I've been coming back to my love of the MC30 recently--specifically, the MC30T--and have been noticing a trend: a fleet with built-out MC30T's seems to lead to some very interesting activation-order games. This has kind of gotten me thinking about activation order in a big way, so I'm hoping to gen up some discussion on it.

This concept is applicable to a very broad spectrum of different fleets, but for concrete terms, I'll frame my introduction using a fleet I've been tinkering with: two MC30T's built for APTs, Yavaris, and Salvation under Dodonna with a spattering of aces. My tactics usually revolve around two things: trying to use the devastating threat of a close-range MC30 to force my adversary's activation order, and setting traps by layering threats.

For example, I might hold Salvation and Yavaris in rear flanking positions on either side of the MC30's, while the shrimps charge down the center of the field toward two (or more) ships. The turn before we clash, I'll slam the brakes on one shrimp (let's call him Jake) and throw the other one (Eddy) out front right between my two arbitrary targets (Bob and Larry). This distributes my fleet's threats from front to rear, and builds kill zones all along my adversary's possible approach vectors, leaving him with a series of poor choices.

* Bob and Larry both delay activation to avoid Salv's front arc or Yav's bombers. In this case, both take devastating close-range broadsides from Eddy.

* Bob escapes, leaving Larry to take the broadside from Eddy. If I've laid my trap well, Bob has just moved into close range of Jake, Salv's front arc, or Yav's bombers; or (more likely) some combination of the above.

* Eddy's escape route is somehow counter-threatened, forcing me to delay his activation and enabling both Bob and Larry to escape from Eddy. Both Bob and Larry have moved into the Jake/Salv/Yav trap described above.

The activation game, I think, draws some pretty heavy parallels to forking in chess, which (if anyone's not familiar with the term) refers to threatening two pieces simultaneously in such a way that the opponent must choose which piece to give up. I'm no chess guru, but in my experience the trick to countering such a move often comes down to counter-threatening--when the opponent places a piece under threat that you consider more valuable than either of the forked pieces, forcing you to abandon or delay your attack in order to protect your valuable piece or position.

I think we can draw a lesson from this for Armada: the counter to many activation-order-centric attacks is to counter-threaten in such a way as to force the adversary out of their plan, or make them pay for it.

I actually used this idea to pretty good effect against a Clonisher clone in last week's Store Championship. He deployed Demo across from my MC80 flagship, with clear designs on her, so I went extremely aggressive, and threw one of my two MC30s along with 6 A-wings into the swarm of Raiders to counter-threaten them. At the start of the turn he wanted to triple-tap on, I held two Raiders (one Screed's flagship) under threat, while the other MC30 threatened the entire area that Demo could fly into after the triple-tap. He went ahead with the triple-tap, but immediately paid for it with his flagship, another Raider, and Demo.

So, I'm interested to hear other people's thoughts on the activation game. It's been touched on in numerous threads, and I think it's pretty commonly understood within this community that there is value in having activation advantage, but I haven't really seen an in-depth discussion on why, or how to leverage your activations.

Edit: sorry about the lack of diagrams or drawings--wrote this over lunch at work. Might come back and insert some graphics tonight if I'm not busy fighting for freedom from Imperial oppression at Armada night. :

Activation game (and advantage) is huge. Understanding it is absolutely critical to winning against more experienced opponents. It's also a reason why, when facing another 4 ship list, I will often try to take out, not necessarily the biggest threat, but a cheap CR90 so I can gain activation advantage (if I don't already have it).

I've also found that having more than 1 first-last activation gives very quickly diminishing returns. What I mean by that, for example, let's say your opponent is bringing 3 ships and you have initiative. The optimal number of ships for you to have is 4, not 6. Now, of course, you won't know what your opponent is bringing, but you can keep a close eye on the meta to see what the preferred number of ships is.

Another thing about shrimps (and broadsiders in general); if you can learn how and when to rush with them, instead of toilet bowl flush them, you will really upset your opponent. I played a tournament saturday against 2 ISDs, and I chose Contested Outpost for him. He camped it, of course, thinking it would take me a while to get in position to toilet bowl him. When I rushed across the map at speed 4 right at him, he didn't know how to respond and was not prepared for the onslaught. Because I had activation advantage, he never got a single what he referred to as "melta" shot off (ie, Medium or Close range full frontal ISD).

In my experience mc30 shenanigans are fantastic for overcoming an activation disadvantage. I've had success using hyperspace assault to drop an mc30 into a demo's rear arc and force it to activate earlier that it wants to. Also I find that shrimp work best in pairs.

Well I can offer my perspective as an imperial player who tends to play tournaments with 3 ship lists with bombers...

I also tend to prefer going second...

Basically all the things much of the forum inteligencia will tell you are horrible disadvantages. This weekend I won a small store champs with a total score of 27/30 I was second in 2 matches and out activated in 2 matches.

I have played against and won with this list vs very well flown 2 shrimp (or sharks as I call them) lists with initiative and activation advantage against and I can say that the key is very much counter threatening.

My tactic is to approach as slowly and from as far away as possible with my raider deployed first, across the entire board pointing at the rest of my ships and depending on opponent fleet makeup and initial deployment I might put my entire bomber wing with the raider to delay deployment. This also often gives my opponent the impression that I will deploy my boosted comms bearing ISD next to the bomber wing. Instead I put it on the other side pointed most effectively depending on obstacles and enemy placement and tucked beside and behind is my demolisher. Everything but the raider going speed 1.

Then the idea of threat comes in. If they deployed tight, the approach vector is predictable, my favourite tactic is to put my ISD out as bait and bring my bomber wing and demolisher along in a sort of "punishment threat cloud". It threatens that, sure you can zoom in and take your shots but as you fly by and try to fly away you will have 4 firesprays using rhymer as a turret shooting at you until you die OR demolisher double arc, or most often both.

I have lost count of the number of MC30 who thought they got away at speed 4 I have picked to death with a couple of firesprays and rhymer with no squad commands.

If deployed loosely this is where Ozzel comes in, I wait until the opponent over-commits or gambles and I Ozzel pounce on any isolated target (there is always an isolated target on a rectangular board with a limited deployment zone). My ISD and Demo sandwich the target and give it the wonderful choice of fly into front arc of ISD, fly into threat range of demo or fly into a cloud of bombers.

I haven't played a clonisher swarm yet, but I don't see why this tactic wouldn't work. I'm also not too proud to blow up a bit more points than a tough enemy and then run away. A 7-3 isn't that hard to score.

Only time it has failed was when I tried to tweak my list and didn't follow my own tactical doctrine and selected to go first. Going first messes me up especially since my objectives are tailored to suit my list extremely well.

Well I can offer my perspective as an imperial player who tends to play tournaments with 3 ship lists with bombers...

I also tend to prefer going second...

Basically all the things much of the forum inteligencia will tell you are horrible disadvantages. This weekend I won a small store champs with a total score of 27/30 I was second in 2 matches and out activated in 2 matches.

I have played against and won with this list vs very well flown 2 shrimp (or sharks as I call them) lists with initiative and activation advantage against and I can say that the key is very much counter threatening.

My tactic is to approach as slowly and from as far away as possible with my raider deployed first, across the entire board pointing at the rest of my ships and depending on opponent fleet makeup and initial deployment I might put my entire bomber wing with the raider to delay deployment. This also often gives my opponent the impression that I will deploy my boosted comms bearing ISD next to the bomber wing. Instead I put it on the other side pointed most effectively depending on obstacles and enemy placement and tucked beside and behind is my demolisher. Everything but the raider going speed 1.

Then the idea of threat comes in. If they deployed tight, the approach vector is predictable, my favourite tactic is to put my ISD out as bait and bring my bomber wing and demolisher along in a sort of "punishment threat cloud". It threatens that, sure you can zoom in and take your shots but as you fly by and try to fly away you will have 4 firesprays using rhymer as a turret shooting at you until you die OR demolisher double arc, or most often both.

I have lost count of the number of MC30 who thought they got away at speed 4 I have picked to death with a couple of firesprays and rhymer with no squad commands.

If deployed loosely this is where Ozzel comes in, I wait until the opponent over-commits or gambles and I Ozzel pounce on any isolated target (there is always an isolated target on a rectangular board with a limited deployment zone). My ISD and Demo sandwich the target and give it the wonderful choice of fly into front arc of ISD, fly into threat range of demo or fly into a cloud of bombers.

I haven't played a clonisher swarm yet, but I don't see why this tactic wouldn't work. I'm also not too proud to blow up a bit more points than a tough enemy and then run away. A 7-3 isn't that hard to score.

Only time it has failed was when I tried to tweak my list and didn't follow my own tactical doctrine and selected to go first. Going first messes me up especially since my objectives are tailored to suit my list extremely well.

I would love to play (against) that list Hast. What objectives do you usually bring, given that you usually go 2nd?

I bring:

precision strike (handy CF tokens plus bombers make non-bomber lists pay)

Hyperspace assault (I bring this for people to not pick it, i find this one is the most neutral-effect and a bit of a gamble for P2. In fact it hurts my play style screwing up my deployment strategies and separating my farces that I very much want to keep together. People tend not to choose it out of the justifiable fear that they will find a very inconvenient demolisher in the wrong place at the wrong time towing firesprays)

Minefields (this is probably both the most boring and the one I want my opponent to pick the most, I have a lot of practice stacking the board against a variety of lists with minefields and have forced people to choose between certain death flying into my threat range or likely death flying into mines, it can also be used to discourage the speed 4 "shark attack" you describe, making such an attack very difficult to execute without eating obstacles or mines and all it takes is a good 2 damage mine roll with a crit and an MC30 is looking at being at half health with a crippling crit or 3/4 dead with a struct. damage)

It's nice to hear Hastatior about an Imperial player who has a plan for going second.

Too many Imperial lists have a 20-odd point initiative bid for first player. That's loosing 3 Intel officers or there about. I think I'll give it a try.

When you split your forces during deployment just how far apart are your clumps? Also How do you prefer to deploy your minefield? Do you go for the long line across the deployment zone or vertical lines to cut the play area into sections?

It's nice to hear Hastatior about an Imperial player who has a plan for going second.

Too many Imperial lists have a 20-odd point initiative bid for first player. That's loosing 3 Intel officers or there about. I think I'll give it a try.

When you split your forces during deployment just how far apart are your clumps? Also How do you prefer to deploy your minefield? Do you go for the long line across the deployment zone or vertical lines to cut the play area into sections?

Deployment and mine placement are an art and a science!

I will often feint with my raider and squadrons and literally place all my other ships on the opposite side of the board. The advantage to going second is your opponent gets to throw down the first gauntlet on placement and that starts informing the rest. If they don't have a lot of squadrons and I am placing a raider and 3 sets of squads its quite likely that a couple of capital ships have hit the table before i have to put down my ISD and then they typically are thrown off balance and have to adjust their deployment to account for the big guy. Demo is always lurking around the ISD ready to pounce on an overextension or punish a speed 4 shark sweep. All that being said, every enemy fleet will have a different way to deploy against.

Same with the mines, If I want to deny a fast light fleet I concentrate the mines and obstacles in such a way that it is difficult to advance and manouver at speed 3 or 4. A good way to get this in your head is start a small base on a side or in the middle and get your movement tool out, you can then use the corners to mark a range where a first move at speed 3 or 4 coming straight at you will land and make that spot a hellscape of mines (obviously do this bit at home), if they deploy opposite that, face them and go slow, if they start deploying to go around, deploy opposite and half-face where they will be coming from when they swing around with the mined side of the board at your flank and the edge of the board to the other.

Again, a lot of this is very dependent on what your opponent wants to do and denying them that agency.

For example, in Saturdays tourney round 3 at top table my opponent had a rebel bomber list with lots of B wings keyan and Nym an MC80 and Whale decked out for squadron and fire support. Objective was precision strike. He deployed his MC80 first to my right facing to my left, I deployed raider to my right pointed 45 degrees. started deploying squadrons back and forth and at some point he clued in that if I was deploying all these squadrons I would probably be dropping my ISD within squadron range so he put his whale next to the mc80 but facing out to the right. His idea was probably that he would arc around with both ships as he herded his slow death squads down the middle to counter the typical imperial "point triangle at things until they die"

Instead I dropped my ISD and Demo to the far left pointed in. He started moving his squadrons towards mine before he realized that my raider and squadrons were just dashing back to my other ships. by that time it was too late. His whale was heading out to no mans land for no reason, his slow squadrons took too long to adjust, his MC80 tried to correct by going straight down instead of arcing but it didn't matter as soon as i saw it was isolated i Ozzel pounced, my squadrons caught it at the same time that my demo pounced followed shortly by the TRC ISDII. I farmed that thing for precision strike tokens (thanks, Riekaan!) so by the time he took it off the board it had 14 damage cards. The hapless whale then trundled directly into the teeth of my demolisher and some firesprays and it went down hard. He did manage to take down 3 firesprays, but that didn't even make up for the tokens. It was a slaughter and I can comfortably say that deployment strategy made it so.

I am starting to realize with this game that deployment is probably the most brutally unforgiving part of the game. When in my first game i placed my demolisher quite literally half an inch off of where it needed to be and I realized it could be disastrous I kind of stepped back and thought, ****, thats unforgiving. (fortunately Montferat, and selecting concentrate fire on a hastily re-positioned raider saved my ass)

It's nice to hear Hastatior about an Imperial player who has a plan for going second.

Too many Imperial lists have a 20-odd point initiative bid for first player. That's loosing 3 Intel officers or there about. I think I'll give it a try.

When you split your forces during deployment just how far apart are your clumps? Also How do you prefer to deploy your minefield? Do you go for the long line across the deployment zone or vertical lines to cut the play area into sections?

Deployment and mine placement are an art and a science!

...

I am starting to realize with this game that deployment is probably the most brutally unforgiving part of the game. When in my first game i placed my demolisher quite literally half an inch off of where it needed to be and I realized it could be disastrous I kind of stepped back and thought, ****, thats unforgiving. (fortunately Montferat, and selecting concentrate fire on a hastily re-positioned raider saved my ass)

This game is to WHF as X Wing is to 40k. You could win or lose a game in WHF, so it is in this. I love that about this game. X wing is for the kids :-) Armada is where the strategos come to compete :-)

I bring:

precision strike (handy CF tokens plus bombers make non-bomber lists pay)

Don't need to go further! I love this objective. Though when I play lists like what you describe, I plan on losing 1 to 3 of my ships at the cost of your fleet and about 10 objective tokens

Why do I see this devolving in to another Demolisher thread?

Why do I see this devolving in to another Demolisher thread?

Why do I see this devolving in to another Demolisher thread?

because Demolisher is like 40% of the reasons Activations are important

If that's true, Torpedo Frigates are the other 60%.

I think this is also why red dice, which we all love to hate, come at such a premium: your fork range is enormous.

Now, learning how to leverage that, on the other hand...

Why do I see this devolving in to another Demolisher thread?

because Demolisher is like 40% of the reasons Activations are important

If that's true, Torpedo Frigates are the other 60%.

My Scout Frigates take offense to that.

I think this is also why red dice, which we all love to hate, come at such a premium: your fork range is enormous.

Now, learning how to leverage that, on the other hand...

Tis true. This is the reason i have named my MC30 Scouts Knights and my TRC90's Bishops.

I bring:

precision strike (handy CF tokens plus bombers make non-bomber lists pay)

Don't need to go further! I love this objective. Though when I play lists like what you describe, I plan on losing 1 to 3 of my ships at the cost of your fleet and about 10 objective tokens

You mean lists like mine? Funny that never happens...

I'm pretty good at the card flipping game and at worst I come out a couple of tokens to the bad. When I play my buddies rebel bomber list is where I most see the token effect neutralized or go against me but in those cases I use my ISD and demo like buzz-saws to shred his carriers. Takes a lot of tokens to make up 400 points.

I think this is also why red dice, which we all love to hate, come at such a premium: your fork range is enormous.

Now, learning how to leverage that, on the other hand...

Tis true. This is the reason i have named my MC30 Scouts Knights and my TRC90's Bishops.

And Defiance is your Queen?

I think this is also why red dice, which we all love to hate, come at such a premium: your fork range is enormous.

Now, learning how to leverage that, on the other hand...

Tis true. This is the reason i have named my MC30 Scouts Knights and my TRC90's Bishops.

And Defiance is your Queen?

I bring:

precision strike (handy CF tokens plus bombers make non-bomber lists pay)

Don't need to go further! I love this objective. Though when I play lists like what you describe, I plan on losing 1 to 3 of my ships at the cost of your fleet and about 10 objective tokens

You mean lists like mine? Funny that never happens...

I'm pretty good at the card flipping game and at worst I come out a couple of tokens to the bad. When I play my buddies rebel bomber list is where I most see the token effect neutralized or go against me but in those cases I use my ISD and demo like buzz-saws to shred his carriers. Takes a lot of tokens to make up 400 points.

I bring:

precision strike (handy CF tokens plus bombers make non-bomber lists pay)

Don't need to go further! I love this objective. Though when I play lists like what you describe, I plan on losing 1 to 3 of my ships at the cost of your fleet and about 10 objective tokens

You mean lists like mine? Funny that never happens...

I'm pretty good at the card flipping game and at worst I come out a couple of tokens to the bad. When I play my buddies rebel bomber list is where I most see the token effect neutralized or go against me but in those cases I use my ISD and demo like buzz-saws to shred his carriers. Takes a lot of tokens to make up 400 points.

Sure, I just don't lose my whole fleet ^_~ though, that could be because I don't have a single point into squadrons

Yeah that would do it. Its simply a matter of applying pressure to the weakest point of the enemy strategy. Full points on squads, sure he'll get some tokens but I will sacrifice every firespray I've got to tie down what I can while demo and ISD do work. No points on squads on the opponent and its time for rogue bombers to do work.

This is why first is overrated. Don't get me wrong first is strong but second is punishing in a different way.

The combination of point based objectives and threatening/countering aggression with trades is how to neuter the first player advatage. You're going to Demolisher one of my ships? I'll punish XYZ ship in return.

I love building my lists to max points to go second with Glad. I loose the bid and because of the fear the triple tap Glad they make me second. Now you can pick Precision Strike, Fire Lanes or Superior Postions.

Very interesting points and ideas here.

Having a plan to effectively go second, with the crazy high initiative bids around these days, is definitely a meta counter and a strategy oriented way of looking at things.