Having 1 high miner is not bad, but here it is not going to be used as more than a discovery piece, which is something I don’t think miners should be used for at all, leave that to the scouts. The only thing I might change is the miner. You can either choose to leave the centre to play out, and let captains or lieutenants take the scout or sergeant, and take it from there, or you can move sergeant up and put major behind it, or move scout up and put marsh behind it, all of which are good options. The centre is quite well set up for defensive play IMO, but it does allow you to quickly bring out the marshal if you see an opportunity to trap a valuable piece. I think that’s enough adjustment on the right for now, let’s move to check the centre. Both methods of captain and lieutenant should work fine, you may want to try both and see what works best for you.

To solve this, you will have to play that lieutenant moves up one and you slot the colonel in behind it. However, this means that a captain coming down your right could hit J4, then J5 before you can swap captains. The reason for this is that front row pieces often don’t survive long, and its better to be a lieutenant down rather than a captain. Looking at this again there is a small thing I would change, I would swap the captain at I4 for the lieutenant at J2. This makes it harder to use the marshal on your right side, but it is better for keeping info down.Īfter each adjustment you should do a small analysis on what you have just changed and whether there is more adjustment needed. Say for example the captain on the right, it’s fine there but if a lieutenant comes down and takes the scout, you take it with captain, your colonel is now exposed for a scout at I7.Ī simple fix for this is to move the colonel behind the lake. I think that playing a good defensive game is about having a setup that is easy to move pieces around in, and also about how much information you give away/how much you can hide. A few of the previous principles still apply such as bombed in flag and backing up pieces but some tweaks will help a lot if you plan to play defensively. It’s time to tailor this to suit your own style, I will start with defensive options using a style of setup making (analysing each small part) that I like to use. The setup offers good manoeuvrability for endgame and overall is not too bad for defense, or an offensive up the centre or down the right lane. As you can see the front row scouts are backed up by sergeants or captains which are backed up by general and colonel. Now this setup is a bit rough, but it does include a good number of the basic elements that make up good setups. Have catch points where an opponent can entirely block off piece movement (mostly applies to endgame)īased on these principles I have made a setup off the top of my head.

Put all 3 majors in the front 2 rows, have at least 1 in the back 2 back up lieutenant with a major or a colonel)

Keep at least 3 miners in the back 2 rows (4 is preferable)īack front row pieces up with ranks 3-4 ranks higher (i.e. Though these have reasons why they are the way they are, we are going to look first at more standard setups then move to more advanced methods of implementing bluff, attack, defence, and most importantly, surprise into your setups.īased on my own experiences these are some of the general ways to make a good balanced setup:īomb in your flag, either corner or tripod is fine The more you improve and gain confidence the more you will try things, often resulting in crazy setups that look like they should never be used. I hope this tutorial helps you realise flaws you may have and also lays down a few fundamentals to help you make good setups on the fly. I believe this is a good topic for the first tutorial as your setup is your solid base from which to build your game It is amazing how 1 or 2 flaws in your setups can let the rest of your game down. We all have our favourite setups, and we all like them for different reasons. Below article taken from player 'Losermakers' tutorials Balanced and Defensive setups

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