Strategy: Fast and Furious

Over the next few weeks I've decided to put out some Left 4 Dead strategy articles.  These are going to range from general strategic mindsets for survivors and infected to detailed strategies on the different map segments for vs, and finally more specific strategies for individual/group tactics.

For the first article I will start with what I think is the strongest strategic mindset for the survivors: Fast and Furious.

Before I start I will say there is one very strong exception to this rule, and that is before you get T2 weapons, it is very beneficial to go slightly out of your way to try and find Molotovs and early T2 weapon spawns to deal with tanks.  This should be common sense as anyone who has dealt with a tank while having no Molotovs and T1 weapons knows that chances are that you are pretty ******.

Anyways on to the article.

General war strategy suggests that you should act in a way that counters your opponents strategy, and valve has it right in saying this about the infected strategy:

 

"The whole goal is not to outright kill the survivors yourself, but make enough mayhem in their ranks so they can get separated, overwhelmed, or just plain confused enough so the horde can rip them to shreds. Sure you can kill them, and you should, a skilled and lucky player can take all of the Survivors out in one go. But don't run in there expecting to notch a kill every time.

In that sense, the whole aim is whittle down the Survivors, chip away at them over time until they cannot stand the constant attacks, and then slaughter them."

- Valve

So what would be the opposite of letting your opponent slow you down and whittle away at your forces?  Logic dictates that the best course of action would be to move swiftly to accomplish your objective giving your opponent as few chances as possible to mount attacks on your forces.  This turns out to be increasingly logical when you take into account the fact boss infected are on spawn timers, and also attack in more of an ambush style.  Because of this the benefit of moving fast is two-fold:

1) You don't allow you and your team to get bogged down by constant rushes and delays (Everyone's had the time where you get stuck in a place for far too long because a smart boomer keeps vomiting on you before you can get out)

2) You avoid potential ambushes because by moving fast you reduce the potential choke points at which infected can ambush you

 

The other main thing that moving fast accomplishes is forcing the boss infected to play catch-up, and aside from the smoker attacking from behind is largely a disadvantage for them, especially in the boomers case.  The best possible example I can think of regarding this philosophy is Stage 4 on Blood Harvest.  Many people that I play with will attest to the barn, and the train station being death traps.  What I mean by a death trap is by going in there you open yourself up to being put on the defensive for long periods of time by good ambushes and effective boomer player.  Before you know it you've taken 3-4 boomer waves used multiple health kits before making it down the cliff, and are starting to hurt on ammo.  Another couple rushes and you are having players get incapped, allowing for the infected to zerg you down and win what to me is essentially one of the easiest segments of the game.

 

Now lets look at the opposite mindset on this map of moving fast.  First off by skipping the barn you could already potentially pass a boomer who set up in there for an ambush.  This puts you at a huge advantage because as I stated earlier boomers are the worst infected class at playing catch up, and you can quickly make it off the cliff with near full health/med packs as well as being nearly halfway through the map.  I'll save going into detail about the rest of the map because most of what I am going to say would be rehashed in my map strategy articles, but I'm hoping you get the point of why moving fast and skipping potential item spawns is very beneficial given that you are avoiding potential death traps.

 

One thing I will say is that to accomplish this type of strategy very good communication and team cohesion is necessary.  Everyone needs to be moving on the same page, and if there is any miss communication you can easily end up with someone left being getting incapped quite quickly.  There is actually a specific strategy I've come across in movement tactics that specifically addresses protecting the last man, as well as an effective strategy for watching the teams back rolled into one that I will discuss in my next article called the 3rd man tactic.

 

 

Report Post