3. While this is indeed an overcommitment the speed of your Daggers means diving your Commander is risky - if it's just a feint or if you have backup you get Glaive pickoffs in exchange for health your Commander will regen for free.
3b. As soon as you killed the Glaives, your priorities should've changed. Pause the terraforming and grab the reclaim and the metal spot! The reclaim also means getting more build power on your Factory should be a high priority; I'd alt-build a Quill to assist at minimum.
6. 9. and 10. SauceMeUp scouted that the follow-up to the Felon was Rogues. Mass Rogues under a few shields will beat Scalpels over time unless you diligently repair the Scalpels. Since there was only one Felon and no Outlaws you could've gone into a Lance's worth of Dagger/Bolas and crushed the whole shield ball off the back of a salvo from your existing Scalpels.
6b. Part of your problem up til now was lack of radar or presence on the right side; aside from the Bandits you had no idea what their shieldbot player was up to before the Felon arrived.

6:20 - You can see Al's isolated Commander here. Your Maces are just baiting Rogue shots right now. You need one Mace with your Scalpels in case of Glaives. That means you can send the other two to link up with your Commander and use both to menace Al's Commander. Felons are slow and using threats like this to jerk the shield player around can mess with their ball - ideally the Thugs would leave the Felon behind and your Scalpels could snipe it.

11. I think what you'd want to clean up the Rogues after breaking the Felon would be a couple of Bolas.

12. Unless you planned to save the Lance for the Commander you should've just toggled off hold fire for a moment and taken a Rogue kill ASAP. Your army can't overrun the ball yet due to the Rogues - you'd get the Felon only, and pay too much for it - so you might as well get the reload started.

12b. The second Lance here implies you're confident there will be no more Thugs and you can entirely drain the ball with a combined salvo. Unfortunately for you, Al responded to the first Lance by queueing up more Thugs.


10:00 - you see the Commander again, you know the shield ball has moved out of the way, and you have two Lances. That Commander should be dead, but your entire army's out of position except for one Dagger. I think you could come very close to winning the game here by winning a race to their factories with your Scalpel-Mace ball, with the Lances blowing a hole in their turret fence, but the Commander and four mexes would be a decent consolation prize.

Checking the Cloakbot push with a Scalpel volley and some Mace pokes was a fine idea, you just lingered too long.

MDSK very kindly did a very excellent and extensive writeup on the discord. I am going to be recreating that here in my own words and format because that process significantly improves information retention.

0. @ 0:00 - Allocation: Strike commander may not actually bring any specific value here. Engicom is better at reclaim, repair, and can blueprint. Guardian com can help hold middle.

1. @ 0:15 - Allocation: First dagger is a bit late, could have been BP built or boosted.

2. @ 0:35 - Tactics: Need to avoid trading damage with glaives due to their regen. Utilize range advantage if possible.

3. @ 0:48 - Activity: Fixation on the scouting dagger, I'm probably too zoomed in on the top right dagger. The two daggers I currently have should be scouting and possibly harassing.

4. @ 1:00 - Allocation: Radar isn't doing anything useful here. This map is flat, I have a forward comm, and an ally on my left flank.

5. @ 1:10 - Activity/Tactics: Why is my commander just wandering off into the desert? He has work to do (like build mexes).

6. @ 1:20 - Allocation: Two solars is expensive in both time and material. In the time I've spent building the extra solars, I could have an extra mex.

... Any idea what my comm is supposed to be doing? I sure don't. I'm pretty sure he should be grabbing mid before MrGristle's slow-ass com and not sitting around having biscuits in the desert. The longer I wait here, the worse the situation gets. Coms are strong early game. Gotta use that.

7. @ 1:30 - Strategy: Dagger rotation north doesn't make sense. I have two allies in that direction. I should be expanding to the right. Exploring that territory would both position me to get on MrGristle's flank and let me kill the bandits before they get on my flank.

Apparently my comm is having tea too.

8. @ 1:32 - Strategy: MrGristle is building a pointless stardust. Why am I not making mexes like mad? Bad porc is a good sign, not a bad sign.

9. @ 1:50 - Tactics: I won this fight, so obviously I run away. I'm lowkey tilting watching how passive I've been this game. Com is full health- push forward, tank, support with daggers. Take space, kill glaives, maybe pop the mex before the stardust finishes. Until it finishes, MrGristle is actually in a weak position.

Also of note, MrGristle is demonstrably not going to be aggressive here with his com.

10. @ 2:00 - Allocation: Terra up isn't doing anything. Just bury the mex like a civilized giant robot and move on.

11. @ 2:00 - Activity: My con has been inactive for quite a while. I should be in a mad dash to expand.

12. @ 2:00 - Allocation: Bad unit choice. Scalpels are standoff units. They have excellent burst but shit overall damage. Maces do something like twice the DPS per cost, slaughter raiderss and put serious pain on coms. All of which could be used to punch through MrGristle's position. Dagger/Scalpel doesn't really work because the daggers can't protect the scalpels.

13. @ 2:20 - Allocation: STOP TERRAFORMING AND TAKE THE RECLAIM.

I can't believe I was mentally giving MrGristle shit for porcing when I'm setting metal on fire with bad terra.

14. @ 2:30 - Scouting: Gristle doesn't have the forces to threaten me, let alone me + pyro. Daggers should be spreading out and scouting and getting vision on the incoming Felon.

15. @ 2:54 - Control: If I'm using scalpels, it helps not to feed them to glaives. Com should be forward, and the scalpels should be getting pulled back.

16. @ 3:30 - Allocation: Scalpel/Mace production is a questionable choice here. Halberds and lance would both be better choices.

17. @ 3:30 - Activity: Comm is now having crumpets and calling his mum instead of doing something useful.

18. @ 3:30 - Activity: Scalpels inactive despite targets. The stardust could be dead, I could poke at thug shields. I could bully their com.

Overall note: I seem to be terraforming the right things, but I'm doing so very inefficiently.

19. @ 4:57 - Activity: Com needs to be repairing my scalpels.

20. @ 5:30 - Allocation: Hey you know what's better than wasting an extra solar worth of metal? Wasting two extra solars worth of metal.

21. @ 3:30-6:00 Composition: Mace/scalpel isn't working. What would work? MORE MACE/SCALPEL. Not a lance or halberd to be seen.

22. @ 6:15 Tactics: Scalpel ball here is not good, makes me vulnerable as heck to rogue fire. Linemove good. Use linemove. Even with my bad comp this fight is actually winnable if I'm not eating ridiculous amounts of unnecessary rogue damage.

23. @ 7:10 Tactics: Lance should be firing now. Forget the felon, just start kicking over rogues. I'm unlikely to kill the felon outright here, and a failure to kill is actually favorable attrition for the shields (taking shield damage instead of actual damage is kind of their *thing*). I have a killing tool out- murder everything in range. Alternatively, set target with the lance and free fire would be good. As it is, I kinda got the lance and then didn't do anything with it and then let AI get his army under shields again after extending. Not good.

24. @ 7:15 Strategy/Allocation: Also, I should be trying to repair my army, not baking a cake out in the desert. (I'm going to stop commenting on this at this point but comm activity is a huge recurring issue).

25. @ 7:30 Allocation/Composition: Another lance here is a questionable choice. Shield has good tools for this (more thugs, aspis, racketeer). A cloak would be good, more maces could work, halberds would work, I just have a bad comp here overall.

26. @ 7:30 Strategy: Also of note, shields really don't like playing multiple lanes. I have enough maces here that I can split without facing a glaive threat (Assuming I actually repair things). I could continue to threaten with the lance (which should be firing, not waiting for an opportunity) and split off a mace or two and some scalpels into both MrGristle's lines and back into AI's reinforcement path and force the shieldball to either slowly trundle to try to handle that or split up.

They move at the speed of their slowest unit, generally, and felons are slow as hell. (43 elmo/s, which is like 2/3 of a mace)

@ 9:38 Activity: (My own analysis, not MDSK) I am incredibly passive here despite having 2 lances. Very sad.

27. @ 10:37 Strategy: Rotating the hovers north to check enemy push is workable, but I should instead be exploiting the gap left by their rotation north. Their right flank is wide open right now.

28. @ 10:40 Allocation: Also these imps aren't doing anything right now. Outlaws exist, and I don't have a cloak with which to use them offensively.

29. @ 11:45 Tactics/Allocation: No response to the TBird here. I need AA, and I had a mace make a generous donation to MrGristle's sovereign phantom fund. Total failure to adapt here.

ALSO THE RIGHT FLANK IS WIDE OPEN. The part of me that has been watching Kingstad games trying to figure out his secret sauce is debating how best to slam my head in a car door. Two maces, even 1, split off from my army could do wonders to set their right flank on fire. Nothing that can respond quickly will survive contact with the mace without TBird support.

30. @ 12:50 Strategy: The moment for this right side translation has passed. I'm now overextending chasing a com. Shieldball is no longer occupied left and has MYSTERIOUSLY VANISHED.

31. @ 14:00 Activity: My com finally did something! (It died.) Kind of a dumb loss here.

Broad notes:

* Mace/Scalpel army needs to be much more active. If the shieldball leaves, I should be going to set their eco on fire. If it stays and I get advantage, charge and kill the felon, then light up the rogues using split scalpels. Activity as a whole is a problem. I may need to take a lesson from judo- slow is smooth, smooth is fast. I know I feel busy in games, but watching them it doesn't look like I'm doing anything.

* Need to better consider use of halberds and bolas. Bolas would shred the rogue comp without the felon there.

* Consider the use of com as a combat asset. 4.2k HP is a lot of health. That could eat an entire felon volley and come back for more. Consider using it to tank for other units in engagements, especially early.

* Army control needs work, especially lances.


I'm going to set some fail forward goals to try to limit test some of this.

Goals:

1. Lose at least 2 coms to reasonable overextension using it as an offensive combat asset (not just "Being too far forward"). Win at least 2 fights that otherwise would not have been winnable.

2. Never let a com idle, even if it's just queuing up move commands, for a whole game.

3. Lose at least 1 mace each over 3 games to enemy after sending it to reset enemy eco.

4. Use forward-position lance to bait at least 3 engagements over 3 games.