Site Wide Grifball Tournament

This is for players new to Grifball.  For the tournament, I would leave out everything about spawn camping, as this is a friendly tournament.  

Typically, you need to swing the hammer a fraction of a second sooner than you'd normally expect; swing just before you think your opponent has entered your kill area and you'll likely have them walk into it, as the hammer takes a second to complete its attack.  The sword is preferred for only killing the ball carrier, but the sword has a delay that often loses against a well timed ball swing.  The ball carrier (called Grif) can be killed with a direct hammer swing.

When in doubt, PASS THE BALL.  Everyone sees where Grif is on the map, and you can use that as a diversion for your team.  Try to have blockers in from of Grif, and if possible, sneak a teammate up to scoring position and pass it up.  Lofting the ball high when passing is better than rolling it along the ground, as the ball loses momentum quickly.

Teamkilling WILL be rampant in Grifball.  Try not to get angry at teammates when it happens, but teams can reduce their friendly fire; if you see a big group of both teammates and enemies, sometimes its better to kill with a simple melee attack; it'll focus on one enemy and there won't be a massive hammer blast.  At the start of each game, there is usually a big push for the ball, often involving team kills.  This can be remedied by instead of rushing in a big clump to the ball, use a bit of a Flying V formation, when the leader attacks and others are there as backup.  Its far better to have one teammate die than having your team wipe and having the enemy team get a quick Score.

Communication is absolutely vital.  You wouldn't expect there to be callouts in a square Grifball court, but there are and they are simple to remember.  There's just Left, Middle, and Right, and Our Spawn and Their Spawn.  I standardized this for my teams by using Ender's Game, where the battles occured in a big 3D room, and Ender always oriented his team by calling out before the start "The enemy's gate is down."  Always call out "Ball is their left, swinging middle, now right, moving to our right..." etc.  Make sure you help your team by communicating, too.  If you're Grif, call out your intentions "I have the ball in our right, moving up to middle, going to swing left, no they're on me, swinging right, (Name) I'm surrounded going to pass to you."  When Grif is alone, they might not always see on their radar, so let them know; "Grif you're alone, slow down and let me in front of you" or "They're all over you, dump it back."

Spawn camping is a part of Grifball.  If you can dominate an enemy team with a spawn camp, there's no reason not to in my opinion.  The only exception would be if you're playing with friends and you don't want to piss them off.  There are only four spawn points in Grifball, two to the left of each capture point and two to the right.  It is very, very easy to dominate these by timing your hammer swings with their expected respawns (3 seconds from death.)  Spawn camps can be broken by usually swinging your hammer as soon as you spawn and turing slightly; players camping will usually hide just behind your spawn to the opposite angle of the capture point.  That means if you happen to spawn left of your capture, they'll typically be anywhere between 6:00 and 9:00 of you, more likely around 7-8:00.  If you spawn right of the capture, they camper will probably be 3-6:00 and closer to 4-5:00.  A third camper can easily set up on the capture point and rotate left and right.  When your team is spawn camping, I usually don't set it up until my team has scored 4 times, and the ball carrier will be sitting back relaxing at my spawn.  This ensures that, worst case scenario, if the enemy team happens to break the spawn camp, kill the carrier, and score, they will still be in a score deficit.  I usually call off the spawn camp around the one minute remaining mark and end the enemy's suffering.

There are two Grifball gametypes in Halo 4, standard Grifball and Grifball Pro.  In standard Grifball, the first team to score 5 times wins, the ball respawns 10 seconds after each capture, and the ball is instantly picked up on contact.  In Pro, there are 5 rounds that end as soon as a team scores, and you need to push the activation button to pick up the ball.  In standard Grifball, you can catch opponents off guard by passing them the ball so they can't kill you with a hammer or sword swing, but you run the risk of the enemy expecting your pass and using it against you.  This strategy will not work in Pro.

In Reach, you used to be able to hammer jump, but this does not work in Halo 4 unfortunately.  In Halo 4, you can (very carefully) propel teammates using a hammer swing.  This helps for sending Grif behind enemy lines and getting a score.  To pull this off, have Grif stand 8 feet or so in front of you, and get ready to swing the hammer at the ground.  Tell Grif to jump, and when their feet are about two feet off the ground, the blast should send them flying high and forward with minimal shield damage.  This move takes practice.

Finally, Grifball in Halo 4 runs into issues because of Sprint.  Grif is not able to Sprint, but has a slightly increased movement speed.  In Reach there was no Sprint and Grif was twice as fast as other players.  Bear in mind that Grif is not able to Sprint, and he can easily be caught by a sprinting sword carrier.  This makes it vital to have blockers in from of your bomb carrier.

If I think of any more tips, I'll be sure to post them here.

I updated the rules post to include Termitarium.