Macrogame theory #1

Win conditions

Team oriented article

What is a win condition?. Let's start here, the concept seems self explanatori, right?, it's a condition that needs to happen in order to win the game, well in theory is that simple, but that condition can be often missunderstood.

Let's make it simple, if you ask someone "what is it necessary to win a game?" you'll probably get answers such as "Get fed", "Dominate the lane", "Counterpick"... If you ask more experimented players, or coaches, they might answer "Be ahead in gold", "Control objectives", "Place wards", but you and your team probably got fed and lost anyway, you probably dominated one or more lanes and lost anyway, you probably picked counterpicks and 3 wining lanes, and lost anyway, you probably been ahead in gold and objectives, and lost anyway, why does that happen?, well, you're undestanding the win conditions the wrong way.



Let's breakdown a win condition as an example, so you better understand the concept. A simple one;

Image rights to Riot Games

"GET FED", so; getting fed is a condition to win?, well, if you're fed you'll probably have better chances of winning the game, but is it really a win condition?, or is it the RESULT of a win condition happening?.

Getting fed equals having more items and/or level that an average player in the enemy team. Which means that your gold and/or level is higher than the average.

Therefore, is it GOLD the win condition?, well we're close, but not yet, GOLD is a RESOURCE adquired from killing, farming, and taking objectives, not a win condition, so what is the win condition that has gold as a resource?... Pressure.

Yeah, we have our first primary win condition; pressure. To win a game you need to pressure the enemy team, GOLD helps you pressure because the relation between the risk you can take and the reward you will get increases, meaning that you can pressure more to a lower risk.

Gold is not only a resource for ITEMS that increase your kill potential or survability, but also allow you pressure safely, with vision.

Then, if pressure is influenced directly by gold, means by logic that gold inherits the win condition status, right?. It would be that way, if pressure was only influenced by gold, but it is not.

The factors that influence pressure are many, but the main ones, that do it to a similar level than gold are; wave control, global summoner spells or global ultimates, and team players distribution (rotations).

Image rights to Ivan "Mushy" Prats

So, we're stating that one primary win condition is PRESSURE. Knowing how and when to pressure will give you a huge advantage, each composition or team composition has its own way of pressuring, but pressure is mainly conditioned by GOLD, WAVE CONTROL, GLOBAL SUMMONER SPELLS AND ULTIMATES & MAP POSITIONING.

Picking another example to jump to the next primary win condition; "Place wards", this is very common and popular among pro players, "Place a ward, save a life", it's more or less true, but you've placed wards, a lot of them, yet lost the game, well this is because warding is not the win condition, is again the RESOURCE for a win condition, which is INFORMATION.

You'll think again that warding and information are directly related, that information has no more sources than VISION, provided by wards, and you're not far from being right, but there might be something you might have overlooked.

Information is very important to make decissions, seeing where the enemy champions are is key to take the right decission, but can we make the right calls only knowing where the enemy champions are?, don't we need any other INFORMATION relative to the game?, well you might have realized already that we do.

Image rights to www.smallbiztrends.com

Information, as well as pressure, is conditioned by many primary elements, one, as we stated before, is VISION, the ones that equally influence information are; wave control, champion knowledge (powerspikes, weaknesses, etc), and timers (baron, dragon, important summoner spells or ultimates, etc).

If we control INFORMATION and PRESSURE, we'll most likely win the game, because if we lose a fight, but the lanes are pushed (wave control) we will not lose as much, if we get engaged but we know that X ultimate is down, we can turn the fight instead of back off, if we get contested at dragon, but we know that they're in numbers disadvantage, we can take the objective safely.

Knowing when to pressure and how to do it is conditioned by the information we have, and the information we have depends on the pressure we can put. It's a very tight relation between 2 factors that highly condition a game, and whoever controls both will have a huge advantage over the enemy team.

Thanks for reading!

To stay tunned about new content, articles, seminars and videos I'll be uploading soon regarding this and other interesting topics follow me in social media and subscribe to my YouTube channel.

Facebook
Twitter
YouTube