Edwards Guide

Edward's Guide to the #discworld worms Meta #updated for 2014

Background

In the beginning there was chaos; it was beautiful. A large number of schemes had the mysterious invisibility weapon of legend and it was very broken and unbalanced. Games favoured darksiding and players who preferred open conflict rarely won games. This amazing period could never have lasted and as expected, the one called Protected banned the weapon of legend forever. However, this alone was not enough to balance the game for offensive players and eventually the system we know as ABL today was put into place to do just that. Some in the community believe that the weapon of legend lies dormant; biding its time and will one day rise up again to rain down terror upon the denizens of #discworld. Time will tell.

What is ABL?

So what is this ABL system and how did it put an end to the chaos? Well to understand how it brought about balance we should examine how games played out before ABL. In a worms game on #discworld most players were offensive and just liked chucking grenades at each other or whatever other stupid attacks offensive players like to do. There was also that small number of players (of which Ilesyt is the most famous) who would do utterly random things that made no sense and were not even in their interests 95% of the time. These players added to the chaos and made things easier for the few darksiders. So let's break down a typical game from back then... Offensive Players: Protected, Iks, Somerandomdude; Chaos Player: Ilesyt; Darksiders: Stmated, Edward. We would load into a map and the offensive players would immediately try to do as much damage or get as many worm kills as possible. Each and every turn as a darksider we would position our worms subtly (or not so subtly) away from direct conflict with other players' worms. If we went unnoticed then the ending was obvious... either stmated or I would be left with a darksiding worm while the offensive players killed each other off. If we were noticed and they offensive players decided to stop attacking each other and come after us they still had to deal with chaos players who could kill their own worms along with the offensive players worms for no particular reason. Even if they overcame all that by the time they got to us they were probably in bad shape and stmated and I were not bad at offense by any means so at that point it would be easy to take them on offensively if necessary. This was even worse with invisibility because the effort required to go after darksiders was just too much. However, all of this was not enough to make darksiding as imbalanced as it was. That came about because players like myself employed meta tactics to ensure that our worms would make it to the endgame and with the biggest advantage possible. These tactics included focusing the good offensive players while semi-darksiding or damaging our own worms to deflect attention to people who had more worms with more hp. Other methods involved using individual players' characteristics and tendencies against them... knowing that Protected was always a player who liked to go after darksiders more than the others... knowing that Iks can be manipulated into grudge matches easily... knowing that Ilesyt will kill himself at some point so attacking him is probably a waste of a turn.

Ok so what is ABL? ABL basically means that a player should never attack the person in last place. Anyone But Loser. Why was that such a big deal? Because it singlehandedly focused all the players attacks... the chaos was over. Players could now chase down darksiders and not get blown to bits before they made it cause chances are the darksiders were winning on health. Players rarely got killed off early now since if you were losing no one would attack you. This meant that darksiders couldn't pick off the good players once they got low... putting an end to many strategies that involved focusing the better players or having the offensive players kill each other off. Once they were low enough to be protected by ABL they would have carte blanche to go after you the darksider and it was awful. The darksider's choices were limited to: darkside and end up being in a 1v5 situation or play the mindless offense with the rest of them and hope you get a good 1v2 situation at the end where the third person kills the other guy and you can kill him.

Why did people adhere to ABL? because if you didn't everyone would hunt you down as punishment anyway. And like this the chaos was replaced with stupid, stupid order.

So is the Meta dead?

Not at all... it's just alot harder to win games through strategic play right now. But it's not impossible. One aspect that will always help you is knowing the players and their tendencies. Also using ABL to your advantage and how to darkside with ABL protection.

The Players

Protected: The Creator of ABL and the first enemy of darksiding man. He will nearly always attack the person in first position on the list. There are times when he will target good players but more often than not he will go for the leader... no doubt in some stoic way he must feel the need to be the poster boy for ABL >.> Use this against him. He will come after you if you darkside but it's not as bad as it used to be. Strengths- Grenades, Decent Roping, Good game sense and weapon choice. Knows the schemes in and out. Weaknesses- Prone to mistakes and can be a bit clumsy.

Stmated: Retired. Who cares? He's a darksider anyway and you probably couldn't beat him if you tried. Strengths: Darksiding Weaknesses: Darksiding

Iks: My original arch nemesis. He's not as subsceptible to grudge matches now that ABL rules the world but he still has tendencies towards enraged aggression. Not as good with rope as he once was. Strengths: Roping, grenades Weaknesses: Weapon choice, temper

Timeclock/Wiiguy/ATG: I have rarely seen him go against ABL. He's pretty good with most weapons. If i had to rate him it would be a weaker version of Protected.

Vai: Vai is an oldie but he's very hard to pin down in terms of strenghts and weaknesses. It's probably because of his absence in games for a long time but I recall that he was a sensible player who more or less would adhere to ABL and he wouldn't go after darksiders that much. Also he is very calm and won't get baited into any grudge wars or anything like that.

\g/Zero: This guy is Ilesyt's child or something... so random. He's capable of anything at anytime. I normally try to stay away from him or kill him first for fun even if it means breaking ABL. I guess that's one of my weaknesses... throwing all strategy aside to kill this guy. Better strategy is to move your worms away from him... when he's not being random he usually attacks the closest worm to his.

Rothenell/Q: Another of the attack whoever's closest to you as long as it doesn't break ABL players. His weakness is his weapon choice usually.

Peppers: Ilesyt's other child. So much random... what else is there to say. Same strategies as \g ... stay away from him.

Leipurihiiva: He's very strong with grenades and any weapon that requires him to pull out his ruler and protractor. Almost a weakness in some situations since he'll choose to use skillshot weapons over much better weapon choices. He's not as adherent to ABL as some of the others so be wary. He's also good at roping.

Spaz: Strong player. Doesn't suffer the weaknesses of leipuri in that he will normally make optimal weapon choices. Probably a little bit of an affinity to sheep? Don't quote me on that! Good at rope, good at throwables. He follows ABL pretty strictly so weaknesses would be along the lines of Protected... also he's pretty predictable.

Players I have no info for: nea_milosu, Psi, Terran18

Guide will be updated with advanced meta tactics after the tournament or once I gather more info.