I've been playing around with a 2xJuke defender + Palp list and I've been having a blast. As I play it more though, my mind drifts towards a possible mirror match and initiative.

For the sake of this question, let's say it's a two Juke Glaives plus Palp mirror match and I win initiative. Do I:

1. Take initiative so I can force the spending of tokens by shooting first with Juke still active.

2. Pass initiative to try and barrel roll out of arc.

I see high points to both arguments but would like some to make a discussion out of it.

What do you think and why?

Personally I would go with 1. take the initiative. Barrel roll by itself is only okay for arc dodging, and rarely lets you get in a shot while simultaneously avoiding enemy arcs. I think that you'll have far more scenarios where you force your opponent to spend their evade and neutering their juke.

I've been playing Palp Defenders since before vets came out (TTS) and have always taken initiative so I can block and know that my K-turns will make it. However, when I played Dee at regionals (Ryad/Stele/Delta) he won the roll and gave me initiative and his Ryad/Stele were arc dodging almost every turn and passing initiative was a good call for him. I also asked Dallas about this same question since he was also running defenders and he said that most of time being at 100 points he wouldn't be able to make the call and if he did it really just depends on the match up. I agree with that, but to go further I think it also depends on your play style. Do you wanna block? Do you have a dedicated blocker already like a Delta? These are all factors to consider.

Personally I would go with 1. take the initiative. Barrel roll by itself is only okay for arc dodging, and rarely lets you get in a shot while simultaneously avoiding enemy arcs. I think that you'll have far more scenarios where you force your opponent to spend their evade and neutering their juke.

I'm not so sure.

(assuming that you're going to trade fire at equal pilot skills)

Firing first does give you the advantage on Juke, but on the flipside you have to make the decision about whether or not to spend your focus on the attack, and you have to make that decision without any knowledge of whether or not you'll need that focus on defense.

Sure if you give away the initiative then you're sometimes losing the use of juke because you're spending your evade token on defense. But on the other hand you'll be flying safer because you will never spend on offense a token that you need for defense.

If you are moving first, it means that in a straight joust, which is common for Defenders, it means your shuttle will move first, which means he can either block their shuttle or move and focus/target lock without being blocked and block their K turn path.

What I found with Defender mirrors is that there will be a situation where you will both want to K turn, but only one of you will manage it. That leads to a full turn of fire against an evade token, Palp and three agility with no returns. They will K turn next turn (obviously) and you will once again be up their back sides and if played right, your shuttle is going to block their K turn for a second time and that should be the game.

I often favour handing initiative to my opponent for this reason.

Number 1

We played this and it turned out it wasn't the Juke that was important, it was that the player who moved second on the engage got to target lock with Ryad for Vessery to pick up, while the player who moved first had the opposing Ryad out of range.

If you take initative you've got to be very careful about managing the approach range.