I don't like it because I have developed a strategy and lists for it, and I don't like the non-interaction part of keeping my stamina up.
Sometimes in 5 battle tournament you can't make 2 lists that are designed perfectly for all missions. Where is the non-interaction part?
I can't agree with you here. I would say most missions favor going second. Most area control missions like Quadrant Control, Acquisition, etc favor going second because if you get to turn 3 you pretty much have the game won unless your opponent trounced you so hard they deserve the win anyways. Objective heavy missions like Countermeasures or Unmasking also favor going second because you get to counterplay your opponent based on what they put down on the table or how they are currently positioned. Of course, any player worth their salt knows that when you want to go second what you do is pick deployment so your opponent is forced to pick going first. I've lost count of how many times I was sweating because I lost the first turn roll and I was afraid I would have to go first in a mission that favours heavily going second. That being said, recently I was talking to this totally knew player who related to me how they watched a cutter completely blow through their army and how unfun that was. Said person was turned off the game by this and I was (hopefully sucessfully), trying to convince them to come back to the game with N4. So I would say the fear of going second is directly tied to player skill. Most newcomers will dread going second, but most veterans I know are comfortable and in some cases (myself included) will prefer to go second depending on the mission. By all this I mean the game does not in fact favor going first. It only might feel that way because lopsided player skill levels will lead to obvious mistakes being capitalised on and punished more harshly. Oh, and deployment. I've lost and won games right after deployment. Sometimes a single piece that's not positioned properly on either side can spell disaster.
In ITS tournaments over the last five years, I've quite frequently been taking 2nd turn directly, either by winning the LT roll and choosing 2nd turn, or taking 2nd turn after the opponent wins the roll and chooses deployment. I do get a few surprised comments from opponents when this happens, but it makes for an enlightening conversation a couple of hours later after I've defeated them. You can and should do it sometimes. It's a matter of your confidence in defence and how well you know their capabilities. I don't, however, take 2nd turn when I am up against vanilla haqq because of the daylami and impersonator spam, nor do I take 2nd if I suspect my opponent is running an avatar/speculo combination, which can also be oppressive to defend against.
General consensus from my local community is that there are few genuinely 'wrong' options but choosing to go second against an opponent who's deploying second is the riskiest option. I can think of a fairly long list of players that I wouldn't be game to do it against personally, but I respect the cajones it takes. So far I think I've seen it work out a couple times (in Vaul's battle reports) but have also seen the risk materialise and the game basically end off the back of an alpha strike launched from a position of deployment advantage. Like anything, I expect it becomes a more valid option the more you practice it.
I've chosen 2nd turn directly a few times and come out ok. It really comes down to how confident you are in your defence. That's faction dependent too. Some factions that can be manipulated into not giving too much away, or are reactively dangerous in hard to completely predict ways (e.g. Shas, TAK) it can be quite fun with. Kinda think this is brilliant, and elegant and counteractive of the tendency towards order spam, while introducing another interesting choice in list design. Nice one.
In the actual gameplay. My first priority is keeping my models from fighting at all without overwhelming odds in my favor until the last turn. I want to kill enemies but only to give me an advantage on the last turn, so taking any risks isn't helpful. My main faction doesn't have a mechanical problem with having lists good for it. I'm not sure if any faction is as good as corregidor in that way. I just don't think it's as fun
I'm sorry but I don't get this part. If I decide to pick deployment, why wouldn't my opponent make me play first and turtle as much as he could to mitigate ?
@DaRedOne seems to give his opponent a choice between 2 bad options to his opponent : - choose to go first and let @DaRedOne play second and deploy first => good tactical adavantage and mission advantage (in many mission) - choose to go second to take the mission advantage but let @DaRedOne in a perfect position for an Alpha strike as he will play first, deploy second and choose the less defensible side for his opponent (being able to place his active piece in a perfect place to counter any defense)
Deployment is usually a binary choice with three options and four permutations. Typically the player winning the roll will choose between: Going first, deploying first, letting opponent pick side. Going second, deploying first, letting opponent pick side, and thus getting a disadvantaged first turn Deploying second and picking side where opponent gets to choose whether they Go first, which is by far the more common option, or Go second, and getting a disadvantaged first turn The last permutation, where the winning LT chooses to go first and gets to deploy second should never happen outside of introduction games as there is no advantage to this at all, it's a literal handicap. Sometimes missions, factions, and terrain coincide such that going second and deploying first is acceptable for the loser of the FTF roll. Sometimes terrain in one DZ is so difficult to get defensive ground in that choosing disadvantaged first turn is equal to losing for the second LT regardless of factions and mission. 1 and 3.1 are the two most common choices that the winning LT typically expects to make.
When you pick deployment, your opponent deploys first after you choose which side of the table you want to deploy in. Even if they do turtle a lot and have amazing defenses, the fact you will be able to see where said defenses are even before you put your first model in the table usually means you will be able to counter-position and get such a good initial offense that even if the mission favors going second you can come on top.
Around here, selecting to go second when forced to deploy first is a tactic most often used by our newest players - and the very best of our players. I'm not one of then, but I have lost games to our best players because they considered that mission was too favourrd for the second player. The reactive player isn't blind. You can predict roughly what, or at least where, units will deploy and defend accordingly. Universal delaying troops such as Muttas, Libertos and Taigha will make sure that no one group of unit can push all the way to the important soldiers. Meanwhile TO camo or an abundance of Ambush/Mine camo will also by necessity slow opponents down by threatening AROs.
Okay so, unless your deployement is really skewed in your favor, either thanks to the map (which would mean both DZ are litteraly Hornburg) and/or your list, and/or you being a very insighted player, deploy first play second is this too much of a disavantage for the benefits the scenario offers to go second.
While most veterans will usually know how to make a list and deploy it in a way to not get obliterated if they don't have first turn, I think this days it can vary a lot depending of the match-up. Some factions are just poorly equipped to deal with dedicated alpha strike by stuff like a sheskin core or the classic dashat list with 20 orders for Mcmurrough and a rui-shi+zuyongs pain train, and will rightfully dread playing second against those. I really feel like most of the "recent" game design choices have greatly enhanced dedicated all-in and rambo tactics (varuna being the exception), which obviously favor the active turn, and I don't think it's a good thing for the game...
To follow up on my previous post, 1. It could be the case that all of my opponents are much weaker players and don't know how to play aggressively and punish my initiative strategy 2. I find that a person's view on this issue is very much shaped (more shaped than usual compared to other issues) by their run of experience with how the initiative has affected their games. People who have lost a lot against alpha strikes, because they regularly play against strong alpha striking players are going to feel that this is a more general truth than it is. Likewise, people who don't realize how bad they have it until that final game round dawns and they have no hope of victory because their opponent will act last, start to perceive 2nd turn as much stronger than the aforementioned crowd does. This thread has given me some good ideas for YT content though. Thanks friends
This might need a thread of its own, but it’s related Alpha Strike and attrition so... Does anyone else count the average cost of an order and work a meaningful strategy from there? For example, if Tactical window is used in a 300p game, the average cost of an order is 20pts for a game (200/15=20) or about 7pts (300/15/3 = 6,666) for a turn. I’m not counting LT or impetuous orders here because their usage is more limited. From a purely attrition point of view, it doesn’t matter if a trooper generates an order or forces an opponent to spend one. What I mean by this is that if a 19pt (below average) trooper generates a single order during your turn and enemy uses two orders to kill it during his turn, the trooper has performed above average (19<3x6,66). If enemy managed to kill it with a single order, it would have performed below average (19>2x6,66). Ideally, you should always try get at three orders from your low quality (pts<20) troopers. For a high quality (pts>20) troopers it gets more complicated. They probably need to kill enemy models and get more than three orders. This also means: - By spending an order, you are effectively suffering 7pts of attrition. - If you are going 2nd, by spending a cmd-token you can cause 13pts of attrition damage to your opponent. - While high cost enemy troopers should be destroyed when given the opportunity to degrade enemy order quality, the real target is the enemy order quantity. Kill them early or don’t kill them at all. - AD and TO cause 7pts of attrition damage each turn that they aren’t deployed. AD deployment also causes 7pts of attrition damage when it’s deployed. AD and TO units need to kill a lot enemy troopers to perform above average. - All ”multiple models in a single slot” troopers are very good at attrition due to the fact that enemy is often forced to spend multiple orders to remove their order from the pool.
