Fortress Gameplay

One of the many different styles of Armagetron is Fortress.
This differs from the normal style of game play as the main object is not necessarily to go round, kill everyone else and be the last person alive. As you enter a server you will be automatically assigned to a team. Two zones will appear on either side of the arena that look like the win / kill zones on normal servers. Primarily, the main goal is to capture the other teams zone and to protect your own zone from capture.

Fortresss Graphical and Written Tutorial

People in busy fortress servers will expect you to do some certain things:

1 : Grind - this means, when the round starts, you move in towards the center lines, and gain more speed from the start.
2 : Not to Team kill (or TK), which may be caused by breaking too early and killing someone behind you, or not breaking at all and killing people in the centre. Either way, people don't like it and may try to kick you from the game.
3 : When people post messages saying things like "Defence down or needs help" or "Everyone attack", you will be expected to do these.
Defence and attack are explained in more detail below.

Fortress Positions

In the main Fortress game, there are some normal positions which need to be understood in order to be a good player. Firstly, the Defence position - circling around your own zone, to prevent attackers from the other team getting into your zone to win the game:

Secondly, attack - the main object here is to either kill all the other team so members of your team are the last alive, and therefore win, or to break through the opponents defence and capture their zone:

Thirdly, there is a position called Sweeping. This basically means covering the front normally, or a side of your own defence as an extra way of blocking attackers.

Fourth, and the last of the main positions, is Double grinding (or DG), which means when in rank 2 or 3 (not the very center person, but one just either side) you can double back, and go back along the center line to get a much higher speed, which gives a greater chance to kill opponents at the start.

Sumo Fortress

Within the main fortress game there is also a derivative called Sumo, which can be practised in special sumo servers for when these actually take place within a fortress match itself. The main object of sumo is to stay alive and not leave the gradually shrinking circle, before your opponent does (however in normal Fortress the defence zones stay the same size, smaller circles just make better practice).

Popular Fortress servers (where it is not wise to go without any practice) are:
Crazy tronners wild fortress
Bugfarm fortress
Lords of destruction ITW/TWC server

Sumo servers which can be used for practice include:
Bugfarm sumo
1v1 Sumo arena
Crazy tronners sumo battles

New servers are appearing all the time.
There are also fortress competitions, where clans or countries compete against each other in tournament mode.

Game play in fortress is always being improved on and different kinds of fortress gameplay are always being explored

This tutorial has been written exclusively for armagetron.co.uk by Alex of the AST clan, Thankyou Alex :)