Just played my first online Conquest game on Crucible (actually second, but the first was a long time ago, when I was a newb), and it left me wondering...
It was a 2v2 : Oak + Erebus vs Sedna (me) + UB.
Game started well for my team : I held the center while UB capped flags, and I even got a few kills. Their Erebus was actually a beginner (no Bat Swarm, on Crucible ??).
Then my ally started feeding the opposing team and said it was his first online game (checking his profile after the game showed about 100 games played, so I guess he was playing on somebody else's profile).
Well, it kinda balanced things out, but we were still dominating the game.
We came to the point where we had catapults, lead WR 10 to 7, the opposing team was down to it's last line of towers while we controlled every flag on the map, including their gold, and all our towers were intact.
I thought 'GG'... I had money for giants, so made ready to teleport back to base after locking their gold flag when I died. It happened almost that fast : went from 6K to dead in about 5 seconds.
I saw Oak attacking me, but I thought Ereb mus have been there too : Bite + Penitence, 20+ minions attacking, well, yeah, that must be what happened.
Oh well, never mind : I bought giants + the first two attack and defense upgrades, and made ready to win the game.
My ally had died yet another time and it was then I realized he was level 10 when we were all ~15. Good thing game was over...
... or not.
Well, it was over, but not as I thought. Oak actually had Ashkandor, and from that point on, there was nothing I could do against him. Standing in the middle of four of our towers + 2 fortresses, with accompanying creeps and minions, I still went down almost in the blink of an eye.
We got pushed back very fast, and Oak single-handedly downed our citadel.
OK, we know Ashkandor is overpowered, and that the only counter to it is another Ashkandor (couldn't do it there : you can't sell back citadel upgrades), but still. On any other map, even that artifact isn't going to save your butt when upgraded giants are knocking on your front door and you only have priests.
With only one creep wave, creeps don't seem to have any real impact on Crucible. Had I spent my money on an Ashkandor of my own instead of upgrading creeps, I would have won easily.
So is overpowering the other team (aka playing Slaughter Mode) the only strategy on Crucible ?
