You are in a joust with an opposing swarm. You K-turned your fleet and are now as shown.

You are facing:

Howlrunner (with a blinded pilot and damaged cockpit)

BSP with squad leader

A.P's x3

Sigma with ACD

Your squad is split with 3 facing up table and 4 facing down table. Your opponent is concentrated uptable and has a sigma for flanking your ships.

I would guess that my opponent would 2 green straight his square block (to clear the stress) and block me when my PS 2's activated.

His lone AP that is blocking my square of Z's (breaking them up) will do a 3 or 4 K-turn to get arc.

The sigma will either do a straight or a left BR on delcoak. Going with right BR on decloak will put it close to the table edge but could be done.

As the Z swarm player what do you dial in for your maneuvers?

(you don't have any upgrades to worry about in this scenario and all of your ships are stressed)

Results of the next rounds moves as the players did them

pic2283637_md.png

How did you compare?

Wow, not good for the Z player. The only good thing is Howl has to move first, so I could hope for her and the AP's to do a 2 right bank or 2 straight, which might block the Sigma's forward decloak area.

Home 1 and Home 2 go 1 straight to destress and block the right decloak area.

Delta 1 goes 2 straight to block the left decloak area, so this should stop the sigma from decloaking, if the TIEs don't barrel roll out f the way.

Delta 2 goes 1 straight.

Delta 4 could 3 right turn, keeping stress but getting a shot, hopefully.

Delta 3 goes 2 right bank to destress.

Squad leader should do a 2 right bank to get a shot on AP3.

wow, not good. And situations like this tend to get more dicey than not, so not much point doing too much overly ambitious stuff since you honestly cannot read even into the next turn, nevermind the turns beyond.

Let's look at the situation first before we decide what to do. we have:

1) forces are separated, Delta group is facing very weird directions making it difficult to achieve a coordinated attack from both sides.

2) Your Z95s are in danger of getting blocked due to their higher PS. Delta group on the right for instance, with that single TIEif your opponent decides to hard turn 1 right and stays on the spot, your left column is blocked. If it swings hard turn 3 right instead, your right column is blocked, and there is honestly no way to tell what he is going to do, unless your opponent is someone you often play with and you roughly know his maneuver preferences.

3) You have a Sigma ACD which you absolutely must get rid of as target priority #1, else that thing would probably eat you alive. And you want to do it while maintaining a numerical advantage against the remaining TIEs, otherwise the TIEs would probably kickass when 1v1 or 3v3

4) Howlrunner is hanging by a thread, you could go for the kill, but seeing that she is likely to take an evade token this turn, it would be difficult without good luck or a coordinated massed attack

5) The TIE seems to be stuck in a block with regards to their flying. Unless your opponent has a tendency to simply ignore Howlrunner and split, it should be fine to assume that he would continue flying them as a block, so this is very crucial in helping us predict his maneuvers.

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Home team's priority is to hang back while you try and sort out Delta team's problem. Hence Home 1 forward 2, Home 2 forward 1. This would clear their stress, and hopefully keep them at range 3 of the Howlrunner block, so they could have a higher chance of not getting hit. Focus for both.

Delta is a bit tricky, because you really have no idea what that TIE would do. Main priority is to clear the stress. Delta 2 forward 1 first to collide and stay on the spot. From that position, your next turn has a lot of possibilities, you could go after the phantom, you could turn in to challenge the Howl block, you are relatively safe hiding behing the asteroid.

Delta 3 easy 2 right, hopefully this would put it out of range of that TIE whether it wants to hard turn 3 or stay on the spot. Delta 4 easy 2 right, but moves AFTER Delta 3, because Delta 4 WILL collide with Delta 3's final position, clear the stress, AND if the TIE is in the way, collide with that TIE and be behind it, so next turn a forward 1 would give that TIE a lot of problems. If that TIE stays on the spot instead, Delta 4 is still outside the TIE's final position, so yeah its good too, and you still get to clear your stress and maintain position.

Delta 2..... forward 1? Honestly no good move for that Z95, so simply clear stress, maintain your angle facing (so you can turn in next turn) and just see what happens.

Squad Leader Hard Turn 3 right, yes he is still stressed, but it should keep him out of trouble. Im assuming the Howl block would do forward 2/3 green en masse. Either way, your main priority for the squad leader is to simply keep him alive and unstressed so he can use his EPT to TL+F your Z95 that has a good shot at anything, so he doesnt need to take part in combat. Hence, it is ok to keep him pointed away from the battle and/or hanging around behind up to range 2