On the rezzing: The priest/pally doesn’t even have to go inside. Just announce you’ll be at Galv for rezzes after he’s dead. That’s MUCH preferred to rezzing way up north and either playing defense or trying to run the Horde gauntlet to get back down to FW.

I agree with you: Take 3 and push a forth, but know who is going to defend when ST gets attacked. AB seems to me to be the best for a 15-man premade; it really takes more coordination there than, say, EoTS.

The group 1,2,3 is great start. One of the biggest problems we have in my battlegroup (Alliance, Blackout EU) is that people do not start communicating early enough; after the horde have established a 200 point lead, it is too late.

However, from a pure strategy point of view, 3 defended bases is not enough. A 3/2 split is a slow win and extremely vulnerable. Split your defense across 3 bases, and there’s a good chance 2 of those three bases will see no action, and one of them will see entirely too much. Unless you are working with a well-geared & skilled premade who are communicating (in which case, go for 4 or even 5 caps, already), in an evenly matched game, you’ll see a see-saw between the two sides. This is better than the usual carnage – but not necessarily a win.

What is more important, if you establish 3 bases early, is to *start pressuring a fourth*. This is why incs are important – NOT because a base is salvagable, but because if 10 of the other side turn up at one base, there are only 5 split (usually unevenly) between the other two bases. With experience, you can guess which one it is – better, a stealth class or two out and scouting can give an idea of defence. Moreover, if 10 turn up and are held, even briefly, by the defence, then it is seriously time to counterattack – NOT chant 3 bases win over bg.

Now, all of this is IME and IMO, but most evenly matched ABs shake down to 2/1 bases held, not 3/2. The trick is to keep rolling – insert your favourite Chinese tactician here – and to be always attacking where defense is weakest. Having established a lead, get people pressuring farm/stables. These are usually most weakly defended, and a fast cap there might drop the flags to 3:1 briefly, and ensure 2:1 if a base falls.

Because of the difference in resource gathering, having a 4:2 even briefly will guarantee a win far more effectively than trying the 5/5/5 split. 5/5/5 can be combated by an even moderately competent PUG zerg; but the zerg in turn is vulnerable to recapping in their path.

I completely agree with you about the alliance crybabies (and, certainly, in my BG they have a lot to cry about) but I have seen just as many strong alliance starts crippled by adherence to the 3 base win doctrine. Result? It triggers a zerg; def panics instead of doing basic math (10 at LM? must be 5 at the other points, then); and we lose.

My advice? Get three bases… and then start pre-empting.

You have a good point about waiting for the towers to be destroyed; I neglected to mention that. In the couple cases I was thinking of in the article, either the towers were down, or we were so low on reinforcements, we had no choice but to attack Drek or lose. We lost.

We weren’t even waiting for a tank (at least, no one was calling for one). That, by the way, is…how do I say this?…lame. You do NOT need a tank to take Drek down. If you have 10, 12, 20 DPSers and a healer or two, which we’ve had, he’s easy. I need to really watch for this sometime, but I believe he dumps his aggro table at times. I could be wrong; we may have had lousy tanks.

The best strat ive seen played is 10 in defence, who if they can, push to defend IB Bunker at the map funnel there… send 5 or 6 to cap RH and E/W towers whilst capping the IB/TP towers on the way, the rest zerg Galv and then head to Drek whilst leaving 3 in each of IB/TP tower to defend until the timers are up.
Ofc if u meet heavy resistance at RH its not going to go so smooth and you’ll end up waitng for the train, and if no Gy’s are taken yet and you spawn at the beginning, i try and look out for horde front runners to take out before rejoining the train… but then if the above plan seems to be operating, its very rare it falters, at least in my experience.

The key for Horde to win AV is simple: 15-20 people defend the pass and Galvandar, and recap all towers that the Alliance takes. The rest go forward and take Balinda and try to get Van. But the most important is Galv and all the towers, then it is a sure win. It takes about 20 minutes but we get all the honor and the Alliance gets none. As usual, easier said than done!

On a related note, I just finished the AV daily to wrap up AV weekend on Falken. We did a great job of taking the intermediate GY’s (I took one, myself!), skipping the Frost Wolf graveyard and heading right to the RH.

The Horde had a few by FWGY, but none near the relief hut. We took that, and the towers…but we didn’t guard the towers! So they Horde took them both back. I managed to help retake one, and I think we finally got both but the timers were long, and we were short on reinforcements (score-wise).

(I’m not sure if we ever went back out and took FWGY; I suspect not, because I killed the same Horde rogue at least twice.)

So we went with numbers: All in on Drek, and by dint of numbers (despite some horde in there too) we managed to eke out a very narrow victory — +118 for our side.

Moral of the story: When you take the towers, leave at least 3 people in them in case the Horde try to retake. (Or a Hunter and a Rogue.)

I’m looking forward to reading up on EoS – this is the BG that I currently don’t ever seem to be on a winning side in and also the links to other articles you’ve provided. Thanks again

@ Mosshoof: What the Orc said. The Raid setup I use in PitBull, however, doesn’t number the groups. Not a problem, if you remember how you order them when you set them up of course.

@ Ratshag: ‘Twould be an honor to be killed by you, sir! I think you’d kick my butt from Frost Wolf Village all the way to Dun Baldar with stops at every GY in between.