Our First Skrim

This past Wednesday 4/1 we had our first skrimage. As we all know it didn't go as well as we had hoped and it led to a rather embarrassing loss. However bad that game may have been, it will only truely be bad if we don't learn from our mistakes/ weaknesses from that match.

Ok First I will praise our strengths of the match:

Coordinated
Worked well as a team

Ok and now the weaknesses of the match:

Slow pace as surviors
Slow to set up attacks as infected
Poor excecution
Frustration
Gave up half way through the match


Well that just about sums up what we did wrong, now I shall explain what I observed this match.
First off as survivors we were ballz slow. We gave them sooo many chances to set up good, percise ambushes on us. When they were survivors, they didn't do this. We hit them once they recovered and we didn't hit them again until after the bridge by the witch. We def. need to improve on this. I know it can be hard to spawn when they are running through, but if we can get a good quick boom on any of them, it will allow the rest of us to make our hits. Thats something we need to work on. Having to boomer puke and the rest of us quickly set up and attack right after.
This was a contiuning problem throughout the entire match in which, from what I believe, was the primary cause of us losing.

Next was just poor excecution and to put it simply, we just sucked. We had a bad night and it happens. What ambushes we did pull off, failed becasue of poor excecution. For example, I believe it was BH3 when we were out side by the witch we had 2 of our 3 hunter get killed because they were sitting by the very edge of the hill waiting to pounce when the other team attacks the witch. Thats good in all, but lets look at how THEY did that same stategey. When we were about to hit the witch, none of them were in sight. Infact I saw 2 hunter WAY back by the camp site briefly. I couldn't touch them with the gun I had, and it would've been a hard shot to make even with the hunting rifle. When we hit the witch they pounced from areas we couldn't see, especally since we were focused on killing the witch. 2 of us were pounced, then the boomer droped down from the top and puked on us. I don't remember But I think one of us were killed at this point. That was a well-excecuted ambush. Granted they didn't get some of the BS we got, like when I pounced on Luis' head next to the witch and I just sat on him with out doing anything. However, thats not the reason why that ambush failed. It was the nail in the coffin but it starts with common sense. Don't stay where you can be seen. I shouldn't have to say it, but im going to. You crouch out in the open, next to a ledge get shot up, then get frustated and make you performance go down.

Next was the frustration and giving up on a match. First the frustration needs to end. I can remember a few months ago back in February when I got REALLY frustrated and the whole match from the first map was ruined for me because I was pissed about ONE failed pounce/boom/smoke or I died really easily. Sparks told me that I can't keep griping about it, and I need to take a breath, forget about it and keep playing. Well I for one can say I can do that. I will swear and yell at times, but then its over. We need to stop dwelling on what happened and focus on what we will do next! The frustration led to giving up, which i was not happy about. Nothing pisses me off more is when we teams go "fuck it, we're losing anyway I don't care anymore!" I makes me soo mad, it has when I played football, hockey, paintball, and here. So lets try and stick with it. If we're gonna lose, lets at least make it a close game.

Well that about sums up the match from my point of view. If we can solve just a few of these problems. It will solve the rest. Good attacks/ excecution leads to less frustraion and no one will want to give up. Keep in mind this wont come over night. We're still too used to beating on un-coordinated pubie teams. Once we get used to countering and organized foe. Our game will signifigantly improve

i don't think you said a single thing that i disagree with...

i also forgot that that match was our first *real* match against any sort of organized team... previously, we had just been playing against pubbers. the 4 of us playing against 4 complete strangers, to us and themselves.

as for *my* actions, i'm sorry... not only was i just in a piss poor mood from earlier games, but other stuff has been going on outside of the game that have left me in an overall depressed mood all the time. this in combination with the frustration of getting my ass kicked all the time left me in a mood that i just could not describe. for that i apologize.

for the next couple matches, we should EXPECT and in fact COUNT ON losing, probably even by a LOT. i'm even thinking we probably shouldn't do very much pub matches, we need to get more teams together, and i know you're working on that, derek, but pub stomping isn't going to help us practice at all. if we're in a pub match and we're just slaughtering them, i vote that we leave and try again. it might help with moral some to OWN a team, but in the long run, it's not going to help us at all...

we certainly need to work on cooperation. no one attacks alone, even if you're left over from a previous attack, you should just try to stay out of sight until the other 3 are ready. even if we all die miserably during that attack, we would've caused more damage then if we attacked alone. and if we all 4 fail at the same time at the same attack, well, at least we tried to attack as a team

i've been thinking the same thing about our pace for a while. time and time again, i see that teams that DART forward, then stop at an attack and fight, then DART AHEAD again seem to do better than crouch-walking through the whole level. it gives the enemy less chances to attack. for this i saw we do several EXPERT SPEED RUNS as a team in campaign. these expert speed runs that i've been doing have greatly improved my ability to kill zombies while running quickly, and it helps to heighten your senses/reflexes as well. i'm CERTAINLY not advocating that we speedrun through VS matches, but if we can just learn to move more quickly, it will pay off. (also, i'm not talking like the kinda speed run that so long as one person makes it to the safe room we're good, i mean we ALL need to be able to make it as a team)


the bottom line is this: we just need to practice more against organized teams, rather then pub stomping.

I agree. Pubie matches arn't gonna cut it. Its hard to find a team right now we can practice againt for our next up coming match this wednesday. It would be nice if Tuesday night and wednesday evening(before our match) we could get together and practice. Don't know agaisnt who though. I would like to just have a GF practice, but our membership right now is still low. Pub matches arn't gonna cut it either as we don't gain a lot from it. Only minor skills such as hunter pouncing and coordination.

Sparks we all understand, I too am sorry If I was being an Ass towards you guys. I just didn't want to lose this team from playing future matches with. At the end I talked with them and they appladed us for not raging on them. After I told them that it was our first team v team match they told us that for the first 3 of their first team v team matches, they also got thier asses kicked too.

It will take time, like any team, sports or military alike to work out the kinks and find a strategy that will work. We're not bad guys, I don't think we should go into the next match with an attidude that we're gonna lose, becase that will defenatly lead to losing and poor performace. Play to win, just don't let it get to you if we're losing. We will defenatly rematch that team again in the near future. But for now, I suggest preparing for this next skrim.

I would like to a friends and/or GF only match so we can work on those skills Sparks listed above. It will be better than pubie stomping, the only problem is we have few GF members and all are not at an equal skill level yet. But I think its enough that it wont be too big of a deal. It might be a good warm up before the match or something. Right now we have limited options for actual organized team matches.

I completely agree. But I think our main problem (besides giving up) is that we were too coordinated as both the survivors and the infected. With our attacks as infected we relied on another player executing their part perfectly. And as soon as they didn't execute, the rest of the team suffered. As infected we should plan our attacks, but we shouldn't be so coordinated that it has to work for everyone to execute right. Everyone should act more on impulse than as a team. I know that sounds stupid, but you can't plan for everything to work because we can't rely on everyone doing their part. And our movement as survivors was too coordinated to the point that we were all moving really close together which allowed the opposition to better execute their attacks. That's mostly because we're all right next to each other and the boomer could easily slow us all down in one boom.

wow, you bring up an excellant point. Now that you mention it I defeantly agree with you. We need to still be able to carry out a decent attack if say, the boomer dies with no effect or someone misses a pounce. We need to losen up a little and not go:

"Yeah boomer, go!"... *Boomer pops*... "Awww SHIT! Now what!?"

Im glad you brought this up and it doesn't sound stupid at all. This was something I over looked, but we defenatly need to improve on.

i found out a few neat trick that we can use on NM, ill show them to you when we play

Sweet, cant wait you see it. For now I am studying the tactics of our opponents for our next skrim.