Some laser tag game analysis

My wife and I went to Bob-O's this afternoon and played two rounds of laser tag together. She had never played before, so she was a little overwhelmed the first game. But I gave her some coaching and she more than doubled her score in the second game.

I had my best game yet during the first game, with my highest total score, highest accuracy, and my second best tag ratio. I tested a sniping location which didn't work out quite as well as I had hoped. It's on the middle landing of one of the ramps and offers a commanding view of the lower level, with reasonably good cover. However, it's still fairly vulnerable from the upper level. I was able to hold my own against the players on the upper level, but I wasn't very happy with the position. Tactically, there just isn't any greater advantage than holding the high ground. That's not to say the location is useless. If your team mates were holding the upper level, it would be the ideal location. Which brings us to the second game...

The blue team, one of our opposing teams, was surprisingly united. In the average laser tag game the idea of teams is more hypothetical than actual but this time, it was blue unity all the way. They camped out the upper level with amazing success. In this arena, the upper level is impossible to hold for long without the majority of your team to help. These guys had it. They also had one of their players holding the previously discussed sniping location. It was almost impossible to move anywhere without getting tagged from above by these guys. My wife and I made a couple of assaults on the upper level, but were unable to take it from them. 2 against 5 just doesn't cut it.

Another important lesson I took from the second game is the psychological effect of sniping. I found it awfully difficult to keep my cool when I was under constant threat from above. I'm going to have to work on that. Interestingly, this heavy sniping shows up on the score card: the weapon is a valid target and the majority of my tags against the blue team were tags on their phasers.