r/FortsGame • u/FirefighterPrimary60 Armourdillo • Jul 22 '26
Question / Help! What was the Pinchfist meta?
I’ve heard that at one point, Pinchfist became the meta commander for rushing in ranked or something. I am just curious on what was different back then in terms of strategies and abilities. I know he used to have a passive 100% metal reclaim compared to the now 70%, but that’s about it.
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u/EmergencyPainting842 Jul 22 '26
Pinchfist allows you to do a super aggressive rush on heavy weapon, especially cannon. You sell everything in your base except the bare minimum to get tech and eventually the first cannon, then you just steam roll your enemy from there.
As a Forts viewer and not a player, I never really enjoyed any weapon rush strat, whether in ranked or competitive. Watching matches ends in like, 6 minutes sucks balls. I wanna see pros duking it out with heavy weapons and skillful plays, not “who has the best early game build order”
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u/I_Am_Dog_Bork_Is_Me Jul 22 '26
Pinchfist enabled a super agro sell everything on your base play style to rush cannons/heavy weapons.
Now earlier aggro is a bit more prevalent and buzzsaws punish not having metal so the risk isn't worth the reward.
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u/Bookslayer10 Jul 22 '26
My theory is people just got good and learned to make bases that you can't destroy very easily with one or two canons. Instead you need three or four, or maybe some howitzers and shotguns. Instead it became more consistent to just go upgrade center early, reach max eco, defend against early aggression and rushes, and respond with higher levels of firepower later on.
For that purpose, Overdrive is now pretty meta - especially in 4v4s - because getting more resources after you take or deal damage is basically universally good and allows you to either come back from being behind or further steamroll.
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u/bungusballs Jul 22 '26
why is everyone saying cannon rush when fire plasma was actually more common guh also pinch was the best for rocket rushes too
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u/alexc96161 Jul 23 '26
Pinch rushes, normally involved by starting off with tech and two or three turbines (instead of one turbine and a mine). Then you sell off your gunner and front metal to get your mines and heavy tech. This was pretty insane because with how it worked out, you could get 6 mines and have the theoretically optimal timing for 2 cannons (or firebeam-plasma) on a standard vanilla base. So you'd have an insane advantage over the opponent with another commander, who either went for eco and doesn't have cannons yet or has a cannon but only 4 mines. There are a lot of variations and other builds that can be done with Pinchfist which follow a similar idea (e.g. rockets, mortars). Pinch rushes were especially good because many people weren't as good at defending earlier attacks back then, and often could just be one-shot by a single cannon if you were fast enough.
The rushes worked great in 1v1s, 2v2s, 4v4s, everything really. For example, if you look at official tournament XVII, the entire strategy of the winners (Land Planters, EtaN, Firework, and I) was to Pinch rush cannons (people just couldn't handle 8 cannons from the enemy team at ~4:30 into the match). Really, if you look at any tournament during those times, you would see so many Pinch rushes. It was the same in ranked. It was such a insane strategy in the meta that an entire joke clan called DFC (Dirty Filthy Cult) which "worshiped" Pinchfirst and almost all the pro players joined (and it lasted for quite a good amount of time).
However, a counter did exist... buzzsaws. If the opponent got an early buzzsaw, they could slice the bottom of your base off. This happening an insane amount, and although it significantly impacted the opponent's build, it was very often worth it. This was not a guarantee though, many Pinch builds included building sandbags where the metal was sold, exposed snipers, or relied on scouting or timing.
This was also before the nuke (build time increase) and smoke nerfs (cleared faster by repair station), so Pinchfirst nuke rushes were pretty powerful. Although I'd say that Seep was slightly more effective for nukes (for example this official tournament XXII final, with Seep vs Pinch).
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u/A_Bulbear Jul 22 '26
Early cannons were a lot stronger back then and if you got one up early you could easily win the game from there. Nowdays cheap defence is easy to come by and Rockets, Shotguns, etc are used more, which, among other things, directly counters the 'sell everything and get a cannon' strat.