Windmill fights usually go the same every game right? Both teams rush through the FoW, come out their respective slots on either side of the lower Mill, and poking begins until the 4th champ gets there for the party. (Ex.1)

But...why? I had a tactic introduced to me via something a Darius would do every once in a blue moon.

Instead of just rushing straight up to the Windmill's far side you hook a sharp left/right as soon as you exit the FoW, find the nearest enemy blind rushing out of their side, nab him, and start a 3v3 Teamfight without all the pre-poking exchange. (Ex.2)

I've been trying this out on Volibear and Hecarim and personally I think it's a better tactic (for now) than the pure Windmill rush. If you build properly for the initial engagement you can survive and deal a fair amount of damage to the enemy team even if they immediate turn and tri-focus you; which often takes them a moment because a lot of people just aren't expecting an engage in that spot (heck not even many ranged casters try to take the blind shots anymore to clip people coming out of the FoW).

Teams are usually clustered enough in that initial rush that grabbing the squishier/high priority targets is much easier than letting them get set up behind their team up top.

It's not the go-to tactic for every game but I'm wondering why we don't see if far more often. Mid ELO, High ELO, DD,...all will pretty much default to the poke-war, I'd feel safe to say, 80%+ of the time. Where's the downsides to this tactic that keeps it from being more commonly used?

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Because it doesn't work if the enemy team is paying attention. You don't get to nab anyone, you just take a ton of poke while getting nowhere.

If your team knew about it in advance and decided to pick champions based on this tactic then it could work. I speak from low elo so what you say stuff like this occasionally happens. I will say that nothing is more frustrating for a mid than knowing your entire team died before you could even finish capping your point.

Plus, I'm always for new strategies. Although, probably wouldn't work for DD tournament since people would be more alert to this sort of stuff. In a regular game, it does have the element of surprise. We can talk theory all day but we won't know for sure until it's put into practice. The reason being this strategy is about catching your opponents off guard. If you are going against someone who can quickly recover from this sort of thing then the plan falls apart.

Although, if you had someone really fast doing your mid that could temporarily make your little 3v3 into a small 4v3 for a few seconds then that would work too.

What do the high elo players think?

Blitzcrank grab in first fight that lands on squishy = free kills

It's pretty risky. It's pretty likely the person leading the charge will get cc'd into oblivion and immediately die, pretty much auto-losing the fight for their team. You also can't really effectively cut them off unless you have a move speed increase, which means that your whole team can't be there to back you up. Unless your team has no poke, you're probably better off just doing the standard poke war. That being said, it can work if the enemy team handles it poorly, it's just not very safe.

These are great strategy

But like every great strategy, you require great teamwork, and great teamwork with 4 people you never met can be very risky (especially if your elo is not that high)

It's the best thing to do if they have a poke heavy team and you don't. For example let's say they have Nidalee, Ezreal, Lux and Amumu capping mid and you have say Darius, Xin Zhao, Vayne and an Eve capping mid, you are much better off initiating straight away otherwise you'll just get poked/kited to death before your team can set up and your Vayne will be left 4v1.

Just look at the teams and analyse the best course of action, the Darius you see doing that a lot is smart, he probably thinks it's more beneficial for him to just initiate and hope to blow up someone or a couple of people rather than risk getting kited to death because he knows in melee range he's basically the King.

The better thing to do is head to the middle (assuming you're not a slow fatty) and grab the 2nd-3rd person (always let that first one by to give you a little edge). So now you have a 3v2 fight. You don't even need a "grab" tactic here. Any type of snare/stun will work. Just pounce on them out of the bush and go SURPRISE *(^&#$% %&$*#$$@