A few weeks ago you read an article on how to effectively use all out attack (AoA or AO) to get good results in hattrick. Despite its various advantages and may be also because of its success, today, we will go over the ways of countering teams using this tactic.

Scottish manager Talkingcat said once about AoA that “if your opponent can’t do anything about it, you should use it“, of course this implied that on the other hand the tactic could be countered effectively.

HT-Tjecken reinforced that in 7831771.37: “the AoA tactic’s “success” is more because a lot of people fail tactically (imho) when facing an all out attack team. (…) The all out attack tactic is an extreme one, but it’s not superior. In fact it’s far from superior. And as long as it’s not superior, why should we limit its existence?”.

This seems to imply that we can expect AoA to be there for a long time, and we’d better learn to counter it effectively.

The main weakness of AoA teams is the defense, which will allow their opponent to score nearly all chances if you have a tad of attack.

To counter effectively AoA, the main principles are:
1 - high midfield level, even if you cant get the possession it will help you to have some chances and reduce your opponent’s chances.
2 - build up good defense ratings on the fronts used by the AoA team to reduce the chance that they score their chances
3 - attack on all fronts without necessarily having very high ratings, so that you have good chances to score your own chances.

Type of player orders that can be useful:
- forwards toward the wing: they will allow you to attack on all sides while you will be able to score a lot of the chances
- defensive forwards: they take advantage of the low attack requirements and boost your midfield level
- good WTM: which will help have both a bit of wing attack and boost your midfield

Some additional tips:
- avoid AIM or AOW team orders as they would reduce your defense levels and are unneeded for your attack to be effective
- have good defenders which will help, not to block the strong attacks, but so that you can use some of the other defensive spots to build up your attack or midfield levels

What about CA then?
If you leave midfield completely to your opponent, there is a strong chance that despite very high defense ratings, your AoA opponent will score some goals, and then despite a possibly high CA level, it is lady luck who will be able to save your game.
CA is not the best option to counter AoA teams, except for very few extreme teams which have optimized their teams for great defense, CA and attack levels.

This article was based on contribution from DurdenTyler, and conference posts in particular from HT-Tjecken and Talkingcat, thanks and credits to them !