First, a quick reminder that well established teams will have advanced beyond some of the tips stated here. Even so, there are some good nuggets of information that gamers might be able to use or concepts to explore that might tighten up your team play.
Hog Team
As promised, we’ll open today with why you should protect your vehicles at all costs. Using Hemorrhage as an example, picture how far the enemy will be able to advance onto your side of the field if you have possession of all your vehicles. Imagine each driver keeping at a safe distance, yet using suppressive fire at anyone he or she sees.
As is well known in the world of physical fighting, when you attack, you create an opening, a weakness to be attacked. By “setting up” and in a sense waiting for the enemy to come to you, keeping your vehicles safe on your side, you create a scenario where they have to progress into a line of fire from every one of your teammates who have a line of site on them.
Although it is well known that the ‘Hogs of REACH are made of cardboard, these vehicles, as well as the Revanant and Wraith, are powerful tools to control your opponent and keep them at bay. The longer your vehicles stay up and running, the longer your team has that control so ‘Hog teams are best as defense and mid-field. Although it doesn’t always reflect in the stats, a proficient ‘Hog team or other power vehicle driver can be invaluable to secure the win.
For this reason, I cannot discuss roles, especially in Big Team Battle, without highlighting the roles of Gunner and Driver. These are the guys who, if they do it regularly for awhile, begin to develop an inner tuition that allows them to almost work as a single unit. The driver begins to “feel” where the enemy is by watching where the gunner is aiming on his third-person screen. The gunner instinctively knows where to look as the driver navigates the map. There is something almost graceful to this dance of avoiding damage while controlling enemy movement and taking them down, when gunner and driver are moving as one.
Sniper
The second role in our Hemorrhage example is our sniper. Sniper must be diligent about obtaining the weapon on respawns. Too often I am in a game where the sniper uses up all his rounds and moves into offense, leaving the snipe at home where it’s nabbed by a waiting infiltrator. This is a great way to make sucky games suckier. Yeah, you know what I mean.
Sniper is also integral to communicating enemy movement to the team, as he’s usually sitting back in a position with good sightlines. If a team is covering each other’s backs and using proficient comms, the sniper will always know when an enemy is compromising his position.
If you are sniped by the enemy sniper, the best way to prevent it from happening again is to report you’ve been sniped and where you were sniped from so that your sniper can move into a position to take him out. If you didn’t see a contrail, your screen will point in the general direction if you don’t look around for a second after death.
Offense
A good balance of committed offense is three players. Committed means they rarely if ever play defense. Only if you’ve spawned at home base and your objective has been grabbed should you stop this role and switch to protecting your base. Otherwise, you protect your base by communicating enemies you see approaching your base and by grabbing said enemies objective so that their forces are now split, with many of them falling to defense.
This is one of the most difficult concepts I’ve found to communicate to gamers new to team strategy. Instincts may tell you to win you have to stop the enemy from getting your flag, but if your entire team is so worried about defense you don’t pose a threat to the enemy, they can lock you down in your spawn because they are now lax on their own defense and pushing with the bulk of their team. Putting pressure on the enemy’s objective is one of the best things the offensive role players can do for the defense of their team.
Heavy Vehicle Specialist
Heavy Vehicle specialist is that gamer who amazes you when they go 20 and 3 in the Wraith. I’ve also seen gamers like Orcish completely control enemy movement with the Revanant, which amazes me because that thing is just… well, weird. Heavy Vehicle Specialists are usually defensive, as that is the best way to protect your vehicle, but learn when the timing is right to push forward and help procure the objective. Rarely is it advantageous to put these vehicles at risk, as usually this results in a loss of this power weapon. Upon respawn, after the vehicle is destroyed, this teammate can put themselves where they are most useful, whether loading up a ‘Hog with offense for a push, or hanging back on defense if we’re being dominated. But when the Wraith respawns, they are there to pick up where they left off.
Defense
Last but not least is a role I am perhaps most familiar with. Maybe it’s mothering instinct, maybe it’s the fact that when I first started gaming, pushing out of my spawn was so freaking overwhelming, but sometimes it’s fun to hole up like a badger and just mess up anything that tries to encroach on your space. The number one reason I will always recommend having someone at base is too often they sneak in and before we know it there goes our flag. The sooner we know we’re being infiltrated, the sooner we can focus out attention on getting ourselves in between our flag and their base in case defense doesn’t take them out, thereby lessening the chance they’ll actually score.
So there’s just a little more on roles, for those who haven’t had the chance to feel that confidence and security you can get when you know your team has the bases covered and you can focus in on your piece of the win. In closing, I would just like to add that when your team communicates enemy position, activity, weapons, etc., really try to prioritize what’s going on. If someone is coming at our Wraith with a Mongoose, that trumps someone getting ready to kill you at midfield – – don’t stomp on priority callouts. Try to make your callouts short but sweet, and react to team callouts by prioritizing where you can be most useful to your role.
Interested in getting in some games using roles? Check out BTB Thursdays, running until Halo 4 comes out or until it’s cancelled due to lack of interest.