PWP: The power of 2

WSNPP: PWP – Edition #5 “The power of 2”

Hello all and welcome once again to another PWP guide. In this edition, we’ll be going back to team battles, the power of 2! We’re going to follow up on guide 2 about the do’s and don’ts of 2v2 and take it to the next level.

Think to yourself, how many 2v2’s have you played (with a random team player you don’t know) and lost. Now ask yourself why? Is it because your teammate isn’t experienced enough? Is he/she playing for the first time? Is your teammate reluctant to co-operate to plans? Is it because you both aren’t co-operating each other? OR is it because of you? Well, it could be all of these or any of them OR it could be none of these questions that fit the reason as to why you failed.

Take this for example: You and a friend are experienced players, you both co-operate and communicate well with each other and you just know all your stuff about Wesnoth. However you still lose the game and you wonder why. Well the answer is, you just did not integrate your strategies with each other. A slight mistake between the synchronisation between two or more players will definitely defeat. How, you might wonder?

(To simplify things say we have 4 players P1,P2,P3,P4. P1 and P2 vs P3 and P4) Well to put it simply, you did not combine your forces. Each player, should, start off evenly out however what happens when P1 pushes on the left side of the map and P2 pushes on the right side of the map? Well most of the time you’d win since you can surround, trap and kill the enemy leaders. It’s a good tactic but what happens when the enemy team (P3,P4) both pushes on the left side of the map. That one army is now going against two armies (P1 vs P3 and P4).

Several things can occur but the most likely case scenario is that players 3 and 4 would win with little or no casualties. Now hang on a sec not all is lost, player 2 still has his army and is advancing with no confrontation on the right side of the map. The leaders are undefended and vulnerable to player’s 2 attacks. You might celebrate, you might feel wonderful and you might win but the chances of that are slim. Why? Well P2 is trying to kill two leaders with just one army (P1 can’t do much at this stage) and P3 & P4 are attacking two leaders with an army the size of two. Seeing the picture here? Whilst P2 attacks the leaders of P3 and P4 with one army, P3 and P4 are attacking P1 and P2’s leaders. P3 and P4 are going to kill the leader faster than P2 kills theirs. Yes both players can recruit more men for defence but the most likely end result is that P1 and P2 loses.

What I am trying to express here is the importance of combining forces and moving as one large force. Strategy won’t be helpful if the enemy kills off one whole army and the last surviving army has to defend and attack two players. Not to mention the combined army may or may not have level 2’s or have units that are about to level. The same goes for 3v3’s or 4v4’s or 3v1’s etc. No matter what mind blowing strategy you have, if your friend loses his army to a giant rolling ball of death spikes, your team will most likely lose (fortunately as a TBS game relying on luck, you might win anyway) and the chances that you win are very slim.

Notice how I’m prioritising this over strategy? After all this is a strategy game so why isn’t strategy the number 1 requirement? I’m not disregarding strategy as useless and pointless. Knowing tactics can also mean between life and death but it is more useful in a 1v1 (or FFA’s) game rather than a team battle.

Generally you’ll find that in most of the favoured maps, players don’t start off really close to each other. The ideal solution is to set up a rendezvous point to combine your armies before moving out. Other cases, you share the same keep and other times you are away from each other but the map is quite small. (Isar’s Cross is an example).

Going back to ‘Luck’, almost all the time luck will always screw absolutely anything up. Who knows, your combined army might lose to an army the size of one. Bad luck, nothing you can do about it really there. Or your enemy might kill your leaders faster than your combined army does. Once again bad luck. That doesn’t mean that you should stop combining your forces. Most of the time you will win, whether you’re lucky or not so lucky (if you’re really unlucky then just try again some other time).

Unit composition (or unit combinations FYI) can also make a huge difference. Say both players decide to join forces... good 1 star for both teams. One team has troll whelps and the other team just has horsemen. Well... the most likely outcome is this: after turn 5 the troll whelps starts to engage one enemy leader whilst the horsemen kill off one leader and start engaging the other. What’s the issue here? You lacked speed but fear not, you did nothing wrong. The only reason why the orc players lost is because they got rushed with horsemen and that’s that. Those loyalist players chose a good unit composition, no players did anything wrong they just made the wrong choice of units and that happens in many wesnoth games. The only thing you could do is scout out ahead first but we’ll leave that to another guide.

Hope this one helps your 2v2’s!

Previous edition - #4 What use are bats

Next edition - #6 Flank the flank

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