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Zonal Tactics

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Post by cheandwhi Sat Aug 22, 2015 7:15 pm

Hi all - advice needed! I'm in a tight league this year and am making a real effort to improve my tactical play. I've started out by committing an old article of Wing's to memory, but I want to go beyond. Can anyone outline the basics of setting up Zone tactics?

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Post by Hopmans Sat Aug 22, 2015 9:06 pm

Can you set me as your mentor. Because the tactics you play heavily rely on the squad you got it would be foolish to say what you should play before knowing your skills.

But in general
PnG: is a ruck heavy possesion safe (relative) strategy. few yardage, you'll need technique especially in the back row.

Driv: is a maul heavy possesion safe (relative) strategy. Again few yardage. You'll need a lot of weight and strength in the forwards. Can be very advantagous if your opponent hasnt got much weight. This is visible by going through your opponents last matches and to compare the scrum weigths.

Exp: Handling, Speed, having good backs including wingers. Good on yardage, but comes with a greater risk of handling errors and line-outs against. basicly an attacking strategy.

Crea: The closest thing we got to an all or nothing kind of strategy. Okay, perhaps a bit too much but it is the attacking strategy with the most risk on handling errors. Having great backs compared to your opponent is a must. Agilty, handling, speed. But if your pull it off it is great on the yardage. Will rip rush defense to shreds.

Drift: good against crea and exp. The theory is that drift let's your defenders hang a bit back and stay aligned. Will prevent linebreaks if possible but a PnG tactic can make use of the yardage between the offensive and defensive team.

MoM: middle ground, nuff said.

Rush: Good against PnG and Driv. The theory is to immediately close the gap between the two teams those giving away as few yards as possible. Beware of your opponent playing creative though. Because rush will make linebreaks easier with all trouble that comes with it. It is not wise to play rush everywhere in all your matches when there is a seasoned manager in the league.

Kicking: Quickly after the start of zonal tactics kicking % grew heavily. This meant that the full back needed to be good. Recently we see more and more low kicking tactics and even 0% kicking tactics. Whatever you decide it Up and Under are very rare. And even rarer to succeed. Only pick U&U when you got the team for it. Mostly this would mean 0% kicking in their half and their 22. A return on a kick can be an annoying affair. you get rid of the ball and the opposing full back runs it back for more than half the distance you kicked. If you have a decent lineout than Kick for touch is the best course of action. Otherwise kicking the ball away can be a very poor decision in BR. Don't compare kicking IRL with kicking in BR because kicking in BR seems more favourable towards the receiving team. It can be a good decision to kick if you are much much better in defense than in offense but with the all-round players we got now i don't think many of those teams exist in England.

Drop-goals. Drop goals can prevent you from getting the fourth try. There are teams with this selected all year and never get an attempt and there are teams which have a match of 4 attempts. Choose with care, but you much rather prefer the try anyway.

Discipline: The trade off between penalties and rucking power. Generally you want good rucking but no penalties. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way in BR if you pick one you have to pick both. If you suck at rucks going aggressive isn't going to solve your problems. TT tech and watch the tech on players you buy. The theory of going aggressive in your own 22 to convert tries against into kicks against isn't working. If you have a good disciplined team you can go more aggressive to compensate. Can be a valuable tool especially against better teams with weaker tacticians as a manager.

Intensity: This is all about energy retaining and opponent planning. Any TNT which you lose is a major blow for the matches following it. If you can't win go WNWIM. A lot of teams go energy depleted in the end of the season. If you have managed energy correctly and are still high by the end of the season you can beat them then. Remember it's the playoffs that count!
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Post by clive.girling Wed Aug 26, 2015 11:16 am

Thats some great insight Hopmans - probably explains a lot of why my progress in BR has been so slow ! One specific area that I have been getting wrong is defense - I've never used anything except Rush for 5years now. If I start using Drift or MoM now, will my team have any idea how to use them or will it be like going 5 years and therefore I'm better off sticking to Rush even though it going to lose me games against decent attack (which appears to be what happens to me me a lot now - where all the stats in a match seem pretty equal except for line breaks and I lose by 7 tries to 1 )

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Post by Hopmans Wed Aug 26, 2015 11:20 am

No you don't gain experience in a tactic like you do in games like hattrick. So your players "know" how to deal with drift as much as Rush. Whether they have the skills for a good defense is another matter of course.

Playing rush all the time is a red flag to any manager. Your opps if they were paying attention could have creamed you with creative and given the number of linebreaks you report probably have.
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Post by clive.girling Wed Aug 26, 2015 11:47 am

Thats good news - so just to complete the picture, do you have a rough guide on how to tell what tactics have been deployed in games - which stats tell you what mix a manager has used of exp, creative, PnG, Drive ?

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Post by Hopmans Wed Aug 26, 2015 11:55 am

if I would want to know that of a manager i would read the match reports. Certain lines indicate certain attacking and defensive tactics. Although zonal play makes analyzing attacking plays more difficult since you have to know the zone they are in and thus have to re-watch the match live.

For that reason when i'm online for match day i usually watch my direct rivals match and make notes.
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Post by clive.girling Wed Sep 16, 2015 3:39 pm

Having spent 5 years only playing Rush, I've played the last few games using drift and MoM and I've lost massively - I lost to a div IV team with an average CSR of 107k compared to my teams 180k by 50 points - are you sure that my team knows how to play drift and MoM. If you're right something has gone massively wrong with my team and I dont know what, after 5 years of steady improvement. I now cant win anything and i'm not just losing but getting thrashed by teams with the same or lower average CSR and who I beat comfortably last season. WHATS GONE WRONG - HELP PLEASE SOMEONE before I start losing to bots

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Post by Hopmans Wed Sep 16, 2015 4:42 pm

send me a pm in br.
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Post by quind Wed Sep 16, 2015 5:16 pm

Clive,

If you're losing a game you're expecting to win then the first thing to check is the intensity the two teams played with, and the second thing to check are energy levels. These are the two things which typically give unexpected results. Worth noting if you're energy levels are down enough it doesn't then matter if you're on a higher intensity.

Tactics come more into play in close games, so if it's gone badly wrong my guess is you're down on energy and you shouldn't read too much into the defence type elected on.

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