Starcraft is friend to abusive strategies- plans of action which are easily thwarted but rely upon your opponents ability to A) know how to thwart it and B) execute said thwartation... thwartage... thwartadigination? Why is it abusive? It requires less effort to execute an abusive strategy than it does to defend against it. A bronze might beat a gold player with a cloaked banshee or DT rush, even the pros use it (have you seen the TvTvTvT in the GSL recently? Banshee central I say!).
So what about other sports? Can you think of abusive strategies which have yet to be implemented? Here are some of mine.
Football A long time home to abusive strategies, early on in the history of football people used to run the ball all the time. It was hard to stop. Then people learned the art of the line and the art of tackling, and running became harder to execute, leading to the pass.
My strategy is to get a midget with an iron-grip for a bear hug. The ball gets hiked to him and he grips the ball and faces up on the turf. You then get a shotput player for quarterback who lobs the midget holding the ball as far as he can. When the midget lands, he rolls if he can. If your shot-putter can throw him at least 3 yards each down, you can win the game, every time!
Ice Hockey
Has anyone tried the uber-fat guy in the net? So fat, he covers all the edges and just sits there crosslegged for a game?
Basketball
Get that shot-putter we talked about earlier and have him practice his long range shots to the point where he can heave full court shots and hit them 50% of the time from the same spot. Perhaps I'm being a bit optimistic on this one.
Tennis
Train someone so that they hit the net with every other ground stroke so it just tickles over the net. Someone could learn that talent, right?
That's all I have for now. What abusive strategies do you know?
On June 15 2011 11:58 IamBach wrote: I take it you probably don't play any of these sports?
Actually, I'm an NFL player. Lol.
Nah, I play football and tennis about twice a month. I play Frisbee Golf every week and enjoy bicycling. I used to play cricket and badminton, but alas, no more. I am not a pro in any of them and never even got to varsity level at any of them in school.
the ice hockey one is covered in a book called "andy roddick beat me with a frying pan." apparently the rules of ice hockey only allow a certain surface area of padding, so your fat guy would be getting hit with hockey pucks traveling like 80 mph all game...plus he'd be sitting on ice. you'd have to get a new fat guy every game?
also, hitting the tip of the net every time is pretty much impossible. but it's nice theorycraft.
On June 15 2011 12:04 jellyfish wrote: the ice hockey one is covered in a book called "andy roddick beat me with a frying pan." apparently the rules of ice hockey only allow a certain surface area of padding, so your fat guy would be getting hit with hockey pucks traveling like 80 mph all game...plus he'd be sitting on ice. you'd have to get a new fat guy every game?
also, hitting the tip of the net every time is pretty much impossible. but it's nice theorycraft.
On the cover- "could a morbidly obese goalie shut out an NHL hockey team?" I now want to buy this book!
There's another question there "Would a team of midgets be the greatest offense in baseball?" I don't get it. Is it about the pitch and where it has to go?
Well one that was commonly used by the New Jersey Devils was called the Blue Line Trap. They'd win pretty much every single game 1-0 by abusing a rule that just let them make an impossible to break defensive line
Get that shot-putter we talked about earlier and have him practice his long range shots to the point where he can heave full court shots and hit them 50% of the time from the same spot. Perhaps I'm being a bit optimistic on this one.
Or just get a 325 pound giant and sit him under the hoop all game where he can just stand on his tip toes to score. Call him Shaq or something
For baseball get a pitcher who can throw a slider that goes 5 feet to the right of the plate so it looks like a ball then comes over at last second and strikes out. Easily done right?
And lol at the basketball one I was thinking of actually practicing a full court shot for the rest of my life so that maybe I could get put on a team maybe not full court but a three pointer that i can make under any circumstance? BAM 100million a year?? :D
In football they disallowed stepping on your teammates to jump over the line, so there's probably some mutual contact/pushing off type rule.
Basketball, even if you could heave those shots at 50%, they'd just end up covering you every time you get the ball no matter where you are. And the best basketball players don't hit contested long 2's much better than 40%.
Basketball - Professional fouls. Just keep tagging their best player and when your player gets too many fouls sub them off.
Cricket. Bowling (pitching) the ball as fast as you can directly at the player to try to hurt them rather than try and get them out. It freaks them out and they can't play properly, first happened to the cricket equivalent of Flash (Don Bradman), and did the job quite well. Newer batters now know how to severely punish these types of bowls so its rare to see this type of bowl.
Cricket. Roll the ball along the ground on the last ball so the batter can't hit the ball hard enough to get enough runs to win the game. Happened when the batter needed only needed 2 runs off the last ball to win.
AFL. Playing defense on the opposite side of the pitch. Most players let the ball get halfway before defending really happens. Since last year a team got their bigger players up front to tackle them right in front of their goal and get cheap goals as well as make it impossible to get the ball into midfield. For a while the team was scoring huge amounts of points and barely letting the other team get any.
Bowling at a batsman at an awkward angle, that will prompt him to play a risky defensive shot, or a very risky attacking shot, or do nothing and possibly injuring yourself.
The underarm incident:
A tactic used to take all speed of the ball, almost rolling it to prevent a batsman from playing a high scoring shot.
Well in soccer, if you're leading the score and it only remains a few minutes, if an opponent is going to score, just hard tackle him, or even take the ball with your hands ! You'll be out, and they'll get a penalty kick they have 70% chances to succeed. IIRC someone from a South American team (Uruguay ?) did that during last world cup.
EPT
