Eleven players - what formations to play? Should I put the player to play normal, offensively or defensively? How about towards wing? Towards middle? Aggghhhh… I’m pulling my hair out! Sometimes doing trigonometry or calculus is easier than setting the match orders for your team for that next crucial match!

If you take a step back a bit, and look at HT in general, it is actually quite simple, really! The objective of match orders is, you have that eleven players from your team, in order to churn out that 7 ratings that will determine the outcome of the match. Whatever it takes, whether it’s 3-5-2, 4-4-2, 4-3-3, 2-5-3…. as long as it’s a legal HT formation.

So, what 7 ratings? It’s simply the midfield, right defense, left defense, central defense, right attack, left attack and central attack. These ratings are found on the right side of the match report, and the ratings indicating your team’s and your opponent’s performance, basically.

Let’s talk about your team. You, being the manager, surely you need to understand your team inside out. I mean, your team’s strengths, weaknesses, training, individual players strengths, form, etc etc etc… Analyze your team’s ratings. For instance, what is the difference if I play my winger normal or offensive? What sort of difference does it gave out on the ratings? Basically, HT lesson #101, you need to know this. This is how you learn to know more about your team and what your team performance is capable of producing. But bear in mind also, that individually, there is also the player’s form to be considered. So, from these ratings, you can do a very simple analysis of your team as well as your up-and-coming opponent’s team:-

1) Your midfield vs Opponent’s midfield

Generally, midfield in HT still rules. Having an upper hand in midfield is a good and firm advantage to get a result. Well, I wouldn’t say surely, but chances of winning are better. I said this because having a better midfield is actually only the first step. The next step is to ensure how your team is going to make full use of that advantage. Even if you packed your midfield in everyway possible BUT inferior defense and attack ratings would not guarantee you a winning formula.Furthermore, you should also take account of your inner-midfielder (IM)’s stamina. If the stamina is anything less than excellent skill, your team may have to endure a heart-popping and torrid time during the 2^nd period of the match.Next season would be even more interesting, as stamina is accounted for all positions in the team. Basically, besides your midfield, your defense or attack ratings will suffer in the 2^nd half of the match if players having poor stamina skills.

2) Your Defense vs Opponent’s attack

Here, you look at your three defense ratings, left, center and right, AND compare them with your opponent’s right, center and left attacks respectively. For eg, your left defense vs opponent’s right attack ratings. When you find these individual defense ratings being higher than your opponent’s attacks, then you are on the right track. If they are not, then adjustments needed to be made. For instance, if your opponent got a strong center attack but poor side attack ratings, then you may want to consider adding a CD, like 2CDs with 1WB, considering you are playing a three-men defense like 3-5-2 formation, or, playing 3CDs with no WBs if you have a really good GK to fend off the side attacks. Apart from that, you also consider whether to put the WBs defensively or normal or even offensively. Then also, which of your defender is in better form, and maybe you can consider putting him on the position that you figure your opponent’s attack would be the strongest. Think out of the box a bit, your player doesn’t have to be playing at the same position week in week out. This is HT, and HT players can play with both feet.

3) Your attack vs Opponent’s defense

This is the fun part. If you have done with midfield and defense options and got them countered, then you are almost done. And in this part, your mission is to find out your opponent’s weakest defense, whether it’s left or center or right. If you find two out of three sides being superior ratings, then things will look brighter on your team. Otherwise, try to get at least one. You see, if your attacks are inferior, even if you got a superior midfield, you will find the following scenarios to occur quite often:-

i) Many chances come through you team but unable to convert.

ii) Fewer chances than your opponent even though your got an outright better midfield.

So there you go. My version on how to look at HT differently. But please do not take it word for word that it is a sure-win thing. What I am doing here is to help you play HT better. Besides setting out your regime and train patiently, the other thing that you need to do is to explore the game further. Most HT managers tends to be contented easily and rely on the same formations/tactics to win all matches. If that is so, then it would be so boring, right?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 4th, 2007 at 11:04 am and is filed under Hattrick, Tactics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.