So, I thought this might be an interesting thing to look at.

This is a position I was in, playing as the rebels, last night. I felt I had a pretty commanding position over the stressed Aggressor, but managed to toss the game away with poor dial choices from here (flew the Z off of the right board edge, indicated by the red area - I blame the lateness of the hour! - and then lost a subsequent K-turn joust with those treacherous unmodified dice). Revisiting the same position, I'm actually a little unsure what to do (I also have a bias for what move seems correct because I know what my opponent did in this specific situation).

I'm interested in how other people would fly from here - both as the rebels and the scummy robot. How would you attempt to fly out as the IG? how would you attempt to block the IG? Would you even want to try blocking the IG?

An important note is that the rebels have the initiative here, so Garven is going to be moving and shooting first.

(1) The Bandit should execute a 2-bank to the left to block the IG. (It would be even better to pick up a shot this round, but I don't htink it's possible, and this sets it up for a flanking shot after a 3K next round.)

(2) Garven should be replaced by a Blue Squadron Pilot with a Fire Control System, which would offer him a lot more good options and be cheaper to boot. If your opponent isn't okay with that for some reason, Garven should probably just execute a 1-forward and focus.

(EDIT: If you're up for a bit of a gamble, Garven looks like he can K-turn. In that case Wes should focus instead of acquiring a target lock. It's a hit to your damage this round, but sets you up better for next round.)

(3) Wes should execute a 1-forward and pick up a target lock against the death-bot. He's the most obvious target, but he'll have Garven's focus for defense, and 4 dice with TL should do nasty things to the bot.

It's extremely boring, but every alternative I can think of is either a gamble or sets you up for failure on the following turn. This gives you a median and mode of 4 damage against the IG, with Wes taking 2 in return. The Rebels are also set up to K-turn and continue the joust on the following turn, while the IG should regret lining up for the head-to-head pass in the first place.

Out of curiosity, why the 2 bank for the Z rather than a 1 bank?

Looking at that board position, a 1 or 2 left bank seems to be the best move for the IG. But there really isn't a way for that to clear without getting blocked. The rebel player should setup those blocks because there's not much else he can do. As such, I would actually do a 1 Right bank as IG, with the goal of boosting left afterwards.

Garven should do a 4K turn. That way he gets a shot (and doesn't get shot at) and gets behind IG. And the Bandit should do a 1 Right bank to block all of the good moves from the IG. Wes then should just do a 1 straight to prevent from bumping and to get a shot.

At first I thought of doing something similar to what Vorpal proposed, the problem is that IG88 has those green 3-banks, which would let him jump over anything your Bandit could do, then boost out of most if not all arcs.

What I would do is this:

1. 3-hard turn the bandit to its right (left side of the picture)- get that little guy out of the way and try to avoid blocking IG88.

2. K- turn Garven.

3. IG88 now only has Wes in front of him- not likely to bump anyone, but that's okay because with that stress token there is no way for him to turn around.

4. K-turn Wes. Unless IG88 has Inertial Dampers, there is no way he can block the k-turn.

Yes, you have no tokens or modifiers on your rolls, but you can open fire on IG88 with fear of no return fire.

Out of curiosity, why the 2 bank for the Z rather than a 1 bank?

Because creating that bit of additional separation between Wes and IG-88C doesn't change things for this round, and it could pay off next round.

And to answer the second part of your questions, with IG88 I would do a 3-bank right like Kyros suggested, and then if I felt like I had space I would boost left to pick up the free evade (I noticed that it is IG 88 C that you were up against). If I didn't think I had room to boost I would just evade or focus then wait to next round to do a hard turn to the left.

At first I thought of doing something similar to what Vorpal proposed, the problem is that IG88 has those green 3-banks, which would let him jump over anything your Bandit could do, then boost out of most if not all arcs.

What I would do is this:

1. 3-hard turn the bandit to its right (left side of the picture)- get that little guy out of the way and try to avoid blocking IG88.

2. K- turn Garven.

3. IG88 now only has Wes in front of him- not likely to bump anyone, but that's okay because with that stress token there is no way for him to turn around.

4. K-turn Wes. Unless IG88 has Inertial Dampers, there is no way he can block the k-turn.

Yes, you have no tokens or modifiers on your rolls, but you can open fire on IG88 with fear of no return fire.

I see a K-turn for Wes as a much riskier move. If you keep the Bandit out of the way and IG-88 moves short, it's possible to end up with Wes stressed and base-to-base with IG, which takes him out of the fight for this round, next round, and possibly the two rounds after that.

As the IG player, it's a tossup whether Garven will K-turn or block my 3-bank to the left, and I'm running out of room to the right. Also, I'm not 100% sure the IG can execute that right bank without catching a corner of Wes' base. So I actually think the IG's best bet is still to bank toward the center of the board and plan on a right-hand S-loop next turn.

(Disclaimers: I haven't yet won a single game with any IG-88, and an inability to escape the head-to-head joust is a critical weakness in my play.)

Oooh, fun.

[TL;DR] If I was the rebels I would do Bandit:2-turn-right, Garven: 1-straight, Wes: 1-straight. If I was the Aggressor, I would do 3-right-bank.

At first I thought this was pretty obvious for the rebels, but they are actually in a pretty awkward position here, on account of being a bit too close, and the Aggressor has some good moves available.

To figure out how I would move as the rebels, I would first look at where the Aggressor is going to move. Since he is stressed, we know that he can't S-Loop, which means he's stuck to 3-speed and lower maneuvers. He has enough space between the edge of the board to do a bank of any speed to the right without going off the edge and be in a position to make a sharp turn left next turn and get away. Wes and the Bandit are blocking off his straight maneuvers, and Garvin can easily cut off all of his left banks. So the only move that the Aggressor has that is likely to succeed is the right bank towards the edge, so that's the move I'll be looking to cut off.

I want the Aggressor to bump into the bandit so Wes and Garvin can take range 1 shots on him. Garvin can't k-turn without bumping into the Aggressor, and if the Aggressor bumps into the Bandit then Wes also won't be able to clear a k-turn, so that means both ships are going to do a 1-forward.

So that leaves us with what to do with the Bandit. If we want to block the opponent's bank to escape towards the edge, then we have to do a hard turn towards the edge, which means sacrificing our Bandit. Banking with the Bandit won't block the Aggressor's 2 or 3-speed bank. So that sucks, but if he does bump into our Bandit, our X-Wings will be able to light him up and deal a lot of damage, and then be in a perfect position to k-turn next turn.

But what if the Aggressor doesn't bank right, but goes left instead? Then he will bump into Garven, and Wes will bump into the Aggressor, and we'll have sacrificed our Bandit for nothing! But if we send the Bandit in that direction, the Aggressor will be able to make a clean get-away if he banks towards the board edge. So we have a catch-22, where either choice we make could be bad depending on what our opponent does.

I think in this case I would pick the move that puts us in the best position on the next turn, which is blocking the Aggressor's left turns and not sacrificing my Bandit to block the edge. A 2-turn should put the Bandit square in the path of the Aggressor's left moves, with Garven being protected from bumping the Aggressor by the Bandit in front of it. If the Aggressor escapes to the board edge and gets away, at least all my ships will be in a good position to flip around and shoot at it next turn. Remember that if you have a Z-95 directly in front of an X-Wing, one of them can't k-turn, but this way the Bandit can do another 90 turn and Garven will be clear to k-turn.

If I was the Aggressor, I would do a 3-bank towards the edge, knowing that most opponent's would not be expecting a large ship to bank so close to the edge of the board. If I deployed my ship that close to the edge, which I assume is the case since the rebels are still in such a tight formation, then that means that I've measured that distance ahead of time and I know without a doubt that my 3-bank will not put me off the map.

Edit: If I could use a laser to check if Garven could clear a k-turn, I would do that instead, but I'm pretty sure that's not allowed and without a laser they are way too close to each other (2 pixels apart) for me to feel comfortable gauging that k-turn with just my eyeballs and level-plane view. If Garven messes up that k-turn, the rebels will be screwed.

BTW OP, were you actually playing on Vassal, or is this a recreation from a tabletop game? The accuracy of the distances between the ships and the board edge are really important for figuring out what the right moves are in this situation.

BTW OP, were you actually playing on Vassal, or is this a recreation from a tabletop game? The accuracy of the distances between the ships and the board edge are really important for figuring out what the right moves are in this situation.

Good question, actually.

What are the upgrades in each squad?

Why is your formation so tight? You can't even bank without bumping.

Not knowing any details, my first reaction would be to do the following:

1-bank left with Bandit and TL.

1 forward with both X-Wings and TL.

K-Turn all the next round.

I'd probably do the same as Tvboy. You can't really stop the 3bank to the right, so might as well put yourself in the best position for following rounds. If he goes straight (unlikely), he bumps Wes and probably has no shot. If he banks left or even tries a hard turn, he can't clear bandit, so is bumped back and facing Wes & Garvin's fire.

BTW OP, were you actually playing on Vassal, or is this a recreation from a tabletop game? The accuracy of the distances between the ships and the board edge are really important for figuring out what the right moves are in this situation.

This was an actual Vassal game.

BTW OP, were you actually playing on Vassal, or is this a recreation from a tabletop game? The accuracy of the distances between the ships and the board edge are really important for figuring out what the right moves are in this situation.

This was an actual Vassal game.

So I'm guessing from your OP that you went 1-straight with the X-Wigns and turned the Bandit into the board edge, where he could not escape (hard to predict that without actually moving the ship, it's very close), but what did the Aggressor do? Did he dodge right or bump into Garven and Wes?

Btw, this was fun, I hope this becomes a thing.

This is a fun one. As rebels it is very easy to do the wrong move and get 0 or only 1 shot on the IG. There are actually very few good moves here if any.

Here are some options and tradeoffs.

1) 2 left bank on bandit. Bad. Why: IG can 2 right bank and jump over you. It will clear, but require a hard turn next round from the IG. This actually would be favorable for you next round. But it also lets IG 2 fwd and clear with an action if Garvin goes straight.

2) Any bank with bandit followed by a 3K. This requires about 4 bases horizontal space to clear even with a 1 bank. You'll be off the board with a 2 bank +3K for sure, and a 1bank+ 3K will be super close.

3) 1 bank with bandit followed by any straight or K turn by Garvin. IG can 3 fwd, and crash into wes. Good news is Garvin can get a shot if he 4K vs an action less IG. And IG has no shot back. So far this is the best option.

4) 1 forward on bandit. Garvin 4K. The IG can 2 right bank and clear the whole thing, again requiring a hard turn next round. OR the IG can 3 fwd and crash into Wes. Because of how the ships are lined up, nubs will not cause the IG to not fit between the bandit and Wes. Or the IG can 2 or 3 bank left instead and clear. This still isn't terrible because you are getting a shot on him and he isn't on you.

So I think I like a 1 forward with bandit and a 4K on Garvin, followed by a simple 1 forward on Wes. If IG gets a shot on Wes then Wes first gets a shot on IG. The only really bad part here is that if Wes doesn't bump, then you can't K turn the bandit and Wes the following round. You have a big traffic jam. Bandit will have to do something lame like 2 or 3 right bank the following turn.

The other question now is what does the IG do? I would probably bank left 2 and then either boost right (to get to range 2 vs a 4K Garvin this round, and to set up range for the next round) or evade.

Everyone saying 3 right bank on the IG..... heh heh. That will be off the board. Just barely, but off. You must know your horizontal required clearances.

Everyone saying 3 right bank on the IG..... heh heh. That will be off the board. Just barely, but off. You must know your horizontal required clearances.

Well I set it up on Workbench exactly as the OP has it, and it's clear.

See, plenty of room.

Thank you for the thoughts.

I guess I'll start by plugging-in what I did during the game, as a baseline of sorts, and then I'll go through the posted solutions (or as many as I can, anyway), using my opponent's actual move from the game (a 3 bank to his left).

President Jyrgunkarrd's Solution:

Vorpal's Solution (Garven 1 forward):

Vorpal's Solution (Garven K-Turns):

If you get into this position it is difficult to make something good out of it. Why you would fly in this tight formation? There is absolutely no advantage for you. You should take advantage of your mini swarm and try to counter the IG from several different angles. Then you have more opportunity to react and you are less predictible.

1) 2 left bank on bandit. Bad. Why: IG can 2 right bank and jump over you. It will clear, but require a hard turn next round from the IG. This actually would be favorable for you next round. But it also lets IG 2 fwd and clear with an action if Garvin goes straight.

2) Any bank with bandit followed by a 3K. This requires about 4 bases horizontal space to clear even with a 1 bank. You'll be off the board with a 2 bank +3K for sure, and a 1bank+ 3K will be super close.

Well, don't I feel dumb? (EDIT: Actually less so given the information from PJ's cross-post. The Z is out of position but the X-wings are happy to take the joust, and the IG is going to have to fly very conservatively to survive the next couple of rounds.)

The other question now is what does the IG do? I would probably bank left 2 and then either boost right (to get to range 2 vs a 4K Garvin this round, and to set up range for the next round) or evade.

Glad I have some support here, at least.

As rebels it is very easy to do the wrong move and get 0 or only 1 shot on the IG. There are actually very few good moves here if any.

Yeah. It's bad for the Scum due to the rotten choices available to a stressed Aggressor threatened with a joust, but the really close formation and lack of repositioning hurts the Rebels.

Khyros's Solution:

Herowannabe's Solution:

TVBoy's Solution:

MajorJuggler's Solution:

...I'm not really sure of the educational value of this exercise (if any), but this is the sort of thing I like to examine.

By the way the Bandit should TL in case it gets bumped, in all cases.

Bummer, I guess I underestimated the turn radius on the Bandit, he's too far to the left to block the IG's left bank like I thought he would.

I agree with everyone that the super tight formation is not helpful, it cuts off a lot of your flexibility in maneuvering and gives you less options for blocking. If the Bandit was off to the side of the X-Wings, either he could bank into the Aggressor instead of having to turn away from the Aggressor, or the Aggressor would be in front of the Bandit and the X-Wings would have a clear k-turn.