A unique Winter Duel
The other day, CydeWeys pointed out to me a rather unusual match that he had seen on Winter Duel. We’ve done reviews of quite a few battles on this map, but none have been like this one, between TheLittleOne (playing Aeon), and Djinn (playing Cybran).
The game opens like pretty much any other, with both players getting a couple of power generators, mass extractors and then a land factory. Both players go pretty heavy on the land factories early on, and neither really rushes to upgrade. In fact, neither player upgrades any of their mass extractors at any point, which is definitely not recommended. There is a fair amount of back and forth early game comm-rushing, with Djinn’s slightly more aggressive expansion netting him a fairly small yet important lead over his rival.
However, all of this changes quickly when TheLittleOne uses a tactic I’ve never seen before. By loading a T2 engineer and a T2 mobile shield generator on a transport and dropping them on an inaccessible hill behind Djinn’s base, TheLittleOne is able to gain a decisive advantage. He quickly puts up a tech2 point defense and a tech 2 tactical missile defense. Coupled with the mobile shield and the elevation of the cliff, this defense is basically uncrackable to Djinn’s meager forces.
TheLittleOne makes good use of the T2 point defense as short range artillery, and takes out 2 factories and some assorted other buildings in Djinn’s base. It is only a matter of time after this, as Djinn’s attempt at winning with tactical missiles fails, and his commander is eventually destroyed in a battle with TheLittleOne’s commander, who has ample health to survive the blast.
The tactic that TheLittleOne uses raises some questions. How could a good player stop this sort of attack? If he was reasonably lucky, he could take out the transport with interceptors before it could land. Other than that, he would need to commit an unreasonably large force, leaving his front line overexposed. I suspect that even a very good player would have some trouble coping with an attack like the one employed in this match. In all likelyhood, we’ll be seeing this trick again soon.
Download the replay of this match (v3223).
April 26th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
Djinn actually almost managed to kill the shield. He pulled his units away when it had barely any HP left, and the shield gen itself would have died quickly after that. It’s very creative, but there’s a pretty decent probability that it’ll fail.
Also, there was a window of opportunity for a tacsnipe, when TheLittleOne wasn’t moving his commander around yet (Djinn didn’t have radar and scouting information, it seems).
Another neat trick by TheLittleOne is building a wall formation in a way that could make your opponent think you have a PD set up:
wwwww
w
w w
w
But Djinn was clever enough to send a scout.
April 26th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
Having been the victim of a similar tactic on a different map I’m glad to see it’s still effective even against the big dogs, lol.
April 26th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
“In all likelyhood, we’ll be seeing this trick again soon.”
Especially now that you’ve highlighted it ;)
April 26th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
Well, as I’ve stated before, strats come and go as the game gets played longer. They spread around the community until there’s a defense that makes them no longer as effective as they were, and then people move on to something else. The fact that he built TM defense under his mobile shield says a lot about how TML sniping has evolved and how common it’s become. Something like this could be the thing that keeps people from sending their ACU forward, leading to build orders revolving around keeping the ACU at home, and so the cycle continues.
April 26th, 2007 at 10:51 pm
as others pointed out, at the point when Djinn fired 3 tactical missiles in an attempt to kill the shield gen/t2 PD, TheLittleOne’s commander had been completely stationary (and within range of the TML). If he had fired the missiles at the ACU rather than wasting them against the aeon TMD, it would have been game over.
April 27th, 2007 at 8:07 am
@T2A: “strats come and go”. Yes, but the good ones then come back again at the most unexpected opportunities. :-)
April 27th, 2007 at 10:09 am
Is it really so unique? The very first time i played this map against my friend, i was getting flattened and was forced to try to think out of the box, so i attempted pretty much the exact same thing as littleone, granted, i really sucked at the game then as i’d only been playing it for a week or so, and had let my friend get decent radar, plus i wasn’t cybran (stealth would have helped) so of course he busted me after only a few minutes of my units having touched down and gotten to work.
I’m honestly surprised that this is a big revelation right now though, sure it’s not all that conventional, but to really knock everyone’s hats off in surprise? It’s not all about barging through the front door, especially when the terrain lets you be tricky.
Artillery was key to his defense there, i was aeon, and if memory serves me correctly i too had a mobile shield gen which he smashed.
In high ranked winters duel games, is artillery really even an option? If you can afford to just get one going, i think it could be quite effective because the map is so small, correct me if i’m wrong though, i’ve only played winters duel a few times, and that was before i started to become more aggressive.
I was listening to the shout cast, and when deman announced what littleone was upto i wasn’t too shocked.
April 27th, 2007 at 11:20 am
Morblitz: I guess you’re more creative than most. I’ve watched dozens of replays of matches on Winters Duel between top players and I’ve never seen a game unfold like that. It wasn’t just the corner drop. It was that battle completely stopped in the middle for awhile.
April 27th, 2007 at 11:22 am
Hehe, nice to see it here :)
It is a nice tactic indeed, but if I would not stupidly waste my first three tactical missles on it (no clue what I was thinking, I paniced a bit) I would have won or at least drawed.
April 27th, 2007 at 11:46 am
As mentioned in the commentry, he deffinatly could have tac sniped earlier and no its not that much of a new tactic since it was highlighted the other week or so by brainiac doing it on eshez successfully.
What was new was the shield going with him and buying the time to build tech2 stuff. Normally its a T1 engy drop and fast building pd’s.
Good game after all and TheLittleOne is one of those players that reacts and thinks when most people are admiting defeat.
April 27th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
Cyde: I suppose it just becomes ingrained in everyones minds on that map. Control the map control the map control the map. So you get these furious battles involving commanders going on in the centre that really takes all of players attention, sort of narrow visioning them when it comes to thinking about tactics that may take the enemy off guard. Usually because someone is always going to come at you, you have to fight fire with fire or pull something nifty to make them drop map control as their top priority. I guess that’s what’s even more shocking, that the way the map is normally played was just forgotten about completely at one point. On such a small map with only one real path, you probably don’t expect to be fighting stuff BEHIND your base, but thats why it’s so dangerous. Take advantage of peoples mentality of certain maps and you can probably do a lot of damage.
Deman:I agree, and huge props to littleone actually pulling that off, depending on what your enemy has in his base (an abundance of patrolling interceptors will make any transport attempt very difficult for example) it can be tricky to start and sustain, and maybe took a fair bit of attention from littleone to make sure nothing was going wrong. He deserved to win that match.
April 27th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
I just tried this, also on Winter Duel, and it worked perfectly. Of course, I couldn’t quite do it as quickly because I’m not as skilled at economy management, but once I got two extractors upgraded I sent some interceptors to patrol over his base, saw there was nothing near the hydrocarbon, and dropped two T2 engineers and a mobile shield there. Luckily PDs build quickly with two T2 guys, so I soon had a T2 PD and four T1 PDs to keep the Mantises at bay. After the game the dude said he didn’t see that coming at all; he’d been worrying about the mass of Aurora and Fervors on the frontline and had been building T2 PD in the chokepoints. He saw he was beat so he just walked his ACU into the five PDs.
I’m curious to see how prevalent this strat will become… Or if it even has a chance. If you have interceptors patrolling your base, the transport probably won’t even make it in. That’s the only real counter I can see at the moment, because it’d take a lot of PD in your base to cut through a mobile shield and then take out anything built under there.
April 27th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
I use the same type of strategey on open palms every time someone leaves themselves open to it(nearly every game I play). You transport drop on the cliffs by there starting position, build some pds within range of there factorys(really nice if it’s there teching factory) and laugh.
April 27th, 2007 at 7:39 pm
The beauty of uncommon tactics is that players may overshift when countering one of these tactics, thereby creating a weakness somewhere else. A very glorious see-saw.
April 28th, 2007 at 2:54 am
Ivan, you make a very good point. I’m counting on my next opponent over-defending against a push on his spire that never comes. Meanwhile my land rush overruns him the old fashioned way: straight through the front door.
April 30th, 2007 at 12:32 am
i just used basically this same tactic as i was losing terribly to some random player. despite that he could killed me easily, he held off (i think because he thought he had it in the bag)… and so i flew behind his base just like this on winters dual and blew him away with a tml.