two

@two

actually the number two IRL

Thanks for playing, everyone. I'll see you around.

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two
@two

an incredible Tricolour Turf War strategy I witnessed

I kind of love Tricolour because, yes, it's terrible and somehow feels awfully inbalanced against you whether you're attacking or defending (and I genuinely miss how it used to be a part of the Open rotation instead of its' own mode), but working together with players who have a different paint colour to you completely changes how you play the game and leads to all these bizarre strategies. For example, I only worked out in this last splatfest that you can very quickly charge an "opposing" player's Ink Vac. That wasn't the best thing I noticed this time, though.

As an attacking team in Tricolour, you win if either of the two two-player attacking teams have more turf at the end than the single four-player defending team. Because the numbers don't really work out on their own - even if you're working with perfect synergy with your attacking counterpart, half your turf is going to be your colour and the other half theirs, so neither small team individually is going to have enough to beat the defending team - you have access to the Ultra Signal which paints a lot for you automatically, if you can claim it.

But do you really need it? The design on most of the Tricolour maps has given a lot of free turf at spawn to the attacking teams and almost nothing for the defenders. If you can take all the space on your side of the map and the other attacking team doesn't give up too much ground, you can just about win without an Ultra Signal. Just barely, and you need to get lucky with winning fights towards the end of the game, but you can do it.

The trick is that the area between your team's spawn and the middle doesn't need to go to your team. Tricolour is balanced such that you can just barely win without an Ultra Signal if you play normally and the turf claimed at the end is about 50/50 between both attacking teams. So in this particular game, as an attacking team, an Inkbrush player from
team Love
I deliberately chose team Fame for this one under the impression that Love would be too popular and lead to mostly mirror matches, only to play against team Money for almost every game in Open...
(the other attacking team) beelines for our spawn and starts painting everything they can get at. I'm initially worried by this, we're supposed to be working together why are they fighting us, but for whatever reason I trust them, and we don't shoot at them and they don't fight us, and I leave our side purple with just a tiny green path so we can make it out to mid - and it works! Nobody claims the Ultra Signal and things don't even go that well at the end of the game but team Love gets just enough turf by stealing ours to have the most.

I'm not sure how repeatable this strategy is - you really need both players on the other attacking team to realise what you're doing and be nice to you (and they also need to not be trying to pull the same trick because that might get confusing). But it's an interesting way of breaking Tricolour to try.

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esoterictriangle
@esoterictriangle

I looove all the ridiculous stuff that happens in tricolor; absolutely my favorite mode.

I've found the most basic winning strategy is very much just turf war area control, but there's definitely the added wrinkle of two teams supposed to work together but with friendly fire and a central goal. There's absolutely a load of BS involved but I love it 😌

A friend and I have worked out some overall strats that tend to land us with wins:

As Attacker:
first 30-50 seconds: Paint base/establish a foothold near center
asap through middle minute: Attempt signal as much as possible. Farm special, use to fuel attempts. Every touch counts for both clout and reducing the capture time, so absolutely do a staggered suicide jump from spawn to directly onto the bottle
Final minute: aggressive painting. Paint defender spawn, maintain your turf. Signal Sprinklers help (and are a lot of clout!!), but a lot of the time they're not necessary tbh
overall: avoid other attacking team as much as possible. Let them paint, even distract defenders so they can capture!

As defender: I spawn camp, my friend defends mid (usually. Sometimes we both spawn camp, weapon depending). Spawn camping provides a massive boost to turf you can own and it's generally not hard to keep two players spawn locked for a good chunk of the game. In this fest's map I'd get up on the roof on the right of attacker spawn everyone paints once and forgets about and use sprinklers/the terrifying presence of a dynamo to hold things. If people decide to slip past to go to mid, that was fine; I'd just paint more of their spawn, lol

Weapon comp also matters a lot. You need something independant, aggressive, and at least one of a pair needs a good painter. Backliners are generally not a good choice, as you have to generally play aggressive and mobile (so if you choose one, adjust accordingly!) Being able to coordinate makes it all better because you can time specials perfectly, but even with randos it can work if you keep a eye on things

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two
@two

Oh shit, I thought the amount of time needed to capture the signal went down over time, not with each attempted capture. I'm going to have to be a lot more aggressive about attempting capture in future!
Weapon comp is interesting because being a backliner is useful sometimes - playing Jet Squelcher in this one I found it was possible to splat someone attempting the Ultra Signal almost immediately after spawning as defender, and while attacking it was occasionally good at making space for a teammate to attempt the Signal, but yeah, it's tough if your partner can't play super aggressively to make up for it (if only we could know ahead of time what team we'd be on...)

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esoterictriangle
@esoterictriangle

touch that signal!!! Eventually it's an instant capture; attacking teams who both go ham get the signals 😌

I think this map is particularly well suited for a backliner (esp for defending, yea), and I'll never say you can't use a backliner; my main thought is it's far easier to carry a team with something else and unfortunately in Splatoon's matchmaking--where being a "oops all backlihers" is a regular thing--being able to carry is a priority for progresison. If you're not on your A game, it's far easier to use something else 😔

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