Vanguards...

I surprisingly find myself ensnared by drama of the Elimination News reports.

To raise a classic history of warfare inquiry...

Does Leadership drive the majority of the action? Especially given the factors of alliances , loyalty and betrayal ?

Or does the day to day activity of the noble grunts turn the ebb and flow.of battle and force the leaders hands ?

Bonus : How much does Fog of War play a part in moment to moment fighting. It seems that various screens give fairly accurate situation reports ?

lets just say sugarvalves can make things sound way too dramatic sometimes . . . . and thats a good thing

It's a healthy balance between Leadership and Gruntwork. Leadership dictates how far you get, gruntwork decides the exact position.

Leaderships make deals so that you only have half the elimination against you at all times
Gruntwork makes sure the leader's plans work by not dying.

One can't exist without the other: A leader's words mean nothing if they can't execute them.

Withithout both, good teams fall to lower places. Fire starters only got 9th despite a crazy grunt team surviving on the bottom for 3.5 rounds with a failed leadership, Rainmen's diplomacy only got them this far but their gruntwork has been famously lazy this elimination and they're burning lives as we speak because of it. (Go Bones!)

That said, politics make for better news, interesting stories and easy scapegoats for when your team fails. Luckily, Most teams have fallen with grace this year so the retrospectives have just been kinda wholesome karma farms rather than vindictive drama starters.

Leadership can sink a team easily if it wants to.

They need to be able to create sensible alliances and plans or a team won't follow or will crumble. They only really need alliances to prevent from being targeted. Members as individuals are pretty good at picking smart targets but that means nothing if everyone is focusing you so their important goal is just to prevent you from being the focus and to try to get global focus on big threats.

In short, the need for leaders is to influence other teams more so than their own. But if enough want to sabotage a team and come in last is surprisingly easy for a small number to do so (see last year's last place team). Last year's last place team gave up before hitting started due to internal trolling of a handful of people.

Leadership sank the team I was on two years ago. Someone went behind everyone's back and made deals and they all got together and realized the "so called leader" was just a plain shit show and didn't know their head from their arse. The other leaders had no idea so I think we went out first or second that year.

Also it depends on who is leadership. If they are hated, it sinks a team quick also. I think Dude and ED took over a server one year and sank the team fast because they declared themselves leaders. It was a mess for that team.

It's about who you know, what you know, if you've done it before, and you're willing to be dirty if you have to be.

Me personally, don't' think I could do it. I can't lie. Horrible at it to start, but then it gets messy.

If you think the current RM situation is because of "famously lazy" grunt work you're totally deluded. No amount of grunt work saves you from a 4v1 - that being said, I completely agree that both grunt work and leadership need to marry up.

Or just make the most hits as a team and somehow get all the other teams allied to you on promises of 2nd place :)

Rain men have all Elim been outed by allies for weak pushes and being complacent being on high tickets. I struggle to believe 4 teams are sitting on you guys that hard that TB could get up to 1k tickets scott-free instead of brawling at you at 0 tickets, especially as you only need to beat them in 16 30-minute brawls to gain another position.

This is another thing leaders do and is a huge part of Elim OP; Motivation.

It's the difference between your grunts burning E training and crying on the forums because they think it's over when you've only lost 10 lives, VS gaining another position as you fight tooth and nail against unfavourable odds. Fire starters killed Laughing Stock and ate half of Cops' lives just because the leaders who remained pumped the motivation to survive and see if they can gain some extra places, and they had 6 teams being down on them when they died I believe.

You weren't watching when HB were eliminated were you? Nobody was hitting TB at any point apart from RM, meanwhile everyone else was hitting RM. TB were kept to within 200 for almost 3 hours in a 4v1. If motivation was lacking would RM be 2nd most total hits (only 3k behind WP?) Or, if it wasn't a 4 v1, would RM go from being the bottom targetted team 2 days ago to now the most targetted team with 92k (7k more hits received than any other team?)

Grunt-work tick pushes make no difference when you can't keep your next target in touching range. For RM this has been due to alliances, not grunt work.

Honestly, I agreed with your previous point but you are so far off the mark. Fire starters did a great job, but again you are missing the alliance element of the equation. Neither of the top two teams hits wise (RM & WP) were hitting fire starters at any point during their period scraping on the bottom with tick pushes. Firestarters didn't have to worry about zero'ing their competition simultaneously with tick pushes.

For the sake of unintentionally de-railing the thread, will leave it there - it's a combo of leadership and grunt work that wins Elims.

Perhaps Elimination demands more leadership due to the diplomatic issues of alliances and reliance on key stronger players ?

Top tip...

Join Monarch and they will tell you who wins, much easier... Load image: sick

what team are you on this year sweeney?

Like you have to ask. The same team as every year:


[image: www.nickwestergaard.com]

I don't think sweeny knows how to do anything at all in Torn anymore except whine in the forums. He's pretty much just an unpleasnt smell that won't go away at this point.