Reaper Rush Defense - Brought to you by iPro

[Necrocat219]

(12-30-2012 02:14 AM)harvarnold Wrote:  

(12-30-2012 01:40 AM)Thrutchy Wrote:  

(12-29-2012 11:17 PM)harvarnold Wrote:  

(12-29-2012 10:57 PM)Necrocat219 Wrote:  

(12-29-2012 10:21 PM)vegaprom Wrote:  Thanks a lot!!! Usually I make an assumption on Reaper with the Adorables that he'll do a Mobi rush. But I wonder if are there any Adorable players who don't do a Mobi rush???

When everyone begins to always set up against the mobi rush it'll become a game of Rock Paper Scissors as the adorable player decides to let the opponent waste resources countering the rush.

The thing is, the opening doesn't really waste resources even if the is no rush. It provides defenses on the heavy side for later in the game, so there is really no reason not to do this opening.

Necrocat is absolutely right. The waste is in the movement of the predeployed runner and sniper. If it weren't for one spawn per turn, you'd be better off spawning a new runner and new sniper.

With regard to rock-paper-scissors, it is worse than that. P2 just typically neutralizes the P1 rush. P1 on the other hand wins. P1 can also just keep trying the rush over and over.

We need a better defense, I think. We are doing quite a bit of testing on Reaper to find better solutions. It is a difficult problem.

My mistake, I forgot about moving the sniper. It is good though that the rush is defendable and not an automatic lose.

It is good that it is defendable but it still isn't right as it's somewhat abusable. The following is a perfect experiment that you can try out in your games to demonstrate this:

Lets say you start as P1 Adorables on Reaper and you decide instead of playing depending on what you feel like playing you decide to flip a coin, Heads as Rush and Tails as playing normally. At the moment standard practice is to do everything in your power to counter the rush, moving the runner away from the wit space (-1 wit), which doesn't provide P2 with any knowledge of the rush taking place until his 3rd turn. Now theres a 50% chance of P1 opening normally and having a 1 wit advantage and any positional advantage that would be gained from your opponent, simply because the threat of an unstoppable rush is imminent.

Now the flip-side of the coin is almost unfathomable; right now if Adorables open with a Rush they are most likely greeted by a ready opponent if the opponent knows how to counter the rush. However lets say the P1 Adorable player has played this same player once already and not rushed him - what does P2 do? Judging on the previous game he could assume that P1 will have the same opening - but if he does that then a choice from the opponent to rush would result in imminent death. + the coinflip scenario could take hold at top levels of play.