Here's one thing that I learned about blocking if you're not doing a 4-wall (i.e. in a straight line). Suppose you're all rushing to the front of the pack to save your point. How should you go about that?
To illustrate this, suppose the yellow jammer is coming up to the blockers (as seen below):
You would probably want your weakest blockers (2 and 3) to be furthest up
front. Why? In virtue of being the weakest blockers, they are the most
likely to get sucked back into the pack. So you want to keep them in the
pack, but as far away as possible from the opposing jammer, who would
get their point. (And I guess you'd also want them as far away from the
opposing blockers, who might goat them. But of course, this should all
be done while still maintaining the pack.)
Of the two of those, you might put the weakest one in Blocker 3's position, so at least 2 can hold the inside line (with B1 if necessary). Plus it would take the jammer more energy to get to the outside past B3.
This would
entail that you also leave your strongest blocker (Blocker 1) in the back, and if
necessary they can tractor-trailer off the frontmost blockers, to hold
the jammer in the pack and stop her getting the points of all three blockers.
This probably all sounds really obvious in retrospect, but sometimes I need obvious things explained to me to help the light bulb go on!
Okay, so we all know that eating the baby is when the jammer gets reabsorbed into the pack. Well, here's a strategy that banks on that, and also uses a lot of new skills and stuff. I'm not sure how I feel about this as a strategy just yet, because I think it'd be kinda hard to pull off, but anyway.
So the idea is that you induce a situation where the jammer gets absorbed by the pack. This is done basically by hitting the jammer out at the beginning of the jam, and then skating backwards to about turn 2 or something. The jammer that is hit out would have to follow you back to reenter behind you (or else get a cut). So this is what happens:
At the start, you have your packs as follows. Blue jammer hits yellow jammer out of bounds. Blue jammer skates backwards (or turns around and skates forwards, whatever) to about turn 2.
If Yellow Jammer doesn't catch on fast enough and just reenters, then she's cutting and that's a major right off the bat. But if she takes the bait (as it were), she can skate around the outside to reenter behind the blue jammer.
However, if the pack is moving, then Blue Jammer can make the Yellow Jammer reenter right between her and the pack:
I got tired of doing the individual skaters for the pack, so now they are giant blobs.
At the same time, if the Blue Blockers are slowly skating forward then the gap that yellow jammer should be reentering in is between the blue jammer and the blue blockers. So as yellow jammer approachers, blue jammer skates forward and yellow jammer reenters and gets immediately absorbed by the pack:
I call this "feeding the baby" because you're basically bringing the baby to the pack, as it were. But when we were trying this, it was contingent on a lot of things.
Firstly, the yellow jammer doesn't need to follow the blue one. She could just stand on the side of the track and not reenter until the blue jammer skates past her. Which, presumably she wouldn't do because that would defeat the purpose of the play. But that in itself is a good strategy for blue if they want to count down the clock, e.g. if they have blockers in the bin and are waiting for them to come back.
Have a look at what happens in this bout, around 16:30:
But, of course, the pack is (slowly) rolling forward so if the red blockers had taken off sooner the red jammer would have had less time. But this is pretty much the strategy that's being employed here.
However, then that means both jammers are both one down on their initial pass, so you'd have to skate a lap (since the pack is almost by turn 3 at this stage) and then skate another lap for your initial pass. That sounds tiring to me, and it might not be worth the energy. It might work well if you have a really slow opposing jammer or something but then that also assumes they are taking the bait, and their bench might be just screaming at them not to or something.
I guess the benefits for doing this would be to chance that the opposing (hit out) jammer would force the track cut, thereby making it pretty much a power jam, or she'll be so eaten that this jam basically guarantees no points for the opposition. And if she didn't take the bait then that counts down a lot of time too.
But yeah, this looks like a play to keep your eyes peeled for...
We've been working on scrum starts, and one thing that we looked at was the fact that we didn't all have to be in a line right on the jammer line. In fact, your jammer can do a lot of work in directing where the opposing pack goes and how they work.
Suppose (for the sake of simplicity) we have a 4:4:1 situation, so let's say it's a powerjam for red. The green blockers are going to move whereever the red jammer is, and so the red jammer can lure them etc. to whereever she wants. Plus, if her blockers don't just line up in a giant line in front of the green blockers, it gives them more room to set up this play:
After the jammer is released, the wall of green blockers will move with her. This is where a quick jammer can act as a lure for the green blockers. So, suppose she goes to the outside, and the blockers follow her:
This then gives her team an opportunity to swoop in on those blockers and pin them against the outside line. If your jammer is fast enough, while the opposing blockers are pinned on the outside, she can sweep behind on the (now open) inside line:
So that's the jammer candy: using your jammer as a lure to get the other blockers to go where you want them to so you can trap them there and make it easier for your jammer to get through the pack. Whee. Of course, when you have two jammers, it's hard (but possible) to get this to work both ways.
(I have to admit that I stole the title of this post from this. But it is totally true.)
Today we did some scenario work in scrimmage, like when you have two blockers and the other team has four, or whatever, and we kept mixing up the numbers. I like these scenarios; it makes it much easier to see when to do what play. I'm still kind of a derby strategy derp though, so having stuff explained helps. And then I write it here so I can remember it and stuff.
This is what I got out of scenarios like 4:3 and 3:2, if you are the team with the more players:
1. If you have control of the pack (i.e. more of your players), there are a bunch of different things you can do to help your jammer. One thing that Smack said was that you should speed up and get in front of the other blockers, such that if your jammer is lead and coming up on the pack, them she can score the points off them first without having to try to get past her teammates.
2. If the other jammer is a while away, you can also force a split pack while the other blockers are holding your jammer. That way they'll have to release her before you need to jump in and stop the opposing blocker. (Of course, if both jammers are really close to each other, there's no point in splitting the pack since you'd have to yield to both jammers, but the above point about being in front of the other blockers still holds.)
3. Another thing you can do is stand on the side of the track (probably the outside) in a line until your jammer passes and then swing back in to form a wall before the opposing jammer comes in. This will prevent your jammer from having to crash into her own teammates, and thereby save a bit more time for her to get around the track.
4. Importantly, because you already make the pack, you don't need a goat to make up the numbers. Obviously. But it might mean that your blockers could get goated, so keep your eye out for that.
5. You also control pack speed, so you can speed off (not too ridiculously though) to make the opposing jammer work harder for her points. But it's tricky to do this and not also tire out your own jammer if the opposing blockers also speed up to try to catch you.
Yay. I'm slowly learning. I'm still a rollerderp but I think I'll get it eventually!
So because of the awesome efforts of the executive and training committee at NRV and VDL, I was cleared for scrimmaging even though I haven't done my WFTDA test yet. Eeeee! Scrimmaging takes place at the end of the training, and I was pumped for it. But because I am awesome I happened to hurt my crotch hip flexor at training doing a hockey stop, so I decided to sit out scrimmaging. Boo. :( But I did learn some things about pack-breaking from Goliath while I was watching.
Basically, the thing to do these days is scrum starts. That is, you've got your jammers on the jammer line, and then your blockers are pretty much lined up on the jammer line as well. And one team will take a knee right on the jammer line to release the jammers right away, since if one team is on their knees you've got no pack.
In this AWESOME diagram, K= knee start:
In this case, Blue is forcing a no pack and the jammers are released immediately.
But then you can also have no pack if the pack is split. So if everyone is at the jammer line in the scrum start and one blocker skates to the pivot line, the pack is split, and the jammers are released. (Of course, then that blocker will need to skate back to reform the pack, but still, a no pack.)
Red blocker has split the pack, so there is no pack, and the jammers are released immediately.
However, if everyone is on the jammer line and a blocker goes to split the pack, and then a second blocker (at the jammer line, on the same team) takes a knee, then the second blocker has broken the pack and gets majored for it.
I couldn't convey "you shouldn't do this" so I wrote "Boo" instead.
Basically it seems that the moral is that either your whole team has to be at the jammer line and on their knee, or someone has to be on the pivot line and everyone is on their feet, but not some weird combination of both.
I'm pretty bad at derby strategy, so even getting my head around this took about 20 minutes. And I'm not sure I got it right. But maybe when I scrim on Tuesday I can actually be part of this and it'll make more sense.
