Initiative is still confusing me.

If we are tied on points and pilot skill how does initiative work? We've used dice rolls, but then giving away or taking initiative doesn't make sense to me.

Who moves/shoots first?

If one player spent fewer points, they choose who gets initiative. If you're tied on points, you randomise who gets the choice of initiative (the most common method is to roll a red die and call hits/crits vs eyes/blanks, which is a 50:50 chance).

The person who gets the choice chooses either to move first and shoot first on PS clashes, and resolve first on any other timing clashes, or to move last, shoot last on PS clashes, and resolve last on any other timing clashes. This situation persists for the whole game.

Remember initiative for that moving and shooting only matters in that moving and shooting situation when players have ships acting at the same PS. If the two of you have no ships at the same PS and you can avoid effects where timing matters then the only place Initiative matters is that the person who has it starts placing obstacle first.

If you have initiative you shoot first. Any crits are applied before the other guy attacks. If you're lucky enough to score a Blinded Pilot, there's no counter attack.

If you don't have initiative, you move last and shoot last, assuming equal pilot skill. The advantage here is you get to see where the other guy has moved to. If you have the ability, you can boost or barrel roll to get into firing position or out of his firing arc.

That's the trade off. Shooting first vs seeing where your opponent ends up. It only matters with pilots of equal PS value.

One other time where initiative matters is on abilities that trigger after attacking or after defending or other abilities that trigger at the same time.

The player with initiative resolves their abilities first.

One example would be if 2 players were fielding Corran Horn and both wanted to perform the additional attack at the start of the End phase. The player with initiative would get to fire first and potentially cause a crit as Stoneface describes. This is an example where you want initiative.

Another example would be Old Teroch and Palob Godalhi. Assuming Teroch is faced off with Palob at range 1 and has initiative. At the start of combat, Teroch gets to strip Palob's tokens, but immediately after, Palob can take Teroch's focus token and assign it to himself. This is an example where the Palob player likely does not want initiative.

Initiative can be extremely important depending on the abilities of your squad as compared to your opponent.

2 hours ago, USCGrad90 said:

One example would be if 2 players were fielding Corran Horn and both wanted to perform the additional attack at the start of the End phase. The player with initiative would get to fire first and potentially cause a crit as Stoneface describes. This is an example where you want initiative

It should be noted here that initiative is what determines the order even if the Corran from the player with initiative happens to have a lower PS. There are a few times (decloaking) where PS will still matter but with these simultaneous events that require initiative to determine the order the PS will not matter.

18 hours ago, player2456237 said:

Initiative is still confusing me.

If we are tied on points and pilot skill how does initiative work? We've used dice rolls, but then giving away or taking initiative doesn't make sense to me.

Who moves/shoots first?

One player has initiative for the whole game, at all times .

This is worked out before the game, and if one player spends less points, they get to choose. Otherwise, it's dice (rules recommended), coin flips, competitive haiku poetry, however you and your opponent agree to resolve it.

The rule for initiative is simple; whenever both players should do something at the same time according to the rules (like two PS9 pilot activating), the person with the initiative goes first , regardless of whether that's a good thing (normally the case for shooting first) or not (normally the case for moving first)

This applies in every other case, too. So if both players have an 'after you execute a manoeuvre' trigger - say, a TIE/x7 Defender has just parked in front of a ship with Snap Shot - then initiative would determine whether X7 is resolved before Snap Shot (and hence, whether you have an evade token available during the attack).

Cheers all. I guess it will take practice to see how to get an advantage off of an opponents list you haven't seen before.

The list I have in mind uses only ps 5-7. So is it worth using all 100 points? As most people have low ps generics or high ps aces, I would only be fighting for the first rock.

38 minutes ago, player2456237 said:

Cheers all. I guess it will take practice to see how to get an advantage off of an opponents list you haven't seen before.

The list I have in mind uses only ps 5-7. So is it worth using all 100 points? As most people have low ps generics or high ps aces, I would only be fighting for the first rock.

Difficult to say without seeing the whole list, but bidding for initiative mostly matters to the highest PS pilots. With only 5 to 7 you may well not care.

It's Guri, Dalen and Torkel or Palob. I'm leaning towards Torkel to make the ps less of an issue.

You probably don't care then. Especially if you use Torkil rather than Palob.

They only points where you will likely care are when you have clashes of timings at the start of combat, which predisposes you just slightly to taking initiative (so that you can get Guri's ability before the likes of Ahsoka barrel roll out of r1) but it's probably not worth a bid to do so.