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A key concept for gaining a tactical edge
is the idea of action advantage.
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With all else being equal, if you pit two
evenly matched opponents or teams against
one another, in theory the one that takes
the most significant actions
is likely to win.
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Significant actions is a fuzzy concept,
but basically it recognizes that some actions
have more impact on the final outcome than
others.
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Tennis is an excellent example of this.
It is possible to score more points than
the opponent and still lose. You can fight
to duece in your opponents service games
but lose the game point while your opponent
can go scoreless in your service games allowing
you to win the game points, but if you cant
break them they can still take the set in
a tiebreak.
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Winning individual game points is less significant
than winning set points, since set points
are what counts for winning the match. Thus,
set points are more significant than game
points
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MANAGING OPPORTUNITY
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Moving forward from that basic premise it
can be concluded that the opportunity
to take significant actions is the
most important commodity in the game.
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Based upon that conclusion, it follows that
reducing an opponent's opportunity
to take significant actions is a
recipe for success because you are limiting
their ability to convert their available
actions into something meaningful.
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But how is that accomplished, you might
ask? In many different ways; some subtle
and some overt.
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DEFENSE
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The most comprehensive means of limiting
your opponent's opportunity to make significant
actions is to lower your own risk profile.
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Which is to say play defensively and rely
on reactionary responses to hamper and prevent
the opposition's actions. If the opponent
is unable to breakout of this reactionary
net, they can't take any significant actions.
The big flaw to this method is that if they
can breakout in a reliable fashion,
you will probably lose because you are exerting
all of your efforts to stop their efforts.
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At best by itself a great defense can only
result in a stalemate if it completely succeeds
and will result in a loss if it only partially
succeeds. Of course in some cases simply
squelching an assault is effectively a victory
none the less.
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While defensive strategies can be very effective,
they require more coordination and are not
as error-tolerant as some other strategies.
Communication, preperation, and advanced
knowledge are elements that can help a defenive
strategy succeed.
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In many team sports defense is an important
element of success. There are many different
defense schemes such as man-to-man, point,
and isolation to name a few but the purpose
of all of them is to where possible deny
the opposition opportunities to make significant
actions.
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ELIMINATION
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The most direct means of denying the opposition
opportunities for significant actions is
to simply eliminate the people that can
make those actions in the first place.
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The advantage to this method is that it
has dramatic returns when successful, the
downside is that one must often take greater
risks to accomplish this goal.
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To be effective elimination strategies must
be as one sided as possible; it does no
good to lose a teammate or asset to eliminate
an opponent or asset of equivalent ability.
If you must sacrifice a less capable asset
to remove a better opposing asset this is
usually an acceptable trade, but it is best
to eliminate an opponent without suffering
any loss at all.
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In a team environment you also reach a point
of ascending returns; as each opponent falls
unmatched by an equivalent loss on ones
own side a numerical advantage is gained
which makes it easier to gang up and eliminate
the next opponent.
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While elimination strategies can be extremely
effective, they can be easily countered
by other strategies. Speed and suprise are
two synergistic elements that can help an
elimination strategy succeed.
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In most team sports it is considered to
be unsportsmanlike to deliberately eliminate
an opponent, but effective elimination strategies
can still be based around penalty rules
to acheive a man-up advantage in some sports.
And of course in some sports like hockey
and lacrosse its permissible to body check
opponents to the boards, a corner, or to
the ground and thereby temporarily eliminate
them from a play.
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Endurance matches are in a way a form of
elimination strategy as one side attempts
to effectively outlast the opposition and
allow fatigue to eliminate their ability
to resist or take actions of their own.
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In chess and similar board games elimination
is a primary means to victory. Eliminating
an opponents high value pieces such as a
Queen for no loss or the loss of a low value
piece such as a pawn grants sizable advantages.
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DISRUPTION
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An opportunistic strategy that relies on
destablizing the opposition's strategy via
chaos, confusion, randomness, unexpected
manuevers, or well executed pre-choreographed
plays.
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This method can be extremely effective,
particularly against opposition that is
inflexible or incapable of making rapid
adjustments, but it can also fail horribly
and can often backlash.
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Speed and adaptability are extremely beneficial
elements that can help a disruption strategy
succeed.
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In many team sports there is a fast break
equivalent whereby a player gets an opportunity
to make a rush on the opposition's goal
or net virtually unopposed, relying on speed
to strike. Similarly loose ball or puck
opportunities can be converted into goals
as it becomes more difficult for the defense
to see and react clearly or quickly.
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Patterns and plays are generally a form
of disruption as one of their primary purposes
is to allow the execution of some complex
multipart manuever that an opponent is not
prepared to deal with effectively.
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Even in individual sports changeups, net
balls, and off tempo attempts at offense
can catch opponents off guard and result
in an advantage.
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TRADE
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A more subtle strategy revolves around achieving
a numerically beneficial trade ratio of
actions.
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If one action taker can force responses
from multiple opposing action takers or
multiple actions from a single opponent,
they have in effect acheived a beneficial
trade ratio; they traded one action for
several of the opposition's actions.
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Simply speaking, if you can force an opponent
to spend more resources for less effect
then with all else being equal you will
likely win.
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The flip side of this strategy is to avoid
taking actions that do not yield better
than a 1:1 trade with an enemy save for
manuevers designed to gain an even greater
advantage in succesive actions.
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For instance, if a character takes one action
and costs the opposition no actions they
have in effect yielded an action
advantage to the opponent. If a character
follows that action up with an action that
costs the opposition two actions then they
have temporarily broken even.
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However if the second action cost the opponent
five actions then the character has gained
an action advantage of 2:5 from the opposition.
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In some team sports it is possible to force
an opponent to allocate more resources to
create an advantage. For instance many sports
have the concept of a "pick",
whereby one attacker scrapes off a defender
on another attacker creating a temporary
window of opportunity for a significant
action to occur.
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In effect the player setting the pick has
taken one action and cost the defense two
or more actions -- not only did the player
hold down the opponent defending them, they
also cost the defender that they picked
an action, and a third defender might be
forced to slide to cover the open attacker
thereby costing the defense a third action.
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Baseball in particular has many examples
of beneficial trades, with double and triple
plays on both offense and defense, RBI's,
homeruns, and of course grandslams.
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Similarly a player that is so good they
force the opposition to commit two or more
defenders to stop them has helped their
team gain a beneficial trade even if they
are shut out themselves.
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HYBRID STRATEGIES
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The most effective strategies combine two
or more startegies to some degree for best
effect. The most successful hybrid strategies
use strengths of one strategy to offset
the weaknesses of another strategy.
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For instance a hybrid defense-elimination
strategy might attempt to lockdown the opposition
but force them to exhaust themselves in
the process until they lose the ability
to effectively continue their attack, while
a trade-disruption strategy might run complex
plays in an attempt to lure the opposition
into misallocating resources to stop them
and thus gain the tactical edge.
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Almost all team sports use hybrid strategies
for best effect. Examples of a hybrid strategy
include zone defenses which are a hybrid
defense-trade strategy that allows one defender
to potentially cover multiple attackers,
and interceptions which are defense-disruption
based and allow a team to simultaneously
halt an offense and unexpectedly convert
to offense themselves while the opponent
is not set up for defense.
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APPLYING
TO THE HERO SYSTEM
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You can take more over all actions based
upon your character's SPEED and your team
can take more actions overall than an opposing
team based upon their total SPEED, but if
your opponent makes more significant
actions they can still triumph. However
all of the above strategies can be applied
in a HERO System combat to gain an action
advantage and thus increase the opportunity
for success.
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Defensive options are many in the HERO System,
including the ability to Abort and to hold
Actions to block-stop opposing characters.
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Elimination is certainly an option in most
HERO System games where it is basically
expected that each character will have some
means of removing an opponent from a conflict.
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Disruption is not viable for all characters,
but many are able to unsettle a situation
and capitalize on the resulting opportunities,
and of course in a team / group environment
it is possible to set up common manuevers
or teamwork between two or more characters
to gain a combat advantage or for one character
to disrupt so that another can take advantage
of the situation.
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Trades beneficial to a character or team
are very easy to accrue by a player that
considers their actions carefully, takes
advantage of terrain, and has abilities
allowing them to affect more than one person
at a time.
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