I grew up playing sports, soccer, baseball and basketball. Soccer was my favorite and sportsmanship played a huge part in the game. I mention this, because while I firmly believe in good sportsmanship, I am also competitive (I just beat my 12 yr old son in a local tourney, so I tied for first place. Had I let him win, he would have won overall and I would have come in 3rd.) It is this competitiveness that I want to address.

I've read quite a few posts and threads on stalling / slow play and everyone pretty much denounced it. Which seems odd to me. In timed sporting events (ie NOT baseball) a very common tactic is run out the clock when you are winning. Yes, I know there are shot/snap clocks or timers going so you can't delay too long. Heck, even in battles there are typically times where one side needs to hold out until reinforcements arrive ("Look to my coming, at first light, on the fifth day.")

I love casual play. Trying new ideas, new, odd lists that make people look at me like I've lost my mind. But I want to address tournament play. Casual play is for fun, and while tournament play should be fun too, in my mind, I see it as "how good am I against these other players" and "I want to win." (Not a win at all costs. I despise cheaters.)

Other than two local tournaments (one was a 50 pt tournament), I haven't played in a big tournament. I read in one of the threads about a person who lost a game, because when time ran out, and they got to finish that round, he chose to engage the other player and died instead of bugging out and winning. While I acknowledge his spirit of play is commendable, in my mind, that seems like the wrong decision to make. Yes, if he got out of range and saved his ship, it would have been an anti-climatic end to a very close game, but he would have won.

What would you decide to do in that position? Say it was the final match of the Regionals, time has expired and you are finishing the last round, you can bug out with your 1 hull pt remaining, very expensive point ship and place an asteroid and hopefully 3 range or further away from a basic but totally undamaged ship that you couldn't take out in one turn. Would you bug out for the win? Or pull a Biggs Cassidy & Stardance Kid, which would be a totally useless gesture as the Bolivian space fleet gunned you down?

What if time was almost up (not the final round yet, but soon) and you were in basically the same situation. Would you arc dodge for the win? Take your time, carefully setting up your maneuvers? (No delay of game/slow play, but definitely slower than your previous rounds. You are trying to save your last ship.) Or would you bring guns to bear and hopefully evade the opponents hits?

No, seriously. Last time it went 20 pages and descended into all sorts of nastiness.

Bug out for sure, especially if it's just one round. Stalling would be in very poor taste, IMO. I try to play as fast as possible. But if my opponent did it I wouldn't really hold it against them.

Yep, I'd run, and I'd expect any opponent to do the same. The point of competitive play is to win under the conditions.

I grew up playing sports, soccer, baseball and basketball. Soccer was my favorite and sportsmanship played a huge part in the game. I mention this, because while I firmly believe in good sportsmanship, I am also competitive (I just beat my 12 yr old son in a local tourney, so I tied for first place. Had I let him win, he would have won overall and I would have come in 3rd.) It is this competitiveness that I want to address.

Wait, you beat your 12 year old son, preventing him from winning overall? You couldn't just take one for the team and let your own flesh and blood win something, boosting their self-esteem and encouraging them to work hard / play hard?

Did you ground him for being a loser when you got home??

It has begun...

Much as it is a relevant topic... I think we as the forums are kind of sick of answering "how you should play" questions. Competitiveness is kind of a divisive term here.

Stalling as running your ships around so they don't get hit is okay. It is part of the game play to stay in the game and not get knocked out. It is okay because that kind of "stalling" is still playing the game. Stalling by not making moves or taking actions in a reasonable time just because you were the first to destroy a ship thus putting points on the board is not. Stalling like that is not a part of X-wing game play.

This isn't a sporting event of athletics where there is no "turns" you don't have to wait for your opponent to act in sports, you can seize the initiative forcing them to make plays instead of stalling. Not to mention in every game that has turns or rules that force a team to wait on their opponents such as chess or even football has rules that limits unfair stalling. Chess has a clock and football has huddle timers where if they don't snap the ball within a time limit the offense gets penalized.

And yes in professional sports you do see intentional clock running and other shenanigans just to secure a win like an offense taking the penalties because they are 1 field goal up and they have enough yards where they won't reach their end-zone by the time the clock is up, and the crowd was full of Jeers as if a pitcher purposefully walked the star batter. The discontent is justified because at that point the team is not playing the game as much as they are playing the rules. The one excuse that they have is that they are a professionals and they are payed to win (or payed more when they win).

However X-wing is not a professional game, it is a hobby that has a small (but rapidly growing) competitive scene. Thus said you play to have fun and enjoy the hobby. If you don't enjoy the game unless you win then you are playing the wrong game. Now I understand competitiveness, it is a good source of motivation. However I have to question the reason of competitiveness for all those who claim to be "competitive". As a source to better one self using peers to evaluate and see your strengths that you can capitalize and shortcomings that you can overcome is the virtue of competition. However competing for no other reason than to gain satisfaction of dominating another and to put others lower than yourself is where one crosses a moral line.

Point saying is that competitiveness should be seen as a ladder to climb up and improve yourself, not a set of stairs to kick others down so you can feel that you are better than them.

and as for stalling, well playing the game is what you are supposed to do even at tournaments. Playing the rules such as hold off on your actions up into the point right before a TO disqualifies you is not playing the game.

Running away, fine. You don't have to engage where it is disadvantageous to do so. You are still playing when trying to avoid being hit. Deliberately playing slowly is cheating, it's specifically called out as prohibited in the tournament rules. It's hard to prove, but if you are trying to play slowly, you are trying to cheat.

Last turn yeah, I'd stay away for a win. It's only one turn.

But there's an issue if you build your entire strategy on nailing just over 12 points and playing keep away for the rest of the game. You are only wasting your opponent's time and patience.

I was at a tournament the other weekend, and had a very close game with a great player - my XXXX swarm against four TIEs and a Defender. It came down in the last round with a minute or so left on the clock to my Wedge with one hull point left against an undamaged Academy TIE. Both ships were quite far away from each other, so I could quite easily have chosen to turn away and that would have been it.

But I didn't, I turned towards my opponent, and we had one last round of combat before time ran out. I needed to one-shot his TIE to guarantee victory, he needed to do one point of damage to me. As it turned out, neither of us managed to finish the job, but the game literally hinged on a dice roll either way (he managed to evade just one from my three hits, and I managed to evade his solitary hit with) and we had an incredibly fun end to a great game.

In the final of the same tournament, on of the guys turned away from his opponent and bugged out in the last round, and drew amused jeers from those watching on. Prudent? Yes, definitely. Fun? Not really.

/anecdotal evidence

TL;DR? Play the game whichever way you want. Some ways will be more fun than others, for you and your opponent.

Wait, you beat your 12 year old son, preventing him from winning overall? You couldn't just take one for the team and let your own flesh and blood win something, boosting their self-esteem and encouraging them to work hard / play hard?

Did you ground him for being a loser when you got home??

I did beat him and what would I teach him from throwing a game and therby fixing a tournament to let me son win? I did tell him I was very proud of him for winning his other games and coming in "second" overall. ("Second" is because there were two first place winners, so he should be "third" then...) I do not believe in participation medals. Not everyone can be a "winner." A couple years ago I helped him with a a science fair project the he worked hard on and he got first place... along with 10% of his grade. How is 10% "first place"?!?!?

I put a curse on both of your houses!!

There hopefully that is all the nastiness we need.

This is an excerpt from the rules:

".... This prohibits intentionally stalling a game for time..."

So stalling for time is prohibited, but running away is a valid strategy in some contexts. I believe what is within the rules is perfectly acceptable. I don't believe that some strategies are "cheese" or "broken". The developers themselves argued the same with the Lambda fortress: Is it within the rules? Yes. Is it broken? No! And to top it off, it's not even that good..

In battle, you have to know when to cut your losses, when you should just switch to a point perspective and try to finish the game in your favour. I am still learning that, I don't fault my opponent for running away.

I would also argue that running away can be very entertaining: Try playing a cat and mouse game with Corran+R2D2 vs Soontir, or see an A-wing swarm disperse as the opponent desperately tries to catch at least one of them for a win.

I grew up playing sports, soccer, baseball and basketball. Soccer was my favorite and sportsmanship played a huge part in the game. I mention this, because while I firmly believe in good sportsmanship, I am also competitive (I just beat my 12 yr old son in a local tourney, so I tied for first place. Had I let him win, he would have won overall and I would have come in 3rd.) It is this competitiveness that I want to address.

Wait, you beat your 12 year old son, preventing him from winning overall? You couldn't just take one for the team and let your own flesh and blood win something, boosting their self-esteem and encouraging them to work hard / play hard?

Did you ground him for being a loser when you got home??

Well, if he tried to make eye contact, he had it coming...

I was at a tournament the other weekend, and had a very close game with a great player - my XXXX swarm against four TIEs and a Defender. It came down in the last round with a minute or so left on the clock to my Wedge with one hull point left against an undamaged Academy TIE. Both ships were quite far away from each other, so I could quite easily have chosen to turn away and that would have been it.

But I didn't, I turned towards my opponent, and we had one last round of combat before time ran out. I needed to one-shot his TIE to guarantee victory, he needed to do one point of damage to me. As it turned out, neither of us managed to finish the job, but the game literally hinged on a dice roll either way (he managed to evade just one from my three hits, and I managed to evade his solitary hit with) and we had an incredibly fun end to a great game.

In the final of the same tournament, on of the guys turned away from his opponent and bugged out in the last round, and drew amused jeers from those watching on. Prudent? Yes, definitely. Fun? Not really.

/anecdotal evidence

TL;DR? Play the game whichever way you want. Some ways will be more fun than others, for you and your opponent.

The end of your game certainly would have been exciting to watch and fun to play for sure. Sigh. I don't know how I will play in a larger tournament. Would I take a "safe win" or risk fun loss?

Thank you for your insights. I can't wait to take part in a larger tournament.

I grew up playing sports, soccer, baseball and basketball. Soccer was my favorite and sportsmanship played a huge part in the game. I mention this, because while I firmly believe in good sportsmanship, I am also competitive (I just beat my 12 yr old son in a local tourney, so I tied for first place. Had I let him win, he would have won overall and I would have come in 3rd.) It is this competitiveness that I want to address.

Wait, you beat your 12 year old son, preventing him from winning overall? You couldn't just take one for the team and let your own flesh and blood win something, boosting their self-esteem and encouraging them to work hard / play hard?

Did you ground him for being a loser when you got home??

This post if a bit out of line.

Winning against your own child in a genuinely competitive environment is a promotion of sportsmanship and integrity. Other people had something at stake and it becomes unfair to them to throw a match just so your family member can win. It cheapens the entire affair for everyone.

Ex. I have a bye for Regionals and am playing a friend for the store championship. They don't have a bye, so I play just poorly enough to ensure they win.

I'm cheating the system and everyone else there who deserves to see a fair result.

Now if the guy won the game, slammed his kid's YT on the ground and did a touch down dance, I'd have some issues.

There are a lot of honest ways to boost your child's self esteem without resorting to disingenuous behavior.

That would actually be collusion. Which is specefically against the event rules. So I'd hope the guy wouldn't be teaching his kid that

I grew up playing sports, soccer, baseball and basketball. Soccer was my favorite and sportsmanship played a huge part in the game. I mention this, because while I firmly believe in good sportsmanship, I am also competitive (I just beat my 12 yr old son in a local tourney, so I tied for first place. Had I let him win, he would have won overall and I would have come in 3rd.) It is this competitiveness that I want to address.

Wait, you beat your 12 year old son, preventing him from winning overall? You couldn't just take one for the team and let your own flesh and blood win something, boosting their self-esteem and encouraging them to work hard / play hard?

Did you ground him for being a loser when you got home??

I put a curse on both of your houses!!

There hopefully that is all the nastiness we need.

I am somewhat ambivalent about whether or not running is a viable tactic, however the recent change to the MOV tiebreaker system strongly punishes this tactic at the pointy end of the event if you loose 1 or more matches at any stage.

So its fine if you think you can win out through the swiss but don't expect to be making the elimination rounds if you lose 1 round at all.

To answer the OP...

I would to what made the most tactical sense.