsible for all of the defense on both flags. Anyone on CKCSS could beat me like a drum if they attacked me.

That introduces the last bit of my plan. My intention was to time multiplex one or two of our players. At one phase of the game they are both part of the rush, but later they are running defense.

Summary:

No way in hell we win a BC/react contest 5v7 vs CKCSS on lichen. Can imagine winning by employing dark and evil plan. Would have loved to see how it came out.