the ronin aars from their last matches

[mazzilliu]

"first match aar"

Оriginally Postеd by Sairait

I should have done this earlier‚ sorry chaps ... Cool

Basically, we started with a setup that we've been confident with, and been preparing for the various scenarios coming up. After seeing the amount of triple Machs teams on Saturday, we discussed what we would do against such a team and the answer was: not much :7 ... These beast are fit to alpha small ships and are fast enough to avoid our bigger ships, hence a problem. We knew they might have problems tracking small sig non-webbed targets, so one of the priorities would be to not let the guardian and support get tackled. Оthеr thing we decided to do was to use the logistic drones (which were otherwise just a backup option for most ships) right at the start and hopefully keep at least the guardian alive for a bit longer.

The next day‚ when we've been transferred to arena, first thing we noticed was that the beacons are no longer in scan range -> no beforehand knowledge. We warped in the team at 30km and guardian at 50km and started scanning to see what Huzzah has. Chara started reporting first and when he said 3 Machariels, the temperature in TS room decreased by 10 degrees, immediately followed by Koum stating "This is exactly what we didn't wanna see" in a sad sad voice. Fortunately Nergal giggled, the spell has been broken and we started rehearsing the tactic.

The conclusion was: to keep in one group together, put the logi drones on our support, tackle anything that will get close to us and see if we can tank those mofos. If we would loose the support, the only chance was to charge at the BS's with all we had and hope that we kill at least one of them.

The fight started, we started our logistic chain, locked the proper targets and started shooting (well, just healing in the case of most ships on team). Оnе of the Huzzah Dramiels suicided into our painball to tackle Daredevil in the first minute‚ the rest was much more cautious. We had the Daredevil and one of the Ishkurs running around the arena annoying the hostile tacklers, but since their logistic was still alive, none of the dogfights could've been finished by kill, at least not before we started moving the whole gang towards mach blob (they kept around 60km orbit from us for most of the fight - except one of the Machs, who has been tackled from roughly 3rd minute till the end of the figh).

We started sending Proteuses to finish the tackled support, and slowly cleared them all. At the point where Huzzah had only big ships + Sabre and Kitsune left, one of the tacklers got point on Sabre and Shivaja immediately primarized it. Unfortunately, since he still mixes up Sabre and Scimitar names, he went straight to the Scimi and tackled it. The primary was switched, Scimi died, and the rest was just a clean up.

Looking back - we played it very defensively, and it probably could have been much faster fight if we went straight for the Machs. However, there would be much more risk of splitting up the group, getting some of our critical ships tackled, guardian out of range, and so on ... This was a logistic victory, and main credit goes to Koum in Guardian, who was absolutely flawless.

Huzzah didn't make that many major mistakes from my perspective, they just were as defensive as we were and that had lost them the fight. If they would move the Machs to better optimal (say ~30km from us), they would have broken through the Brutix tank and probably even killed ishkurs/guardian. We would have still probably won in such scenario, as we should have been able to tackle the mach at such orbit and put the Proteus dps on them, but it would have been much closer.

I'm pretty glad that we had the chance to play against the Mach team, both because that was one of the hostile tactics that for which we had most respect, and also because no-one will probably try to field such a setup against us again

/Sairait

second match AAR

Оriginally Postеd by Sairait

We did some research on Get off my lawn‚ and concluded that even though they're not one of the big tournament teams, we should not underestimate them, as their alliance seems to be pretty active ingame and their first setup was tournament-worthy (unlike many other newcomers).

That said, we expected them to switch the setup to something that would work better against our drone team from 1st round, which they didn't do (they just modified original setup to accommodate for 10 ships, nothing else at all). So maybe we overestimated them a bit in the end, we shall see next week.

I have changed my mind several times during the last week about what we will field - first I was adamant about using the Round 1 setup again, then I briefly considered some BS based setup (including the flagship perhaps), then came back to the R1 setup, and then finally decided that the we'll field the bombers. The bombers would have several advantages over R1 tactic - they would serve well against BS's (even neutralizing ones), they add more EW to the team than the Ishkurs, they add quite a chunk of dps, and last but not least - R2 fight would be a good place to test and get familiar with the bomber tactic (as even if we would loose, we still should get enough points to advance).

The general plan behind the tactic is quite clear I assume - use the bombers to clear some dangerous targets in the beginning, use the Loki's web to protect the team from tacklers or to tackle ourselves and clean the rest with the two Proteuses. The way this setup would play depends quite a lot on what the opponents brings, and I thought we had most of the major tactics covered.

But one tactic that we didn't discuss all that much was what we would do against the same setup they had in the first round ... Chara appeared 90 minutes before the match began and raised our spirit by stating: "Guys, you know that if they will field the same setup, we're dead". We convinced him their setup was shit, paper thin and that we would still win, but the tension in my guts has increased, hehe ...

Cut to the arena, we're facing jamming/dampening setup, they're spread out along the 50km line, all of their ships ~50-60km from our team. The problem with EW teams is that there are way too many primaries to call, and the decision what should be taken first and what later is not that obvious/easy. I kinda gave up on getting a flawless fight here, and decided to just go all out offensive, with our team speeding to the targets and removing the Rooks first.

The bombers were supposed to fly for 15-20km towards enemies, drop the bombs and then turn around and get back close to Guardian, while shooting the primaries all along. Loki was supposed to tackle the Rooks, and since we didn't want him get jammed, he was to be ECCM boosted at the start of the fight. Shiv and Nergal would run to kill the tackled ships, Krivas in Daredevil help tackle, and me and Koum staying a bit behind and create cap out of thin air in a logistic circle for the dps ships.

The start of the fight went as intended, and we bombed one of the Rooks (and also our T3 cruisers a bit, but that was not a problem). Then it got messy. Koum was jammed first and heavily dampened later, so he couldn't help all that much. We lost all of the support in a short order (their Mach did the job). I had no idea which hostile ships were damaged and kept calling the priority targets, even though we might have had better targets at hand (the Mach was almost in armor after the bombs, and it was shield tanked! -> should have been popped; the same happened with one of the Curses).

Оncе the Rooks and Curses went down‚ there was basically nothing that could hurt our five bigger ships and we mopped up. The fight was ended by Claw after 9 minutes, see the local chat below. I think we would get the Keres in the end, if we used all the ships to maneuver him into running into Loki, and get the THD, but oh well ... This will probably put us on the right side of the finals brackets, which is less advantageous than the left one (which has better match schedule, usually easier opponents etc).

Looking back at the fight - I should have been expecting that the bombers will be primaries and possibly not send them into the fray (but then they would still get sniped by the Mach anyway, so ..). I should have been also expecting that they will use most of EW on the logistic (even though it wasn't the best target for their EW) instead of the Loki, and support him. Another thing was that we had kind of a complex decision tree for each of the ships (if this happens, do that, if something else, do a different thing), which was complicating the fight (at least for me) quite some, and I'll aim to make the future setups simpler to play.

All in all, the bombers have drawn LAWN's attention, which gave the bigger ships free hands to play, and lead to our victory. Even though they have died and we've lost points, I declare this fight and tactic a success Cool

/Sairait

Оriginally Postеd by Sairait

Yeah‚ good idea, and we actually have Gargouѕ in a similar rolе (to watch the stream and relay the intel based on commentating/vid). But since the commentators are so weak this year (bar Kil2)‚ I never really expected to get ѕomе serious FC assistance from this. There is still some delay in broadcast‚ probably juѕt a fеw secs tho ...

So yeah‚ we might deviѕе something for the next match(es) - maybe use Yakuza channel to shout at us during the fight and Gargous or someone can pass that intel on TS ? I might watch the chat there too‚ here and there Cool ...

The harder the fightѕ will bеcome‚ the more important it will be to make good callѕ and I'll bе grateful for any little help Smile

/Sairait

It's only 7.3 sec delay‚ ѕo totally usablе.

/Sairait