Hello everyone, New player here. I've been playing through Kaldstrom and have a tactics question, if this is the appropriate place to post such questions? Here's the question: Let me preface that as a new player I'm pretty sure I'm playing the rules correctly, however, I believe I'm naive to how to tactically handle the situation I'm running into. I'm playing the game on my own (thanks Covid >:( ) playing through the Kaldstrom scenerios. Each time I start the game whoever goes first (Pan O or Yu Jing), starting with 7+ activation tokens, they tend to wreak havoc on the opposing team, removing units and activation tokens from that team, so that that they have very limited options for reprisal for the remainder of the game. For example, Yu Jing goes first, runs it's Daofei (Lieutenant) up, out shoots the Pan O ARO response (as expected from a 4 BS spitfire verse 1 shot ARO, especially version the Fusiliers), removing at least 3 units from Pan O. Pan O then attempts to reply, but with only 4 activation tokens, they can maybe remove 2 units. For the rest of the game Pan O is at a disadvantage. I played a 2nd game with Pan O going first. Ran the Knight of Justice up and again removing 3 units from Yu Jing, and same effect; Yu Jing is now at such a disadvantage for the remainder of the game that they lose. So, the question is, how do you mitigate the first player "advantage" I've attempted to make sure any opposing team has as many ARO opportunities as possible, but first activation player seems to have an unfair advantage. As long as they can eliminate as many units in the initial turn, the first player will always have an advantage. I understand that the 2nd player could get a lucky ARO, however, against units such as Daofei (mimetism or Knight of Justice powerful armor), it seems unbalanced. Any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated! Nonetheless, I'm really enjoying the game and look forward playing into the future. Thank you , Jim
Try doing the opposite; don't leave too much out to ARO, make the opposing player waste orders on Move+Move to get close before they can do anything, especially as the PanO side of Kaldstrom. The Hundun and Guilang can be a decent ARO threat because they have to be discovered before they can be attacked, and sometimes the opponent will fail which will essentially close that avenue of attack for them. You'll probably still lose one or two pieces, but the enemy will likely have to overextend their valuable elite units making them vulnerable when the turn changes.
Welcome to the Forums! There are a number of ways. First turn advantage is exacerbated by the small 15 point board in Code One, once you get to 25-30 point board sizes (or 300points in N3/N4) Aggressive pieces have to put more orders into moving. This can also leave them overextended and vulnerable to a counterattack Deployment is one of the most crucial (and hardest) parts of Infinity. Going second means you also get to deploy second, which means you get to hide from their heavy hitters and position your more defensive pieces accordingly. Scenarios that score after the second player's turn or at end of game naturally favour the second player as they get to claim objectives in the last game turn. Most players have the mindset that the reactive turn exists to slow down your opponent, not kill them. Only leave out troops that are cheap (Fusiliers for example) or have reactive advantages (Total Reaction remotes) deployment comes into play here as well, make sure that anything you do leave out to provide AROs (and most likely die) can't be engaged in it's negative rangebands. Camouflage is good for delaying actions, first they have to be discovered, then they've got inherent defense against BS Attacks, and a lot of lighter Camo troopers can also drop Mines for an ARO. Having a hacker out of LoF to drop Spotlight on approaching enemies can also boost the efficacy of your Reactive troopers. The Kaldstrom box is very much a first steps product designed to teach the basics of the rules, even Code One is a simplified version of the game. The Full N3 (and presumably N4) provides a number of additional defensive skills like Hidden Deployment, Minelayer, and cheap disposable Irregular troops, and Fireteams of troopers that can boost reactive firepower.
Thank you for your replies. I'll try hiding the units of the 2nd turn player to soak up the 1st players activations and see how that goes. As colbrook mentioned it will be a little more challenging considering I'm playing on a small map board, but I'll also try to playing on a larger size table top (Intermediate size), although my pts doesn't warrant a larger board. I'll just have to expand my armies by 10 pts ;-). Thanks again.
