Tactics Talk: Erlenberg Defense - YOLO? Oh no.

Had a game on Erlenberg Defense tonight and thought I'd talk about it for a moment. It's an 8/7/6 game and I'm in the CromB (so bottom tier).

As I've talked about before on this map there are a couple of key positions to hold early. Basically E2, D5, and D9. If you can hunker down there in the early game and let the enemy team waste time and HP trying to dig you out (with support from shooters on the A line) you've got a good chance to win. Even if you lose one of the flanks the enemy still has to cross a bunch of open ground to get to the cap and your guys SHOULD be able to farm them.

I took the CromB to D9 figuring I could use the mobility and view range to help hold that spot and light enemies trying to sneak down the 0 line, or playing tourist on the 6/7 lines.

Initially the battle is going ok. We have a light tank in the bush at E6, bunch of shooters around A9/A0, and the enemy isn't able to push city. In fact, our guys have faced so little resistance in city that two of our better tanks (a M-II-Y and a TS-5) have decided to push up the 6 line all the way to J6.

Why? 

Well, in battle chat (after they were both dead, since they got themselves isolated and encircled in a 2 v 5) they said they were trying to "Reestablish the battle line to keep us from getting flanked" or somesuch.

Now, to be fair, that's not a terrible idea...in clan wars. Where you have comms and coordination. It might even make some sense in standard mode where the enemy's cap has value.

But in the early game of defense mode they overextended and got themselves disconnected from the rest of the team, in a position where none of us could really help them, in order to take meaningless terrain.

There is zero strategic value to J6 in Defense mode; at least not in the early game.

Worse

Even worse one of them was a top tier TS-5, a tank that needs to keep everything in front but has now pushed himself into a position where he has enemies on 3 sides.

And if the TS-5 had somehow survived, the enemy team has no reason to come back to fight him. They could have just continued to push into our cap knowing that it's very unlikely he'd be able to get back to reset if they got on cap - TS-5 is just too slow. And he's basically driven himself out of the fight.

And...?

They did modest damage and got 1 kill (total) in exchange for throwing two of our better tanks into a meaningless position. That left a bunch of Tier 6 and Tier 7 tanks trying to fend off Tier 8 MTs and TDs and sure enough the enemy capped us out and we lost.

The lesson

Know your mode (Assault? Defense? Standard? Encounter?), know the map, and try to understand which terrain is meaningful and which isn't. Taking a slow tank to the opposite side of the map from the objective (like valley on Lakeville in an Encounter game) significantly reduces your team's chance to win.

And trying to make 200IQ plays like "resetting the battle line" in a pub match when you don't have any coordination with the rest of your team is probably just going to result in you getting isolated and killed. Remember, Snapshot: We're not psychics (wotguy.blogspot.com). 

GLHF!