Tidal Tactics
| Trans-Mortal Tactics |
| The information on this page or section discusses tactics that can be applied if you find yourself on the wrong side after getting killed or being revivified. |
| Zombie Tactics |
| The information on this page or section discusses a zombie strategy. |
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Tidal Tactics
Only for the deluded are grand schemes - strategems based on wide co-ordination such as River Tactics or Dam Tactics will invariably fall in the long term. Marzan is a city of entropy, of decay, and the maxim of Tidal Tactics relies on just that - the inevitable fall of every stand, the collapse of every fortification.
Practised, as any sensible doctrine is, on the small scale on multiple fronts, the teachings of tidal tactics are simple - prolonged attack, time after time, will wear down any defense, and sap the resolve of the defenders. Ferals, death cultists, the quiet dead, even larger hordes, will all find themselves encountering resistance on some scale, and whilst true river tactics espouse the notion of a forcible current, there is not always the momentum to maintain one continuous assault. There are also times when a small horde or cult do not wish to move - the barhah need not be nomadic, after all. In this instances, time and again, the axioms of tidal tactics come into play.
| "Water hollows out stone, not through force but through persistence." |
| - Ovid |
The idea is simple - hit it hard, keep hitting it, then hit it again tomorrow. Ovid may have said it slightly more elegantly, but elegance is not the point of the doctrine. Crash with sound and fury at whatever obstacle presents itself, and bide time for another full crash again the next day. Your brood-mates will do likewise, until the inexorable tide breaches, and in its ravening swash turns all and sundry to bloodied flotsam. Break down the walls. When they are broken, break down the fixtures. When they are broken, break down the breathers. When they are broken, break out the cold ones.
Play by Play
Consider, if you will, a quantum soup of Irish postmodernism. You must be the anti-Godot. Find the target, and come at them. Again and again, come at them. Your priorities should be roughly thus:
- Tear down their playpen - throw yourself at the barricades. As a feral, you will need to be sure that you have found a weak enough target, or have formed a small cloud to aid you in this endeavour; otherwise your journey simply repeats this point. With numbers, however, even two or three-fold, throwing yourself entirely upon the barricades leaves them either opened entirely, or sufficiently worn down, so that the next set of claws finds easy home in the meat behind the shell. As such, learn to embrace the notion of spending 40-50 AP at a time smashing barricades - with this beachhead established, your next wave of AP will find their way inside also. This is one of those times where death culting has no significant advantage, though a well-placed 'friend' to help you bash from the inside too is not going to hurt the operation. This is also a perfect moment to employ the lesser-used "what the fuck was that sound" technique of parachuting into a populated building with the chief intention of groaning or bellowing whilst inside, which can in and of itself create this tactical situation from nowhere, as your calls summon a feral cloud to bash the cades knowing one of their own is inside helping.
- Break their fun toys - smash their generator. Without this, it ain't no party, it ain't no disco - it ain't no foolin' around. If your tides sweep across a NecroTech Building, denying infallible combat revives mean you've instantly made things more difficult for the initial defense. If you break down a hospital, you reduce their healing output by one third instantly. And even in a mall or police department, you've made some minor inroads into curtailing their ammunition scrabbling. The main point of this, however, is to create an AP sink. For the eight or so AP you spend to send their funbox to Ahab, you've created for them the need to expend two or three times this amount to locate and bring back both a replacement and fuel. You also greatly aggravate the trenchcoating demographic - and remember, longer-term tidal tactics are as much a battle of will as a battle of combat.
- For larger targets, when each breach is required to remain open for as long as possible, the wireless becomes a target at this stage too. The reasons here are two-fold - by removing their means of ranged communication, those who do not metagame will waste valuable time and AP - and HP - by leaving the target, running for aid or cover. In their absence, you have less meatshields to eat through before you can ruin and squat your new home. Secondly, those who do metagame will find themselves spending real-world time asking for back-up, which can both supply you with a brief moment to slaughter them before more arrive, or to simply move survivors to your target, away from another target which may very well be attacked in their absence.
- And, of course, let's not forget the hi-and-die men. Parachuting and still-breathing GKing are wonderful accompaniments to this stage, as your inside man can make short work of these toys with a knife with the same AP cost as claws, and can turn any firearms in their possession into a nice chunk of damage even before you start leaving teeth-marks.
- Throw teddy from the pram - you've huffed and you've puffed, and through successive waves, one or more of you is inside, ankle-deep in shrapnel, now what? Make noise. Bellow or Groan, in that order of priority, to draw nearby ferals in - not only for support now, but as additional waves if and when this breach falters. When you've made sure the dinner bell has well and truly been rung, it's time to attack. First priority is to kill off anyone on single-digit HP, to quickly thin the herd. Survivors logging on will only see the death notices, not how much damage has actually been inflicted, so don't underestimate the usefulness of cheap kills for demoralising effect. After this opportunistic slayings, your priority will be infection. Claw to grasp, and bite for infection. Then move on. Try to attack in order of last active - namely, from lowest-listed to first-listed. Someone who may still be active during your attack is more likely to expend AP and lose a few HP to an infection whilst you're still there, and even 3-5 HP is essentially a few 'free' claw attacks for you if you choose to kill them then and there. Once infections have been passed around like Kiss groupies, you can work on whittling down the 'smarter' survivors. The more skills a survivor has, the more of a nuisance they are to you. Bringing the bodies with Construction, full combat skills, combat revive skills, or any mix of these, out of the equation will add longevity to your breach. It is not necessary to kill these as quickly as possible - simply dragging them outside will save you AP whilst giving you most of the same immediate benefits, provided they aren't active there and then. Remember, you aren't playing with the mindset of a strike team. You know full well that you will run out of AP whilst all of this is going on, and every step you take to maximise your AP efficiency whilst keeping their expenditure as high as possible is a step closer to getting inside easier the next time. That street treat you dragged outside for the 2 AP drag/re-enter cost instead of the 8ish to kill them outright, coupled with your noise-making earlier, is going to entice more claws to join in tomorrow.
- Sorry Mar!a, your barhah is in another castle - so you've cleared the building out and some of you still have AP to spare. What's to be done now? Well, for a start, loot and pollute. Turning it into a ruin may seem a risk, a 6 AP cost that takes a week of not being reclaimed before it breaks even, but it's not. It's first and foremost a deterrent - a ruined building with zombies squatting inside is not something a casual survivor will approach, especially not alone. If the rescue effort takes its time arriving, you can even play it smart and tackle an adjacent building, saving 2 AP to retreat inside your ruin instead of conking out still outside, which will mean that even when the 'clean up' operation does arrive, by the time they clear out everyone squatting inside your pretty little ruined building, repair it, and re-barricade it, the AP they've spent is AP they won't have to fight off an immediate wave. Once you log in to find yourself dumped outside a freshly-rescued building, you start from point one again. You always start from point one again. That's why you're using tidal tactics in the first place.
- Of course, this is the stage where the cultist truly comes to the fore. Once the building is cleared of survivors, allow a friendly breather to barricade you all in - it can be done alone by one parachuting cultist, but a healthy one prepared to spend a lot of AP working past the inevitable interference can end up sealing quite a large number of the restless dead inside a building with some dedication. Once the cades are at Heavy Barricaded at the very least - though it is usually imperitive to get the highest possible Extremely Heavily Barricaded result - then the ruining begins. One Mexican Hat Dance later, and you've lined a beautiful Piñata with the Marzan equivalent of broken glass, effectively causing survivors to employ pretty much the same ideas you had to try to get in there in the first place.
In Practice
Whilst all tactical doctrines are essentially theoretical guidelines, it's always worth pointing out pertinent examples of the core elements in practice. A notable recent example of this is the siege of Blackmore 4(04) - a high concentration of survivors holding The Blackmore Building led to the adoption of an almost-fortnight-long series of waves crashing against the building, with GKing and culting wearing down the resistance. Although the end result was reached primarily due to Zombie River Tactics, due to successful beachheads, it was the attrition of the constant Tidal Tactics that prevented the survivor foothold from spreading to other buildings.
On a less dramatic scale, longer-term application of these doctrines forms the core of several groups throughout the game, including the trend-setting St. Ferreol's Hospital Noise Abatement Society and their attacks on, well, St. Ferreol's Hospital, the Twinning Association who are sticking to a known quantity, or RDD and their attacks on The Jeffrey Building. Evidence can also be seen in the hassle caused to the Escape movement by No Escape in the weeks leading up to the massed zombie river delta that eventually cancelled the movement out; and in the thousand tiny-scale break-ins only made possible by extended cade-bashing by feral after feral until one breaks in.
Oh look it's a shiny thing
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The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. This user or group espouses Tidal Tactics |
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See Also
- Zombie River Tactics - what each wave aspires to be
- Dam Tactics - essentially, tidal tactics is usually in response to this
