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Scalpel
spammer:
-
Space
taker
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Moved
as
per
Orfelius'
suggestion.
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[spoiler]
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This is used for flat maps and is effective on all map sizes. Scalpels are OP atm and counters basically everything.
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This works in all team sizes, regardless of your team’s elo range. If you’re the best player on a team it’s a good idea, if you’re the worst it’s still a good idea.
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This is best with a strike commander with riot cannon.
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At the start, if team numbers are low make eco and up to five daggers. If team numbers are high skip eco and daggers and head straight to scalpel spam. Take your commander (preferably a riot gun wielder), and head to just short of the centre of the map (while morphing). Set rally point to commander.
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When he reaches there you should have two-three scalpels. Stop making scalpels for a short while as you set up some porc (four defenders and a radar is my default, but this varies based on what you’re up against). You are holding this front and this radar is where you’ve planted your flag. Resume scalpel production, and either take the mex behind you (if the front looks safe), or tell someone less busy to do it (it the front is contested).
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Your defenders and scalpels should be denying the middle mex, and if you’re confident it’s safe, you can go out and pick off their stuff. This is very important to do and will impact the future of your lane a lot. The reason being how burst works:
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Burst is when you do all your damage at the start of a fight, hopefully leaving them with nothing left to kill you. Burst units usually have low dps/cost, but make great attrition by only engaging in battles where they can kill everything before a dps slog occurs.
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Most units don’t have a chance of causing you attrition, you will usually kill at least the first X things in any engagement without taking any damage, where X is the number of scalpels you have. So even though scalpels are countered by raiders, five scalpels will defeat five scorchers without a scratch, making half cost in the blink of an eye. If you’re able to then retreat without losses your opponent will have difficulty making an army that can ever catch up to yours, and you will continue to have the option to burst all their stuff. This is part of the reason you pay less attention to eco than other players, because your army size relative to your opponent’s is so very important. If ever something survives your burst you risk losing your entire stack of scalpel in the 10 seconds it takes to reload.
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It’s important to stay relatively close to your defender line to make sure you have a place to retreat to if your salves are all used up.
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Once you’ve got about 12 scalpel, it’s unlikely that you will gain much benefit from further scalpel spam. Opponents will find a way to counter you, so you need to diversify your composition. Halberds and pene are your two most salient options.
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Halberds will prevent anything from ever reaching your scalpels, and when they reach a critical mass you can be pretty belligerent and snipe their important tech structures/units right inside their base.
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Pene is a great for if you can see something valuable with <3000 hp on the front line that’s likely to stay there long enough for you to build a pene and move it to the front line. Commanders, stingers, worker balls, stardusts, opposing artillery etc. Make sure it’s on hold fire so it doesn’t waste your first (and most important) shot on a flea. You can do this in ‘new unit states’ menu to have this as your default setting for all penes in all games you play. It’s super important.
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Endnotes:
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- The decision to go halberd over pene usually comes down to whether the front is stabalising (porc on both sides) or not. If it’s not then halberd and scalpel are higher priority.
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- I never see much point in making more than one pene, but others seem to do it fairly often so maybe I’m missing something.
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- Wolverines are a common counter to scalpel, but halberds can bum rush them, and pene can kill 1-2 every shot. It’s important that you switch from scalpel once these things are on the field.
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[/spoiler]
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