Psychological Warfare
Posted: Wed Apr 02, 2014 5:34 pmThe purpose of this thread is to discuss tactics that are "intangibles" which I'm now convinced can be the deciding factor in a match. Granted some of these tactics may be considered "dirty" but here's a few examples from my personal experience:
The classifc reverse psychology- I was in a chatroom where a discussion came up and I ended up mentioning that I was testing our the Worg. Coincidentally a few minutes later I was matched with someone who was also engaged in that conversation. For some reason I had a feeling that my opponent may roll an anti-legendary comp. So I decided that I would roll an anti-anti-legendary comp (5x fang+grave guardian). Sure enough the guy had 4 archers with ferocious + a couple of weak melee tank units. It was an easy win.
Reading the opponent- I actually had some luck with this yesterday. I was rolling a melee wolf comp and my opponent had a range-heavy + tanking lion comp (3 archers, mage, valk, soliders). The map was hanover where your opponent can either deploy to your 3 or 9 (right or left). I noticed that that he had most of his units already randomly positioned to my right so I thought hmm... hes probably going to position all of his units to my right because it involves fewer mouse clicks. Sure enough thats exactly what happened. The guy actually had his 3 archers in the frontline looking for a clear 1st turn shots probably because he wasnt threatened by my comp of 0 range units and did not expect a first turn melee engagement. Let me just say that I found new respect for hunters. They have a movement of 7.
Inception- It was a lion vs lion match. My opponents biggest threat was a nuke mage with seal and chastisement. He also had more units and therefore more likely to have last turn (this is deadly especially against a mage. This is because most pros will use his towards the end of a turn to minimize retaliate once a mage is exposed. A mage user may also cast seal towards the end on a spark or lion for the same purpose. At the beginning of the round I told my opponent, "you're mage is in range of my archers, I'm taking it down". This prompted my opponent to move his mage behind cover and casted seal on his lion. This was bad for two reasons: 1) His mage w/ recovery now will only have 6 mana at the beginning of the next turn. This prevents a possibility of using 2 back to back chastisements. 2) I now know which unit has a seal. This gave me a better opportunity to position my units accordingly.
The classifc reverse psychology- I was in a chatroom where a discussion came up and I ended up mentioning that I was testing our the Worg. Coincidentally a few minutes later I was matched with someone who was also engaged in that conversation. For some reason I had a feeling that my opponent may roll an anti-legendary comp. So I decided that I would roll an anti-anti-legendary comp (5x fang+grave guardian). Sure enough the guy had 4 archers with ferocious + a couple of weak melee tank units. It was an easy win.
Reading the opponent- I actually had some luck with this yesterday. I was rolling a melee wolf comp and my opponent had a range-heavy + tanking lion comp (3 archers, mage, valk, soliders). The map was hanover where your opponent can either deploy to your 3 or 9 (right or left). I noticed that that he had most of his units already randomly positioned to my right so I thought hmm... hes probably going to position all of his units to my right because it involves fewer mouse clicks. Sure enough thats exactly what happened. The guy actually had his 3 archers in the frontline looking for a clear 1st turn shots probably because he wasnt threatened by my comp of 0 range units and did not expect a first turn melee engagement. Let me just say that I found new respect for hunters. They have a movement of 7.
Inception- It was a lion vs lion match. My opponents biggest threat was a nuke mage with seal and chastisement. He also had more units and therefore more likely to have last turn (this is deadly especially against a mage. This is because most pros will use his towards the end of a turn to minimize retaliate once a mage is exposed. A mage user may also cast seal towards the end on a spark or lion for the same purpose. At the beginning of the round I told my opponent, "you're mage is in range of my archers, I'm taking it down". This prompted my opponent to move his mage behind cover and casted seal on his lion. This was bad for two reasons: 1) His mage w/ recovery now will only have 6 mana at the beginning of the next turn. This prevents a possibility of using 2 back to back chastisements. 2) I now know which unit has a seal. This gave me a better opportunity to position my units accordingly.