Each game I have analyzed has had a theme to them. In the first game it was splitting and how it can effect every aspect of the game. Next we looked at knowing our opponent and how it can impact the game. The battle we are going to look at this week is a bit different. It is hard to point out one theme of this battle. While we will be looking the advantage of aggressive play. The main “Theme” will be a study in battling itself.
First lets look at some previous games. Two from group play and he had one game before me(the other was a timeout win):

In Group Play
In Group Play
Second Round of Play Offs

From these games we can’t use too much. He is a solid player, making few mistakes, he takes control of the game and attacks more often than playing defense. In some battle you can see him taking his time to attack while not loseing any units, other times he attacked fearlessly trading alot of units, the whole time staying in control. That being said he did sit back and play defense once or twice when he had no good attacks. Maybe taking control will get him out of his element. The one thing I feel I can take out of his battles, is a good deploy. He does show a pattern and that may allow me to counter.

The Battle

Very Early(1-8) I start out by moving the Taurus into a very strong attack position with nothing being able to attack it next turn it is safe for now, and protect a large group of Rains (thinking about JBarata). I take out alot of his Praetorian. It ends with him taking alot of my eagles and me countering with a triple attack and killing 19 of his.

Early(9-15) The rest of his eagles die and I send in some destroyers to take out a big chunk of his units.

Right now (right after the destroyers take out his black widows) let us look at his position. Eagle on far right not much help, Destroyers with no real targets, same with the Praetorian and nothing they can block. Spiders are in a good position here, protected by the Taurus and can reach the middle. There are two big problems with his position though, first are my units, and the second is that big hole they just made. The destroyers are able to attack almost all of his units. They must be dealt with right away… but that doesn’t solve the defense problem. You only start with 6 movement points and he will be spending ALL of them for the next several turns trying to kill off those units and fix his defense. What he will not be doing is attacking any units that doesn’t threaten him right now… meaning I get to choose what attacks and who gets attacked over the next few turns… and I like that. Even if you only attack with one small unit your opponent will have to kill that unit off, thereby lowering his/her movement points. Over time this can lead to a big change in control of the game.

Next two turns I push my attack taking out what I can before he stops me and takes out my units.

This is where the game changes from early to late most units have been traded off, and the board is much more open. I had control of early game and pushed the attack where and when I wanted, I am sitting good at this point. While I am not as good of position as I would have liked I am sitting better than my opponent.

Beginning of late(18-27) I rush to the middle and try to clear his units out of the way, I made some good attack and get ride of his Destroyers, and some Praetorian while loseing very little. We are both in good position.

Next turn cost me greatly I lose my eagles! He is low in light units and I have alot of strong units left, but not having catapult units while your opponent does, is not a position I want to be in… ever. I must stop my trading and look to win the war, attack his units slowly, breaking him down while not loseing any of my own.

Now I am facing an eagle that could negate my light units… so I will take out the rest of his light units. Like in chess when you are up it is best to go for the light units(or pawns). In chess it is because they can be made into powerful units, but in this game it is for a different reason. Why? well look at it like this. If you attack and kill off all of his light units, and you have
A)more big units you should win,
or
B) less big units but light units to block you should win.
The turn after I killed off his black widows, my destroyers didn’t attack the Praetorian to kill the Praetorian, or to kill destroyers or the Taurus, but for the 30+ samurai.

Turns 30-50: I attack his light units (and large units when I can), while trying to minimize losses.

End Turn (50+): Seeing as he is running out of blockers he starts to split up his spiders to act as blockers. and pins down some spiders of mine. He then makes a bad move by moving the eagles to the edge of the board. As I have said before Diagonal units should almost never be on the far sides of the board, besides lowering their effectiveness it also makes them easy to be blocked. I block them in and move a in a unit to kill them when I want. It is now down to the spiders and my Praetorian. Having more it is not to hard to put this one in the W column.

While I can be matter of fact now, this was the hardest game of the tournament so far. While I did lose some units attacking so hard, it allowed me to have more control of the game. When you face a player as good as Tsousa the last thing you want is for him to be in control.

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.

Ad420 won the first tournament on the new version of Orion’s Belt. You can follow all the coverage of this event on AD420 Road to Victory on Tournament the First.

Here’s an interview with the champion.

OB: Can you introduce yourself? Who are you, what do you do, how long are you playing and how did you find Orion’s Belt…

AD420: My in-game name is AD420, my real name is Alan, I program phone systems in Atlanta Georgia USA.

OB: You are the winner of the first tournament of Orion’s Belt 2.0. But you also played OB 1.0. How was your performance back then?

AD420: OB 1.0 was so very different from this game; the only thing that has stayed the same is the battle system. So while I was not the best I did learn alot and it carried over to now.

OB: It looks like the groups phase was easy to overcome. You were the first of the group only with victories. Can you talk a little about that?

AD420: While there were some great players in my group, namely SylikDivad Syriin  and Fodazed, we all had quite a bit of mistakes. It was good to have that time to get ready for the playoffs.

OB: On the playoffs you went against fodaze, JBarata, tsousa, nunos and you had the grand final with Morf. What was the hardest battle? Were there battles where you almost thought you had lost?

AD420: An interesting note here before fighting JBarata he gave me only losses, two, and I had not been him once. The same for Nunos I fought him twice and twice I lost to him. I looked over old games I knew what I had to do and pulled it out in the end. I think the battle with Tsousa, Nuno, and Morf could have gone either way.

OB: How does it feel to eliminate tsousa and nunos, two game administrators that had top ELO on the previous version (and on this version also)?

AD420: Oh were they playing I didn’t notice… No really They are both amazing player, I really can’t say enough about them and their level of play. It feels great to be at the same level as these players.

OB: On the final you went against Morf. Morf is playing Orion’s Belt for a long time, but he has always been somewhat discrete. Did you know him? Had you battled with him before? What can you say about the match?

AD420: I have seen him before and knew he was a good player but have not fought him much. Before our battle I looked over his other games. He was on fire each battle he seemed to make fewer mistakes, and was more focused. I Attacked early and thought I had a nice advantage but he found some weakness in my attacks and capitalized on them. I had to stop and regroup; he was in control now and deiced to trade his spiders for my eagles. I took it and it worked out for me, this time.

OB: What were your favorite combat units on this tournament? The ones that were a complete life saver and helped you to win the tournament?

AD420: Spiders for sure were the MVP of the Tournament. More than once they were the only strong unit I had left and they came through for me.

OB: Now that you have won a tournament, everyone will take extra caution when fighting against you.. Do you feel any pressure?

AD420: People should take extra caution when fighting me. If you make a mistake I will make sure you pay. I love this battle system and take it seriously.  People could be gunning for me… I don’t know, I do know one mistake could cost me the game no matter who I am fighting.

OB: Well, thank you for your time. On a last note, do you have any tips for players entering tournaments?

AD420: Join every tournament you can!! It cost nothing and there is not better teacher than fighting 8-10 people at once. Once you get though one or two you will be loving it. Take your time, play it slow and easy.

Over the Next several weeks I be posting each battle I faced in the “playoffs” of “The First” tournament. I hope to show all the new (and some old) players how torment are played out and the level of play that they must be at in order to get to the playoffs. The Analysis of the battles will get more and more in-depth as time goes on, but for now we will mostly be looking at the fundamentals of the battles.

This battle show us just how important it is to split units and make the most out each and every single one.

By turn 13 he had lost most of his attackers, and was in the process of loseing 2 more groups. While I did lose several groups of attackers the important thing to see here was that my groups were split up. Fodaze very first turn is a good example of this. He used 50 eagles to attack and kill 25 of mine. It is overkill, but more importantly he lost 35 due to my counter attack. In this game you must “trade” units, that is attack and be attacked. You can not protect all of your units all of the time… you will lose units. When splitting up your units you give your opponent less targets to attack. He attacked me just as much as i attacked him (in the early rounds) but each time i attack i got the maximum amount of kills while he could only kill what i had in the group.

There is another reason having many groups is a good plan. Go to the very end >>| then go 15 turns back <<. We can see here that he has 4 groups of Attackers while I have 8. Now look at all the squares he can attack, then look at how many i can attack… There is no question my units can reach almost any square on the board, while he is very limited. While i do have more units that really doesn’t matter as much as the position i am in. My units can control just about anywhere he can go, and i can counter any attack he can throw at me even with the spider’s paralyze attack. While his units are split half on one side of the board and half on the other. I can attack at will in this position, while any attack he does will be meet with a counter attack.

Both of our use of light units was not the best, while mine was worst. Attacking 7 Taurus with 50 Rains is overkill again and even though he was the attacker he lost that “trade”, not only by units but also by spending 5 movement points to move in the Rains. On the Other side I didn’t get any heavy kills off of my Rains, that’s just not playing smart. Again you want to trade in your favor, and killing off heavies while only loseing light units is almost always a good trade. One in witch I failed to do.

Both sides blocked very well. It is important to block, or use cannon fodder. It comes down to trading again while you get to attack your opponent’s good ships you only give them very few light ships in witch they can attack, it is just smart any way you look at it. That is why Eagles, Destroyers, and the Taurus play such a big role in this torment as we will see later.

I hope this battle clearly illustrates just how important it is to constantly be splitting up your units, not only to make the most out of your “trades” but also with board position.

That is all for now. Next time we will be looking at the next battle, VS JBarata.