Love in strategy
Sometimes it is better to simply say what you mean, rather than trying to pussyfoot and make things palatable. So: Overwatch is being played (and thought about) wrong, and thinking about it right is not actually that hard. In fact, you can write some universal rules for every member of a team to follow, and Continue reading Overwatch: the Skirmish Style
If you go looking for definitions of the word strategy, you ll find a lot of definitions that are domain-specific, that only concern themselves with a specific slice of life. The American Heritage Dictionary, for instance: forces of a nation, military command. This would be bad news for Richard Rumelt, professor of strategy and author of Continue reading A General Definition Of Strategy
The phrase Win-More emerged from the competitive Magic community, and refers to cards or plays that only work if you re in a winning position. It s a perjorative, because what you really want is to turn losses into wins, and why would you want to waste a card that doesn t help you do that? In the Continue reading In Defense of Win More
Roles are bad in competitive play. They limit your thinking and cause you to misread the game situation. They exaggerate the importance of trivia, and gloss over what is actually important. HotS Basics Aren t What You Think They Are HotS is a game where you try and destroy the enemy core before the enemy team Continue reading Why Roles Are Bad
(I m writing this Phoenix Rising Amethyst, my team, but anyone should feel free to use it) Risk Is Bad In competitive games, risk is bad. We want to eliminate random chance as much as we can. The reasoning goes: we are trying to be good at the game. If we are better than our opponents, Continue reading The HotS Series Pt. 1
Different heroes are geared toward fights of different sizes. Illidan and Zeratul, for instance, are fantastic for small skirmishes. Their high mobility and damage let them dodge attacks while putting out their own. However, they re not quite as great in larger fights. They can certainly be useful. But they re generally less favored. Kael thas, on the Continue reading What s Your Size?
It sounds obvious: There are powerful AoE abilities in the game, so bunching up is risky. Hence, don t bunch up. Everyone knows this. Yet people do it all the time, and get punished for it. Why? At root, it s lack of imagination. Here s why people bunch up: something good happens in a fight. They move Continue reading Don t Bunch Up
Sometimes, for whatever reason, it s not a good idea to fight. Perhaps you have a defensive comp that can t attack effectively. Perhaps your comp isn t good at 5v5 s maybe it has a lot of melee assassins. Whatever. If you take a fight, you ll lose. What do you do? Well, there s a sort of rock-paper-scissors equilibrium: splitting Continue reading How To Play With A Weaker Comp
It s common to talk about the map objective. The temples on Sky Temple, the seeds on Garden of Terror, etc. It s all wrong. There s only one objective: the core. Of course, you can t just right-click the core at the beginning of the match: that won t work. Rather it s useful to go after some intermediate, achievable Continue reading Forts and Keeps Are The Objective
There s a common pattern I ve noticed in games. An example: the teams are both just poking weakly at each other. The Stitches on one team hooks the enemy healer, and his entire team dogpiles on him and kills him. Now it s 4v5, so they run forward right into The Kael thas Zone. They eat a ton Continue reading Quitting While You re Ahead