Tactics V2
Should you be playing the same tactics every game? Against some opponents you'll find almost every one of your players has a higher CSR than your opponents corresponding player, in which case you'll want to play a relatively safe game, controlling possession and ensuring you build points from converting inevitable line-breaks to tries.
Other times you may find yourself well behind in the player skills department in which case playing safe will just be an attempt to minimise the margin you lose by. A higher risk, high variability tactic may be better suited in the hopes that you can convert 5 of the 12 creative plays into tries to pull off that great upset.
It's clear we should sometimes be varying our tactics, at least when we know we are a huge favourite, and when we are a huge underdog. But how should we go about it? We'll be looking at a number of play styles used in the football/soccer management game, Football Manager 2010 (FM10) for some hints..
We've broken the tactics down into 7 styles, which vary from those used in FM10 but the general idea will remain the same.
Overload For situations where you need to go all out for a result. Overload will represent something like the 'I-Safeway' from the V1 Tactics, with high expansive and creative percentages, as well as a relatively high percentage of kicking. We want to play very direct rugby and not necessarily minimise the time the opponent has with the ball, but maximize our utility the times we have the ball.
Control A slower tactic where we do not need to urgently score points. We want to create space using slow, repeated sets of driving plays and then run at gaps using a quick expansive play out wide. This tactic is preferred when our opponents are playing an attacking style which we can control by slowing play down and picking off gaps, rather than a defensive style where we are unable to force lapses in defense.
Attack (I) Essentially a toned-down version of the overload tactic. Here we want to use the entire width of the field and still use the I-Safeway philosophy, however without being as extreme in the creative and expansive slots as overload. Still a high risk tactic that will give us a good blowout score over significantly weaker opposition, but also one in which we are vulnerable to controlling tactics should our try-scoring opportunities be plundered an abnormally high amount.
Attack (II) A more conservative attacking tactic that is a cross between Control and Attack (I). We'll lose the I-Safeway spread and move some creative plays to PnG and Driving, to make it a slower, less riskier tactic than Attack (I). The reduced amount of creative plays shift our main playmaking function to driving sets, followed by an expansive play to force a gap in the defense. We want to hold onto the ball more than in Attack (I) to ensure the forcing play is carried out until an expansive play is executed.
Balanced As the name says, a balanced tactic with tight marking that has the capability of (randomly) playing a slow, forcful PnG and driving game, a repeated Driving sets + Expansive play game, or an attacking play with the possibility of consecutive expansive/creative plays being relatively large.
Counter A mix of Attack (II) and Control with an increased Expansive style. Instead of running repeated driving sets and trying force a gap, we're happy to run either with an expansive or creative play more than 50% of the time when we first get the football (such as from a turnover, kick return from within the opponent's 22, scrum win, etc.). Since we're not relying on driving plays to slowly bring us downfield, we're happy to kick posession to our opponents after 3 or 4 plays without a linebreak, in the hopes that once we do regain possession, we can do so while they have a disorganised defense.
Defensive For keeping possession and making slow plays. It is a version of V1's Safeway tactic, with high PnG and Driving, and a low creative play percentage. We want to hold onto the ball, so it has a low kicking percentage, but it can be dangerous when taking the ball up from our own half. We need to make sure we are playing with good discipline to reduce penalties against us within kicking range, and that our players have relatively good handling to reduce errors in our own half.
Piecing together the tactics, we get:
Tactic PnG Driving Expansive Creative Kicking % Discipline Defense
Overload 10 26 30 34 35 Norm/Agg Rush
Control 21 35 31 13 20 BTB/Norm Drift/M2M
Attack (I) 14 26 29 31 25 Norm Any
Attack (II) 18 29 29 24 15 BT/Norm Drift/M2M
Balanced 24 30 25 21 20 Norm M2M
Counter 16 31 34 19 32 Any Rush/M2M
Defensive 31 30 22 17 12 BtB/Norm Drift/M2M
As with everything that relates to your team, you'll need to adjust these settings based on your team. If your Drift defense rating is at Impressive but your M2M is at Non-Existent and you'd like to play the Balanced tactic for a one-off game, you may aswell keep using your Impressive Drift unless you'll devote to training up M2M until Impressive. Everything in the above table is simply a recommendation and modifications based on your current situation may be required.
