Greetings captains! Welcome to another episode of the Chronicles of Capping where we take an in depth (read: screenshots. lots of screenshots) look at the rigors of captaining a Myth World Cup tournament team. As always friends, we will be following the action from hindsight, where anxiety turns into laughs! Hooray laughs!


This week, our feature captain of the month will be Blade of the Myth World Cup team The Syndicate. Blade (hereafter: blade) took over this week's match from Hannibal, who was away at the time possibly lecturing a bunch of pelicans on the difference between fruitloops and ringworm. It's just as well, though, because blade (hereafter: blad) proved to be a marvelous unwitting subject for our study for three reasons:

1) Syn loses game 2, and nothing reveals more about a captain than how he or she reacts to the agony of a crushing defeat. Also, it's sometimes entertaining. Hooray laughs!

2) Syn chat is hilarious.

3) blad (hereafter: blard) and Syn have a very specific captain-player relationship. Specifically, blard (hereafter: blade, or whatever I want to call him because history is the final judge of people) is the Supreme All-powerful All-controlling Dictator, and the rest of Syn does his bidding. Not even a mighty warrior could take a crap unless it went through blade, first. For us, though, that means we get to see a load of hot capping action! (pictures included)



So sit back, relax, and join us while we embark into the MWC edition of Chronic Captaining!!



UPDATE: JUST KIDDING. I STARTED WRITING THIS ARTICLE, SAW IT TURN INTO A 10 PAGE PROJECT, AND BURNED OUT. BETTER LUCK NEXT REVIEW.

PLANNING TIME

Phase I: Trading Time

Planning time begins. This is the part of capping I like to call "trading time." Usually when I'm trading, I can't read a damn thing that anybody says unless my name's in it. Even then you'd be taking your chances. You could tell me you're going to take a hot bar of soap and a can of whipped cream to my mother's house if I told you where she lived, and I'd probably only say "go south."

Blade with Syn is no different as they start yammering away from the get-go gl's, whilst blade is furiously trying how to figure out how to fit 7 players into, like, four squads. Thanks, badlands.

Phase II: distribute and deploy

After a minute into planning time, blade unleashes his first orders:



note how blade neglects to differentiate between the southern hemisphere, any one of the southern flags, or directly south into the trees.

I find it funny these days that people give east/west/south/north/left/right/behind orders while constantly switching between "south [of your units]," "south [of my units]," "south [central flag]," "south [east of the map]" all the time without even a second word.

Or maybe blade's compass needle just points to the left. I hear tight pants will do that to ya.


Right about this time as blade's handing off units down the line, he comes to something strange.



As everyone knows, lichen has this crazy alric-looking character that can make annoying yellow snowflake bubbles which propel flaming jack daniels to ranges far beyond the ones that get blamed on magma. Now, every captain that doesn't want to hog the cheap ratio glory is faced with finding out who is the best at doing something that nobody ever practices (okay okay, but only THREE times, and that was when I was a LOT younger).

Smartly, blade eschews deliberation in favor of the direct route.



::sound of crickets chirping::


Eventually, tox helps out his captain by ruling himself out.



blade finally makes an executive decision, and then covers his ass:



from now on, if ash nukes you, you can't say you weren't warned! clever thinking, blade.



blade proceeds to direct three more players.

By the way, don't you love it when people have names like "scout" or "dorf" or "north" or something that makes even simple orders confusing as hell? You could be balls deep fighting off a rush or something, and you'll be all like "north, run." then all of a sudden you're giving free tags to red thrall and your teammates are yelling at each other and suiciding and blaming and then coming back the next day with the same damn names and joining you asking for orders. Goddamnit, why can't you all be named, like, "Jeff" or something (ps - just kidding, scout. don't ever change your name to jeff).

Anyway, blade tells them to go mid[dle of the map]. Simple enough.


Next up, notice how blade handles the next command. Sometimes you want people to go just where you want them to go, even if you don't know where that is exactly, yet. When that happens, a great way to accomplish this feat is to give half your units to the player, and follow blade's example here:



See how that works? blade is now free to pick the stupidest zig-zag or sweetest figure eight around the map, and wherever he goes, he has a trusty set of eyes and a back-up rush ready to pummel. The best part is that he never has to give any other orders!! We'll see in a minute what happens with "mid" and "south"-type orders.


Blade gives Asharak a journeyman, a common complement to the dorf/general combo, but blade also decides on a little added insurance:

I give that an 8.5 on the BMF scale of tact

Phase III : Friendly Advice

:30 left in planning time, and blade shifts to the "advice" phase. This is the time for most captains to remind their players not to do anything dumb. Famous captain Rabican recommends "dont die" and/or "dont suck," etc.

Another method for the more Logic 110 inclined is the 'ole "if... then do this" method, as we see blade using here:



Really though, this is just the same form of gentle reminder that's part of the advice phase, which combines  "don't be stupid and leave huge amounts of space in between each other" with "don't be stupid and leave north hanging, either." Which, again, is long for "don't be stupid." Again, tact points! But you get a brown frownie face for clarity.

GAME ON.

Syn releases an impressive war cry, but blade has been too involved in THE PLAN to be able to participate. blade shrugs it off and makes a mental note to contribute something in the future.

Units blast off down their respective paths. Asharak heals puss without incident. All of a sudden...

PHASE I : THE CHALLENGE

The dreaded first few minutes of every game, in that space between first step and first contact, there's this lull where not much action's going on. This is the time when players can opt to fill the space with...

THE CHALLENGE

Whether there's enough on D, whether flags are being tagged fast enough, should so-and-so have such-and-such units, basically there are a zillion ways to say "HEY, GUY THAT IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE WHOLE TEAM, ARE YOU SURE YOU'RE NOT A DUMBASS?!?!?!" If this happens to you, fight the urge to say yes. Stupid question stupid answer, I know, but trust me from experience, it never works.

Of course, sometimes the player is confused, and issues a Challenge in order to cover. When this happens, you must assert your dominance, such as here:


note the subtle approach. The Challenge is disguised as directed to tox, but don't be fooled. All Challenges are meant for the captain.

As we see here, tox's warrs can be found... right on blade's heels, as per orders.


Tox, in the right and sensing the focus, wisely defers.

AND IT'S YOUR OWN DAMN FAULT!

Interestingly, blade doesn't stop there. So far, Scout is the only "lost dog" in dictator blade's master plan. In order to fit Scout back into the puzzle, blade reverts to using the most time-tested, surefire, unmistakable direction system in the history of cartography. Even THOR uses it to break the language barrier. Yep, you guessed it, blade busts out the pencil and draws a line on the map.

note the clever wordplay this time around

blame frumious mob for adding the'w'

sealed off with grace. gj blad

and just for good measure, there's still time for a proper challenge!

PHASE II   CONTACT

The enemy is sighted. Most young teams cease to make/follow orders at this point, and they are simply drawn to battle as per the laws of gravity for all I know. OoH is no exception to this rule, and upon contact frum's orders are sacked, and it's every Hamster for himself in what turns out to be a giant concentration spanning between N temple and mid. The Syndicate, on the other hand, is still locked in on dictator mode, with every player going only as far as blade allows.



So the first step in contact phase, if your players haven't rushed and died in less than zero seconds (expect this behaviour from liger & newskin), is to direct the players that run into... nothing. Myth is a game of units. You need to use more units better than the other team, or else you will lose. It's bad in all cases always to let 30% stand idly by against 0%, which leaves the other 70% to die against 100%.

But, it's not enough (in dictator mode) for players to decide for themselves where to go, instead the 'ole strategic decision between flags or frags is captain's choice. In this case, RD spells out the options nicely, giving the illusion of shared power.



and you know what, I could write a 10-page article this way, but I'm done! fuck this shit!

fuck you blade!!!!~!