Game plans: Dealing with key targets
Okay so this is my first attempt at picking apart a very particular concept regarding game plans. I should probably do a basic game planning post (maybe I'll come back to it later - maybe I wont, I do what I want!) but this is a concept that I have been aware of for a while but only recently have we started implementing it into our game plans. I've felt our breaking down of field layouts was pretty lackluster in the 2013 season, we just worked out 'Who's going where and which runner are they shooting?' and then played the games from there. However the past couple events I have seen an improvement in our attitude towards field layouts and our individual roles within the team.
The aspect that I want to talk about is identifying a key player on the other team and preventing them from doing their role. Now pretty much every game plan conceived will have an attacker on the D-Side and an attacker on the Snake side and at least one person shooting for each of those attackers on the break. That's all well and good but what I am talking about here is what happens in the mid-game, once you've rolled the breakout dice and (hopefully) made it into your bunkers. You still want to stop those attackers of course, but the problem we're facing here is; how do we make progress in the mid-game? There is often a key bunker preventing you from attacking the side you want to push hardest (the side where you'll be stacking 3 of your 5 guys usually) and in the main this is the bunker you need to deal with. When you have identified this bunker it's time to work out the most effective way you're going to deal with him to work your way up the field. This can be done in different ways:
Method 1: Hit em off the break.
If there's a big enough lane to catch this player out before he can get to his bunker then it may be worth putting an extra gun on him to make that early G. You may have to look around for the best way to hit him - with the no-back-centre layouts it may mean stopping at the start gate or finding a blind spot where you can delay and put some early paint in without getting hit - if this player is also delaying and you can find a good blind spot where you can sit for a bit longer, you can keep putting the paint down to either hit them as they make the move after they have delayed, or to make them go to a different position. Be aware though that even if you hit him, there may be another body going there if they double up, or they may fill it again soon after, especially if that team knows it's importance - so don't forget to keep an eye on it. This may not work however if there are no suitable lanes or your shooter keeps getting shot trying to hit him. Don't forget that this player may also be delaying to shoot a lane and so might not be filling this spot on the break. In any of the above cases you may need to move onto..
Method 2: Bully em
Someone holding a lane in these key bunkers can be hard to gunfight with and to be honest I never really recommend gunfighting unless you're the last guy out there or time is against you and you need to make something happen. On the bitburg layout (contrary to how it looks on paper) we found that the player sat in Orange was often locking down the teabag 1 player, preventing him from making the big move to teabag 2 where he can start shooting people crossfield. There wasn't a particularly easy shot to try and hit Orange on the break unless your first ball through the M was right on target. Therefore what we decided was to try and stack the teabag side with 3 guys, 2 in Apple and myself in Teabag 1. From there either myself or one of the Apple players were to move to the corner (it was too risky to send one there off the break) so that we had a player in the teabag 1 and the teabag corner. From there we had 2 guns which we could shoot Orange with and therefore between us both shooting infield we could gain dominance / bully him out of his bunker if our snake player had eyes on him. The remaining apple player was containing the teabags and we were using our Orange to support our snake player. With all of our players aware that Orange was our bully target, we were able to either eliminate or disable him quite quickly, allowing us to play our aggressive teabag side game-plan. Once Orange was eliminated it meant that we could start to bully out their teabag attackers from our corner and Apple players, whilst our own teabag attack was free to make moves and cross-field shots.
Bullying: Teabag 1 & Corner working together to get dominance
Method 3: Make their job pointless
If there's a strong bunker stopping you from pushing up the teabags then the alternative to putting multiple guns on that side to dominate and bully - is to push harder on the snake side and just let him control that lane whilst your teabag player just soaks up paint and keeps tabs on their mirror where possible. Stacking players on the snake side will hopefully mean more G's and more field progression on that side that will, eventually, cause that Orange to have to switch lanes (or be pinched out) at some point. This game plan may not always be effective, especially if they're stacking the snake side too, as it does mean Orange is being allowed to control the teabags during the early game as they had planned and you're letting them dictate the game.. but if you're not hitting them off the break and you're not able to bully them with 2 guns, give them their inch but try to take a mile on the other side as a counter-punch.
Method 4: Gunfight
You're pretty much rolling the dice here, these holding bunkers are normally going to have paint on your bunker before you're even there and so getting into a gunfight is mostly a bad idea and essentially just rolling the dice. However if you are confident at reading their paint and you see a gap, you can always try to get dominance yourself and hope for a kill. I did shoot the orange bunker on this layout from the teabag 1 but only once, but I also got shot out of my bunker on more than one occasion so really it doesn't pay off. When you're down on points and against the clock then maybe you should push the issue.
