EPTUnrelated to topic discussion but I just acquired masters in 3v3 Arranged Team, unreal. Seems to lose value when you get it from a 5-0 placement.
http://i.imgur.com/o6ki4.jpg
Replays:
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Game 1: http://drop.sc/8232
Game 2: http://drop.sc/8233
Game 3: http://drop.sc/8234
Game 4: http://drop.sc/8235 (pretty sick game)
Game 5: http://drop.sc/8236
Game 2: http://drop.sc/8233
Game 3: http://drop.sc/8234
Game 4: http://drop.sc/8235 (pretty sick game)
Game 5: http://drop.sc/8236
Pre-Prelude:
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A few months ago my Protoss self encountered a Terran in a random 3v3 game who then later contacted me. From there I learned that it is possible to party up and do random 3’s and 4’s games and ever since then we’ve worked our way into high diamond in all the formats. I mention this because essentially he and I have really started to gel as of late and both would like to progress as players, and doing whatever it takes etc.
In all honesty, in about 90% of our games we simply went for optimized 6 minute timing attacks (4 gate, mm push). We quickly learned that one of the components of a team game that isn’t necessarily evident in 1v1 is coordination. Additionally, team games have made us try to become more decisive players as failure to have a concise game plan is deadly. That said we were able to win the majority of our games purely on these elements. As of late we’ve been trying to break into masters (random 3’s and 4’s) and we’ve tried to diversify our play.
In all honesty, in about 90% of our games we simply went for optimized 6 minute timing attacks (4 gate, mm push). We quickly learned that one of the components of a team game that isn’t necessarily evident in 1v1 is coordination. Additionally, team games have made us try to become more decisive players as failure to have a concise game plan is deadly. That said we were able to win the majority of our games purely on these elements. As of late we’ve been trying to break into masters (random 3’s and 4’s) and we’ve tried to diversify our play.
Introduction:
I understand a majority of higher level team games, especially in Arranged Team, utilize very specific compositions and strategies. However, when doing random 3v3’s or 4v4’s the option to execute these strategies can be limited by the random element of your pick-up-guy. Thus, what I hope to extract from this thread is essentially general ideas/strategies that are effective regardless of the composition. I’m trying to form strategies/game plans that are based off of the general trends and good RTS sense. What follows is the current foundation of our game play and strategy that has got us this far.
Foundation:
(1) 3 of us mass up units for a 6 or 7 minute timing attack, then ideally expand
(2) 2-3 of us tech* off of a shared base (map dependent)
(3) 2 of us mass up units for a 6 or 7 minute defense while the other player on the team techs.
***tech being something like 1 gate stargate, 1 base robo, dark templar, cloak banshee
•Emphasis on Scouting (tower control, base scout)
•Emphasis on Communication (coordination of attack)
An opening is just an opening. A fundamental aspect of a game plan is being able to transition. In general, our 6-7 minute attack either wins the game or acts as pressure behind which we can expand.
Things to Keep in Mind:
•Cheese
•Early Aggression (essentially anything that occurs before 5:45)
•Cloak Tech
Cheese of course can be attended to with proper scouting. Although, I’m not quite sure about the early aggression (in game I find myself still lacking in mechanics to actively be scouting my opponent 3-4 minutes into the game, but this could be learned). Finally, I feel the cloak tech can be accounted for by a quick transition into detection with DT's usually hitting a base at around 7 minutes or so.
Lightning Round:
Just going to throw out questions here that are really more about trying to understand the proper reaction. Feel free to answer any or all of these.
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•Under which circumstance is teching off one base an acceptable transition (say, after the 4 gate fails)? Or do you find yourself allocating the tech transition to one player, and the other two expanding etc.
•Which of the three races do you tend to focus down first at your first engagement? Does it depend on what you scout or is it always one race over the other (for example, Zerg on account of the openness of their base, tend to walk up ramp)
•One of the Terran opponents went for a super fast siege tank tech, nullifying your first engagement. How do you respond? Do you attempt to engage elsewhere or do you immediately expand and hope?
•Under what circumstances do you alter your strategy for early aggression? Say you see two Zerg who have late pools.
•Are pooling (resource sharing) strategies viable? In WarCraft 3 this was notorious and I’ve seen some masters level players do ‘pool the protoss’ for mass gateway units.
Replays/Final Thoughts:
My approach so far has been pretty color blind. Strategies may be founded purely on team composition. A while back I chatted up with a Master’s 4v4 player with one of those absurd records in random team games (50-2 or the like) and he very quickly told me that it essentially comes down to having a zerg on your team that 10 pools every single time, a protoss that 4 gates, and a terran that goes hellions. The last random player on the team just makes beefy units to accompany it.
Anyway, here are the replays. These are definitely not the most ideal representatives but rather to provide some sort of tangible context of what sorts of things we’re doing.
This first game is an example of the 2 of us teching off a shared base.
PPT v ZZT
This second game, much more recent, is an example again of a 6 minute timing attack where both zergs on the other team 2 base ling and the protoss 4 gates.
PPT v ZZP
This may be a game you could view and provide feedback on. For example, in this game having seen the late pools we should have attacked before 6 minutes? I mean, even so we manage to win the first few encounters. In my eyes the best decision would have been to immediately attack the Protoss after having won the first engagement as opposed to trying to hit expansions or one of the Zergs like we did. We could have then defended the counter attack and won from there?
tl;dr:
What general tips/strategies do you have for Arranged/Random 3v3's?
