On the last battle we review we looked at the importance of some basic techniques, like blocking, position, material advantage and how splitting plays a role in each one of these. This time we are going to focus on more intangible concepts, like knowing your enemy and some advance tactic.

At this point in the torment each player has faced 9 to 10 people with only 0-2 loses. What does this mean… people you will be facing from here on out are good!! So you can’t just rush in to a fight. Take sometime to gain an edge, your time with be will invested.

So let us look at JBarata as a fighter.

JBarata Vs Morf
JBarata Vs AIR Diogo

In both of these fights we can see two trends that keep repeating themselves, (three if you count he keeps winning). First his use of light units. You can see how much he values his light units. Not only does he get every kill or every block out of his light units. He also hunts down and destroys all of his opponents light units. Simply a great tactic! By the time his opponent knows what has happened they have lost their big units and there light units while he is only down about half of his light. I must try to counter this if I want to win. This leads us to the next trend, attacking. We can see how he gathers early momentum in the battles and rolls with it. Once he has his opponent on the ropes he doesn’t stop and let them catch their breath but rather attacks harder. This aggressive play should be something to watch out for… but I might be able to use it as well. Now for the battle.

The deploy: in an attempt to make some of my light units less attractive I split them up as much as I could. I also placed less attackers and more light units in the front row, I wanted to send them out to attack before he could kill them off, and split up further. The rest of the units were close to each other for counter attacking.
Early Game turns 0-10: The only thing I could do to counter the attack on my light units was to attack his, and use them up. I believe I got the better out of the early trades by taking out all of his rains before any of my heavy units were destroyed. I did take out 9 of his black widows with by rains, samurais were slightly in his favor.
Middle game 10-22: My goal here was to trade off units, I was expecting him to be aggressive and wanted him to feel like it was what he should be doing. I moved up some units with few or no protection in order to bring up some strong counter attacks, I am down on score at this point.
The end 22-on: This is where the game ends. I sent 15 eagles to the far right side to take out 35 samurai. He countered by sending his eagles to the edge as well. This is the opening I was looking for. In turn 25 his units are split, most of them on the left side and a few on the right, and I had easy access to the middle. None of his units were in a good position to attack, most were behind other units that cost a lot to move and/or had weak attack range, and still others were pined up against the wall. We both moved to the middle at this point. He moved and attacked with the eagles from the right side, focusing on material. I moved up my units together working on position. When he started to move his units from the left side on turn 37 the trap was already set. He continued with his aggressive play over the next 17 turns, but the position I set up was too strong, and it was over.

Turns to look at:
14 – He split his spiders in order to keep my Taurus at one unit, taking up that square and stopping a counter attack.
22 and 25 – I sent the eagles to the far right side he followed, the begging of the end.
37 – The trap is set, all I need now is him to come running in with wild disregard.
42 – He is showing very bad position here. His Taurus is unable to join in on the action due to bad deploy, spiders are stuck with no backup, Eagles are blocked in by Destroyers, and the Destroyers are getting out ranged.