Let's talk about our Red Rush strategy...

How would the game statistics change if the rule prohibiting early rushes in this tournament were in effect?
We are comparing two scenarios – with and without the rule, right? Then, instead of criticizing one of the scenarios, we should compare both.

How am I supposed to know?

The situation here is that these scenarios are inherently unequal. The ban on early rushes creates a number of controversial and inconvenient situations, so it is up to the proponents of the ban to justify why it unbalances the game.

The proponents of allowing early rushes only need to show that it doesn't create a significant imbalance.

For example, Amulets of Fortune decide the outcome of far more games, even though they are not present in every game, unlike the first days of the week. And Amulets are not banned – they are part of the game.

There are quite a few factors in Heroes that have a much greater impact on the game than early rushes. I already wrote about this when we were discussing Mullich and level 4 specialists – you should ban things that decide 1 game out of 30, not things that change the gameplay and on which the game is built from the start or over a long period.

For example, color trading initially appeared not in random maps, but in fixed maps, where knowledge of the map and the opponent's location allowed players to build a game around an early rush on 121 or 131 from the start. That is, in those maps, color was a gameplay-defining factor, so it had to be balanced through trading.

In random maps, it appeared as a trend and also to avoid predictable castle pairings. Initially, only castles were planned to be traded, and color was just an addition. And practice has shown that color trades are quite symbolic; much more is paid for a castle in unequal pairings.