Battleground stories

[Gurnsey]

All ten?!?  Oh, my God.  Our team eats up groups that try to do that.  It's my basic contention that the flag rooms are indefensible against anything but a small one or two person attacking party.  The simple way to mess a group like that up is with a series of aoe fears and snares.  The typical thing would be to have a warrior charge into the flag room and intimidating shout.  A mage improved Blizzards and/or Frost Novas to snare more people.  I as the priest fear anyone else who's still active and picks a caster to Silence, while the druid snags the flag and books it out of there with me right on top of him giving him heals, dispelling magic snares, and fearing any enemies who catch up.  Once the druid's out in the open field, it's travel form and cap the flag for the win.  Sure, a team that holes up in the flag room has plenty of firepower to kill an attacking party, but we don't stick around long enough to let them do that.

It is far more important to control the middle of the field and the proper way to defend the flag against an assault is in front of the base.  You can fight them there and kill, slow down, or at least use up their mana there.  Then, if you die, you can rez at your graveyard with full health and mana and go again.  The nearness of the graveyard is the greatest advantage defenders have.  A team that defends the flag in the flag room itself loses this advantage.  Yes, it's occationally helpful to have one or two people go back to the flag room to guard against solo or duo attackers who try to steal the flag, but having more than two people stay in the flag room itself is counterproductive.
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I got into a group that had just finished a match and had immediately gone in again, with many familiar names that worked well together. I have to agree in your analysis of flag defense - we had 2 in the flag room to slow and confuse the attackers, and one on the roof (rogue) to pick off those trying to sneak in up top. We had a 4-man attacking group: me, another shaman, a druid, and a warlock. The other three played 'midfield' and did it well - they picked off as many attackers as they could but let those that made it past go, but tightened into a wall on the rare occaision that our flag made it out into the field. That position also let them help us bring the flag out.

Our attack plan was to Fear one of the priests out (they had 2 priests, a rogue, a hunter, and a paladin IN the flag room), have a Shaman (usually me) on the other priest, and have the druid or the other shaman pick up the flag. Some people seem to forget that you can heal the flag-carrier even in pickup groups :) Our carrier (druid this time) had 4 on him leaving the flag room and hit another rogue and a warrior coming out of the tunnel, yet still survived with his Renew (he'd pop in and out of Bear while inside to Renew) and my and the other Shaman's Lesser Heals. He then survived being rooted by an opposing druid several times, being Concussed by a Hunter, and being chased down near our base by straggling enemy attackers. Druids FTW!

Something else that most people don't realize: Druids in Bear or Cat form (don't know about travel, or Shaman's Travel form) are Beasts - Hunters can scare them, and more importantly, Druids can put them to sleep :) On our last capture, there was a Druid in Cat form (Grrrr, +30% speed outdoors!) ripping our carrier in the back. 2 secs later, Zzzzzzzz sleepy time!