Article 6: X-wing basics 3, Coordinating Ships

Clarification:  the term "coordinate" is used several times in this article.  It is not in reference to the Coordinate action available to some ships, it refers to using multiple elements cooperatively.

Introduction

To win a game of X-wing, a player needs to put more effective shots on an opponent’s ships than the player receives from the opponent.  No great insight there.  Article 3 discussed how to look at a ship’s arc in the context of the board state to find the parts of that arc that were more and less effective.  Article 4 discussed how to look at a ship’s dial in the context of the board state to identify places that are easy or more difficult for a ship to bring its arc to bear.  Today I’m going to build on those to look at how to combine the arcs of multiple ships to try and get the most out of their arcs.  It is the goal of this article to outline how to use multiple arcs in support of one another to make their total effect greater than their sum. 

The ability to effectively coordinate arcs is important because it is the principal way that higher ship count lists defeat lower ship count lists, particularly when the lower ship count lists have an Initiative and maneuverability advantage.  How many times have you seen a single highly maneuverable ship on the table against two or three basic ships and thought that the game heavily favored the single ship?  Maneuverability makes it harder to predict the single ship’s position, and it makes it easier to isolate single opposing ships.  As the man said, however, quantity has a quality all its own, and that brings us to today’s article.  The content in this article is pertinent to massed efficiency squads fighting against higher maneuverability squads, but I hope it’s also of use to ace squads fighting when they have lost the Initiative bid and are moving first.  The mindset of the article is more proactive than reactive, but the content is still of use to highly maneuverable squads moving last.  After all, if you don’t have to use your actions for repositioning, you’re usually better off anyway. 

Step 1:  Identify the goal

There’s an idea in the X-wing community that huge maneuverability options available to some ships can make it impossible to predict where that ship will be.  This is true, to an extent, and that kind of maneuverability advantage in a 1 ship vs 1 ship engagement is almost impossible to overcome for the ship moving first.  I expect we’ve all seem the maneuver blossom diagrams describing everywhere a particular ship can be.  The relevant options, however, are more limited.  Positions of other ships on the board, obstacles, and board edges all take big chunks out of those maneuver diagrams.  Even more importantly, knowing what the opposing ship needs to do to allow its squad to win, and how many turns that ship has available to accomplish that goal allows a player to narrow the possible positions to a more manageable number.  Even insanely maneuverable ships like Kylo Ren with Supernatural Reflexes must bow before inconvenient win conditions. 

Figure 1:  Kylo getting ready to do his thing.

Figure 2:  Kylo contemplates the better part of valor.

Figure 3: Just a few of the places Kylo can go, can he find a way?

Clarification:  the Kylo positions in Figure 3 aren't from one move, they're just a selection of moves that end him pointing in the general direction of the ships he needs to eventually destroy to win. If it wasn't obvious, the right move for Kylo is probably a 5-straight.  

These figures illustrate a situation where Kylo probably just runs away and resets for a later turn.  If the X-wings are up in points, however, that can still be a victory for the X-wings.  Even this shot, 3 dice modified by Force vs 2 dice with a Focus, has an expected outcome of 1 damage.  Better than nothing if Kylo lands outside the X-wing arcs, but not exactly melting through those X-wings.  All those options are better than not having them, and do make Kylo tremendously powerful, but they don't allow him to attack at will.  Please forgive me if you think this scenario is irredeemably unlikely, the Kylo vs Jousters will be explored in more detail Soon (tm) in an upcoming article.  

The point of it all is that if you know what a ship has to do to win, you know what you need to do to make that choice a hard one.  

Step 2:  Select a formation that helps you work toward your goal while making the opponent's goal difficult. 

Multiple arcs can be placed in a wide variety of ways, each of which can accomplish something different (this is why determining goals is so important). The overall idea behind any of these formations is the maximize the shot quality in your favor and minimize the shot quality in the opponent’s favor.  You want the opponent to expend actions for defensive modification and defensive repositioning, and not on offensive modifications and offensive repositioning.  Different aspects of a formation should be considered based on the goals of each player, obstacles, board position, damage, and the time left in the game.  Below are a few of the big ones

1.)  Overlap:  This is the area of the board where multiple friendly arcs have regions on the same location.  These overlaps generate “high threat zones” (see Article 3 for more detail) because of how tokens are spent on defense.  Often, getting a second shot on a ship that has already spent its defensive tokens does more than just double the damage of a single arc.  Maximizing overlap maximizes the likelihood that a ship will end in a place where two ships can fire on it.  The downside, of course, is that area of overlap is relatively small for two ships, smaller than a normal arc because 100% overlap of two arcs is impossible (Figure 4).  Consequently, this is the kind of formation you would choose if other factors constricting the position of the target ship such as stress, obstacles, board edges, and/blocking.  Additionally, you may want to maximize overlap if a single shot from one of your ships has a very low likelihood of doing damage at all, such as firing against an AGI 2 or 3 ship with both Focus and Evade tokens.  Because the arc starts small at the ship and expands, maximizing overlap requires two ships to be close to each other, facing roughly the same direction.  This limits the ways ships can move together to try and achieve this geometry.  Useful overlap can be achieved with offset facing as well, but the overlap area will be smaller.  The board situation will determine how much this matters.

Figure 4:  Two ship arcs with high Overlap.  

Maximizing the Overlap can still be very useful against highly maneuverable ships.  Even though the overlap is a relatively small area to avoid, it can be difficult to avoid the combined arcs, which means that a ship is using actions to avoid the double arc ends up in a single arc with no actions for defense.

2.)  Area:  This is the overall continuous board space covered by all the firing arcs of the ships in formation.  Some ships have maneuverability that is far above average.  They have repositioning before and/or after executing maneuvers that means they have a huge number of places they end up.  You might maximize area to try and catch a ship with modest defensive abilities by casting a wide net (Figure 5).  This is an easy type of formation to set up, because ships can be set up at all kinds of angles, and don’t need a tight overlap of firing arcs to be effective.  Against many ships, a single shot won’t be expected to do serious damage, but it can push an opposing ship to use actions for defensive modification.

Figure 5:  Two ship arcs with large Area.  That's a hard arc to dodge.

Other kinds of ships have lower defense and any shot is likely to do damage.  Maximizing area can be powerful against these kinds of ships as well.  I often find I alternate between maximizing area and overlap.  I may initially maximize Overlap to deny a space to an opposing ship, saving my ships some shots against them.  I use this to get Locks on a target ship on turns when they disengage to avoid the Overlap.  With Locks banked from a previous turn, the wide arcs of a formation that maximized Area get much more dangerous.  

3.)  Defense:  Sometimes you need a ship to be in a certain position to block or put an arc on a certain region of the board, but this position is vulnerable to attack from an opposing ship.  In this case, another ship in the formation can cover the first ship.  Most healthy ships can expect to survive 3-dice attacks, so the main thing you need to guard against is the opponent closing to Range 1.  If you put an arc centered on the ship you’re trying to protect, any moves to attack that ship will suffer at least one, possibly two return shots (Figure 6).

Figure 6:  The X-wing in back protects the one in front.

Not only does this make a ship pay for getting a high quality shot, it also usually lowers your incoming damage as actions are often used for defense instead of to bolster the attack against your defending ship.

4.)  Blocking:  Some ships have actions restricted to the normal activation phase.  These ships are very vulnerable to blocking by ships moving before them.  Ships in tight formation are very capable of blocking.  A formation that doesn’t have enough space for an opposing ship to land between its ships will effectively block a whole set of vector options in a general direction, and push the blocked ship back to the front ship, usually leaving it in a vulnerable position.  This kind of blocking is usually obvious, and has the general effect of pushing an opposing ship to select a maneuver away from the blocking formation.  Blocking is amplified when obstacles are nearby, as the number of places a ship can be is narrowed even further, making moves more predictable, and therefore easier to block. 

 

Figure 7:  Stacked formation of jousters pushes incoming ship back to the lead ship.  The lead ship grabbed a Lock on Fenn Rau, knowing that he would not be able to shoot at it this turn.

Blocking is usually most important for denying actions to reduce efficiency in the engagement phase.  Even against ships like Fenn Rau or Boba Fett that have a degree of dice modification in the absence of tokens, blocking serves an important purpose.  Very few ships can reposition after being blocked, which can trap an opposing ship in numerous firing arcs.  Additionally, a blocking ship typically cannot be shot by the blocked ship, so it's an ideal role for a damaged ship to take.  

Step 3:  Repeat

Easier said than done, right?  It's important, however, to identify based on board state which turns require you to maximize different aspects of a formation.  Are you up on points, trying to survive against a maneuverable opponent?  A close formation that denies approach vectors and covers the lead ship(s) with other friendly arcs is likely your go-to formation.  In contrast, as you find yourself behind on points and desperate for damage, maximizing the area of arc coverage may be necessary, as bad shots are better than no shots.  Sometimes the obstacles and positions of ships on the board necessitate one type of formation over another.  Even if you're down in points, you might assume an easily avoided defensive formation to deny an opponent a quality shot from which your squad may not recover, settling for continuing pursuit on subsequent turns.  Selecting maneuvers for future turns is a complicated subject which will be reserved for a later date.  

Conclusion

Almost everything in X-wing boils down to "what needs to happen for a player to win".  Identify the opponent's goals, and understand your own, and you begin to understand what kinds of maneuvers a player needs to select to accomplish that goal.  Once you've done that, even the most unpredictable ships become mortal.  

Please feel free to add any comments, criticisms, or questions in the comments.  

Thanks for reading.