Hold Those Gates!

I've been running some battlegrounds lately, on Kranthis, so I could get some honor. As it's been Strand of the Ancients weekend, I've been doing that. I'd done a lot of this on Mariwocket, so I was prepared (unlike Isle of Conquest, where all I do is run around like a crazy person until we win or lose - still working on strategy for that one).

Anyway. I've been in matches where we rolled to victory quickly and easily, and ones where we were crushed. A few were close contests. Every single one of them had something in common.

Purple and Red gates.

The second-tier gates from the front are key to successful defense in SotA. When the blue or green gates fall, if there's still tanks rolling along, it's not possible to get to the the guns at Purple and Red in time to mount a defense there. If, on the other hand, there are already gunners at those two gates, you've got a really good chance at blowing up that wave of tanks before they even fire on your gate. If you blow up that first wave of tanks completely, you've got the game half-won. If you beat up the second wave of tanks enough that they get blown up before taking Yellow, you've won.

So here's the basic defense strategy. At the start of the round, put one gunner on Red and one on Purple. Two on Blue and two on green, the rest go and fight on the beach. If you don't have a gun, focus on killing tanks - ignore enemy PCs except in defense of your graveyards.

If the tanks do the smart thing and focus on one side (people usually focus Blue, I have no idea why), then whoever is on Purple or Red (the side that's not being attacked) should mount up and make a break for the other gate, thus having 2 gunners on that gate. Protip: you can see the tanks on your tactical zone map (hit shift-M), so you know what to do Right Away. If, on the other hand, there's 2 tanks at each of Blue and Green, stay put, as in this case you can probably beat the incoming tanks with only one gun. Use the gun on the "outside" of the map, the one closer to the gate that's being attacked, and eventually someone will fall back and do support gunning. Sometimes it's easier to just put 2 people at Red and 2 at Purple, but this gives you 2 more people to push on the tanks with.

In either case, as soon as the first gate falls, the people manning that gate need to fall back to Yellow ASAP - this is the same problem as before, there need to be gunners at the gate beyond the ones being attacked so they can unload the max damage on the tanks that get through.

Again, if you're not on a gun, focus on the tanks. They need tanks to get through walls. They can do it by running seaforuim, but this is a desperation move, as it just takes too long. The only reason to attack a PC and not a vehicle (if, of course there's vehicles around) is in defense of the graveyards. Most of the time, they only send one or two people to cap the graveyards, good defense here will buy precious minutes without those four extra tanks.

The strategy for offense is just the opposite, of course. Focus all four beach tanks on either Blue or Green (mix it up each time), send three people to assure a graveyard (and tank shop capture), and drive your tanks hard. Remember that you can catapault shoot gates down, so get some damage on the gates before you get into ramming range.

If you're not on a tank, attack the PCs who are attacking your tanks. Snares are your friend, as the tanks roll at running speed. This means that any melee person will be in trouble if you just back them off a little bit. Casters have to run up, cast, mount, run up, etc. Disrupt that. Hunters (in my experience) are the biggest danger to tanks, although so are well-geared melee characters with sprints and snare-breaks. If you're one of those characters, kill tanks on defense rather than driving them - let the poor Mage do the tank driving.

So that's the long story. But the short story is simple: gunners at red and purple at round start = win (or tie at least if the horde does the same thing). This is something I absolutely LOVE about SotA, since I'm often the only gunner in the secondary line. Quick movement and keeping an eye on which gate is likely to break down means I can often sway the outcome of a whole match by my very own self. Even better, of course, when everybody uses this strategy.