I have heard and seen the term "turtle", "turtling", and "turtling up" at casual games, tournaments, and in the threads on this forum.

I have my own thoughts as to what this means to the average person. Interestingly, I have heard many definitions from others.

So, I want to ask all of you out there ... when you use the term "turtle/turtling/turtling up", what exactly do you mean?

If you need to, provide examples with specific ships to get your point across. So as not to dirty the waters, I will share my thoughts later.

Thanks in advance for your input.

I've always understood it as being Focus and Evade at the same time. Mostly seen on Tie Interceptors and A-wings with Push the Limit.

It's a fairly generic term. It just means to preform actions use formations, movements, ect... that will add in defense, to keep your troops/ships/whatever alive longer.

The idea comes from a turtle pulling into it's shell to protect itself.

Turtling up or similar phrases, basically means to maximize defense/defensive capabilities. I first encountered the term in fighting games, like Street Fighter, where it means sitting in a corner and pressing down and back, just waiting for the opponent to come to you.

I used to hear the term in MMOs that basically referred to blowing all of your defensive buffs to stay alive as long as possible, and playing the attrition game - living longer than your enemy can. This was typically either done because you know reinforcements are on their way, or your intentionally being a distraction. It's more common in PVP than PVE.

So, the same concept can apply to X wing. It describes a play style where someone is being ultra conservative, possibly because he has a 1 hull fel against your two Z95s, and can win on points if he just lasts 10min longer, so he sets up the R3 behind a rock with F F E for defense... And chooses to not be aggressive (closing to R1 for the big hit and try to take out a Z95) with his actions and maneuvers.

yup, it means maximizing Defense or stacking Defensive Tokens. For instance, Soontir can Focus, Push to Evade, and get another Focus from the stress. Makes him relatively resilient to attacks, at least compared to other 3 hull ships.

In X-Wing, I've mostly heard it refer to the PtL Focus+Evade combo, as WargameHub says.

In Risk, it usually means staying in one place (generally Australia or South America), and simply staying put (or at most capturing one country per turn for a card) until you can have a big enough army to smash out.

Picture a turtle pulling back inside its shell. A shell made of X-wing tokens.

It's just maximizing your chances of survival, stacking up focus and evade tokens or in the case of the falcon taking chewie with the title and 3PO.

Focus + Evade.

Tarn + R7, Focus + TL

Epic ships have that Bolster ability I can't remember the name of.

Turtle up means making decisions that would best mitigate an inevitable attack. Very specific phrasing so it's not confused with arc dodging.

jumping into ice cold water......right?

What the others are saying: Stacking as many defensive bonus as you can so you can take a beating.

Prime exemple is an Interceptor taking a focus and evade action with PtL when he can't escape line of sight and keeping the tokens for defense so he can maximize his defensive possibility with 3 dice+F+E against that pesky turret.

jumping into ice cold water......right?

What, were you there this morning? Was at the Urologist, and for reasons I care not to discuss, I had to soak in an ice bath before the procedure.

Never had to do this. You would not believe how hard it was to sit in a bath of ice for 15 minutes.

And yes, it made me defensive as hell.

I've always understood it as being Focus and Evade at the same time. Mostly seen on Tie Interceptors and A-wings with Push the Limit.

Yup, this is it.

I appreciate everyone's feedback. I pretty much concur Focus+Evade.

I have some friends, and I met some people at a Tournament, and they all referred to Turtling as going really slow with blockers. Never heard it referred to as that before, so I thought perhaps I was wrong (happens far too often), and thought I would ask all of you.

I appreciate the feedback.

I use Turtling when flying PTL Ints and Awings. Super turtle with some named pilots that allow another token to be given.