Cage Breaking and Stalling Defensive Strategies:
As you may have gathered by now there is no single one thing to do which will effectively defend against a cage. There are quite a few options open to you and your team to deal with the oppositions cage. Some work better against certain types of opponents while others are useful strategies to use against all opponents. When executing a certain strategy in one of your turns you also need to consider the following turns for both you and your opponent. It is no good breaking up a cage only for them to easily be able to recover in their own turn and perhaps even end up in a better position as a result or your attempts.
The method(s) you elect to attempt will also depend on your team as well as the opposing team. This doesn’t just boil down to the two races that you are using but the skills that both sides can employ. If you have certain combinations of skills on your players they can more effectively employ certain tactics. On the flip side certain skills on the opposing players can render some cage breaking tactics less effective.
Marking the Ball Carrier:
I’ve covered this partially in the Marking Players article but this basically involves creating a path to get one of your players next to their ball carrier. This will force them to do one of a few things during their turn. They will either have to blitz your player doing the marking, pass or hand off the ball to a team mate, or attempt to dodge the ball carrier away (Hypnotizing your marker is also a less common option). If your marking player is also next to another of the opposing players, then blocking your marker is also possible.
Usually to achieve this you will need to blitz one of the cage corners, hopefully knocking them over. If you just get a push you can mark their ball carrier but the player you blitz can just block back next turn. You can more effectively mark their ball carrier if you get more than one of your players next to his, if you removed the player you blitzed from the pitch you should be able to just run at least three players next to his ball carrier. If you used a player with Frenzy to blitz one of their cage corners, then even if you get two pushbacks, you then will have a square where you can place your marking specialist without giving them a free block.
You do need to watch out when doing this though as two of them will almost certainly be next to two of the other cage corners who can look to just block their team mate free. They may also be able to set up chain pushes to free their team mate and then still have their blitz to use elsewhere during their turn. If you can just mark them with one player who is solely next to their ball carrier this is probably best. It means they can’t just block the ball carrier free and it will also prevent you from over committing and perhaps giving them even more “free” blocks in their turn which could injure your players. It narrows down their options and helps you to predict what they will do in their next turn.
There are some great skills which makes this ploy even more effective and narrows their good options down even further. Stand Firm or Side Step may mean they have to knock your player over if they opt to blitz them (unless they have the skills to cancel those). This may cause the opposing coach to look at handing off or dodging instead. If you combine one of those skills with the fantastic Diving Tackle, then dodging away will then also become far less attractive. They may still try to blitz you off and knock you over so they can get away and reform the cage, but you can look to try the same thing again in your following turn.
You now have narrowed their options down to handing the ball off. If they didn’t leave any team mates with reasonable (AG3+) as one of their cage corners, then even this may not look like an attractive option. If they did do that, then you can make it less desirable still by putting tackle zones on any of the likely hand off options. Be careful when doing this that you don’t leave them an easy way to blitz a receiver free for the hand off and then have a nice path through your defence because you over committed and left a big hole for them.
This strategy will work wonders against the slower and low agility teams, they won’t like to dodge or hand off the ball at all and even if they do, they might not be able to move very far with it. These teams will usually have strong players or damage causing skills though, so if you repeatedly do this every turn you can play into their hands letting them block your players. They may be able to whittle your team down so you can’t halt their progress to the end zone as they have you outnumbered.
Look to slow them down and then perhaps try this once or twice to try and turnover the ball. They may also panic or make a mistake which gives you a clear shot at their ball carrier in your next turn. There will be times where this could just hurry them up into scoring, but that can leave you with more turns to try and equalise in before the half ends. This method doesn’t work so great against the fast and agile teams as they will usually be able to pass or hand off the ball to someone and reform a cage easily. It may though against all teams get the ball out of the hands of their Sure Hands player which will open up your ability to use Strip Ball if possible.
You may also find that if you have a really strong player, that just parking them next to the ball carrier can be effective against weaker teams. If they gang up on them to get them away usually they won’t have the players to advance the cage safely that same turn. Also there are some big guys who have Prehensile Tail, this can make dodging away harder and typically the strong players have easy access to Stand Firm as well.
More on page 4…
Great article Coach! I really like how you went in depth on all the different cages and cage breaking style.
Just a note on leaping, Pro could be considered a skill that could allow you to re-roll a failed leap; though it’s only a 4+ that you get the re-roll, of course.
Great in depth article. I’ve ben waiting to read your thoughts on cage defence, and you’ve gone over and above.
Thanks Coach for yet another great article. Let us not forget the best anti-cage tactic: preventing the cage from forming. This might be easier for some teams; but, by and large, trying to isolate the ball handler (and perhaps those few players that want to form the cage) from the rest of the team may prove to be devastating for the offence. This won’t happen all the time (specially against experienced coaches), but once in a while it allows the defence to score during the opponents drive.
Not letting it form is obviously a good point, though this article was about what do to when it has. I thought about putting that in but I’ll be covering it in another article and didn’t want to drift too far from the subject.
Just revisiting this article which is very comprehensive and good to read every now and again in order to remember to sometimes consider all of the defensive strategies available! I think one of the hardest parts of this game is knowing when to commit and knowing when to hold back on defence, especially as an agile team coach. Obviously the uncertainty of the dice rolls will never make it an exact science either.
Anyway just wanted to point out one other way that you can attack a ball carrier in a cage, which I have not seen mentioned here. This applies mainly to dark elves and is not a strategy that I use personally, although I have had it used against me with a certain amount of success, so I think it merits consideration. An assassin with Leap can be a great cage breaker, especially against low armoured teams that have a ball carrier with Block, Dodge and Sure Hands protected in a cage. Leaping in and stabbing a ball carrier like that who has Av 7 can be a good way to get the ball loose and no amount of Guard on the cage corners can prevent it.
Obviously the risk when making the leap is the same as usual, but at least re-rolling the leap successfully means that you don’t have to worry about the block result coming up skulls afterwards as the stab will either succeed or fail regardless. It also helps if the assassin has Block and Dodge in order to be able to withstand the retaliation blocks that will come afterwards.
So, I would never make this a main strategy, but it is worth mentioning because it can be surprisingly effective. Also the dark elf star player Harkon Heartripper comes with Leap, although the fact he has Loner makes a riskier play to pull off with him.
Always good to learn I am a new coach. Curse my weakness of attacking the rear of a cage.
Most of the time I choose to slow the cage with around half my players. The other half I use to kill off any exposed opposition. Once I’ve secured a number advantage I’ll swamp the cage from all sides.
Experienced coaches will then hand off the ball and run away leaving me looking stupid.
Yes that is a common mistake, the rear of the cage can look tempting though it can often just leave you out of position.
What would you do against a slann cage, where if you don’t circle the entire cage, they can always find a way out through leap.
I love to play this team, and when I use a basic cage, most time the other player try to circle me using most of their players, leaving a catcher alone. I just leap out in the open and make a pass, diving catch makes it easy.
Depends what team I’m playing, generally though mark their players up, if they want to keep trying to make leaps without a skill reroll that is fine. I try and put the pressure on to make them score quickly so I can dictate play on my own drives. Slann are such an unusual team to play with and against though, matches are much harder to predict and you have to adapt in game perhaps more than against any other team.
Why I like Yhetees. Big strength with Frenzy and Disturbing Presence. Plow into the corner of the cage and mark the ball carrier. Then he’s hard to bring down and the Disturbing Presence bothers the hand-off.
Great article!
Two things “missing”:
1 The sideline half cage. Using ball carrier and 2-4 players to guard the ball carrier. Often employed by faster teams if a number of players can run past the defense, but to few or too little space to make an ordinary cage. This most likely put them in scoring range and if defense is slower, you may not be able to get a screen between them and the end zone.
2 If the offense’s remaining players are near the cage, marking them could give the opportunity to chain push you own player into the cage in your next turn. If that succeed, that player can block/stab the ball carrier. Or if he can be pushed next to a cage corner, he can block him and make space for the blitz.
Thanks for your comment, that second point was certainly an option that was missed out thank you for that. I’m not sure what the first point has to do with cage breaking though?
My tactics often involve preventing the cage to form or, if they do form a cage, hitting the ball carrier as fast as I can.
I tend to mark isolated players as often as I can (to prevent them from joining the cage or getting ready to receive a pass) and to form a wall in front of the cage with slow players and hitting the ball carrier from the sides or rear with faster ones.
Once, I did that and the ball was picked up by one of my mummies… It was fun caging that mummy to the EZ… It was the first time ever I scored with a Big Guy. (I just played Norse and Undead up until now and a Yehtee is even less likely a candidate for that feat =) )
Thanks for the great article Coach. Made me rethink some of my strategies.
Great article and great site. I can’t seem to find any coverage of the very simple tactic of just dodging into a cage. Using a ST4-player with break tackle, for example, yields a 55% chance of managing a 5+ dodge with a reroll into the cage. Once you’re there, you can probably also get a two-die block against the ball carrier, giving you a decent chance of getting the ball loose. Skills like wrestle, frenzy, strip ball and block can help you increase that chance, and frenzy might let you get the ball away from the cage altogether.
Of course, this will leave your cage breaking player in the midst of a lot of opponents, but they’ll probably have a lot of other stuff to think about if you get the ball free. Don’t forget the move a lot of your team mates close to where you’ll be pushing the ball carrier. 🙂
Thank you for the kind comments.
As for just dodging straight into the cage, that is the most obvious and first thing a new coach will try. So I didn’t really cover it. I only really go that route if I am heavily down on players so I can’t use other tactics. It also gets a lot less attractive as teams develop as a good cage will also have Guard players on at least opposite corners. So the article really was aimed at providing more advanced alternative options, but when the chips are down the good old fashioned head on approach can still succeed!