Attack, Defense, and Playstyles

As noted in The Basics, Attack is focusing on winning and defense is focusing on not losing. That means that in order to win a game you must attack at some point in time. The main thing that makes an offensive player different from a defensive player is the timing of the attack.

"Militarists avoid the full and strike the empty, so they first have to recognize emptiness and fullness in others and themselves." Du Mu, The Art of War

A defensive player first waits until he sees vulnerability to attack. An offensive player is confident that he has sufficient resources to win and thus attacks first based on that confidence. Neither of these methods are necessarily wrong or right; it is mostly a matter of preference. Because you have to wait and assess the opponent to play defensively, patience is essential to victory in that style of play. So it is very common that a patient person will adopt a defensive playstyle and a less patient person will adopt an offensive playstyle.

"You see the inner conditions of opponents by means of their external formations. The inner condition of the formless is inscrutable, whereas that of those who have adopted a specific form is obvious. The inscrutable win, the obvious lose." Du Mu, The Art of War

I want to recommend that you practice both offensive and defensive play. Being skilled in defense allows you to think like a defensive player thinks. This is a very good thing for an attacker because not only do you know your plans, to a degree, you also know your opponent's plans. Having played defense before, you will be able to make convincing fakes and feints, so as to make your defensive opponent become vulnerable. Likewise I recommend defensive players to give offensive play a shot. This will help you to know what types of attacks you need to defend against as well as what types of fakes and feints to look out for. By continuously practicing both offensive and defensive play, you will be increasing your ability to be formless. Once you are formless you may find yourself switching styles in the middle of a game, playing offensively one game and defensively in another, or being a hybrid at all times.

Which brings me to the topic of the offense to defense ratio. After having played so many competitive games, I began to examine how often I was using offensive maneuvers and how often I was using defensive maneuvers.  From this observation I formed a ratio  to quantify my playstyle. By quantifying something that is abstract or qualitative, you gain the ability to apply mathematics and study statistics about it. After about a year of observation, I settled on a 70:30 offense to defense ratio. This number represents how prone you are to use each maneuver of combat. After I formed this ratio and began to study it, I made some very surprising conclusions.

Formlessness would be achieved when your playstyle appears to be 50:50. When I was younger I was very defensive in every game that I played. I attempted to use my memory to give my younger self a number, which I eventually settled as being around 30:70. Between then and now I gave several attempts to be formless, a perfect 50:50. Every time I tried this I failed but, being young, never tried to make a conclusion as to why. Now that I understand a lot more of the factors involved, I have come to a valid conclusion.

Games and competitions are designed by people. As such there are often design elements that prevent you from being formless. The designer(s) of the game might have strongly favored the concept of full offense vs full defense and as a result attempting a mixture of strategies will be unfocused and very difficult to win with. There is also the concept of the metagame, or  a set factors that are not directly in the game but do have strong influence. The modern metagame is a noun that usually refers to the way that players play in a certain area or a certain time. In one country ping-pong players may be very defensive and in another, very aggressive. While a formless style of play may work in one metagame, it may be very difficult to work in a metagame where the average player is very focused and concentrated on one style.

So with these factors and many more in play, formlessness is to be aimed at but it it not always practical. You should first examine the game thoroughly and then decide if your normal playstyle is something that you can adopt. I have found that in most games I play, I am either 70% offensive and 30% defensive or vise versa. Those are styles of play that, in most games, are not too unfocused but also not completely predictable.

But enough of all this pure theory crap. I'm sure there's somebody out there who wants to read about stuff that specifically applies to the game he/she plays. In my next entry I'll discuss how the use of my preferred playstyle has helped me to make a formidable, but completely original Magic: The Gathering deck.