Return with my second article on strategic thought. This time I discuss the AIR cycle, an emulation of the habits high level players have outside the gaming table that makes them great players.

Once again I'd love to generate discussion and look forward to seeing some responses!

https://intelsweep.wordpress.com/2017/02/05/winning-the-post-game-the-air-cycle/

Good advice for pretty much any game you play.

Excellent read. I did a lot of stuff similar to this leading up to worlds as well. I asked local players to play strong meta lists, a variety of objectives, and so on. We would go through each game (sometimes during the game) and walk through the thought process. Which ship is my opponent going to activate first? If I activate X ship first and move it here, which one will he activate? If I deploy here, where will that place the main part of the battle? Going up to worlds I would also have my opponents game the system to stress test my fleet, assuming they had optimal commands and maneuvers at the right time, and I had to react and plan ahead for what I would anticipate those actions to be.

My biggest issue was deployment. I was deploying terribly off the bat. But even just walking through both my opponents and my own thought process allowed me to see the battlefield a lot better, understand the capabilities of my own ships, understand how much fire they can take, and how much fire it would take to kill my ships. Like you quoted Gink, you get a better feeling and just know a bit better what it will take to kill a ship. Not understanding the capabilities of Demolisher with initiative isn't good. Understanding that 3 Yavaris activated B-Wings can nearly cripple a full health ISD is important to know.

I went 2-2 at worlds, and while there were some definite times where my dice were hot/cold, my opponents dice were hot/cold, ultimately it didn't change the fact that I still would have lost due to my mistakes, it just might not have been as bad had the dice been different. Being able to look past the immediate outcome and analyze your own play is something that has helped me a lot.

I think overall I was just reiterating what you said in the article with my own experiences....oops. Good read.

3 hours ago, Card Knight said:

My biggest issue was deployment. I was deploying terribly off the bat. But even just walking through both my opponents and my own thought process allowed me to see the battlefield a lot better, understand the capabilities of my own ships, understand how much fire they can take, and how much fire it would take to kill my ships. Like you quoted Gink, you get a better feeling and just know a bit better what it will take to kill a ship. Not understanding the capabilities of Demolisher with initiative isn't good. Understanding that 3 Yavaris activated B-Wings can nearly cripple a full health ISD is important to know.

Heartily agree with this. Deploying with an in-depth knowledge/ experience of the various combos for/against you is such a critical aspect of the game in my opinion, one I still occasionally struggle with after playing for a year and a half The ISD example in the article perfectly illustrated this (and is something i have near exactly, and fatally, replicated recently).

Love these articles Captain Weather, stuff like this is what makes the forum worth logging on to - please keep 'em coming!

Fantastic article! The thoughts expressed in the article is exactly why I love this game. The opportunity for growth and development of ones own mindset when playing this game are huge. It is so much more then plastic space ships. Keep up the good work!

5 hours ago, Madaghmire said:

Good advice for pretty much any game you play.

Good advice for life in general.

Most 'best practice' rules of any task, skill, game, whatever are transferable.

Learning these things for a hobby will make you better at everything else in your life.

Its kinda why employers want 'well-rounded' employees, because skills learnt outside of work doing completely different things will make you a better employee. (I say kinda because, as with lots of things, the true reason for things often gets clouded. One employer may ask you a prospective employee about his weakness, or his hobby, for good reasons, another interview does it because they have been taught that that is just the question interviewers ask.)

Wonderful post, Hunter's Spider. Thank you for taking the time to write it.

5 hours ago, Card Knight said:

Excellent read. I did a lot of stuff similar to this leading up to worlds as well. I asked local players to play strong meta lists, a variety of objectives, and so on. We would go through each game (sometimes during the game) and walk through the thought process. Which ship is my opponent going to activate first? If I activate X ship first and move it here, which one will he activate? If I deploy here, where will that place the main part of the battle? Going up to worlds I would also have my opponents game the system to stress test my fleet, assuming they had optimal commands and maneuvers at the right time, and I had to react and plan ahead for what I would anticipate those actions to be.

My biggest issue was deployment. I was deploying terribly off the bat. But even just walking through both my opponents and my own thought process allowed me to see the battlefield a lot better, understand the capabilities of my own ships, understand how much fire they can take, and how much fire it would take to kill my ships. Like you quoted Gink, you get a better feeling and just know a bit better what it will take to kill a ship. Not understanding the capabilities of Demolisher with initiative isn't good. Understanding that 3 Yavaris activated B-Wings can nearly cripple a full health ISD is important to know.

I went 2-2 at worlds, and while there were some definite times where my dice were hot/cold, my opponents dice were hot/cold, ultimately it didn't change the fact that I still would have lost due to my mistakes, it just might not have been as bad had the dice been different. Being able to look past the immediate outcome and analyze your own play is something that has helped me a lot.

I think overall I was just reiterating what you said in the article with my own experiences....oops. Good read.

Hey don't worry, glad to hear my thoughts jived with your experiences. Also 2-2 at Worlds is still a respectable record (were you Day 1A by any chance?) given the size of the tournament, especially if you came away from it with a lot of knowledge about yourself as a player. Honestly, it took me a long time to sit down and critically analyse my Worlds campaign, so hats off to you.

1 hour ago, GammonLord said:

Heartily agree with this. Deploying with an in-depth knowledge/ experience of the various combos for/against you is such a critical aspect of the game in my opinion, one I still occasionally struggle with after playing for a year and a half The ISD example in the article perfectly illustrated this (and is something i have near exactly, and fatally, replicated recently).

Love these articles Captain Weather, stuff like this is what makes the forum worth logging on to - please keep 'em coming!

Thanks Gammon, makes all the effort into making them worthwhile.

Also my current mental plan is to finish this series of strategic thought articles with one centred on tournament play and the lead up to a tournament. After that I want to delve into a series centred on what I see as core aspects of the game that warrant serious discussion - first and foremost of these being deployment.

So hopefully you should be reading an article about deployment within about 4 weeks (the only problem with indepth articles is how long they take to do when you're trying to find the time around the rest of your life)!

This article is accurate and sums up my methods prepping for a tourney. I was one of the guys who was beating up on Card Knight'a fleet to get it ready for worlds. That helped me because I was playing a huge variety of fleets compared to my normal favorites.

One thing I do when prepping for a tourney that didn't get included was that I have the OpFor player be allowed to take back mistakes they make while I'm forced to keep my bad ones. Inwas taught that you always trained under worse conditions than the competition/game/tourney so a fair fight felt easy.

It means the Milwaukee regional will be rough for me. We've just been playing CC locally. I now have a good grasp of the limits and strengths of Sato from it (CC) though. But I'm not prepping a killer fleet as I should

5 hours ago, Captain Weather said:

Hey don't worry, glad to hear my thoughts jived with your experiences. Also 2-2 at Worlds is still a respectable record (were you Day 1A by any chance?) given the size of the tournament, especially if you came away from it with a lot of knowledge about yourself as a player. Honestly, it took me a long time to sit down and critically analyse my Worlds campaign, so hats off to you.

Nah Day 1B. My two losses were also to the Canadian National Champ (Kristjan I believe) and CNinja, so I didn't really sweat losing to them, as they are both excellent players. But even in those losses I could trace my actions back to where I made a mistake (or a couple) and they took definite advantage of it. Would I have won those games without those mistakes? Impossible to tell haha.

8 hours ago, Church14 said:

This article is accurate and sums up my methods prepping for a tourney. I was one of the guys who was beating up on Card Knight'a fleet to get it ready for worlds. That helped me because I was playing a huge variety of fleets compared to my normal favorites.

One thing I do when prepping for a tourney that didn't get included was that I have the OpFor player be allowed to take back mistakes they make while I'm forced to keep my bad ones. Inwas taught that you always trained under worse conditions than the competition/game/tourney so a fair fight felt easy.

It means the Milwaukee regional will be rough for me. We've just been playing CC locally. I now have a good grasp of the limits and strengths of Sato from it (CC) though. But I'm not prepping a killer fleet as I should

I'm a big fan of playing under the 'no take-backs' rule when you're preparing for a tournament as it forces you to think like you have to under tournament conditions.

Also, while not as intense CC should be helping you improve and maintain a lot of the base skills of Armada. If you can sneak in a long practice session (three games) beforehand you should be ok.

4 hours ago, Card Knight said:

Nah Day 1B. My two losses were also to the Canadian National Champ (Kristjan I believe) and CNinja, so I didn't really sweat losing to them, as they are both excellent players. But even in those losses I could trace my actions back to where I made a mistake (or a couple) and they took definite advantage of it. Would I have won those games without those mistakes? Impossible to tell haha.

Ah then you especially shouldn't feel bad! Kristjan is a fantastic player. I suspect CNinja is also as deadly in real life as he is on Vassal but the problem with forum names is you can never be sure if you ran into them or not.

I think the thing for me when I'm tracing my mistakes is not trying to determine whether I definitely would have won the game if not for those mistakes, but recognising that if I had done X or Y differently that I certainly would have had a far better chance at winning.

A great read and sound advice!

Fantastic article. The problem is that not everyone has enough time to play and think about game to cover all possible situations. Especially if ones is only casual player. This game has simply too much variables. But understanding the core of what you have said in the article helps. It is very true, it's always you, not a dice. And for me, this is why Armada is such a great game. It rewards you for your effort put into it, and that feels good.

1 hour ago, noggin said:

Fantastic article. The problem is that not everyone has enough time to play and think about game to cover all possible situations. Especially if ones is only casual player. This game has simply too much variables. But understanding the core of what you have said in the article helps. It is very true, it's always you, not a dice. And for me, this is why Armada is such a great game. It rewards you for your effort put into it, and that feels good.

You'd be surprised, I'd say good players think about Armada a lot but it's probably not an inordinate amount - and I would say as a rule the rest of life comes first for the most part. Agreed though, I love the strategic thinking behind Armada.