Grand Arena Strategy - A report and query
February 22, 2019 1:26AM
edited February 2019
I think GA is my fav game mode for sure, I really like the double think and tension with it going on. With another one coming in 2 days I though I would post my last interesting match-up for thoughts.
My opponent had 2 strong teams, 2 "good", and 3 weaker. His strongest was FO, then an Empire team but missing EP, then Jedi and Jawas were good.
I had strong FO & stronger Empire(w/ EP), good Jedi & Rebels, then medicore Phoenix & BH's.
All told we had 7 teams each, very close GP, but my teams were stronger (less FO his was a bit better maybe) and had better synergy within them. We both had 1 good ship team, and one crappy one.
Still, I was worried I could lose this, and there were SO many ways we could both place teams. 2 strongest in front, 1 strong 1 mediocre, etc etc and on and on! At this point we were both 2-0 and I really wanted the win and took forever deciding what he might do, so I knew what I would do.
In the end, I was worried if he put his FO in front of ships (typical TW strat and what I would have done if him), that my only team that might get through them were Empire. I typically save them for attacking but was very tempted to stick them on D here because I was sure he would NOT get through if I did.
So placements ended up like this (1mil GP):
HIM:
Jedi in front of ships
Jawas in front of ?
Offense: ?
ME:
FO in front of ships
BH's in front of Phoenix
Offense: Empire, Jedi, Rebels
Hmmmmmm! Where is his strongest team? Must have saved for offense right? Well I was not convinced but pretty sure he did. So I waited, and luckily, he attacked first, bad move for him. He barely touched my FO in front of ships, and it took him 3 battles to get through my BH's. Then he killed off 2 Phoenix toons. This was a dead giveaway I figured, I went through the possibilities and figured he must of hid FO in the back!
What madness drove him to do that? Did he figure my Empire (strongest team) would be in front of ships and he was not going to beat that so this was his counter trying to stop me from getting 3 zones?
Have you seen anyone else do this, or done this sneaky trick yourself?
In the end because of his "tell", I took out his Jedi with my Rebels (a bit risky lost 1 toon but otherwise NP) his Jawa with my Jedi easily and then his FO with my Empire.
My opponent had 2 strong teams, 2 "good", and 3 weaker. His strongest was FO, then an Empire team but missing EP, then Jedi and Jawas were good.
I had strong FO & stronger Empire(w/ EP), good Jedi & Rebels, then medicore Phoenix & BH's.
All told we had 7 teams each, very close GP, but my teams were stronger (less FO his was a bit better maybe) and had better synergy within them. We both had 1 good ship team, and one crappy one.
Still, I was worried I could lose this, and there were SO many ways we could both place teams. 2 strongest in front, 1 strong 1 mediocre, etc etc and on and on! At this point we were both 2-0 and I really wanted the win and took forever deciding what he might do, so I knew what I would do.
In the end, I was worried if he put his FO in front of ships (typical TW strat and what I would have done if him), that my only team that might get through them were Empire. I typically save them for attacking but was very tempted to stick them on D here because I was sure he would NOT get through if I did.
So placements ended up like this (1mil GP):
HIM:
Jedi in front of ships
Jawas in front of ?
Offense: ?
ME:
FO in front of ships
BH's in front of Phoenix
Offense: Empire, Jedi, Rebels
Hmmmmmm! Where is his strongest team? Must have saved for offense right? Well I was not convinced but pretty sure he did. So I waited, and luckily, he attacked first, bad move for him. He barely touched my FO in front of ships, and it took him 3 battles to get through my BH's. Then he killed off 2 Phoenix toons. This was a dead giveaway I figured, I went through the possibilities and figured he must of hid FO in the back!
What madness drove him to do that? Did he figure my Empire (strongest team) would be in front of ships and he was not going to beat that so this was his counter trying to stop me from getting 3 zones?
Have you seen anyone else do this, or done this sneaky trick yourself?
In the end because of his "tell", I took out his Jedi with my Rebels (a bit risky lost 1 toon but otherwise NP) his Jawa with my Jedi easily and then his FO with my Empire.
Post edited by jayjonbeach on
0
Replies
I've seen that's a relatively common tactic to hide one of your best teams in the back zone. Maybe you'll will see it often enough too that it pretty much forces a strategy of always taking the south character zone first with the most efficient team/teams you can assure will clear the zone. This opens up the most info to you so you know how much power is needed relatively speaking to break through to the ship zone and clear all 3 character zones.
Of course your opponent seems to have showed their cards to you in this instance... that wont always be the case as it could be they managed to clear all your zones and still have a great team hidden at the back if they are lucky and/or plan very well.
You'll also start to see this strategy more often in TW the higher you get... although maybe it's a way off for you, don't know how large your guild is. Once guilds are big enough to field zones based on teams rather than purely on power, then you often see B+ teams in the front with A teams hidden just behind. The B+ teams can be difficult to judge as your opponent will need to accurately choose how to take them out without using squads that are too powerful (as then they run out before getting to the harder zones behind) or they will potentially low ball, trying to save their best teams, and make a few mistakes underestimating. Again, you don't always see this, but the longer you keep your opponent guessing the more likely you are to force a mistake.
Of course if you don't quite have enough teams to at least make the front zone a stiff challenge for your opponent it's not the ideal strategy as it's basically just a 1 zone giveaway in that case!
Single PVP is a bit different since we do not have a "further back" zone to populate with worthless toons, we have essentially a toon frontline and a ship/toon backline.
Now, on ships pretty much everyone puts second best on defense and best on offense, so that is predicatble. The question remains do you put the very best teams front line or you actually put your best defenders in the back. The answer to that is that if they are frontline, the enemy wipes out your teams with the bes counters and then whatever comes in the back is easy to smash with any leftovers. If you do keep a good team in the back, chances are they have used the good counters for killing your frontline and take 2 tries to kill your backline team, giving you the chance to win on points.
And then there is the wall of iron strategy, where you put on the frontline sith meta team, Revan team, and the strongest between your rebels and nightsisters team and count on the enemy requiring at least two tries on the sith and jedis, and hopefully losing toons on the third team. The main problem would be dealing with the enemy's defending teams but if you have built your teams for speed I think you have a chance there (25% higher speed teams tend to wipe out much stronger teams if there are good synergies in place).