ATC: Team Building Theory

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Alright a coherent team is coming together but before I post the lists here is what we’ve learned since last time.

Missions: Every mission has 10 points of kill points, 10 points of holding objectives at the beginning of each of your turns, and then 10 points of holding objectives at the end of the game, plus one point for Slay the Warlord/First Blood/Linebreaker. You get a total of 33 points of which about 20 are advantaged by having Objective Secured units. This means that we wanted to have at least two lists with a lot of objective stealing/holding capability.

Pairing: This is a little complicated but here are the basics. Each team has five team members. The captains meet and exchange lists for full disclosure before pairing begins so there aren’t any nasty surprises. Each team lays down one of their lists simultaneously. Their opponents counter that “defender” already on the table with two lists of their own. The “defender” looks at the two lists presented to him and chooses which one to play. The list not chosen goes back to its team and can be laid down again. This process repeats until each team only has one list and then those last two play each other. Now there are all sorts of strategies and minutiae we could talk about but the basic effect is that you need two lists that could be a decent counter to any one enemy list.

Scoring: Teams are going to be rated first on Win/Loss/Draw (where a draw is worth one half of a win) and then points scored as the tie breaker. So its important to win, not just score a lot of points. Each individual game will contribute 20 points to the team (5×20=100). There is a chart to convert the 33 possible points a game into the 20 points possible contributed to the team. The more you beat your opponent by, the more points you contribute to your team. Player A might score 24 points to Player B’s 15. The difference is 9 points so you consult a chart they provided which means Player A’s team will get 14pts and Player B’s team will get 6pts. Any team needs to get 55 points to beat their opponents otherwise the match up counts as a draw. Basically, every game matters and even if you are going to get tabled, you need to score points to prevent your opponent from scoring a full 20 points.

Our Theory: We want lots of objective secured units due to the type of missions we are going to be playing. Failing ObSec, we want to be very mobile to deny the enemy objectives. The pairing system means we are going to need two armies that can counter any big scary thing we see looming out in the meta. Finally, the scoring system means that we don’t need to win big every time. Consistent minor wins seem like they will pave the way to victory.

Check out our First Steps!