A Turn Zero article by Matt Cary. Check it out here, and let us know if you have any more Turn Zero strategies.

I always love reading about Turn 0 strategies. I especially liked the discussion of turning points. For me, that is the key to correctly guessing/predicting where the initial engagement will occur.

A very good article.

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All this information is technically pre-Turn Zero, but it sets you up for the next piece, which is determining what is your prime target in your opponent’s list.

Absolutely this.

Whilst you can come up with fancy tactics and approach strategies, any truly reliable tactics have to be ones that work on game 5-of-5, when your opponent managed to dictate obstacle placement despite your best efforts, you haven't had any caffeine for three hours, the unpleasant temperature is getting to you, (whether too hot or too cold, the venue is never 'just right'...) and your brain is basically stew.

" Kill that one guy in particular " is about that level; it's a simple enough decision to make but one that picking wrong will cost you the game a disconcerting proportion of the time.

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Say perhaps you don’t know where you want your obstacles to be, but you know where you don’t obstacles to be. You can control that. When you place a rock down, you create a bubble where other rocks cannot be. Depending on the size of the obstacle, you draw an imaginary shape a little greater than range 2 to around range 3 in diameter. Use this to “place” your opponents rocks elsewhere.

You can also combine this with the 'channel' at the board edge(s). Placing a rock at range 3 from both edges in a corner creates quite a sizable 'dead zone' where no obstacle can exist. That's very useful if you need space for a 7 or 8 ship swarm to shake down from deployment positions into formation, for example.

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Another thing to consider is what parts of your opponent’s lists synergize with their obstacles. You picked your obstacles for a reason, and your opponent did the same. Try to understand why your opponent picked what they picked.

And consider avoiding it or making it go away. If you're looking at Dash, for example, who wants debris, or vultures or Mining Guild TIEs who want asteroids, your opponent is likely to want all the 'correct' obstacle types in the same area, and to fight in that area, If your vulture swarm opponent starts by placing an asteroid top left, and you've brought three debris, consider snaffling one of their other asteroids and placing it as far away as possible. Equally, given that so many units do synergise well with terrain now (Dash/Outrider, Han Solo/Lando's Millenium Falcon, Modified TIE/ln, "Blackout", Han Solo/Millenium Falcon, Vulture Droids, and probably several others I'm missing), there's a real argument for finding 3 points for Seismic Charges. They're good both against swarms and against 'terrain fighters', as well as being very flexible bombs since you only have to be within range 1 of an obstacle that's within range 1 of the target, rather than being within range 1 yourself.

2 hours ago, MidWestScrub said:

A Turn Zero article by Matt Cary. Check it out here, and let us know if you have any more Turn Zero strategies.

Nice write-up! Im working on my own turn 0 series of articles. Like your pivot points explanation. Nicely done!

Great article, Matt! Following your blog now. I appreciate that you took the time to write it and provide illustrations (greatly helpful to noobs like me). Looking forward to more Yoda-like wisdom

R/,

TC2

2 hours ago, Tomcattwo said:

Great article, Matt! Following your blog now. I appreciate that you took the time to write it and provide illustrations (greatly helpful to noobs like me). Looking forward to more Yoda-like wisdom

R/,

TC2

Matt wrote the article, but I am not him. I appreciate the follow, and I'll certainly let him know you enjoyed the article.

That's some really good, well-written advice for players of all skill levels. Even if you normally do it, it's good to be thinking target priority and pivot points.

14 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

And consider avoiding it or making it go away. If you're looking at Dash, for example, who wants debris, or vultures or Mining Guild TIEs who want asteroids, your opponent is likely to want all the 'correct' obstacle types in the same area, and to fight in that area, If your vulture swarm opponent starts by placing an asteroid top left, and you've brought three debris, consider snaffling one of their other asteroids and placing it as far away as possible. Equally, given that so many units do synergise well with terrain now (Dash/Outrider, Han Solo/Lando's Millenium Falcon, Modified TIE/ln, "Blackout", Han Solo/Millenium Falcon, Vulture Droids, and probably several others I'm missing), there's a real argument for finding 3 points for Seismic Charges. They're good both against swarms and against 'terrain fighters', as well as being very flexible bombs since you only have to be within range 1 of an obstacle that's within range 1 of the target, rather than being within range 1 yourself.

Vulture droids' struts work on debris too.

Apologies. Consider the above sentance modified to say "gas clouds". The principle remains the same, though; nothing stops you placing the obstacles your opponent brought to make life more annoying for them.

Either way, @Magnus Grendel , you had some excellent points in there. I'm glad you took the time to share.

Honestly, I think this is the best article on Turn 0 I've seen so far. Very nice!

2 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

Honestly, I think this is the best article on Turn 0 I've seen so far. Very nice!

That's awesome to hear. I'll let Matt know you said that!

15 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

Honestly, I think this is the best article on Turn 0 I've seen so far. Very nice!

Whoa, thank you for the high praise, GreenDragoon! I have another one coming out next week, stay tuned!

On 3/13/2019 at 6:33 PM, Tomcattwo said:

Great article, Matt! Following your blog now. I appreciate that you took the time to write it and provide illustrations (greatly helpful to noobs like me). Looking forward to more Yoda-like wisdom

R/,

TC2

Thank you, Tomcattwo! As MidWestScrub said, it is his blog, I just edit and guest write. But thank you for the follow, we will continue to put out content that hopefully helps everybody.