alright y’all, i’ve seen a ton of people say why you should always force round 2 after a win. but, not everyone always explains why. This post is here to tell you!

First, what is a force? A ‘force’ is spending as many credits as possible in a round in order to try and win despite not having enough to full buy a Vandal/Phantom/Operator, Abilities, and Heavy Shields. On round 2, this is often a Spectre + Heavy Shields + Abilities.

When should you do this? A number of situations. However, in the context of this post, I will only talk about forcing on round 2 after winning the pistol. Forcing in any other situation, (including after losing round 2) is outside the scope of this post.

What should I buy? Depends. However, by winning round 1 you will always have enough to buy a spectre + heavy shields in round 2. Most of the time, you will have extra to buy missing abilities, and you should do so (as even if you don’t use them, they carry over to the third round which is extremely important as I’ll discuss later). As you might have guessed, I highly recommended you at least buy heavy shields on a force, as this will make it extremely difficult for enemies to counter your force (as I’ll also get to later). The guns you should be buying are the Spectre, Marshal, and Ares (occasionally). All three are excellent (Ares especially in lower elo) options for countering your opponents round 2, as your opponents GUARANTEED have a worse buy than you if your team forces. The spectre has an excellent run and gun and is essentially a classic with 3x the fire rate, the marshal is a faster operator if your opponents save and don’t buy shields, and the Ares’ fire rate shreds unarmored opponents as well as enabling wallbangs on opponents that usually can’t wall bang back with their inferior weaponry. However, there is one exception to this, which is if one of your teammates picked up a sheriff in the pistol round. In some cases (like if one player is saving for an Operator), it can be smart to simply use the sheriff + heavy shields instead of buying another weapon. If none of your team is Oping, don’t do this, as it will make your round 3 weaker (in most cases, there are exceptions that don’t matter outside of higher/coordinated tiers of play). It is usually smarter to keep it just in case and buy a spectre/marshal/ares or throw it to a teammate who is marshaling. Additionally, it should be noted that marshal is much harder to utilize efficiently on the attacker side.

Why am I doing this? Forcing on the second round nearly ensures that you will win that round as your weapons are so overwhelmingly strong compared to your enemies. i’ve won nearly 85% percent of the time doing so. Also, there is a strong chance many of your teammates will leave and keep their weapons, to be used in the next round as a ‘bonus’.

What’s a bonus? A bonus is a round where your team won the previous round with a lot of people alive, so only 0-3 people need to buy the next round. However, instead of buying up after that win, you save for next round, with the goal of doing economic damage to your opponents to hurt their subsiding buy round.

Why should I bonus? Because your team is going to have some weapons left over, by forcing guns on round three you are both desynchronizing your team’s economy (very bad, esp in soloq) and allowing enemies who might have forced round 2 to pick up full rifles (which is the opposite of what you want). It is usually smarter to go for economy damage on the enemy team with the guns you bought on round 2 in order to have an extremely advantageous round 4.

How should I play a force? The number 1 mistake i see when people try to force round 2 is allowing opponents to pick up the guns you forced, which is a huge mistake especially when the goal is to keep as many people alive as possible. So when you force round 2, DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN to not give your opponents free guns. the easiest, simplest way of accomplishing this is by playing passive, retake angles that allow you to fall back in case you get overrun (this is obviously not the smartest way of playing in every situation, just an extremely common and easy to explain way). I find this, and people playing too aggressive, is the main reason that they baby rage and scream “WHY DID WE FORCE?!?!?” After throwing a high percentage round.

What if my opponents force? This one is complicated. Most of the same principles apply as facing pistols, HOWEVER the most important thing to note about this is that if your enemies managed to plant the spike in round one, it is more likely they will force (and have better weapons) as planting the spike grants everyone on the team that planted it 300 credits. Remember, if your opponents force, you still have far superior weaponry and your Heavy Shields will make it much harder on their sheriffs/stingers/marshals.

What if my team doesn’t want to force? Get a new team. However, if this is not possible, save with them, as the value of a single player forcing is not worth desynchronizing your team’s economy/tilting them (but maybe link them this post after the game :D)

This concludes my guide to forcing! I’ll try to answer comments with any questions.

-aster