What techniques have you found useful when you’re at an activation disadvantage, particularly when you’re at disadvantage to an imperial player?
My tactic against rebels with more activations of “concentrate fire and melt a few units” doesn’t work so well against red defense dice.
The answer “buy more minis”, while technically valid, isn’t going to help since I’m trying to stay on budget and plan the purchcases such they’re the optimum (least number of ultimately unused minis possible).
I am by no means an expert, or have played enough games to ever qualify as such, and am usually the guy with more activations, but I would say, keeping your hard-hitting troops behind cover to make them last longer is one thing. A lot of these large activation lists have pretty flimsy units like sniper two-some units.
When the opponent makes a mistake and leaves something out in the open you have to pounce on them. Knowing when to apply pressure (run in and steal an objective, or get a lucky roll and kill all of his units on the flank) you've got to use that to your advantage. Don't take unnecessary risks, like leaving Vader out in the open or over-using Guardian to whittle down your own units, etc.
Concentrate even more fire and melt a few units.
Supress and panic them if they’re corps and ion if they’re vehicles. Boom, useless units
I haven't seen anyone packing ion in a long time.
But high priority on suppressing unactivated units. I think it's even more important when you're down activations.
I try to concentrate my units so I have one side of the battle overwhelmed. If they have me at a big disadvantage I try and deploy in a way that gives me the local advantage and hope I can thin out a couple units to even the playing field.
Move/aim/dodge + standby. Make them come to you.
11 hours ago, OccasionallyCorrect said:I try to concentrate my units so I have one side of the battle overwhelmed. If they have me at a big disadvantage I try and deploy in a way that gives me the local advantage and hope I can thin out a couple units to even the playing field.
This would be my plan too. The potential problem you have with this plan is that your opponent will likely activate out of the way/disposable units which will force you to move into an ambush. At worst you get fired upon without retaliation possible. With that in mind, swifter units might be handy to reposition for local advantage as OC says. It might be a case of leader buffs adding to the speed of regular troops rather than having to take an airspeeder.
That said, a danger of being outnumbered is paralysis through suppression. In this case vehicles, especially armoured ones, might be useful.
Like Brightguy said:
11 hours ago, Brightguy said:I haven't seen anyone packing ion in a long time.
Kill moar enemy.
When I bring the ATST, it's all about suppression against unactivated units. If you can use all four weapons, you're likely handing out five suppression (thanks to the bonus one on the mortar). Spread it out across the table. Even if a unit was just going to move and dodge that round, you might take away the dodge, which makes it easier for your later units to shoot at it.
My thoughts after a few games with activation disavantage: be patient. With less activations overall you want them to come to you. High activation count means hes git more bodies to hide behind cover and battlefied is limited in that regard. Be pacient and dont move forward too much. If they have speeders with compulsory he will come, he cant prevent it and when he will engage you have everything waiting for him. Also in terms of battlefield conditions and setup get rid of rapid reinforcements. You dont want to have even less activations to work with and letting him engage with full force on round 2 (army upfront, some units behind) and if you get some guys in reinfocements he can outlast you, force to deploy your extra guys and then just kill them. Next up deplyment. Long march is good since the distance is even greater. Snipers are also good with their infinate range cause you can deal damage while hes approaching.