I've just been watching the footage of Paul Heaver vs Nathan Eide, and I noticed Nathan deployed all his ships sideways-on, and Paul deployed his facing forwards but his first move was to hard-turn and then move along his board edge.

This got me wondering about the reasoning behind the strategy, and I'm struggling to figure it out on my own - so, is anyone able to shed any light on it?

Cheers

McQ

Somtimes I deploy sideways, on one end of the board, that way depending on what my opponent does, I can have ships make hard turns, and get nice positioning. but that's just me.

Slows you down, if your ships don't have the 1 straight or they play the slow roll better it helps. I do this with my TIE Advance models a lot.

Rule of 11, control the first engagement and then the second after that.

To keep those blasted Imperials from spotting that illegal "Hot Shot Blaster" that you've got bolted under your starboard wing.

It's a good way to slow roll ships that don't have 1 straight.

Also sat in left corner facing sideways, I can do a fast straight to switch my route of approach quicker than having to hard turn from a forward facing start. If I want to go straight from where I am sat facing sideways, i can still hard turn to achieve a slow roll effect. I like doing it when deploying first as I feel it leaves my opponent second guessing a little more.

Of course that mental aspect could be entirely a placebo effect for myself!

Think of it like fencing or Street Fighter. As soon as the match starts, you usually don't rush right in. That's often the mark of a beginner. Instead, you dance around a bit, gauging your opponent, looking for an opening or a sign of weakness. When you see an opening, you strike.

In X-Wing, you can't hold still (well, most things can't). So instead, you go parallel to your board edge to buy some time before the first engagement. Maybe your opponent's formation will break up. Maybe they will bump into their own ships. You can gain some information about your opponent by watching how they treat those first few turns while you avoid direct engagement.

Also, you can draw your opponent through the asteroids if they're impatient and you skirt your board edge. I've successfully done this once and it was extremely effective. It's definitely something I need to work on, though. Lately I've been rushing head-long into battle and the results have been less than pleasing.

Ah right, so it's a combination of a feint and/or a delaying tactic depending on what's needed?

Yeah, as others have said, the lateral movement is more important than forward most of the time.

Gives you options as to when to turn and face the enemy.

Can slow down your advance.

Can throw some players off.

Gives your opponent more opportunities to make a mistake before you engage him.

Possibly you have planned out a few rounds of movement that interact with the obstacles you placed in a particular way.

I personally like deploying at a non 90* angle. Throws off the math of people who count base lengths before engagement.

Oh there are lots of reasons.

The main one is, the best way to win is to get yourself into an advantageous position. This can be a round where you shoot and the opponent doesn't, or a round where one of your ships clogs up the opponent's, giving you actions and none for the opponent, or an engagement zone where rocks let you K Turn or swing around while your opponent doesn't get to. If you visualize about where you'll end up engaging, or where you want to engage, then it's all about timing how long it takes for your ships to get there based on how many moves it takes your opponent to get there, and if they take the bait or are trying to lure YOU into a spot somewhere else.

Sometimes, traveling sideways down the board allows you to take that time, or baits your opponent into a certain line of asteroids, or lets you 1 turn towards your opponent's side of the board, making your forward movement very small.

With ships like Imperial Aces, if there are no advantageous positions that speeding 5 Fwd will get you to, or if you aren't sure which direction your opponent will turn, then sideways deployment can be a useful waiting tool.

Sometimes it is just important to visualize the table and asteroid field not as just lanes from one end of the board to the next, but maybe as left/right lanes, or diagonal lanes, or not as lanes at all, but as an entire field of play.

I don't think we can conclusively say that deploying any direction is better than any other, but we CAN say that it is important to use any deployment necessary to get you into the best possible position every game.

It's also fairly common for ships with turrets to deploy this way. this is likely obvious to most, but I felt for the sake of completeness someone needed to say it

Always jockey for position, this is one way of doing just that.

I play Imps a lot and like to face sideways most of the time. Most lists I face want to joust. As others have said going sideways can help you control when the engagement happens.

I found when it comes to rock placement most people will place rocks closer to their opponents edge. Going sideways can use this to your advantage as you can draw them through their own rocks. The biggest benefit to this is often times it can break formations, force actions to be spent on rock dodging, or if you're lucky a ship that ends up on a rock. But the biggest thing is if you time it right/read their movements you can force a situation where all your ships can focus fire and your opponent can't. Granted this part is depends on their patience and skill, but most players are eager to start shooting ASAP.

Think of it like fencing or Street Fighter. As soon as the match starts, you usually don't rush right in. That's often the mark of a beginner.

Interesting example, but wide of the mark for fencing.https://youtu.be/nGearEu2PlU

The current methodology for fencing is often to move fast. This is because the bouts are to multiple points, and you can learn from mistakes. Xwing isn't as forgiving.

Slow roll can be very appropriate for determining when/where the engagement happens. And, it's generally easier to surprise your opponent with a fast change of distance than slewing down suddenly

Think of it like fencing or Street Fighter. As soon as the match starts, you usually don't rush right in. That's often the mark of a beginner.

Interesting example, but wide of the mark for fencing.https://youtu.be/nGearEu2PlU

The current methodology for fencing is often to move fast. This is because the bouts are to multiple points, and you can learn from mistakes. Xwing isn't as forgiving.

Slow roll can be very appropriate for determining when/where the engagement happens. And, it's generally easier to surprise your opponent with a fast change of distance than slewing down suddenly

Okay. I stand corrected for fencing. I only did it as a club in college and we did things differently. We weren't pro players.

But I have been keeping up with the Street Fighter scene and the top matches are all about the neutral game. There are a few exceptions, but that's usually to throw off an opponent because they expect you to play footsies first.

Gives you options as to when to turn and face the enemy.

Yeah, this is why I do it. if you're running ships with decent dials, you get lots of options as to where you want your formations to be, according to where you hard turn in. If you set up straight forward, and then decide you want to shift the area of engagement laterally, well, you might have some problems: Asteroids tend to bunch up in the center, and you'll have already of left that golden corridor of roid-free space behind you, and by turning at a tighter angle to your opponent, you offer them the chance to flank you, or at least harass and restrict your movement options.

The 90 degree start allows you to partially dictate the opening. The big downside is with lists that struggle to do enough damage to finish an opponent within time, as it can eat up the clock if you're not careful...

to fly an Academy Pilot off the board to make a point.

It's nice to do thing different sometimes

Think of it like fencing or Street Fighter. As soon as the match starts, you usually don't rush right in. That's often the mark of a beginner.

Interesting example, but wide of the mark for fencing.https://youtu.be/nGearEu2PlU

The current methodology for fencing is often to move fast. This is because the bouts are to multiple points, and you can learn from mistakes. Xwing isn't as forgiving.

Slow roll can be very appropriate for determining when/where the engagement happens. And, it's generally easier to surprise your opponent with a fast change of distance than slewing down suddenly

Okay. I stand corrected for fencing. I only did it as a club in college and we did things differently. We weren't pro players.

But I have been keeping up with the Street Fighter scene and the top matches are all about the neutral game. There are a few exceptions, but that's usually to throw off an opponent because they expect you to play footsies first.

Actually that video is of Sabre Fencing (something I did for 10 years). Sabre is indeed fast-paced, but its the exception of fencing, not the norm. Foil and epee fencing are often more common and have their own pacing (epee being the slowest and often taking the longest to complete a bout). Your analogy makes a lot of sense for epee fencing, and even for foil. Sabre was historically used from horseback. Hence the reason it tends to be more aggressive. But even in that video, if you watch carefully, you'll notice the guy winning doesn't score any points with direct cuts. All of his points are coming from feint head, cut flank, or stop cuts made while the other guy is attacking. So even though its fast-paced, its not just straight up blind attacking----he's looking for openings, or creating them with feints and then going in for the hit. So yeah, its true---only beginners rush right in without having an idea of what their doing...

Think of it like fencing or Street Fighter. As soon as the match starts, you usually don't rush right in. That's often the mark of a beginner.

Interesting example, but wide of the mark for fencing.https://youtu.be/nGearEu2PlU

The current methodology for fencing is often to move fast. This is because the bouts are to multiple points, and you can learn from mistakes. Xwing isn't as forgiving.

I don't know, they were holding back quite a bit in some of the early bouts. In fact, the 4th point scored by Hungary was specifically because he waited for his opponent to come to him, and then performed a beautiful parry-riposte. So I think it fits nicely with what we see in some X-wing matches. (Of course, sometimes it's to your advantage to rush in and press the attack).

EDIT: Wow. Ninja'd on a fencing post.

Did you catch the Capcom cup this weekend? Also: have you seen the documentary that Red Bull did for Snake Eyez?

Did you catch the Capcom cup this weekend? Also: have you seen the documentary that Red Bull did for Snake Eyez?

I saw the first episode or 2 of the Red Bull documentary, but I haven't had a chance to watch the Capcom Cup yet. Looking forward to it!

Flying sideways is akin to slow-rolling, but they have a similar purpose: Control.

If you play enough X-Wing, you start to notice that combat tends to have an eliptical flow to it, with ships that fly against the flow typically dying swiftly if they do not escape entirely (that is to say, the enemy flying the opposite direction will pull their guns to bear against your counter-swirler and basically arrive at a concentration of fire by accident).

The reason for this is that it is easier to escape a firing arc by cutting to the inside of the circle than to the outside, and that almost no-one benefits by showing their flank to their opponent.

Incidentally, this is why Boost and Barrel-Roll are arguably the two most powerful actions for a ship to have, and why the 1 Turn is arguably the best maneuver to have on a dial.

Flying sideways at the start helps to dictate the curvature of the flow, and where one stops flying sideways to engage helps to determine the eye of the storm. It's jockying for position, and also jockying for the privilege to determine where the best position will be.

I love deploying the YV-666 sideways or, usually even better, diagonally. By avoiding moving head on, this makes it much, much easier to avoid your opponent just rocketing through that 180 arc, and you put the YV-666 in a better position to, well... position... and keep it's arc lined up. If your opponent lines up straight, Big Daddy Bossk either gets to keep them in arc for several turns or your opponent will have to try and hard turn to get around. Or, against high PS ships that might try and make a bee-line for him, you can make sure the lumbering YV-666 can rocket away with its actually substantially quick straights to try and force the aces to purse through obstacles.

I combine this with using the rest of the squad in a separate flank that can get behind the enemy if they make a hard move towards YV-666. Either Bossk gets to slowly sweep across pounding out damage or you leave yourself in a predictable location where COBRAAAAAH will be waiting with Glitterstim and Crackshot in hand.