WDBlowJ Plug n Play (A Smile)

This a tweak of a tactic called 4132 Silver Bull II created by A Smile.
Link: https://fm-arena.com/thread/4934-4132-silver-bull-ii/

I changed the DM role to Anchor.

My aim was to make this tactic more Plug and Play, i.e. consistent for weaker teams as well as working good for superior teams.



I have ran many holiday tests with each Premier League teams.
In addition, for the testings I changed the attacking corners to 'Mixed' in order to minimize the effect of corner goals, so that I can have an idea of how effective the formation and team/player settings are.
Some of the more interesting results are shown in the 'spoilers'.

Bournemouth

Nottm Forest

Man Utd

Man City

Liverpool

Spurs

Chelsea

Arsenal

Leicester

West Ham

Wolves

Crystal Palace

WestDoorBlowJ said: This a tweak of a tactic called 4132 Silver Bull II created by A Smile.
Link: https://fm-arena.com/thread/4934-4132-silver-bull-ii/

I changed the DM role to Anchor.

My aim was to make this tactic more Plug and Play, i.e. consistent for weaker teams as well as working good for superior teams.



I have ran many holiday tests with each Premier League teams.
In addition, for the testings I changed the attacking corners to 'Mixed' in order to minimize the effect of corner goals, so that I can have an idea of how effective the formation and team/player settings are.
Some of the more interesting results are shown in the 'spoilers'.

Bournemouth

Nottm Forest

Man Utd

Man City

Liverpool

Spurs

Chelsea

Arsenal

Leicester

West Ham

Wolves

Crystal Palace Expand

You made things even better! Now we gonna test even Anchor

who is this guy!!! good job bro!

Delicious said: You made things even better! Now we gonna test even Anchor Expand

I reckon Anchor only works good for formations with many players high up the pitch. Of course you will know better.

Also, did you create any new and even better corner settings recently? If so I guess it can make this tactic score higher!

sponsorkindest said: who is this guy!!! good job bro! Expand

2 points dropped after 3840 matches tested, which means the same score as the original version.

However, I still think that this version works better for weaker teams~

Update: Test results from another website shows that this tactic got the highest ever points for its Nottm Forest testing.

WestDoorBlowJ said: Update: Test results from another website shows that this tactic got the highest ever points for its Nottm Forest testing.

Expand

well done！The differences between test brackets can lead to some inconsistency in the test results, but getting a good score in both ARENA, FM-GAMERS, and general leagues shows that you've done a good job. It's a tactic I've used very well in our online league games.

WestDoorBlowJ said: Update: Test results from another website shows that this tactic got the highest ever points for its Nottm Forest testing.

Expand

I won't be an ass, but i am willing to explain something, imagine that on arena we are facing a giga-coin flip RNG (is from the game  not from the test), and as i know arena even on MINIMUM is the site that make more runs (640),so i now i want you to understand, if we are in a situation  that we don't even know if the how the "tornado" test is going (1 point? 1.5? 2? from the REAL result),how we do consider 228 games?

Don't missunderstand me, i have nothing against gamer's test, but basically 228 games is not even a run of arena.

Tactic is good,anchor might be good as well. But there is not really a tactic for underdog/sub-top/Elite. Is more what your team can sustain on mentality.



Let aside that it's another tactic etc. Just check the numbers on Home and Away with cautious mentality.





The biggest problem with this patch is that away games are going literally nuts. With cautious at least you can face it, but you can't really face every team with that mentality at Home.

So you need to combine Balanced/Cautious and even V.A.(at a point you will want to all-in as well) to get the maximum from the game.

So there are many factors to get in consideration. From a test you can transform the tactic to adapt it to the best for your team.

PI's for xbox users??

Dylan935 said: PI's for xbox users?? Expand

ST(C)

ST(R)

AML

AMR

AMC

DM

DL

DR

DC(L)

DC(R)

GK

A Smile said: well done！The differences between test brackets can lead to some inconsistency in the test results, but getting a good score in both ARENA, FM-GAMERS, and general leagues shows that you've done a good job. It's a tactic I've used very well in our online league games. Expand

Thanks for creating the original tactic!
You exactly got my point. I was trying to make this formation more consistent or more plug and play.

BTW, I noticed you used Chinese characters in the tactics file. Are you from Hong Kong? Coz I am a Hongkonger.

WestDoorBlowJ said: Thanks for creating the original tactic!
You exactly got my point. I was trying to make this formation more consistent or more plug and play.

BTW, I noticed you used Chinese characters in the tactics file. Are you from Hong Kong? Coz I am a Hongkonger. Expand

I'm not from Hong Kong. We're all Chinese

Delicious said: I won't be an ass, but i am willing to explain something, imagine that on arena we are facing a giga-coin flip RNG (is from the game  not from the test), and as i know arena even on MINIMUM is the site that make more runs (640),so i now i want you to understand, if we are in a situation  that we don't even know if the how the "tornado" test is going (1 point? 1.5? 2? from the REAL result),how we do consider 228 games?

Don't missunderstand me, i have nothing against gamer's test, but basically 228 games is not even a run of arena.

Tactic is good,anchor might be good as well. But there is not really a tactic for underdog/sub-top/Elite. Is more what your team can sustain on mentality.



Let aside that it's another tactic etc. Just check the numbers on Home and Away with cautious mentality.





The biggest problem with this patch is that away games are going literally nuts. With cautious at least you can face it, but you can't really face every team with that mentality at Home.

So you need to combine Balanced/Cautious and even V.A.(at a point you will want to all-in as well) to get the maximum from the game.

So there are many factors to get in consideration. From a test you can transform the tactic to adapt it to the best for your team. Expand

Thanks for your detailed reply. I exactly understand what you mean. That 3 seasons ran by FM-gamers is clearly not enough to draw a definite conclusion to a tactic.

However, I think the concept of FM-gamers is also important: A tactic which works good for better teams might not work as good for weaker teams.
Especially for more attacking tactics, they are more 'volatile'. A realistic explanation is that weaker teams might not be able to finish an attacking move as often, and they might also not be able to defend the subsequent counter attack. A stronger team might have already scored a goal or succuesfully prevented a counter attack in the same situation because it has stronger players.
From my experience, those highest scoring tactics from here (FM arena) usually don't work consistently for weaker teams like Bournemouth or Nottm Forest. 

Also, I don't think a 'plug and play' tactic should rely on set piece goals. I think it's important that the base formation, TI and PI all combine well to produce a consistent tactic. The set piece goals should become a bonus to obtain more points/ more wins. This is when teams like Southampton with Ward-Prowse having 20 for 'Corner Taking' have an advantage if used as a testing team.
The same applies when using Man City for testing. Haaland is such a beast in the game, so he can score much easier than other players. This advantage makes testing tactics with Man City less meaningful.
That's why I would agree with FM-gamers to pick Chelsea and Nottm Forest to test tactics. It really gives a better picture of how the tactic works in different scenarios.

I would also like to talk a bit about team mentality. I have run some holiday testings with Cautious mentality, as I thought the attacking setup of this formation might work better with a less attacking mentality. The results weren't that bad in terms of not losing matches. However, although the teams would lose less matches in general, some teams struggle to win matches, i.e. drawn too many games. For those weaker teams, drawing too many games would mean relegation instead of top half finishes.

Anyway, although the idea of switching mentality between home and away games sounds logical to me and might work, my ultimate goal is to provide the most 'Plug and Play' tactic. Therefore switching mentalities in different scenarios is not what I wanted to dig into. Also, my definition of a 'Plug and Play' tactic is just the most consistent but good enough tactic, just like the test result from FM-gamers: Chelsea can challenge for the title and Nottm Forest can challenge for European places. That's why it is slightly different from trying to 'get the maximum from the game' with this tactic.


*I would also like to express my opinion about the RNG you have mentioned, but let's talk about it later as this post is getting a bit too long...

FM-Gamers testing results

WestDoorBlowJ said: From my experience, those highest scoring tactics from here (FM arena) usually don't work consistently for weaker teams like Bournemouth or Nottm Forest. Expand

When I see someone says a word "work" regarding tactics in FM then it's a sign that the person has a low understanding about FM.

To properly test different tactics a team must have "Natural" players for every position and these players must have the same attributes, which never possible when you test with real teams, they are always better built for some tactics than other tactics. 

I suggest you to look at this - https://fm-arena.com/thread/3293-what-it-takes-to-dominate-epl-with-bournemouth/

Lapidus said: When I see someone says a word "work" regarding tactics in FM then it's a sign that the person has a low understanding about FM.

To properly test different tactics a team must have "Natural" players for every position and these players must have the same attributes, which never possible when you test with real teams, they are always better built for some tactics than other tactics. 

I suggest you to look at this - https://fm-arena.com/thread/3293-what-it-takes-to-dominate-epl-with-bournemouth/ Expand

'Consistency' is my main point. All these top scoring tactic 'works', if you'd argue, but not all of them are suitable for weaker teams, because, as you have mentioned, those team might not have the suitable players for each postion.
My goal was to find a tactic that's 'the most consistent but also good enough' for different teams (hopefully all). Then FM-players can focus on recruiting or developing players to make this tactic reaches its full potential. Probably not the 'right way' to play FM, but that's something I would like to achieve: to play with minimal fuss about tactics.


An example of inconsistency:
I have run a holiday test for a tactic with Bournemouth.
81 points, 4th, awesome.


Then on the 2nd trial.
56 points, 9th. Ok, RNG in play.


Then I tried the same tactic with Nottm Forest.
46 points, 13th...


Just trying to illustrate 'inconsistency' here, of course I won't draw to a conclusion with just 3 seasons.

@WestDoorBlowJ, if you think you can properly test tactics going on holiday then I suggest you to look at this - https://fm-arena.com/thread/3269-playing-on-vacation-holiday/

Also, if you remove injuries, bans, transfers, rotation and many other RNG factors then still the RNG is about 25 points on 38 matches distance - https://fm-arena.com/thread/2713-10-944-matches-tested-fm-rng-measured/ so 38 matches test is like a drop in ocean.

Lapidus said: @WestDoorBlowJ, if you think you can properly test tactics going on holiday then I suggest you to look at this - https://fm-arena.com/thread/3269-playing-on-vacation-holiday/

Also, if you remove injuries, bans, transfers, rotation and many other RNG factors then the RNG is about 25 points on 38 matches distance - https://fm-arena.com/thread/2713-10-944-matches-tested-fm-rng-measured/ so 38 matches test is like a drop in ocean. Expand

Of course it won't, that's why I uploaded the tactic here for testing. I also uploaded the tactic to FM-gamers for testing to see how it works in different scenario, though that test is not comparable to FM-Arena's.

And if you read my original post, I have posted a lot of different team results there, which shows that I clearly understand '38 matches test' is meaningless. Furthermore, those are just a few of the interesting results. I have run a lot of saves with the tactic before posting it here.

Also, I especially mentioned 'holiday test' to let others know that I didn't play the season by myself. This increased a lot of randomness in the so-called 'tests'. It's just that this tactic tends to give more consistent results no matter what happened during the season or how strong the team is.

FM-player doesn't play with the test leagues. I am just suggesting that even with 'injuries, bans, transfers, rotation and many other RNG factors', this tactic has higher chance of giving you success, even if different teams are used.

WestDoorBlowJ said: Of course it won't, that's why I uploaded the tactic here for testing. I also uploaded the tactic to FM-gamers for testing to see how it works in different scenario, though that test is not comparable to FM-Arena's.

And if you read my original post, I have posted a lot of different team results there, which shows that I clearly understand '38 matches test' is meaningless. Furthermore, those are just a few of the interesting results. I have run a lot of saves with the tactic before posting it here.

Also, I especially mentioned 'holiday test' to let others know that I didn't play the season by myself. This increased a lot of randomness in the so-called 'tests'. It's just that this tactic tends to give more consistent results no matter what happened during the season or how strong the team is.

FM-player doesn't play with the test leagues. I am just suggesting that even with 'injuries, bans, transfers, rotation and many other RNG factors', this tactic has higher chance of giving you success, even if different teams are used. Expand

Point is one and simple :

Are you trying to understand how consistent is a "tactic" or how lucky you are?
A "FM-Player", would try to build the team to do rotation and things like that at least is that what i do hope. But basically what you trying to do is to force a tactic into a team regard if the tactic fit for the players.

MR/ML roles as even zippo said are rare as pink unicorn, i did found like 2-3 really good for the roles.
What you are trying to say that is Anchor, for some reason is giving you better consistency to "underdog",but my question is did you even tested the role by watching it?

Because after this tactic's result i did tried on live-games and i didn't like it not even a bit, but that doesn't mean the role is "bad", maybe it didn't fit the player i had on that save.

What we know from test that : BWM(D)/DM(S)/DM(D)/RPM are giving out for some unknow reason the similar kind of perfomance on test league.

About FM-Gamers's test,if that wasn't afflicted by RNG you wouldn't see Man City once with 90+ points and the other time with 66. I am sure their test league is really good and interesting, but doing 228 games in order to value a tactic it seem to my point of view very optmistic.

I am not trying to attack you or anyone, for me the anchor was really good hint and very happy you did it.
Vacation isn't a test is most likely a showdown,full of rng. Sometimes it's good and sometimes is .... as Gattuso's cit.

Imagine that out of there are people doing 16 games "Vacation-Test" and they are convinced that those results should be meta.

added both versions of this tactic as my 2nd and 3rd tactics, need a slightly more offensive tactic to work alongside a 4-3-3 and these look like they will suit my players

Delicious said: Point is one and simple :

Are you trying to understand how consistent is a "tactic" or how lucky you are?
A "FM-Player", would try to build the team to do rotation and things like that at least is that what i do hope. But basically what you trying to do is to force a tactic into a team regard if the tactic fit for the players.

MR/ML roles as even zippo said are rare as pink unicorn, i did found like 2-3 really good for the roles.
What you are trying to say that is Anchor, for some reason is giving you better consistency to "underdog",but my question is did you even tested the role by watching it?

Because after this tactic's result i did tried on live-games and i didn't like it not even a bit, but that doesn't mean the role is "bad", maybe it didn't fit the player i had on that save.

What we know from test that : BWM(D)/DM(S)/DM(D)/RPM are giving out for some unknow reason the similar kind of perfomance on test league.

About FM-Gamers's test,if that wasn't afflicted by RNG you wouldn't see Man City once with 90+ points and the other time with 66. I am sure their test league is really good and interesting, but doing 228 games in order to value a tactic it seem to my point of view very optmistic.

I am not trying to attack you or anyone, for me the anchor was really good hint and very happy you did it.
Vacation isn't a test is most likely a showdown,full of rng. Sometimes it's good and sometimes is .... as Gattuso's cit.

Imagine that out of there are people doing 16 games "Vacation-Test" and they are convinced that those results should be meta. Expand

No, I don't feel being attacked, as I can feel that you have really read my post thoroughly and understand what I mean.

You mentioned a FM-player "would try to build the team to do rotation and things like that at least is that what i do hope.", and this is exactly what I mean by playing FM the 'right way' in post #15. You are also right that I am "forcing a tactic into a team", as I have mentioned in post #15 that I hope this tactic allows FM-players to play with minimal fuss about tactics and just focus on recruiting or developing players in order to make this tactic reaches its full potential. So, it was intentional to build the team around the tactic but not building the tactic around the players.
Of course, not all tactics can be done this way, for example the 3 defenders formation Guardiola uses in real life. I guess no other teams can be successful by forcing such tactic into their team as they don’t have any good enough defenders, let alone having 3 of them.
What I have been saying is that I think this WDBlowJ Plug n Play (A Smile) tactic might be a good enough and consistent tactic that can be forced into any teams.
One of the reasons to post this tactic up here is to share it with other FM-players (if any) having the same ‘Plug and Play’ philosophy.

Onto another topic. One thing about RNG is that FM is not completely random, or else after an extreme large number of matches test, a team will always finish with 1/3 of the games winning, 1/3 of the games drawing and 1/3 of the games losing. When talking about randomness, 'probability' should also be mentioned. Test result from FM-Arena can tell you the highest probability of the points a team would finish a season with when the tactic used. For example, my tactic has a score of 62. It means that after a very large number of seasons tested, it is very likely that on average a season will be finished with 62 points using my tactic. Thus 62 points is the 'true score' of my tactic.

Another 'probability' worth mentioning is the probability that a single season test will hit close to the 'true score'. What I mean by a 'consistent' tactic is that using such tactic will have a higher probability to finish the season close to the 'true score' compared to a 'inconsistent' tactic. If one would like to interpret probability as 'luck', I would not say it's wrong. However, using an inconsistent tactic will have a higher probability to finish the season with an extreme score, which means a score much different from the 'true score', i.e. less luck needed to obtain that extreme score or more luck needed to hit the 'true score'. In fact, 'Normal distribution' is what I am talking about.

From my experience, an over-attacking or over-defending tactic is the more inconsistent ones. Switching the DM role to Anchor should make the tactic less attacking, and it may just happen to be the perfect setting for that formation in terms of the balance between attacking and defending. As a result, it became more 'consistent'.

It's true that the so-called 'holiday test' is somehow not a proper test, as it involves too many random factors, such a morale and player injuries. However, it's not totally meaningless. As you have mentioned, it gives a 'likely showdown' of how the tactic performs.

For example, I ran Nottm Forest with the same tactic for 10 times.
Result:


The average score(of course it depends on how you deal with the data):
60 points

From the above table, out of the 10 times, there were 7 seasons finished with 4 points away from the average score. If this trend goes on when I run the test for 20, 50 or even 100 times (just making up the numbers, so please don’t argue that 200, 500 or 1000 times should be run), I will describe this tactic as ‘consistent’.

Then I would test this tactic with another team, such as Bournemouth. If similarly the trend goes on when I run the test for 20, 50 or even 100 times, the tactic is not only consistent but also likely to be working the same way for all other teams, i.e. a Plug and Play tactic.

This is my logic when talking about consistency of a tactic. As ‘it's important to understand that playing/testing on "Holiday/Vacation" might produce much worse result than playing the game in normal way.’, when a tactic shows some kind of consistency in ‘holiday tests’, I am pretty confident that even better results or even more consistency the tactics can achieve when I play ‘normally’.

Hope this long reply would let everyone understand that I do know how misleading ‘holiday tests’ can be. I won’t be over-excited if the team is doing good after 16 games, as well as I do try to run more seasons in holiday mode before confirming the impression I had for any given tactic.

Peter78 said: added both versions of this tactic as my 2nd and 3rd tactics, need a slightly more offensive tactic to work alongside a 4-3-3 and these look like they will suit my players Expand

Please let me know how it works for you~

I hated using DW's so after a break from fm23 started uinsg this and its been great so far. Im not a purist by any means, I d/l tactics for one haha, but do prefer using this shape over dw's. Scores a lot of goals and as the season progressed the team got better and better.

keithb said: I hated using DW's so after a break from fm23 started uinsg this and its been great so far. Im not a purist by any means, I d/l tactics for one haha, but do prefer using this shape over dw's. Scores a lot of goals and as the season progressed the team got better and better. Expand

I don't prefer using DW mainly because it forces me to use 'hard tackling'. Unfortunately, I have yet to find a tactic that works consistently without 'hard tackling' after the latest patch....

It was also interesting to watch your debate. I feel that the players who can discuss tactics in ARENA usually have a good foundation of FM theory, and their cognition should not be biased. Of course, tactics are good and bad in the end, can only be tested out of actual combat, even the reality is so. I don't speak English, so it's hard to get involved, but I'd like to give my opinion. The first thing to be sure is that ARENA is the most authoritative and reasonable testing site in the world, but even so, there are some factors that can't be resolved to affect test results. ARENA's test files are custom-built, removing all habits, fixing concealment, and locking in health and morale to minimize their impact.

However, one of the most important factors that cannot be dealt with is the numerical difference between a player's attributes and even the player's position, which can greatly affect how useful a player is in different tactics. This template varies from engine to engine generation and usually takes more than 3 months to summarize, which becomes more difficult with this generation of balanced engines. How important is this template? So important that a 130CA team can beat a 150CA team, I'm not talking about the difference in players' real abilities, the 130CA's stats are actually worse, just because of the difference in stats template.

In mainland China, we have online leagues that have been perfected for many years to mimic reality, such as PGM,HEIGO,3DM and so on. There are a lot of actual combat matches between people every day, all of which are the battles between top tactics. The combat level of these tactics is more than what we see now, because all of them will study the tactics on the Internet. To be modified and utilized. We are almost all professional players, studying tactics and players for more than a decade in order to do well in the league. The intensity of online play is much greater than that of single player mode, and a strategy can be judged good or bad in a game or even half a game. In single-player mode, the AI is too easily defeated, and the true quality of a tactic can be difficult to determine through careful observation over the course of a season. I am probably the only one of us who is willing to test tactics in the ARENA, as I am currently only a teaching assistant and only involved in Ladder qualifying, not in the official league and cup competitions. They don't want to share tactics because they'll be in the hands of their opponents, and that's what they rely on to win.

Hey, I really want to discuss FM tactics with you, but the language is blocking me, is it difficult to really understand what I said? Poor me.

In fact, A and BWMD are essentially the same and will not have a fundamental impact on tactics. However, in terms of intelligent coverage in midfield, using A is worse than using BWMD because of the lack of midfield closing down. Of course, this is said when there is no one else in midfield. For example, in the current best formation of 4123, the option of DW can help solve this problem, so the back can choose DMS (stay in position) and IWBA or IWBS (press up) can solve the problem of lack of space in midfield.

Theoretical things are not panacea in the application of practical tactics, there is no way, after all, this is beyond the control of the SI. In fact, SI has changed a lot of things to adjust the balance.

A Smile said: It was also interesting to watch your debate. I feel that the players who can discuss tactics in ARENA usually have a good foundation of FM theory, and their cognition should not be biased. Of course, tactics are good and bad in the end, can only be tested out of actual combat, even the reality is so. I don't speak English, so it's hard to get involved, but I'd like to give my opinion. The first thing to be sure is that ARENA is the most authoritative and reasonable testing site in the world, but even so, there are some factors that can't be resolved to affect test results. ARENA's test files are custom-built, removing all habits, fixing concealment, and locking in health and morale to minimize their impact.

However, one of the most important factors that cannot be dealt with is the numerical difference between a player's attributes and even the player's position, which can greatly affect how useful a player is in different tactics. This template varies from engine to engine generation and usually takes more than 3 months to summarize, which becomes more difficult with this generation of balanced engines. How important is this template? So important that a 130CA team can beat a 150CA team, I'm not talking about the difference in players' real abilities, the 130CA's stats are actually worse, just because of the difference in stats template.

In mainland China, we have online leagues that have been perfected for many years to mimic reality, such as PGM,HEIGO,3DM and so on. There are a lot of actual combat matches between people every day, all of which are the battles between top tactics. The combat level of these tactics is more than what we see now, because all of them will study the tactics on the Internet. To be modified and utilized. We are almost all professional players, studying tactics and players for more than a decade in order to do well in the league. The intensity of online play is much greater than that of single player mode, and a strategy can be judged good or bad in a game or even half a game. In single-player mode, the AI is too easily defeated, and the true quality of a tactic can be difficult to determine through careful observation over the course of a season. I am probably the only one of us who is willing to test tactics in the ARENA, as I am currently only a teaching assistant and only involved in Ladder qualifying, not in the official league and cup competitions. They don't want to share tactics because they'll be in the hands of their opponents, and that's what they rely on to win.

Hey, I really want to discuss FM tactics with you, but the language is blocking me, is it difficult to really understand what I said? Poor me. Expand

Thanks for your reply!
I would like to know more about the professional leagues in China. Sounds interesting!
Any chance you can tell me more about it? Maybe through emails so that you can type in Chinese? We may also discuss about FM tactics.

WestDoorBlowJ said: Thanks for your reply!
I would like to know more about the professional leagues in China. Sounds interesting!
Any chance you can tell me more about it? Maybe through emails so that you can type in Chinese? We may also discuss about FM tactics. Expand

PGM's home page：https://www.playgm.cn/forum-155-1.html
HEIGO's home page：http://www.soccerbar.cc/forum.php?gid=97
All the details are in the sub-columns. Now I am a teaching assistant in the HEIGO League and also in the PGM group, but PGM has not participated in the competition for the time being.
The rules of the two leagues are slightly different and seem complicated, but they are easy to understand once you get familiar with them. It's all about the fun of the team and the fairness of the game.

WestDoorBlowJ said: Thanks for creating the original tactic!
You exactly got my point. I was trying to make this formation more consistent or more plug and play.

BTW, I noticed you used Chinese characters in the tactics file. Are you from Hong Kong? Coz I am a Hongkonger. Expand

well done to this tac, i am from hk

vitoco said: 西門吹J, hahah Expand

Please, edit your post or it'll be removed. Only English language is allowed here.

vitoco said: how do i change it? Expand

there's a button that allows you to edit your posts, just press it and edit your post(translate what your wrote into English)