2010 was a long year, the longest ever in fortress. No other has had twelve Ladles and no others have been as well attended as the 2010 Ladles. On average,  15.17 teams played a ladle and every Ladle had at least thirteen teams, which is a benchmark for participation. So it was a big year, filled with 170 Ladle games, 376 matches, and probably around 3000 rounds.

There are several frameworks with which one could look back on 2010. One could analyze both the strategic and tactical trends and themes, the cultural changes and occurrences, the shifts in skill and power. In each of these four categories, strategy, tactics, culture, skill, there was unmistakable progress and sophistication. Progress and sophistication were, if anything, the themes of the year.

But progress towards what? But we talked a lot about stagnation in tactics, and viewed at a large enough scale this may be true. Tactics did not stagnate, they shrunk. The small tactics of sweeping, of midfield play, the subtleties of grinding and splitting got far more attention in 2010 than they did in 2009. Those subtleties began to sort teams out and preclude what might have been extreme parity in results. Failed defenses and bad grinds are not what separates the top 2 teams from the middle 10 or the top 5 from the middle 7. The best teams, by which I mean Crazy Tronners and Speeders, won when they aligned all those little tactical details into a harmonious whole. That was essentially the innovation at the top of the year.

Take a section of Speeders game plan and alone it seems deeply flawed. Insa’s defense is theoretically doomed if you think about in isolation. The type of holing employed in Ladle 29 is also extremely risky, taken without the full picture. The innovation here was that each piece fits together toning down each’s weakness. The inevitable shrinking of the defense is countered by the holing or the threat of it. The defense did not need to be great or kill anyone, it just needed to be there so Flex or Fofo could move forward when the opponent’s zone broke.

The type of strategy employed by most teams today is derivative of the Speeders fortress. Mostly everyone plays a mostly balanced game, and prepares for the inevitabilities of a Ladle, namely that you will get holed, you will get centered. This was not exactly something Speeders had to deal with in Ladle 29. No one was threatening to hole back. The threat of that today is what keeps teams more balanced and more honest and more careful. Progress and sophistication.

Culturally, there were marked shifts towards something more professional and more competitive. From a negative viewpoint, there were less outbreaks and incidents than in 2009. Especially this Fall, mischief has declined terrifically and generally the fortress community is a more respectful place. It has not necessarily become friendlier, and I think it has not. People keep to themselves perhaps a bit more, or teams keep to themselves. Team changes and personnel changes are fewer than earlier, and teams have taken a more long term look to them. Voting has become more regularized and the adaption to it is notably more traditional than some of the bouts we used to have. Seeding, captain GIDs are improvements as well.

The talk about a league, we essentially had a league in 2010. One could gives points for finishes and quality of losses and come up with a year-winner. It would almost certainly go to Speeders or Crazy Tronners, depending on the scoring system. The two were tied in Ladle wins, Speeders had a slight head-to-head advantage. The teams met 7 times, Speeders won 4 of the meetings.

Part of all this was the decline of sumo. Sumo’s popularity is a shadow of what it was a year ago and American fortress games have expanded. Overall, there is simply more fortress being played. I expect that to be borne out by the stats of match quantity and participation in G5′s, though I do not have any way to certify that.

Regarding skill, it is a tricky issue. Skillsets have become much more defined this past year. I could go on talking about a lean, fast attacker and people would understand me. Similarly I could discuss a solid, conservative sweeper and I would not lose as many readers as a year ago. We are more conditioned to discussing players and their style rather than just their skill. The lexicon has yet to expand to the amount we need it to, but that may come in 2011. That’ll be progress of a different grind kind. Happy New Year.

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

The average container ship can carry about 4,500 containers. This blog was viewed about 21,000 times in 2010. If each view were a shipping container, your blog would have filled about 5 fully loaded ships.

In 2010, there were 64 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 284 posts. There were 33 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 10mb. That’s about 3 pictures per month.

The busiest day of the year was March 9th with 388 views. The most popular post that day was RudyCan’tFail had the Best Time….

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were forums3.armagetronad.net, r.jumpingness.com, google.com, teamunknown.info, and crazy-tronners.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for play fortress, playfortress, twisted rats, fortress play, and noob_saibot armagetron.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

RudyCan’tFail had the Best Time… March 2010
17 comments

Ladle 30 Power Rankings February 2010
34 comments

Ladle 31 Power Rankings March 2010
17 comments

May Power Rankings May 2010
20 comments

November Power Rankings November 2010
17 comments and 2 Likes on WordPress.com

1.) Speeders Clan (11 Ladles, 8 Finals, 4 wins)

2.) Crazy Tronners (12 Ladles, 6 Finals, 4 Wins)

3.) Team Unknown (12 Ladles, 1 Final, 5 Semi-Finals)

Note: Freelancers, Jalapeños, Vowel Appreciation and Inglorious Basterds I could bring myself to lump together, despite some similar personnel.

Three weeks ago Sunday, we played what remains the centerpiece of our game, the Ladle. This the Fortieth, representing 52 months. No one has played in every Ladle, though eggcozy, PsYkO, garisimo, Legit, Lackadaisical, ady-Lucifer were on rosters for the First and were rosters for the Fortieth. The Tenth was won by the Tronners Under the Influence of Durka and Goody, the Twentieth by the Crazy Tronners of Woned and emmy, the Thirtieth by the Speeders of Flex and insa, and now the Fortieth by those same Crazy Tronners again.

Two Ladles ago, Rogue Tronners and Crazy Tronners battled over the championship. Rogue was denied a second straight title and CT took their second in three tries. They remained the odds-on favorite to take three in four, beat a Oracle team with a lot of fight in them, and accomplished a feat only second to Speeders’ three-peat (guess who beat them to keep that streak to three).

With Crazy Tronners excellence on display, we know there is one great team in the fortress world. In Ladle 41 we saw that there are several good teams, and quite a lot of parody. Speeders beat Rogue after having lost to them in their previous encounter. Oracle beat Speeders. Team Unknown, without a final’s appearance since early this summer, played the eventual champs close, taking a match.

What is not reflected on the scoreboard is the quality of the “bad” teams. These teams are not really “bad,” they are just simply worse than their opponent. Immortal Dynasty, Pls Res Us, Tronners Unlimited, United Noobs of Armagetron, Survivors and Dark Syndicate are all quite good teams, relative to, say their Ladle 30 or Ladle 20 equivalents. There are eight teams that make Quarters and eight that do not. With the exception of Open Team, every single team on the board was highly competitive. This is quite significant.

How Woned won

Really any talk of the fortress scene today starts with Woned. It is not because he is the most effective player in the game (I’ve always thought that’s puuquie, for anyone keeping track), but rather it is because he has excelled at playing a specific position in a specific system. We might all agree he is fearsome at the center position. Indeed he is, but his opponents have created the fear.

Crazy Tronners, and specifically Woned, have an acute perception of what their opponent’s are talking about in /team. They have a good understanding of team dynamics. Woned’s play and his positioning is more about that than anything obscene skills, which do help.

Crazy Tronners, in part because they have five great players besides Woned, place a bet in each match. They bet that if they center you every round, you are going to start yelling at your center to block. Woned rarely expends any effort in blocking his own center until his opponents adapt and manage to block and center him. Most of the time he just goes straight at his opponent’s grind and gets down their. He is betting that his opponent’s captain will be yelling at him. It’s a calculated gamble, but usually it works. The opposition loses composure or alters the game just to stop the centering. He dictates play.

This is only possible because the rest of his team can handle it if they themselves are center occasionally. And Woned never has to worry about his captain yelling at him to block center because, well, Woned is the captain. The game he is playing is one where he bets you’ll adapt to him before he adapts to you. The absence of frustrated teammates almost clinches it.

The Left Winger

There’s been this position for a long long time. The left winger is played by whoever plays in the position two slot. In this past Ladle, left wingers were highlighted more than ever, and the position has come to be defined beyond simply the grind. The winger has become more than simply a wingman.

There are two true wingers out there, Gonzap and Viper. For them, the plan is quite simple, but carries quite a few levels of sophistication. There basic moves are to eventually outflank their oppositions wing. This is easily done, simply because to lock off the wing requires rubber and surrenders the passage back to the center. Defensively, it is sounder to keep control over that middle passage and allow flow over the wings, farther away from one’s defense.

And so the left winger slips around the edge and runs up the side, almost at the wall. It is not so much that they will go undetected, indeed few defenses forget about attackers like viper or Gonzap, but that to give them attention is so drastically inefficient. For a sweeper to go out and confront them on the wing draws him far out of position. The sweeper therefore prefers to hold his established ground. He waits for the winger to come.

The winger is rarely the first of his team to reach the opponent’s defense. By the time he gets there that sweeper is often drawn into some other conflict. When engaging with his opponent, the sweeper fails to consider that in a few seconds the winger will enter the area as well, shifting the ground of the battle. The winger can often gain dangerous territory with effort quite disproportionate to the territories value. And these wingers are attackers.

It’s another example of a player playing a specific position. This is where fortress is headed. Playing positions. Do not just do something, stand there. Rather than mindlessly (or “intuitively”) playing, the best are playing with a purpose. These purposes are often subtle, but they are significant. The winger’s consistent presence, predictable timing and actions, allows his teammates to plan of his future movements rather than to react to his present ones. This is what teamwork is. Communicating future actions so that we are coordinated at that future place in time.

Potter

Potter is very valuable to Team Unknown. He makes such a big difference when he is with them and they are simply a much better team with him on the grid. It stood out when, without him, they flopped in Ladle 38. It stood out when, with him, the flipped the scoreboard on Drug Addicts in Ladle 39. It stood out when they took a match of the eventual champions this past Ladle.

Sweepboxes Do Not Win Ladles

They may get you to the finals, they do not win Ladles. You’re just not going to win if you hand your opponent a five on three advantage every single round. You just won’t. It is a marvelous way for slightly underpowered teams to sure up their defense and give their attackers a chance to prosper. Notorious Emoticons did it. Oracle did it. At the highest level, your opponent is going to beat it. Sweepboxes might prevent losing, and usually that’s good enough to make the Semifinals. Having good players as both Notorious and Oracle improves your chances. But it just does not win. I may be proven wrong on this, though I doubt I will.

I am not saying that it is impossible to win using a sweepbox. I’m just saying that strategically, in a Ladle final, it is an error.

3B

Dramatically underrated, this player. I think he’s quite good and would not be surprised to see him playing on a better side sometime in the next several months.

Tronners Unlimited

I would not be surprised if their results start taking a jump. They have had somewhat consistent rosters for four Ladles now, with some talent there. Radian, Syllabear, modis (MobiusPoint) are perhaps the top of the roster, but az95, Dal, Syre, Venom and Elmo form a young solid supporting cast. I am reminded of a group like X Clan in their infancy when thinking about these folks. It was easier to succeed in that environment than today, but similarities persist. They need a skilled center who they can put confidence in.

Ladle 41

Ladle 41 will not be won, but rather lost. It is if Crazy Tronners fails to hold reign.

In an effort to expand the discussion of cameras, I ask you to comment with your custom camera and to help evaluate other listed cameras based on the following rubric. Basically, we’re collecting cameras and evaluating them. (I’m aware of this wiki page, to preempt that comment) I’d prefer that you comment here. I’ve listed a rubric for judging below.

• 1<>4 Ease of use (how long it takes to get accustomed)
• 1<>4 Judgment of speed (how fast things look)
• 1<>4 Detail (performance in small areas)
• 1<>4 Awareness (performance in large areas)
• 1<>4 Feel (gut feeling, how it colors the game)

I’m asking for a bit of feedback so that I can better aim Play Fortress at what people are interested in reading and discussing. I’ve been pleased that longer and in depth conversations have begun in comments here. That’s a relatively new development, and I hope it continues. The amount of senselessness that is present on the forums seems mostly absent (I also like having the knowledge I can moderate if need be

So below is a poll asking for you to select the two genres you most enjoy reading on this site. I’ve linked to the referenced posts below the poll. Please add some more constructive criticism/instruction/wants/desires in the comments on this post. Thanks.

Relative Links

• November Power Rankings
• Filling The Grid
• Reformatting
• In Praise of Real Attacking
• Fabrics

The Problems

December 5th will be the day of Ladle 40. It seems almost a comically high number that we have played. 40. At which point does an individual Ladle victory become meaningless? A bunch of players have won a Ladle multiple times, but there are many who have never won. For those who have won before, winning is nice, and it is satisfying to be the best for month, but it is nothing really special. For those who have not yet won, it is incredibly difficult to get to that higher level.

I was curious as to this stratification of the player base. It seems like there are distinct classes of players. There are a bunch who play for teams that have won and may win again. There are a bunch who play for teams that have never win and probably will not. Consider this statistic, since Ladle 28, Freelancers, Speeders and Crazy Tronners have won Ladles. (I threw Rogue Tronners in with Freelancers, with the common Olive, Titanoboa & Lackadaisical, argue with me about this below if you wish). For the year prior: Twixted Xats, Arrow Clan, Speeders, Crazy Tronners  and Freelancers (then Kill or Die).

Since the Ladle expanded to sixteen teams at Ladle 18, there have been roughly five teams to win it. I would dare to stand up here and yell out that is a bad thing. It is bad that PRU should compete in every single one of those past 21 Ladles with minimal progress. I would also dare suggest that the format of the Ladle reinforces this status quo.

The format discriminates. Because the Ladle is a monthly tournament whose date and time is inflexible, teams need many more than six active skilled players in order to ensure they have personnel that can execute an organized, cohesive game plan. It is no coincidence that the two largest clans have been the winningest (CT and SP). Smaller teams face a tough decision, constantly plug holes with newer players not learned in the system or play only when at full strength. Perhaps this means playing ever other Ladle. Many players want to play competitively every Ladle, a month is a long enough time to wait. These players, if they are skilled enough for admittance, join big clans.

So the smaller teams stay smaller and less skilled. They get together to play fortress once a month, lose 2-0 to a “good” team and continue to tread water. To become upwardly mobile, it requires a combination of strong leadership and good fortune. This is what happened with Rogue Tronners. Without the bolstering of the lineup, the additions of Concord and Lackadaisical in Ladle 37, and then Olive in Ladle 38, Matoso, Luffy and Poke would still have developed into as skilled players as they are today. However, that team would not have the success, would not have played and defeated good teams, without that bump up in experience. R would have treaded water like PRU or Wild West or DS, and eventually the skilled players jump ship: Rudy went to TX, Spook went to Oracle, hello/kult went to Rogue, then to Oracle, Slov left PRU and then DS, Theroze left PRU and then BS. And so the team is back to square one. If there were a law of team-building, if your competing at a tier below the level of your best player, that player will leave.  Good players clump together and clump in the same spots, over and over again.

This may seem unrelated to the format of the Ladle. It isn’t. All the ways that teams and players improve are made impossible to small, bad teams (bad teams are small, small teams are bad).  The single best way to improve is to play serious, organized matches against opponents of very similar skill level with teammates better than you. (This is practically a magic formula for developing newer players, CT is a frequent user of this strategy, SP too). Improvement on the team-level requires each individual to improve as well as the team to improve it’s teamwork and organization. Bad, small teams do not have these opportunities to play against similarly skilled opponents in serious matches, and simply cannot play together the amount they need, most Ladles, they play two matches and lose both. They cannot war as often because they are smaller and are not as desirable to war against because they are bad.

Now, ideally, teams have more control over their destiny. Ideally, gameplay is more competitive and more teams take a stake in determining a champion. For the good teams, the Ladle becomes meaningless, they are just trading victories. Ideally that changes too. None of this will not happen with the current format.

The Realities of Competition

Logistics have always been the issue and they will continue to be. Fortress competition is not a high priority in most people lives. Many have learned to plan around Sundays, and few have conflicts. Allowing people to set their own time usually makes things messier, 12 people are hard to coordinate. Leaving the time making to teams causes problems, we have had experience with that. Spread out a tournament over weeks, players lose interest and for many an hour commitment over four weeks is harder to meet than a four hour commitment once a month. The window of times that work for the ten time zones of concern is narrow to begin with.

Logistics are one problem, meaning is another. The format needs to have meaning. The Ladle does have meaning, I think its meaning quickly eroding but that’s up for debate. The Ladle is simple, you play a tournament, last team standing wins. It measures each team’s ability to play fortress, with a couple impurities which I discussed above. Whatever format we play, needs to have meaning, success in the format needs to directly relate to fortress ability, with as few impurities as possible.

“Well, it was about five years ago now. I had just left a clan whose name none of you will recognize and set out to start my own team. This was back when we still played Ladles with sixteen teams, so you played against the best much more often than today. Great players still floated around casual games. In fact, for the most part, there was only one or two fortress servers with any amount of people in them.”

“Anyway, I was on my own again, looking for some teammates. At just about the same time, the old Diamond Exchange clan was breaking apart. They had won a couple Ladles and were quite a good team. I had swept against them a bunch, and had developed a friendly rivalry with one of their attackers. His name was version_zero. Anyone ever heard of him?”

Silence still.

“I didn’t think so. Well, neither of us were elite players, but we held our own. Some of those D.E. guys stuck together, but version_zero wanted to try something new. The D.E. faithful had this kind of ultra-competitive outlook. They had been caught cheating a couple times, but wriggled out of any sort of suspension. So he and I founded a new team, which we named Full Arc.”

People loved listening to Halfwall talk, and rarely did he talk about the past. Most of the time he criticized yesterday’s games or tomorrow’s lineups, just like the rest of them. Today, though, he was on the subject of his old team, Full Arc.

Full Arc began like most clans do. It began when a couple people decided they wanted a team of their own, and that they wanted something different.  Halfwall had played for some very good teams back then. He was regarded as a reliable sweeper and a solid player. Rarely, though, did he inflict his will on the game. Very rarely. He did not have that type of strength, that intangible element that seem to surround certain players.

Halfwall did have another air about him though. Almost everyone found him immensely likable. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, he carried a reputation of being a ‘nice’ player. Nice players did not have that inner fire that made great players do what they do. Nice players could be good, but they could never be great. Halfwall had always been a nice player.

Accordingly, his new clan was instantly likable as well (this likability followed him). Their new web home was peppered with good luck messages and greetings from many various players. But for a while Full Arc was just version_zero and Halfwall in dialogue. Two players hardly fill out a team.

If Halfwall was well known and well liked across the grids, version_zero had hardly any reputation at all. He was quite, and players generally projected his clans character onto him. He had been an early member of Diamond Exchange; it had been a better citizen in its early days. He stuck around and did not complain when younger, louder and more skillful members started causing trouble. Version_zero knew no other team. But when things fell apart, he knew he wanted to be part of some better. And so, he found the friendly, likable Halfwall.

“Full Arc started off as just me and him, and it was for a several weeks. It looked like we weren’t going to field a team for the next Ladle, Ladle 43 I think it was. So, we decided to just make an open team. This turned out to be a great decision.”

This type of independent team building struck many of the listeners in Jim’s Café as novel. They were used to simply be put on a team with a bunch of other members of Jim’s or else a team drawn randomly from an even larger group. Sometimes these teams would decide to form and keep the same roster for a couple weekly Ladles, but mostly not. Players belonged to a server, not a team.

Of course there were the professional teams. The professional teams played in private, signed their players to contracts, and operated like small nations. TRONIC had become highly legalized and regularized, and much of the power was in the hands of these professional teams. TRONIC was indeed “self-organized,” and those who self-organized best organized themselves atop a hierarchy. Few players thought about this, and at least in Jim’s they were focused on Halfwall’s retelling of his past.

Jim’s Café was a not a great server, but it was home to a lot of players. The settings were standard fortress, the quality of play was not particularly high either. Were one to spend just five minutes at Jim’s, one would discover why people went there again and again. Stories of triumph and folly were traded freely, the place was just pulsing.

“He’s the best ever, surely.”

“Not quite, he’s not like some of the old timers.”

“He’s better”

“You didn’t see those guys play.”

“I know, I know, but none of them had his skill, no one comes close to impacting a game like he does. His record in TRONIC speaks for itself.”

“If he wins the Cup again, then maybe.”

Conversation went on every minute of the day and every hour of the year. The regulars debated which team would bring home the TRONIC Cup this year, or whether the latest trade was a fair one. They all played fortress and many played in the Cup. Few still had ambitions at competing at a serious level and only one or two young ones still had that raw potential to have a chance with any of the big teams. Mostly, good players did not hang around Jim’s. Mostly, good players spent their time training, not chatting up folks in a Café server.

Old Halfwall Holding, a retired veteran of the game, stopped in now and then. He was friends with Jim, who owned the place. Halfwall had made it to the quarterfinals and everyone at Jim’s was proud to say they spoke with a guy who played in a quarterfinal of a TRONIC Cup. But Halfwall had not played in a Cup for a couple years now and while he still had more skill than most of the folks at Jim’s, he did not really participate in the games. He came in maybe once or twice a month, would spectate and chat with the other old timers, while the younger players grindt away down on the grid.

“Hell, I first saw the player everyone knows as Leo over four years ago. He went by a different name then. His name was ‘flush.’”

“Get out of here, Halfwall. Leo, the Leo?”

Leo, a great fortress player, was famous, and not just at Jim’s, but in every small café across the game. Leo was more than a player, he was a popular legend. He had won each of the last three Cups as a central part of the Pointer Fortress Clan team. His legend was not solely formed through his greatness in competition. He famously entered the server New York Showcase, a competitive server where young talents play and try out for big teams, and took on challengers ten at a time. He played ten against one for an hour and won every round. People were selling their spectator slots to people who could not get in.

“He has since become a popular legend and ‘flush’ is no part of that legend. I understand that. But that legend is well known today, I suppose it’s retold in every small late night server out here. That legend begins, of course, with the beginning of the third TRONIC Cup. Leo was a little known player on a little known team, they started winning, the rest is his legacy, his legend. And from all I hear from the stories, Leo did not even exist before the third Cup.”

“What are you on about?”

“I mean, if you believe the legends, Leo materialized in that opening round, out of thin air. He then magically proceeded to carry a mediocre team on his back to the quarter-finals, where he put up a huge sum of points and his team came close to advancing. And then of course, the bidding war began. Every major team made a recruiting pitch, everyone wanted him. He went somewhere and he won. And he won and he won and he won. Sound about right?”

“Yeah, I guess that’s the standard story.”

“Well, what about before the legend? And what about what was ignored after the legend took flight? That’s important but it’s forgotten. You’ve never heard that legend, a lot of people don’t want you to. That legend has players you won’t find on any roster or in any winner’s circle. That history is being suppressed. Hidden.”

“I’m skeptical, what’s stopping you from telling this supposed ‘secret’?”

“Nothing, any more.”

The grid of Jim’s had steadily grown quiet, more and more players hit spectator and listen to Halfwall. He was in a storytelling mood and seemed to have something special to say. Something important. Not just roster gossip or mainstream reporting on tactics. This was something. Jim opened up some more server slots.