I'm a pretty new player and unfortunately, work and family don't allow me to go down to my local game store and play very much. However, I do have time to read and look through forums and tactics articles and such and study up on the game (no substitute to playing, I know, but it's better than nothing). In any event, I see references all around to "blocking" and how ships are used to block others ships' movement. Since moving through a ship is perfectly fine, it would seem that it isn't really a "block" unless it would result in an overlap, and then you move the ship back just a bit till the bases are touching (and yes, it prevents the ship from taking an action and attacking the touched ship). I see how the final position of ships can affect "action" based movement, such as boost and barrel roll, but is that it? Therefore, I'm at a bit of loss as to the whole blocking concept. Would someone help out with this and explain "blocking" a bit more? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Bonus Question: How do you pronounce Koiogran? Is it "koi" (rhymes with ploy) "o" - "gran" ?

Blocking is used more heavily with swarms and the basic idea is to keep a ship (especially less mobile large base ships) in a kill zone. If I have 6 tie fighters, i can sacrifice the attack of one to block so that my other 5 have clear shots. Some very good videos on YouTube for blocking strategy.

It is properly pronounced "K-turn"

You cannot attack a ship whose base is touching your own. So if a ship moves first, it can take its actions, and set itself up in the path of the ship it hopes to block. So that the blocked ship cannot shoot at it, nor does it get an action. Ideally, the first ship will still have another shot on another ship - effectively (a) protecting itself from the blocked ship, (b) robbing the blocked ship of actions, and possibly © robbing the blocked ship of it's planned facing.

A good block can have a cascading effect also - which other ships smashing into their own forward ships - and losing actions etc. When such a cluster forms it can take a couple of rounds or more to get out of it - all if which can be very advantageous to the one who did the blocking.

Bonus Question: How do you pronounce Koiogran? Is it "koi" (rhymes with ploy) "o" - "gran" ?

Yep!

Consider the photo below. The Firespray is blocked (and blocked well). The A-wings are jammed in front of it, but are stacked such that it cannot move at all because all movements on his dial, even a 4-movement, will over-lap. The Firespray cannot shoot the A-wings touching it, nor can the A-wings touching the Firespray fire at the Firespray (actually, one of the touching A-wings has a special ability such that it can shoot at things they are touching). The A-wings that bumped into the back of A-wings touching the A-wings CAN shoot at the Firespray as those bases are not touching. The Firespray can shoot at those stacked two deep for the same reason. The beauty of the large base ships is that I just gave the A-Wing jam 1-speed maneuver's so they could not move either. I held the Firespray there for two or three round pumping it full of dice until his buddies showed up with blaster turrets to break up the party. It was pretty much dead by then.

Edit: I'm an idiot, ignore this post

The OP asked for an explanation of blocking and why it is considered an important tactic. That not enough for you?

As the original poster, I liked balindamood's picture/post. It not only helps explain blocking, but exposes some of the game mechanics and strategy that are not obvious as well. Thanks to all who posted!

The OP asked for an explanation of blocking and why it is considered an important tactic. That not enough for you?

I'm a complete idiot lol. When I opened the thread, I thought I clicked on the main link, not remembering having read the thread previously. Turns out I clicked the new post button, having read the thread.

So yeah, just ignore me, nothing to see here

New guy here too, and this confuses me. Please tell me if I got this right...

Overlapping another ship: the touching two ships cannot shoot each other, but they may take actions.

Overlapping an asteroid: roll a red die and take damage if it pops up. Cannot take actions and cannot attack.

Overlapping another ship: the touching two ships cannot shoot each other, but they may take actions.

Not exactly.

The ship that overlaps another ship skips it's perform action step. But the ship that got overlapped already took its action. They can't shoot at each other, but can shoot other ships.

Overlapping an asteroid: roll a red die and take damage if it pops up. Cannot take actions and cannot attack.

Mostly correct. When you overlap an Asteroid you skip your perform action step, but you could still perform free actions.

With Debris Cloud it's slightly different. For that you don't skip your perform action step, but get a stress in the "check pilot stress" step, which in most cases means you can't perform actions. You roll a die and on a <crit> result you suffer one crit damage. You can still attack.

It's also worth noting that you take the effects of obstacles (damage, stress, skipped action step) if your movement template overlaps them, even if your ship's base is clear of them at the end of the movement. Your base has to overlap an asteroid to lose your shot for the round.