GRRR Squad Forum

Well done guys, I always knew we would beat the Nutz but I would have been a bit worried if the scores were closer, this is exactly the start we needed and we can just build on from there.

Here are the thoughts on the games


Pros
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* We won all the rounds
* TS communication - Although not perfect, there were times people still communicated unnecessarily e.g. “OMG how did that happen”, overall the comms were good
* We did not lose our nerve even in the last map where they had all the tickets, we held our breath and regroup, took back the flags and won


Cons
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* We didn’t always stick to the plan, especially in the last map, first round we pushed up too much and they took our back flags, we didn’t learn and they did it again in the second round. Other teams won’t let us off as easy
* Direction, Hurbis did an excellent job of directing the games overall but he won’t be spectating in other games, the SL need to be more in what they want. This was an intermittent problem as some times the SL were very clear.

What I took away from last night...

TS Communication in the first round... so much going on including stuff that was not relevant. It totally threw me. Found it hard to know what I was supposed to be doing and was left feeling like a chicken without a head. Perhaps the fact that Leppy was so good with the tank and fast, that I couldn't keep up to provide security added to my confusion. So I think with a strong tank driver, we only need a driver and repairer assigned to the tank.
I think the take 3 flags and hold, leaving them with one worked well for us here.

Second map, things went much better. On the public servers, I usually flank and come down through the side alleys and get lots of kills coming up behind a big firefight by the Alley flag. With Hubris commanding and giving orders I felt like I was denied the opportunity to do this with our take 2 and hold plan (the plan did work pretty well though). But I do think, sending a squad round the side to catch them off guard on the flank could of been very useful, even when we held two flags.

Tehran map. We didn't stick to the plan at the start. We were supposed to have seven engineers and both armor together to rush straight for B so we could hit their armor hard and have one player cap our back flag. We didn't follow our plan (APC and Tank split up) and didn't have engineers with rpgs supporting our armor, so the enemy actually took and held the middle flag giving us an uphill battle to get the game going our way. From this I think that if you are not at the practice, so you don't know the plan, you should only be in the team if there are not 8 people who were at practice. The opening move on a map is very important.
TS was great on Tehran.
The take all but one flag and hold strategy actually worked well I think. Before last nights matches I would of been inclined to say try take all flags, but I've changed my mind after last night.

One thing we didn't discuss in the practice, was what to do if our armor went down. Since it takes so long to respawn when Paul and I did loose the APC, I was left with having to choose to spawn at one of our flags on foot, or wait for the APC. The one time I did choose to spawn on Jonny who was capping our first flag (we had no flags) and help him neutralized it, when I respawned again with Paul, I had forgotten I selected medic when spawning on Jonny. So I spawned in the APC as medic and when I jumped out, I realized I couldn't repair. So I ran off to the side to try do my infantry thing and did not communicate this to Paul properly, so when he took damage, he jumped out to repair and an enemy jumped in our APC. So we lost our APC due to a couple mistakes of mine.

One other thing that caught me out on Tehran. I once spawned as Engineer, we lost our APC and I survived, so I pushed forward on foot, ran into an enemy, started shooting him and realized I had the IRNV on my kit (thankfully I didn't kill him). Before the matches, I switched my kits to not use the IRNV, but... I must of switched only my kit for the US side for engineer to not have IRNV on my M16 and didn't realize, that when we switch to Russian side, the AK47 would still have the IRNV. So I had to push forward with my pistol so as not to use the IRNV. So if you don't use a gun for a kit when you play on public that can be used on both Russian and US side, remember to turn off the banned item for clannies for both guns in that kit before going into a clan match.

All in all, last night was very good. I took quite a bit away from the matches to think about how to do better next time and make fewer mistakes.

I'd like to spend more time on the open servers looking after Lep's tank so I can get used to how he moves etc. I let him down a couple of times as spanner monkey. Also, from what I could see last night, armour has little or no chance vs co-ordinated engineers. We need to factor this into our approach to armour use in clannies.

I had one good round out of four last night. I will understand if I need to make way for a stronger player from the Nuts.

I thought the squad layout worked well after we got the groove. I have never played competitively in a 2man squad, but running with some one like Dryman is such a pleasure. The guy is a macheeen! After we got our groove, we were taking on full infantry squads and the armor with success 9/10 times. I can recall a few times were the 2 of us would absolutely rinse them, dropping their infantry squad completely from the game. Hooah Dryman, you've got mad skeelz dude.

Minor gripes (don't take this personally and maybe its cos I was too engulfed most of the time)
-I did not notice our armor or theirs making much of an impact in the game. I may be wrong however..
-Kit-swap-revives - seriously guys, learn to do it, learn to live it, learn to love it and get a semi when you do it. Its critical to saving ticket bleed and is a mechanic that needs to be second nature for us to succeed.

As a whole, I don't think we did anything wrong and considering last night was our first "clannie" styled match, we rawked. From what I saw last night in our best moments, we have what it takes.
Big ups to Hubris, I'll listen to yell at me any time dude, you led us very well (although we need to become more instinctive at times).

Taking nothing away from the Nutz, in the games against the big guns don't expect to see mistakes go unpunished. Lose 2 flags out of 3 and we will be looking at a serious uphill battle.

Also, we do need to keep our aim's razer sharp. Lots of public play together and clear cut strats will make us a serious force to be reckoned with.

Practice and more practice will sort out all these small mistakes.

A thing I found that worked very well was in the 1st few rounds where Jarrod was with me to repair.
It's no use for 2 of us waiting for the armour to spawn(takes too long)so what he did he ran ahead to help out and I just meet up with him later.

I don't know if the rest of you guys(infantry) think that extra hand helped?

Tehran "B" flag is a difficult flag to go for in armour. It's too open and with the enemy having an elevated position on u makes it worst.
This will work only if we have the support of infantry to get rid of the enemy engy's.

Jono u did good!
We just need more play time together.

Overall I thing it went well.

All I can say is top shooting, tank crew and spannermen work! There were chops and changes and you roll'd with it. Everyone played very well and I'm extremely pleased!

Given this is our first practice there was "rust" to shake off. The "rust" isn't gone completely, but I am confident we will straighten that out soon. I know a big part of going up a gear comes with time and trust so I'm focusing on keeping the same team and delivering on my planning. Throughout the games, our armour played exactly the role I was hoping they would; they held ground to suppress the enemy's advance to our defences and responded in good time to lock horns with Skoups and Co.

As far as what to do when armour goes down, I thought Leppy should spawn at the back and, as he suggests, he would then pick up his gunner on the way to the fight (they could die and spawn on him). Hope that clears that up. My thinking is that if they destroy our tank it should be two tickets, so if the spanner survives or can spawn before the tank he cover the support squad as much as he can on foot before going back to the tank.

I noticed every now and then the security team were pushing way forward and capping the enemy's back flag, so perhaps we need to be clearer about the role they play. The security team should guard the support team's flank and lend weight to them in times of need. They should be planting mines, keeping an eye on flanking routes to the back flag etc. What I am worried about is that SSG and other clans will not show mercy when it comes to exploiting a weak flank to get through an obstacle.

The Nutz really tried to get in behind us and disrupt our game, but I think they were just trying to be competitive at the front line and escape our wrath at the back. Without a security team guarding the support squad, strong teams will just keep them occupied from range and send a crew to waltz in behind for fun times. I guess against a weaker opponent having another vanguard squad is more effective than a security squad, alls well that ends well, but I scheme it's not best in preparing for league.

It's hard to contest orders once they are given, so I ask that the SL's are more vocal about what you think your opportunities are. Call out what you're doing, 9 times out of 10 I will agree. After all, even if I play with the big map open every now and then to get a strategic view, you are in the thick of it and that's why you're a squad leader. Just make some noise about it, so I can keep track of where we are going and get others to move into position or request defence if needed.

This SL mechanism should control kill chasing as long as that we understand the underlying objective of our plan. If we can take 2/3 or 3/4 flags without losing more than 50 tickets and hold those until the enemy have 100 tickets remaining and then take our opportunities after this point to rout their back flag we will be demonstrating monster battle sense that will give us a high level edge over most teams (we force them to kill us around 2:1 for the last 100 tickets against ticket bleed).

Let's keep the comm chatter alive, look forward to another game soon gents! I posted a sign-up for possible SSG game on Thursday tonight. If we have the numbers I think it will be a good game to see where we are. http://www.grrr.co.za/forum/index.php?topic=2728.msg44976#msg44976