Yes, this tactic is probably my favorite of the top options on the table right now. I've played quite a bit with Zaz Blue, Void, and my own Cyclops tactics, and dabbled with some of the others like Phoenix. Anything in the high 6s or 7s is going to be really successful, and it's hard with the eye test alone to see what's best. But 1 thing that most of the top tactics have in common is that the goals "mostly" come from players in the middle of the pitch, and wide players are mostly there for supporting play.
Afterlife plays very differently, with the two WMs contributing nearly as many goals as the Shadow Strikers up top. It just feels really different and varied when compared to other top choices. My own complaint is the "very narrow" instruction, which sometimes leads to 6 players all crammed into a small space and a lot of blocked shots...but I think it's definitely better than the alternative here, and if the players are creative and smart enough it can lead to some really attractive quick passes/combinations. It's a really fun tactic to watch.
Hi, the big ones are changing the roles of the striker and DM to be AF and RPM. I also changed some of the instructions for the AP-a's and the Enganche. Pretty small, but seems to be meaningful. I understand why it's not getting tested though, since it's probably still just in the 5's at best.
Just uploaded v2. Somewhat minor changes since I'm disappointed in the score and didn't put a ton of time into adjusting. This tested very well, though. If it is also in the low 5s then I'm truly done with trying to make the Enganche work!
Tactic:
Results (in a custom Super League where I managed Man C and Man U. I also did versions with other major teams that did nearly as well):
Hi, I thought this was different enough from my previous tactic to warrant its own thread. It's inspired by a number of options across the site, but there's nothing with quite this formation or these roles. Major inspirations recently are the Orchestra and the Scatter tactics, along with obviously ZaZ for both TIs and PIs. The football is extremely attractive, with tons of short quick passes and assists coming deep in the opponent's half. I don't expect it to be a 7.0 or anything, but considering the quality of the build-up play and the uniqueness of the roles (not many good tactics with a striker at all, let alone with a complete forward and an enganche) I'd be willing to sacrifice some points at the top end. Just hoping it's not horrible!
Tactic:
Results (Man City and Valencia):
Possession (most top tactics I've tested have low possession, so this is a bonus):
My apologies - I'm rerunning an adjusted version and it looks MUCH better than the v2 I uploaded, so I'm deleting this and will update shortly. Thanks!
5.5 doesn't look too bad (you can definitely win the league like this!) but it's the worst 4-1-4-1-0 tactic on the site right now. After looking into it more, there's a Phoenix v5 tweak that's almost identical to this, just with a Shadow Striker in place of the Enganche and CM-A's instead of Mez-As. And it has a 6.8, which is a huge difference considering it's essentially just 2 changes. Goes to show how unhelpful the Enganche role usually is! I'll play around a bit more and see if it can be improved while keeping the Enganche, since on paper a playmaker that doesn't dribble is exactly what I want.
I think there are better versions of this formation, but I've been trying for 3 years to make a tactic with an Enganche work and this was a decent result. The Enganche probably makes things worse and it's super hard to make him function as intended, but he still does the job as an advanced playmaker hanging around as outlet in the middle of the field). Build-up play isn't pretty but what can you do?
I think I saw something years ago that said Important Matches matters in any match where you can do a team talk before the game. So games where you can clinch promotion or avoid relegation etc, in addition to cup/competition finals. I could be misremembering but that's always how I thought it worked.
Also, take a look at the actual results in the saves. For v1, in all 6 saves, at least one of your teams won the league, and you had the top 2 teams in 4/6. A score in the high 5s is still very good! It means that if your team's talent level is around average for the league, the tactic has a really good shot at giving you a title. The tactics in the high 6s or 7s will do that even if your team is below average for the league, and will make an average or better team dominate the league. But you certainly can run a tactic with a 5.8 rating and win every title.
Yes, definitely agree with you both! Just pointing out that if there's a 3 games/week schedule in FM22 (even for just 1 year), it'll be even more important, and some of the lower intensity tactics that tend to score poorly here might be comparably even stronger than they appear.
ZaZ said: Wait until FM22, with Covid-19 going on. Leagues start six months later, then you have three matches per week. Expand
Hmm, I wonder if that will make FM Arena's current testing method too unrealistic? There's already the conflict where high-intensity tactics can sometimes overperform here since there's no fatigue in the testing league. With good enough players and 1-2 games per week it doesn't seem to really make a big difference in an actual save. But in FM22 if we're forced to use way more backup players due to squad fatigue, I wonder if low-intensity tactics might be a more successful season-long option, allowing the best players to play more often.
Whoops, missed the results here. 4.3 is a little worse than I was hoping - I secretly wanted this to get a crazy good result. On the bright side, it scored a TON of goals. Just don't look at the defense!
Still, I'm pretty sure this is good enough to win the league with if you have a loaded team, which is fun. Someone on reddit just today was pumping up a stolen tactic, calling it the "most OP formation," and meanwhile it scored a 4.0 here on FM Arena. I also think many of the preset tactics inside the game would also score 4.0 or lower, so I'm glad the overall hypothesis of "the match engine is so janky right now a 1 CD/0 striker/2 no-defense forwards tactic is better than many standard tactics" still mostly holds up.
In the future, you can actually download one of the saves on the testing page and get a sense of this yourself - since the lineup is set for the whole season the positions shouldn't change. Note that they play every single game so your players might not get quite this much volume naturally.
I took a look at one of the v3 saves and found this. All numbers are per 38 games to get a sense of how the positions would work in a full premier league season:
This matches up with my experience playing. The raumdeuter actually doesn't score the majority of the goals, but does get the most assists. He functions as a fantastic outlet for the break since he doesn't really defend and is usually wide open on the flank. Then the Treq/SS are great options charging through the middle for him. The back 4/DM don't really influence the scoresheet very often since so much of the play is through the middle with the 3 up top and CM or on the break with those 5. Although I've found the RPM is really good at getting the key pass before the assist in build up, so he's still useful. The wingbacks aren't really that involved in build up play.
If you want a tactic with 1 main goal scorer this might not be it since things are spread between the top 3, but the bright side is that this is high scoring enough that your SS can still lead the league.
sorry, I should have been more clear. Valhalla is the same shape as this, but it plays very differently. The tactic in this thread has less dribbling, with lots of quick passes through the middle and very creative throughballs leading to goals - exactly the way I want my teams to play. Valhalla is definitely a more successful tactic overall, but it scores a lot of goals from the wingers dribbling to the byline and then crossing into the box, which I personally find to be a less attractive way to score.
I know this because I agree, this looks incredible when you play with a top team and I wish tactics that looked like this were more successful. But unfortunately the results were kinda subpar overall. Shame.
Ok I don't think this tactic is actually very good. It started as a joke in my head, but then I tested it and it actually performed very well in my personal test database. It's a combination of Zaz Blue's instructions along with the forwards from my Cyclops tactics...with only 1 CD. There's only 1 other 1-CD tactic on the site and it sucked, so I'm hoping this at least gets a 4 or higher. The match engine right now is very funny - there are lots of very standard tactics that would fit right in in an official SI tactical guide that also suck. I'm curious if this bizarre asymmetrical no striker idea outperforms some of the standard 4-2-3-1s on the site here.
Tactic:
Results (in my database both Man City and Valencia ran the tactic. It went well with Man C, not so well with Valencia)
For reference, this is about as well as my Cyclops v1 performed, which got a 5.5 on the site. It's actually better w/ Man C but worse with Valencia - at the top end this was one of my better performing ideas, which feels insane.
Afterlife plays very differently, with the two WMs contributing nearly as many goals as the Shadow Strikers up top. It just feels really different and varied when compared to other top choices. My own complaint is the "very narrow" instruction, which sometimes leads to 6 players all crammed into a small space and a lot of blocked shots...but I think it's definitely better than the alternative here, and if the players are creative and smart enough it can lead to some really attractive quick passes/combinations. It's a really fun tactic to watch.
Tactic:
Results (in a custom Super League where I managed Man C and Man U. I also did versions with other major teams that did nearly as well):
Tactic:
Results (Man City and Valencia):
Possession (most top tactics I've tested have low possession, so this is a bonus):
Tactic:
Results (I use Man City and Valencia):
Hmm, I wonder if that will make FM Arena's current testing method too unrealistic? There's already the conflict where high-intensity tactics can sometimes overperform here since there's no fatigue in the testing league. With good enough players and 1-2 games per week it doesn't seem to really make a big difference in an actual save. But in FM22 if we're forced to use way more backup players due to squad fatigue, I wonder if low-intensity tactics might be a more successful season-long option, allowing the best players to play more often.
Still, I'm pretty sure this is good enough to win the league with if you have a loaded team, which is fun. Someone on reddit just today was pumping up a stolen tactic, calling it the "most OP formation," and meanwhile it scored a 4.0 here on FM Arena. I also think many of the preset tactics inside the game would also score 4.0 or lower, so I'm glad the overall hypothesis of "the match engine is so janky right now a 1 CD/0 striker/2 no-defense forwards tactic is better than many standard tactics" still mostly holds up.
I took a look at one of the v3 saves and found this. All numbers are per 38 games to get a sense of how the positions would work in a full premier league season:
This matches up with my experience playing. The raumdeuter actually doesn't score the majority of the goals, but does get the most assists. He functions as a fantastic outlet for the break since he doesn't really defend and is usually wide open on the flank. Then the Treq/SS are great options charging through the middle for him. The back 4/DM don't really influence the scoresheet very often since so much of the play is through the middle with the 3 up top and CM or on the break with those 5. Although I've found the RPM is really good at getting the key pass before the assist in build up, so he's still useful. The wingbacks aren't really that involved in build up play.
If you want a tactic with 1 main goal scorer this might not be it since things are spread between the top 3, but the bright side is that this is high scoring enough that your SS can still lead the league.
https://fm-arena.com/tactic/1097-4-3-3-symmetrical-penetration-tiki-taka-banger-bielsa-pep/
I know this because I agree, this looks incredible when you play with a top team and I wish tactics that looked like this were more successful. But unfortunately the results were kinda subpar overall. Shame.
Tactic:
Results (in my database both Man City and Valencia ran the tactic. It went well with Man C, not so well with Valencia)
For reference, this is about as well as my Cyclops v1 performed, which got a 5.5 on the site. It's actually better w/ Man C but worse with Valencia - at the top end this was one of my better performing ideas, which feels insane.