Alright, what's up everyone, it's Dexter, and today we're diving deep into how to absolutely demolish those pesky 95 depth defenses. It's actually pretty easy if you know the right tactics and how to trigger those runs. Let's get into it!
The Two-Wave Run Strategy
The key to breaking down a high defensive line, especially a 95 depth, is mastering the two-wave run strategy. It's all about creating space and exploiting the offside trap. Here's how it works:
- First Wave: The Decoys. We send our first wave of runners forward, but the goal isn't to score immediately. We want them to run into an offside position. This is crucial for triggering the offside trap.
- Second Wave: The Finishers. Once the offside trap is triggered, we unleash our second wave of runners. Because the opponent's AI defenders are now hard-marked, they'll struggle to track these runs, leading to easy scoring opportunities.
It's like a perfectly timed play! You'll see the defense get completely messed up, and you'll be in on goal. Make sure you're using a formation with plenty of midfielders to make this work effectively.
The Perfect Counter: The 4-1-4-1 Formation
Today, we're using the 4-1-4-1 formation. It's the perfect counter for a 95 depth defense. Let's break down the tactics:
- Build Up Play: Balanced.
- Defensive Style: Against a high line, you want to play a high line yourself, or else you could get suffocated under heavy press. An aggressive 95 depth is what I suggest going for, but if you're uncomfortable with that, 70 would be the lowest I would go for in a setup like this.
Player Roles: The Secret Sauce
Now, let's get into the player roles. This is where the magic happens:
- Striker: Advanced Forward and Support. This is a controversial one, but trust me. Having the support focus is important for an offside trap spammer. Straightforward runs are easier to deal with than diagonal runs, so we want as many of those diagonal runs as we can get. With support focus, you're giving that freedom of movement to your striker to shift slightly left or right, which is going to make it harder for the opponent to trap him.
- Central Midfielders: One Playmaker and Attack, and one Box-to-Box player. Since we're running a symmetrical formation, it doesn't really matter on which side you have each of them, but you want one box to box and one playmaker.
- Wingers: Inside Forward and Balanced. Remember what I said about diagonal runs? Having even one of them on winger is going to make them shoot forward in a straight line, and against 95 depth, that's not really what I'm looking for. Since we only have just one striker up top, these two players are going to get lots of involvement in goal-scoring opportunities.
- CDM: Deep-Lying Playmaker and Defend. Stay back and take care of the counterattacks.
- Fullbacks: Fullback and Defend.
- Center Backs: Defender and Defend. This forms a very compact defensive line.
- Goalkeeper: Sweeper Keeper.
Gameplay: Unleashing the Beast
The 4-1-4-1 is a very scary formation. It gives you those 4-3-3 vibes with the wingers starting on a deeper line, giving you more freedom to use them in the buildup phase. Send them on forward runs if you want to, or keep them as a passing option for hold-up play. You have a five-man midfield, so getting through for your opponent is going to be a nightmare. Defending is a bit tricky on this game, so if you had a shot at killing your opponent's chance creation in the middle of the park, that's your best bet, and the 4-1-4-1 is arguably the best formation to do that.
Remember this one thing: you have five midfielders and one attacker. That's it! So, if you don't trigger the runs manually, you might find it hard to score. If you rush your attacks too much, thinking this is a counter-attacking setup, you're going to find it hard to score. But if you play to this strength, use the midfield to control the game and trigger runs and do those one-two passes, you're in for a treat because this formation with those extra runs will destroy defenses for fun.