The fight starts right at SH GY at the beginning, because horde has a headstart and gets very close to SH GY the same time as alliance reaches it.
If teams are even, then of course eventually horde can be pushed back to a point when reinforcement are at even distances, however some alliance have to stay back at SH, because horde can go around Balinda and attack from the other side.
(Meanwhile horde can easily let IBGY completely abandoned since even if a rogue soft cap it, it doesn’t take any significant effort to take it back.)
The fight usually go back and forth between SH GY and mid field until:
- horde caps SH GY when the alliance team advances too far from SH GY and does not leave enough defenders behind
- or horde summons their boss
Horde summon site is at the other side of the field so alliance should split into 3 groups to prevent the summon: 1 stay at guarding SH GY, 1 fight at mid field to push horde main attack back and 1 try to prevent the summon.
On the other hand alliance summon can be easily interrupted because the summon site is in the way of the horde attack line.
Some advices capping SF GY, but first of all horde reaches that faster at the beginning and alliance need to split up until it is capped, because if horde caps SH GY while alliance waits for the SF GY timer, then everybody will res up behind the IW choke point and the game is over.
So in case of even teams there is simply no working counter strategy against the current horde meta because it is based on the map advantage and that cannot be changed.
On the contrary: if horde meta could be countered then the number of rankers would be more even and queue time would be more even.
Yes I remember that, it was before AB released and solo rankers had no other option than AV. However the win rate was not higher than few % and mostly because of some lucky RND on the team setups, or thanks to Russians who had faster queues and played rush meta at that time.