The Fortress Year in Review

Like anyone cares about this blog’s stats beside me…

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.