Looking for a beginner guide to communication? Check out Communication Basics.
Comms 101
One of the most overlooked skills for individuals and teams in laser tag is communication in the maze (hereafter referred to as “comms”). Comms are a vital component in scoring points, base defence, base attack and overall strategy. The biggest difference by far between lower ranking teams and mid ranking teams is their communication – not their packs skills. Training comms as a team is as important as training any other skill.
So, what are the components of strong comms? Any call you give to a teammate (or opponent), should be as brief as possible, while getting across the required information. It should be given early enough to give time to react. Calls should be frequent enough to make your team aware of the situation, without giving too much redundant information and causing confusion. Calls should be prioritised by their urgency.
Communication as Conversation
A good technique to develop these components, which is rare among teams, is to treat comms like a constant conversation. If all team members are always talking to each other, everyone on that team has a clear mental picture of the local situation. Further to that, all important information regarding base counts and game strategy are propagated throughout the team. What you see often, and particularly at the lower end of the competition is not teammates talking to each other, but rather, yelling at each other. When a team is communicating calmly, you can use tone and volume as a tool to convey more information than words alone. When every call is at maximum volume and intensity, it is near impossible to filter that information into what should be responded to and what can be ignored for the time being.
A classic example of this mistake is the calls players make to their player(s) defending under a base. Players under a base are often blind to what’s going on near the doors. Bad communicators will call loudly and urgently about players who are too far away or deactivated to be a threat, drawing the under defender’s attention away. Countless bases are lost this way, as opponents can easily take advantage of this to break the other door.
Universal Comms
Regardless of your current situation (attacking, defending, farming, etc…), there are some fundamentals you should always be applying. Before getting into these, I’ll briefly diverge into an absolutely key skill which could have its own article – the mental map.
Everyone to some degree uses this skill. Specifically, the ability to keep in your mind the following:
- Where every player is, and what team they’re on.
- Timing of deactivations of any nearby players.
- Doubled players.
- Where any out of sight players were heading, and where they might go.
- What any opponents are likely to do on reactivation.
- Etc.
This skill ties in very closely to your ability to communicate well, as this is all information that should be spread throughout your team, especially to any players who cannot see what you can, as it builds up their mental map.
So, let’s assume you’ve got a good mental map built up. How do you use it? At a basic level you should call where your opponents are, and whether they are up or down. It helps if your team has detailed names for positions in the maze. The more closely a call can locate a player, the better. If you must, use relative positions (i.e. behind the wall, left, right, etc.). Generally though, a precise location is better. The major exception to this is if time is short and you need a teammate to quickly reverse their direction and fire. A short, recognizable call is very useful in this case. I like “spin”.
Building on position, you should communicate information about spawns. Who has doubled, and when is each player spawning? If any teammate arrives at your location and there are multiple deactivated players, you should immediately tell them the spawn order and approximate timings. Develop this as a reflex; it should be natural and require no prompting from your teammate.
After this, if you have the time, help your teammates build on knowledge of the base situation and game situation. We’ll go further into this below, but generally, prioritising players as targets based on the situation and passing this information along is critical.
Defensive Comms
All comms are important, but probably none more so than when defending a base. A strong defence allows your team to be flexible and control the pace of the game. The major goal on defence is of course to prevent your base going down. Situationally, it may be to prevent a specific player or team from taking the base, even at the cost of losing a base to the other team.
The key to defensive comms is to ensure any “blind” players on your team (i.e. defenders within a base) know exactly what is going on despite not being able to see. You’re not telling them exactly which side to hold or where to look; you’re providing them with your mental maps and allowing them to direct themselves.
Assuming your fundamentals are correct, the under player should know in a general sense what is going on. How do we build on this to create a strong defence? Under players need to know how to prioritise doors. So, calls should prioritise players likely to break the base. The more information the better here. “One front” is not a good call. “One waiting front, 3 seconds” is an improvement; we know a player will spawn and break our front door in 3 seconds. Under players also need to know when outside players are pinning various positions in the base. Again “One front” as a call tells us next to nothing. “One pinning front from X, don’t expose” lets us know exactly where we cannot move.
If you are the player playing under the base, you will mostly be silent as your focus is responding to calls. However, it can be useful for teammates to know which direction you’re currently watching as it may allow them to range further from their door or aid a teammate at another door. Be aware if you call this out your opponents can take advantage of it.
When defending, there is one call which trumps all others, which I call the “Now” call. This is the call for an opponent crossing your base line and attempting a break. Up to this point, all your earlier calls should have given the under player enough context to know which door will break next. The “Now” call, is a loud, clear cue for the under player to fire. In many situations the under player won’t need to expose or even look to make this shot. Well timed calls on base breakers can be formidable – just look at Wolfpack when Wax or Husky are defending within a base. Keep in mind, that mistimed “Now” calls can be devastating. A late call is obviously likely to cause a base to go down. An early call can lead to your defender exposing a sensor at the wrong time or firing early. If the defender fires early it gives the opponent a full 0.5s to make a shot and take out the defender. This is even more costly on 1sps formats. Even with correct “Now” calls, sometimes the best you can ask for is a double. Any mistake on this call will cost you even that. Be aware that your opponent may well be aware of this and try to bait a “Now” call out of the outside defenders.
While all of the above is important, calls between outside defenders can’t be neglected. Picking your targets while defending outside the base is crucial. The biggest one to keep in mind is identifying who has taken your base, and who still needs to take it. Constantly pass this information around. Much like spawn order calls, as soon as a player on your team swaps back to defence, they should be told without prompting who needs and who has. If someone who has your base gets inside it and just sits there, leave them and call your outside defence to stop breaking and focus on someone who needs. For occasions when there are two teams at your base, this information can direct your opponents against each other in a way favourable to yourself.
If you find one team is essentially defending a door for you from a distant position, pass this information to your team to leave them and focus on the other door of the base. Playing teams off each other using comms can be difficult but it’s definitely worthwhile.
“All comms are important, but probably none more so than when defending a base. A strong defence allows your team to be flexible and control the pace of the game”
Attacking Comms
We’ve all seen someone pulling off a ridiculous solo base-take against overwhelming numbers. While these base-takes are awesome, they’re not reliable or consistent. Effective base-taking comes from coordination and communication.
For any base you attack, you need to know how the defence is likely to set up. You should be continuing with all your fundamental calls so all players on attack know what is going on, and where. Listen carefully and be aware of the timing of any deactivations you can’t see. If you successfully break a base door, you need to know who can come in and from which door to deny you.
The most common situation in laser tag is three defenders and two attackers. The three defenders have one defender under, and two outside, often starting with one outside each side of the base. The attack’s best chance here is to win the outside and break both doors at the same time, with the under player unable to respond to two simultaneous “Now” calls. In reality, what happens is the two attackers fail to coordinate and come in at different times, with the under player able to keep both sides out. Your attack needs to be able to communicate this situation. From your mental map you should both be able to establish that you have a chance at such a break. (i.e. you’ve both won a spawn). Have a call for when you’re ready to break and when to go in. If you are properly coordinated it doesn’t matter that the defender under the base can hear you setting up, because there’s nothing they can do about it.
Whether you’re cracking one door or two with a teammate, always be aware of spawn timings. If you deactivate a defender and don’t hear the other one go down until 6 seconds later, while you could technically coordinate a break, it’s likely to fail or result in a denial. Of course the details of this depend heavily on the layout of the base.
Once your co-attacker is in the base, your calls are all about their ability to take the base. If they’re waiting for a call to take, there are a few different calls you can make about the viability of the base. If you can guarantee a side is clear, “Take and watch front/back/whatever” lets your teammate know how they can safely take a base. If your side is not clear, communicate that often. In some situations you may be able to analyse that if a teammate were to start taking without interruption they would get the base regardless of any outside opponents spawning; you could give a call for that.
Once an attacker begins taking the base, continue to update the situation. It may well be that your side suddenly becomes more dangerous. However, you must develop the judgement for when to give a call. If your teammate can finish before a break occurs, tell them to “Finish” or something equivalent. Even a call like “Red front” or the like can distract the player taking the base and cause them to be denied, where without a call they would have finished taking successfully. At this point the only calls you make should be relevant to getting that base successfully.
Strategic Comms
You hear from a surprising number of players, “I don’t know what’s going on; I just go where they tell me”. This is not a common trait among the best teams in the game. Every player on the team should have a good idea of what the flow of the game is – not because everyone will have amazing game sense, but because simple information should be consistently passed between teammates.
Any time you arrive at a base, you should be passing any information you’ve learned. And likewise, your team should tell you exactly what’s happened at that base. This is true whether you’re arriving at a base to attack, or arriving back home to join the defence.
Keep in mind you don’t have to yell this or let your opponents hear it – just maintain that constant conversation. The kinds of information you should be passing along are:
- Who has your base? Who needs?
- Which bases has your team taken? How many bases have your opponents taken off each other?
- Who has a lot of farm points? Who is getting starved?
- Who has dumped, and to where?
- Who is winning?
Passing all this along gives everyone what they need to make decisions about the game. And more importantly, it stops people making stupid decisions. So many games have been thrown away by people making decisions to dump, leave a base, not take an empty base (the “Lakeo”), etc. by people who did not have the full picture of what was going on in the game.
Psychological Warfare
So far we’ve talked about communicating the state of the game to your teammates. You’ve got to keep in mind that your opponents can hear what you say. In cases where you’re sharing important information about your own team, try not to broadcast it. If it suits your team, come up with a code to pass this along. Keep in mind these codes all generally get broken and can cause confusion amongst yourselves.
Accurate calling can aid your opponents in shooting the third team, which is (situationally) good for you. Try to make sure when you’re doing this that you’re not helping a team get a base if that wouldn’t be tactically suitable for you.
In addition to accurate calling, there’s no rule about lying to your opponents. Lie about who needs the base. Lie about which team is winning. Lie about when you’re spawning. Call “double” when you’ve actually won the spawn, then run in the door. Lie however it suits you, just as long as you confuse your opponents and not your teammates. Most people I’ve seen do this are terrible liars, and it doesn’t work. When it does however, it can be game changing.
Summary
A lot of this stuff may seem a bit obvious, particularly to more advanced teams. Hopefully you can get something out of it. For teams who struggle to improve or get themselves up the ladder, bringing all of this together, every game, will help enormously. It’s a lot to take in, so here are the golden rules:
Get the “Now” call right.
Use tone and volume to give information; don’t scream everything.
Pass game information to teammates wherever you can.
Help your teammates build their mental maps.
If you haven’t made a call in 8 seconds, you’re not calling enough!
Jono "Mouldy" Scott
Mouldy has played for the NZ Cobras since 2014. He has been on the LSNZ committee since 2018, and is currently serving as President.