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ITS PAAAAAART TWO TIME BABY!!!!

Last time on Strategy With the Strategos, we went through the first three steps to making a strategy. If this were a print publication or something archaic like that, I would recap what we went over, but here, just go read the article. It is super important that you understand the first part because otherwise, you will end up testing a strategy that you don't have. Which would be like baking a cake you didn't make. So without further ado, part two. (I'm like dr. seuss, someone gift me that hat!)

Ok, building off the framework laid down in the last edition, we only have three steps left.

1. Focus test

2. Refine

3. Implement into your game plan

The first part of making your strategy probably didn't take that long. An hour or so and you have presented it to your team, another 20 minutes while waiting for a scrim. Everyone understands what is going on. Now it is time for the focus test. If you don’t know how to record STV demos and POV demos, now is the time to learn, because you are going to want as much information as possible from these tests.

For at least 4 games, I want you and your team to do nothing but the strategy you have worked on. Don’t worry about good play or good comms, just focus on implementing this strategy any way you can and as often as you can. For mid fights, that is relatively easy, but you won’t always be able to reliably push last. So depending on where and what your strategy targets, you may be at this for a few days. Make sure that you are playing a wide variety of teams if at all possible. You want to face teams that are better than you, and teams that are worse. If you can, play a few teams that you regularly scrim and see how your strategy affects how well you do against them. Ideally, your strategy is addressing a pre-existing hole in your team’s overall game-play and you will notice benefits even at this early phase.

During each of your focus runs, I want each member of your team to think about what they are doing, how it is working or not working, how it feels and where it is weak and strong. No one should be focusing on anything other than themselves and the people they directly interact with as a part of the strategy. The only player who should be making a concerted effort to watch as much as possible is the medic (or main caller). That person definitely needs to be taking notes and even making use of prec bookmarks. In between games, talk about the strategy, why it worked, why it didn't. At the end of scrim time for your team, get as many of your players as possible to stick around and discuss what everyone thinks of the strategy. This is the point in time at which everyone should be comparing notes and making suggestions. Take the time to ask every player what they though about the strategy and have them say one thing that they would improve about it (keep it to one per person this time, you will be doing this a lot, so make baby steps to avoid overcompensating for a relatively minor problem). Once everyone has said their piece, watch the STV demo as a team.

What to look for in the demo:

Basically, this is your chance to see what the strategy looks like to everyone involved. For my strategy that we have been working with, we can easily see that the key players are the demoman and the medic. So for the first couple run throughs, watch those key players. If your strategy is soldier or scout dependant, then watching them works too. This is what you are looking for.

Demoman: You will be looking for how safe the demoman feels, how easily he can do his job and whether or not more effort needs to be made towards his protection.

Medic: Because the medic will be the one calling out the retreat or aggression, you will be trying to analyze whether he has enough information to be making this call consistently and with great accuracy.

After viewing from these angles, the point of view I find most beneficial is the enemy’s main players. If your goal is to get out severe damage, see if that damage is getting applied into the right place. Because the strategy we came up with focuses mainly on the demoman getting out a ton of damage and then the fragging classes cleaning up, be sure and look for players that get really lit, but don't die. Recognizing where you are coming up weak in the strategy and filling in the holes is the important bit.

After gathering as much data as possible, put everything away. You are done for the day, don’t try and make changes to your strategy, you will only end up confusing everything and everyone that isn't there. The next day, you start all over again, but instead of using your plan and preliminary feedback as sources of change, you use the data you got last night plus any new insights your players have for you that day. In this way, the Focus Test > Refine cycle is self feeding.

The only danger you may come across here is in the urge to specialize your strategy away from the foundation of what it was based upon. Your strategy needs to have built in support for almost everything the enemy will throw at it and not become so bogged down in the details that every move is scripted. If you run against a surprise heavy, you don’t want that scripted into your plan, you should realize what the steps are to dealing with a heavy and why it can be a detriment to their team in a lot of ways. That is another great reason not to be super specific in your strategy, there needs to be room to keep the essentials of your plan, but deal with variation appropriately.

When a team does something crazy like run a heavy or sniper, they are making a gambit at gaining the upper hand by making your team react to their new “strategy”. If you spend all your time playing reactionary to what they do, you will never pull ahead because their team will always be one step ahead of you. You want to force their team to always react to what you are doing, in this way, you will always be that one step ahead and the rest is smooth sailing (this is why sometimes, mindless, stupid aggression works so well, the enemy team is suddenly put on the defensive). This is basic game theory and something every team leader should be familiar with as they are helping their team form themselves into a fighting force.

Implementing into your build

The last stage is the simplest, the only hard part about it is knowing when to actually get out of the endless refinement cycle. (some say that you should never stop refining your strategy, but there comes a time at which you no longer need to do the intensive focus testing) My rule of thumb is that once everyone is comfortable and there are no more suggestions for non counter specific refinements, you are ready to implement the strategy into your normal gameplan. Up until this point, all of your testing has been done in the relatively laboratory sterile realm of focus testing in which feasibility of entering into the strategy has only been cursorily looked at. For things like a middle strategy, this part is a simple plug and play. However, for things like a last push, it is important to recognize when it is acceptable to implement the strategy.

There is no rule of thumb I can give you here, but by this time, you should realize what style of gameplay your strategy is weak and strong against. Up until this point, you have been using your strategy non-stop, but here, it is ok to not do your special type of last push if you don’t think it is advantageous. Cycle in a variety of strategies, especially if your plan requires an element of surprise or luck. The easiest strategy to counter is one you know is coming, keep it fresh and you will always have the upper hand.

As your team becomes more skilled and adds more and more strategies to their toolbox, you may notice the entire process becomes easier and faster.

If you guys have any questions or feedback, leave it here or email me at shdw.puppet [at] gmail.com. Love and brownies.

Alex “shdwpuppet” Williams

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