MS Bitburg layout

This post will be limited to discussing some basic shooting options OTB (in keeping with recent How-To xball posts) because anything else would surpass my boredom threshold and your attention span. But before we get started there is also a disclaimer and a recommendation.

Disclaimer: actual position of bunkers extremely important and your results may vary--if the field is poorly set-up. And while I claim to almost always be right there is a statistically negligible margin of error involved in any claim.

Recommendation: check out Warpig's virtual fieldwalk as it can be helpful in visualizing the angles and lanes. If you haven't seen it before you've been missing out.

The Bitburg layout has fairly limited breakout options so with a little creative guns up play it should be possible to both keep the opponent guessing while giving yourself a little extra laning help. Looking at the field diagram there are 6 shooting positions. Beginning with 3 & 4, the home shooters, each side has two predominant shooting lanes. Snake-side they are inside and outside the line of pins. D-side they are inside and outside the MT. The snake-side outside lane is a pick'em lane in that a runner can be going either corner or snake and the distance between them forces the shooter to pick a primary target. The same is true of the D-side inside lane in that a runner moving thru that lane is either going corner or D1. The most difficult of the 4 "home" lanes is the inside snake-side lane where the shooter must be fast and accurate. For anyone who can get it consistently they can deny an OTB move into the pins and potentially catch sloppy runners going either corner or snake. (I say sloppy because running well defined lanes ought to force the shooter into the pick'em dilemma.)

Positions 2, 5 & 6 are dead zone spots. A dead zone is an area seemingly out in the open but largely "invisible" (or only exposed from very limited points). Playing a dead zone isn't a free pass however as players are in motion across the whole field. Most of the time it's a matter maintaining a lane but still knowing when to move. (It's also important to sometimes have an assist from a teammate to make a dead zone lane a safer option.) For example, position 5 laning crossfield (snake-side) ought to be matched with a D-side home shooter laning the inside the MT lane. It's important to keep in mind dead zone shooting isn't a stationary option. And a very useful skill is the ability to shoot one lane and be aware of incoming paint from another angle.

Position 1 simply shows one option for using position 2 as it leads naturally into 1 while allowing the shooter to maintain a dominant lane.

The only caveat is to precisely check what the M blocks. It may in fact take some options away and allow for others but in any case needs to be examined with respect to the dead zone positions.

Anyone who plays this layout is encouraged to comment.