I write this under duress. Tim beat me in World in Conflict. I now have to explain what I did wrong, for the amusement of you, friend of PC Gamer.
This is after I've been bragging up my World in Conflict skills over the last week or so, having found myself in the fairly unusual postition of regularly topping a worrying percentage of the open servers I've been playing in the World in Conflict demo. I'm not a great player of anything , but World in Conflict appears to sit neatly over a few of my skillsets so... I do okay.
(I lie - there was one server I joined where I ended middling/low, but this one was clearly playing on a level above everyone else. That it was late on a Friday night implies these may be the serious player. And it probably didn't help that I was drunk either, I guess)
Anyway, I'm reatively hot stuff. I apparently, claimed I was unbeaten when we started the match, which is an even cheerier lie, and whose hubris does mean I do deserve a beating. So I got one. A kind of one, anyway.
The game goes like this, roughly.
We're playing on the final code of the game. Eventually, after a little nosing, we find what appears to be a 1v1 map. It's a road in a forested valley, with four or five capture points along its length. I play USA. He plays USSR.
First thing we both notice is that the points limit is about three times what a "normal" game would allow. Whie we can only initially call 2000 points worth of troops, there's over 10,000 more we can have on the battlefield when we unlock. I, at least, realise that I want to get them on the floor as quickly as possible.
I start with infantry, sneaking a load into the treeline at the roadside - I tend to overuse parachutists in the main game, using them as observers to really annoy the enemy support units - and start engaging. My second drop is Heavy Artilery. Tim's is tanks. Clearly, I bombard the tanks, before bringing down a good 5000 points worth of tanks of my own and sweeping along the line.
I'm trying to keep my troops near the control points, and leaving a few of them on it to try and build up bunkers to protect them which - for some reason - isn't working. Tim, apparently, didn't even try this, which proved a smart move. There's some strife over the final one, where Tim has spent what looks like a good 3/4 of his points on helicopters, which are chewing up my tank column.
And I try a basic World in Conflict ruse. I start popping smoke. Not all of them at once, but enough to disrupt the fire at the tanks and keep the armour rolling for longer. The reason for this is that at the same time I'm putting down a support fire - specifically, air-to-air missiles which will take down all the enemy choppers in the area in ten or so second's time. With the smoke and the tank's resilience, if Tim doesn't realise, they'll be going down.
Tim doesn't realise. His forces decimated, all the checkpoints are secured. Then something odd happens.
A whole new row of capture points appear, nearer his line. We eventually realise that this is a tug-of-war style map, with lines being pushed back and forth depending on who's winning. It's why there's no bunker-building - the lines aren't static things to be defended. I rush onto the second line and, after a short battle - favourite moment is dropping a chemical bomb on a mass of advancing infantry just to spook Tim - get that too. A third line opens up, which the game informs me is the final one. I push on. It's looking increasingly like a straight rout, and I'm feeling smug.
As I said, hubris deserves to be punished.
There's two key points where it enters a SNAFU situation. On my right, infantry are my main advance force, using the forests. They claim the right point, and hide in the woods around it. On the left, a heavy tank column rolls towards the last point. Helicopters sweep down on the column, which is the correct counter. I see if Tim's learnt something, and try the popping smoke while calling in a further round of Air to Air missiles.
Tim hasn't. His choppers hang around in plenty of time to see my tanks annihilated by my own airstike.
Yes, in my haste I'd selected the wrong support fire. Man!
His counterattack is even swifter than my reaction. My Tanks gone, I've no forces on my left. The troops on the right, rather than chasing after his advance, try and reclaim the capture point near the woods. Because for a good half-minute or so after a new line has been opened up, the old capture points are still active. I have no idea what getting hold of one would have done, but I'm guessing it may have removed the new row - it's a device preventing a player just abandoning his line immediately, basically. However, as it turns out, his couple of infantry units prove surprisingly resilient, and secure it for long enough. We're back to the second-set of lines. And then, pretty much immediately since my forces were split, back to the central line.
Here, it's straight war. My snipers end up being an ineffective counter to his infantry on my right, even hidden in forests, and he takes several command points as as my tanks actually arrange a fairly elegant pincer around his main left thrust.
It's too late though, and I shouldn't have been pissing around with such small fry. The game timer runs out. Despite the fact I've got a higher score, Tim has greater territorial control. Tim wins!
It's the first time I've played 1v1 on World in Conflict, and it's an enormously different experience. 8v8 you have such limited forces, you're able to micromanage each intensely - in fact, you end up using people's tendency to do so against themselves by doing things like leaving parachutists behind enemy lines, and visible, for helicopters to waste their time hunting down when they should be doing something a little more useful.
(One of my favourite wins in World in Conflict was on a server where I was on the USA team, and the USSR were on a long winning run. It was close, but they just had a slightly better team. But I suspected they weren't *that* good, and decided to try something suicidal. They used their artilery well, so - playing Armour - I ignored the capture points and rushed for the backline to harass their support units. Two helicopter units chase me around the backlines as I annoy the couple of support players. I'm killed relatively quickly, but I've opened up enough space for my side to just sweep the map. By the time I've respawned my army, we're claiming the final command point. A crushing defeat after a string of such close-victories had the USA scratching their head. I left, grinning enigmatically to find clan requests in my account next time I logged in. Result!)
But in 1v1, you just have more units. Your attention is always going to be spread across the map, and where you choose to focus it more essential than ever. Both Tim and I bumped right against that problem several times, and also used harassing artilery to make the most of it. Now, when I play again I'll...
What am I saying? Tim will be reading this. As if I'm going to give away my masterplan so easily. Go get your own, Mr Sucko.
ahhh hahahaha, well done Kieron. Even in defeat you manage to smug it up and sound nearly the victor. Look forward to hearing some more entertaining podcasts with comical threats and great win loss commentary. Yet to play any WiC but my interest has been peaked.
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Yet to play any WiC but my interest has been peaked.
