My First Six-Pack League Experience

So I just had my first-ever Six Pack League experience yesterday…and my actual first foray into competitive gaming.

Well, the results were both encouraging and devastating at the same time: Our team performed well overall (and apparently, it was the best showing by the squad throughout its existence).

The problem is that we faced a lot of heavy equipment and that their firepower was spread out pretty well (they had every answer from the 300-600 meter range, in addition to the obvious fact that they had a lot of Lancelot variants in play).

For me, it was a humbling experience to see some of the best Six Pack League teams in the world – in true action. It also made me have a desire to do more competitively…and to stay with the current team that I have!

Now, if you allow me to indulge in the recap of our match as “The Bartenders” against the “Honey Badgers”…

Canyon: Stealing the Game

Canyon was a very good map for me personally, even in normal play. Thus, I was confident of my own performance on the said map.

With that being said, our opponents (i.e. the Honey Badgers) opened up with many of their heavies and tried to get control of the game from the outset.

Needless to say, we won the match…although it was more of a steal than an outright win as I got meched out just as the match was about to end.

Yamantau: That Was A Chance

I never actually scrimed on Yamantau before this. In addition, I only feel lukewarm on the map.

But then, I really wanted to give my team a good fighting chance, so I poured everything into it and hoping that the team will clutch it for us.

As usual, they kept on rolling out their big guns pretty much throughout the map. It was an extremely scary match for us!

My teammates also performed really well and got the clutch, some 30 seconds before the game ended.

Suddenly, we are up 2-0 against a rather strong opponent who clearly had a lot of experience in playing with this format.

Yamantau 2: Hard Times

I think that at this point, they got our number on Yamantau as they sent multiple Ancilots to open up the game, rendering our own opening quite neutralized.

Despite that, we tried to claw back our way into the game, yet they held center long enough to gain a very convincing advantage.

We just shrugged and focused on getting whatever the next map was.

Moon: A Nightmare

Map three on Yamantau 2 was a setback – but this could have been the map in which we could have won 3-1 (instead of losing 2-3).

We held a slight advantage as we proactively held them off.

However, a quick hard push on Moon caught us off guard (I was just about to spawn on my Zeus Fury), so there was nothing I could do about it.

It was just barely enough to get them the win on Moon.

All of a sudden, it all went down to a final map.

Canyon 2: The End

This was the game that I screwed up so bad. With my Fury and RDB neutralized early on, I needed to focus on using my three other bots.

Unfortunately, my PDB was quite useless…and I didn’t handle my remaining bots in a better way.

I’m pretty sure that I could have played that particular matchup much better. But then, the night was raging…and the mind was getting tired.

Personal Weakness

My Plasma Death Button did absolutely nothing. I should have been quick enough to notice in scrims that they were using Ancilot openings (could have used a normal Death Button or fitted out a Punisher Ancilot instead).

With that being said, I still have three weeks to test out different setups and find my feel – I tend to gravitate towards a support-heavy play, ensuring that the rest of the team gets to execute their plans properly.

Obviously, the PDB failed in that regard, but then again, it could have been effective against any other opponent.

Thoughts on the Map Pool

We were not able to test out Springfield, Powerplant and MANY OF THE OTHER MAPS.

I only could help but wonder if we had seen the other maps!

Some Things on Six Pack League

I would obviously expound on this in another post regarding the Six Pack League (yes, I do have a ton of content for War Robots over the next few weeks to come…and I have all the time in the world to focus on creating written content for my literary, gaming and personal stuff…) – I was wondering if the tournament can have a map banning system.

A simple map banning system goes like this:

Step 1: Coin toss for who bans first/sets order of maps

Step 2: Winner chooses if team bans or sets map order (i.e. pick)

ORDER of MAP VETO (example):

Team 1 bans Yamantau
Team 2 bans Carrier
Team 2 picks Dreadnought
Team 1 picks Dead City
Team 1 bans Valley
Team 2 bans Shenzhen
Team 1 bans Springfield
Team 2 picks Powerplant
Team 1 picks Moon
Team 2 picks Canyon

RESULT: Dreadnought, Dead City, Powerplant, Moon, Canyon (best of five)

Of course, it’s just a suggestion!

Overall Thoughts

I think that our team did well despite the circumstances…and I am definitely looking forward to stay with the team in the foreseeable future. After all, there is a lot of room for growth!

With that being said, I believe that I was able to play at my absolute best with the hangar that I’m using. As a consequence, I am ecstatic at the personal performance that I’ve showed in the tournament (even if I only got to play one official match series).

There are many things that I can learn from this matchup…

In other words, I am looking forward to participate in the Six-Pack League in the future!

Until then, more grinding and more improvements to be done! I know that I can do better, after all.

So…hope to see more WR nonfiction content soon!

Here are the links to the other “non-fiction” War Robots articles on this site: