Thursday, August 12, 2010

NPPL DC Semis/Finals Breakouts

I thought some of you might be interested though in all honesty there's nothing special here. No super secret breakout. No unique insights nobody else had but we did do a few things some of the other teams didn't and vice versa, of course. The places where most of the differences, and the decisions, were made was on the wires and how aggressively to press the middle and get into the U.
The dark blue shading indicates our basic OTB primaries. For example we decided we wanted to play the snake corner SD despite all the guns that could put paint on it. We wanted to have the widest possible gun to work the edges of the snake side MT and MC as we pressed to get into the snake. (Efforts across the field to take the snake OTB failed more often than they succeeded.) The corner SD could also shoot D2 and play the gap between the U & the 50 Dorito which was important against Dynasty. With the C feeding the snake surrounded (MT, MC, SD) it provided multiple options for getting into the snake as well. Additionally we had a primary run to take the C OTB--see blue dash line--that mimicked a corner run but dipped inside the SD and used the C to block incoming paint. Our Home shooter laned snakeside, the blue circle was a floater with differing primary lanes and the last two played the carwash down the D-wire and the D-corner. Two of the primary runs had delays to allow the shooting of separate lanes. Snakeside MC shot over the carwash looking for careless over the top play as well as in an effort to drop paint on the CK, where players often delayed before taking the corner. Our carwash corner held up to shoot a lane thru the U looking to catch a player moving to the snakeside MT or someone shooting a similar crossfield lane. Home shooter immediately after shooting initial lane went upfield to the center MT. That left the floater free to seek targets and lanes of opportunity although he also had a priority to play D-side if we dropped anyone on that wire. The green arrows indicate the basic secondary moves; the blue lines most of the early shooting lanes and the orange line represents Alex Fraige's run to get into the 50 dorito or U. (As mentioned in the DC Challenge recap post a couple of days ago.)
The biggest differences OTB were whether or not to delay moves to the corners (some teams were comfortable skipping the snake corner though most everybody wanted to fill the D-corner at some point); delay the move to D1 (as everybody was pounding that gap) and whether or not to go to the U early or use the center MT to launch a counter.
Nothing real fancy. Mostly just about playing smart paintball, executing a little better than the other guy and pressing home the advantage if/when you had it.

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