Good post here and the discussion seems to indicate that many people agree that Horde does have a can’t miss strategy to win AV. Add in the calls for old AV, “Tell the Blizz that we want Ivus and Lok back.” and I call this thread a winner.

Scorched Earth AV is a game of AV where Horde do not let alliance take anything. This prevent alliance accomplishing any objective and recieving any bonus honor whatsoever. This is best accomplished by playing defense at the chokepoint between the Iceblood Tower and Iceblood graveyard, it’s a narrow chokepoint under Iceblood tower Arrow fire and right next to a graveyard, making it very easy to defend and reinforce while watching objectives at the same time.

With just a handful or two of capable players using Earthbind Totems or Frost traps or Frost Nova’s or any other AoE slow or root with some healers and DPS, the entire alliance -zerg-(that’s what it is, a mindless PvE zerg they use because of the sheer ease they have in capping every single objective from beginning to end) can be destroyed and folded in on itself.

This is Horde’s unique advantage on the AV map. Our first chokepoint(we only have 2 chokepoints altogether) is also in front of our first GY. Alliance’s first chokepoint is behind their first GY. This means that even if Alliance copies and retaliates by playing defense, they can’t stonewall horde on all of the objectives nearly as effectively. It’s much more likely for Alliance to lose Stonehearth bunker, for example. So even in an extended reinforcement battle under these circumstances, Alliance will lose.

If horde manages to wipe alliance offense(That’s the first goal, make them die and rez as far north as you can), it can be easy to combine all of horde offense AND defense and push the now bottlenecked alliance players from Stonehearth and above. This makes playing easy- everybody is all massed together accomplishing both offense and defense at the same time with little to no risk of having towers and graveyards being taken.

Horde should play scorched earth AV.
Factor in HKs and additional Bonus honor for not losing towers and for winning, a 23, 25 minute victory in this way is just as good or superior than a 13 minute zerg into a loss. “Honor per hour guys” willing to ignore the impact of less AV tokens from losing will disagree with me and make the argument that this is retarded because it means less honor.
Lastly, this scorched earth AV, in the act of depriving Alliance of honor, causes the typical Alliance player to fold and give up. This makes AV easier, future AVs easier, and allows Horde to take place as the dominant faction. Being AV weekend, exploiting scorched earth AV tactics would be extremely rewarding, by the time Alliance has reacted in petty boycotts and walled up in a flurry of QQs for Blizzard to fix this “problem”, you’ll have reaped thousands of points of honor from AV. To enact scorched earth AV strategy, you do not have a majority consensus that this is the right action to do- less than 50% of Horde playing in a like minded manner can play out the scorched earth AV defense with the other 50% making up offense.

Simply mass up with other horde interested on defense at the Iceblood chokepoint.

There’s one major similarity that strikes me between WOW and LARPing: your chance of surviving an encounter is directly related to your skill out of game and your gear in game. Your in game skills and talents help too, but as long as they’re not totally stupid it’s the OOG skill and your character’s gear that matters most.

Now in terms of gear there’s a huge difference between WOW and the LARP I play. In WOW, everyone pretty much wants the same gear. If you’re into pvp it’s S4. If you’re raiding you need certain pieces before you’re ready for new content.

In Alliance, the LARP I play, no two characters have the same gear. Magic items are fairly random. At the last event I went to, a PA LARP at this campsite, I picked up a web x2 item. That allows me to cast 2 web spells per day. Someone else might find a web x2 item, but chances are slim that the same item will drop again for a while. There are 30 other spells that can be stored into a magic item.

The other thing is that no one needs a web x2 item. It’s sure nice, but it’s not a requirement for anything. In WOW some items are kind of required.

The closest thing to a requirement in the Alliance LARP is a damage aura weapon. Some monsters are only affected by magic so if you have a normal or silver weapon you’re not going to be real effective.

Damage aura swords (or other weapons) are pretty rare, though, and often made by players. Because the scrolls and components a player is able to get can vary, usually magic weapons are a bit different. You can have damage aura from +0 to +3, you can have different spells, you can have different defensives. If I make a magic sword it will be different than the one you make.

Is it just me or does this look like fun? 3 raids head to Ironforge and kill the King. A few allies even came to defend. I guess I’m inspired to go join a city raid but man are they hard to find.

Here’s a neat little video of a quick raid on Stormwind. I wasn’t there but it didn’t look all that exciting because there were only a few Alliance punks who bothered to show up and defend their leaders… Pretty typical I guess, either Alliance outnumbers Horde 3 to 1 or Alliance does not fight…

Because there are a couple of LARPs in my future…