The main idea of this thread is to talk and get table experience on whether its properly possible to win with decent frequency (say 40%-60%) with a mid-Init pilot (I3 I4) vs a high-Init pilot (I5 I6).

This situation came up in a scenario play we did. I had an Ahsoka list + some generics vs a Kylo list + some generics. It happened that towards the end Ahsoka went up directly against Kylo. Even in this case, I had to flee with Ahsoka even though I've been playing for 3 years or so, vs an beginner on their 3rd match.

Now, first, in a 1v1, how many of you would be willing to gamble your tournament life on flying Ahsoka vs Kylo? Its not a "fair" match, and its not really meant to be - because often in real life play, situations of unfair circumstances happen very often. Now the issue though is are mid-Init pilots seriously simply fodder for high-Init? It feels that way at this point in 2.0-balance.

Play these matches against an equally skilled or higher skilled player piloting the higher Init ship. Please try these situations out in a real match.

Situation 1: Ahsoka 7B R2 (70) vs Kylo AdvOptics (80).
This match is decidedly unfair. Not only that but Ahsoka's points are obviously also meant to reflect a coordinate-esque tax. However, can you win here? Try it on the table.

Situation 2: Ahsoka 7B R2 Sense SpareParts (79) vs Kylo AdvOptics (80).
Sense helps out a huge deal here. Could you win this?

Situation 3: Mace 7B R2 Sense AfterBurners or SpareParts (80) vs Kylo AdvOptics (80).
Mace has a more solo type of ability. You could also swap out any of these upgrades for what you want, up to 80 points. Could you win this?

I think that being able to win 40% of the time in Situation 1 means there's some serious magic to be had here and with your flying. However I expect the typical success rate of most players (assuming equally skill opponents) to be around 20%.

Are these all at the end of a game? Or, can we assume that they've been fighting other ships, etc, even if they're at full resources?

Situation 1)

Either way, taking a slow and wide engagement with Ahsoka from between the rocks should give you the ability to get some hits in. Once you've engaged, Kylo either needs to disengage hard, or take the joust.

I think it's winnable? Not easily. The issue is, Kylo just has the better statline, to start. But Ahsoka has Regen, so...who knows? If she can get the chase, she should be able to get it.

Situation 2)

I believe so. Being able to get the blocks in would help. Kylo could still arc dodge, but, you should be able to prevent him from getting shots without retaliation.

Situation 3)

Yes. I would say so. Mace is brutally efficient. With Regen, Sense, and either Spare Parts or Afterburners, I'm confident I could take Kylo about 50% of the time, if my dice didn't screw me. But, I've also flown Jedi a ton, and not flown against second edition Kylo yet, so...

For what happened to me, both Ahsoka and Kylo happened to be at full health/statuses.

Yes, the situations are meant to be pure 1v1s, 6 obstacles etc.

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Realize, I'm not asking for theoretical help. I've got three years of experience as an avid player, I know my basics. I'm asking anecdotally if after table experience whether people think they can win at a percentage value, around 40%.

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Reminder that blocks don't really get in a 1v1, its a one ship vs one ship. No one else can shoot them if you block them with your single ship.

8 minutes ago, Blail Blerg said:

Reminder that blocks don't really get in a 1v1, its a one ship vs one ship. No one else can shoot them if you block them with your single ship.

Blocks are important even in a 1v1 situation, for a few reasons:

1: Regen. If you know you have the block, you can safely regen without losing out on a damage exchange, because your opponent will not be firing at you.

2. Attack denial. Against someone super consistent like Vader or Poe, getting a block off when instead you'd trade a lesser attack against their strong attack is usually a good play, especially if next round you both flip and end up on more even footing (or you flip and they don't, and now you're chasing - this is good!)

3. Establish the Chase. If you can call a red maneuver from your opponent, blocking it will put you in position to flip the following turn while they either run stressed or clear stress. Either way, you're probably behind them now. They either run for a few turns to try to come around, or they clear stress while you flip, then they flip while you clear stress, giving you action advantage. Either is good.

Just looking at ship and pilot stats, I think the win rate is going to be south of 40%. The three big things are health, agility and initiative, the biggest being initiative. Given pilots of similar caliber I think the advantage falls heavily to Kylo.

3 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

Reminder that blocks don't really get in a 1v1, its a one ship vs one ship. No one else can shoot them if you block them with your single ship.

Agreed. But it does give you a chance to acquire locks and recover shields, and recharge force for those characters who have it.

3 hours ago, Stoneface said:

The three big things are health, agility and initiative, the biggest being initiative. Given pilots of similar caliber I think the advantage falls heavily to Kylo.

Indeed. Regen is nice to have but you need to disengage to use it since it disarms you.

3 hours ago, Eruletho said:

Establish the Chase. If you can call a red maneuver from your opponent, blocking it will put you in position to flip the following turn while they either run stressed or clear stress. Either way, you're probably behind them now. They either run for a few turns to try to come around, or they clear stress while you flip, then they flip while you clear stress, giving you action advantage. Either is good.

Ultimately, you can't afford a turning fight, because of the initiative advantage and autothrusters. Blocking a red move is good, but actually it doesn't need to be a red move per se. One downside of Autothrusters over Fine-Tuned Controls is that the TIE/vn can't pull autothrusters/red move and for that matter is probably hesitant to pull autothrusters/white move and stay stressed.

Using your opponent's stressed turns to overshoot and flip around behind them is one of your best option - which is probably why Mace has as good a chance as any - an advanced move plus afterburners plus sense makes him very hard to evade. You may well be able to avoid him getting a shot, but avoiding his shot and getting a shot yourself is going to be incredibly hard to pull off, and with a deeper force pool and regen, 'no shots fired' turns generally favour the jedi.

Yeah honestly, I'd be very hard pressed to actually win this engagement...

I think you're looking at this from the wrong angle.

Ahsoka has a support ability, and is priced accordingly - ie over-priced if she can't support another ship. She should lose any one-on-one battle with anything of a similar cost which is designed and costed to operate by itself.

The fact that quite a few people think she can win a decent percentage of these matchups at all shows how good her ship and the force is!

An Init3 Jedi Knight with 7B is 58pts. Many people think that is over-priced. Even if you add more points for a 2nd force (plus ability) and an R2 unit, Kylo *should* stomp all over it.

Ahsoka can support herself though, making her reasonably strong in a 1v1.

However, moving last + double repo + passive mods is the real killer.

4 minutes ago, Cuz05 said:

Ahsoka can support herself though, making her reasonably strong in a 1v1.

However, moving last + double repo + passive mods is the real killer.

Yes, which is why Ahsoka stands a chance against Kylo - but if she could win anything approaching 50% of the time, then Kylo is way over-priced!

A more interesting comparison would be Plo-Koon vs Kylo. Plo with 7B is one point cheaper than Ahsoka, matches initiative and Force with Kylo, but is higher initiative than Ahsoka.

Weakest: Ahsoka - she's not able to leverage her points by assisting a 2nd ship.

But, who wins out of Plo and Kylo? If it comes down solely to who moves second, then Plo should win every time (Kylo is 76pts bare, Plo is 69 with 7B and R2).

13 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

Situation 1: Ahsoka 7B R2 (70) vs Kylo AdvOptics (80).
This match is decidedly unfair. Not only that but Ahsoka's points are obviously also meant to reflect a coordinate-esque tax. However, can you win here? Try it on the table.

Keep your distance and use the obstacles. Ahsoka has TL + Focus or Evade + Force or Evade + Focus every round, so she's relatively safe.

Kylo doesn't have SNR, and while having good blues, is limited if using Autothrusters. Keep him in that R2-R3 arc band and you'll eventually get a couple of highly modified shots, and should be able to poke damage in on him. Just don't let him get R1 on the maneuver, where he can arc dodge and still get a shot. Take advantage of blocking for resets and to get behind as well. If you can get behind him, you can keep major pressure on him as well, since he'll have to stress himself to get out of arc.

Depending on board state, I can win this anywhere from 25-50% of the time.

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Situation 2: Ahsoka 7B R2 Sense SpareParts (79) vs Kylo AdvOptics (80).
Sense helps out a huge deal here. Could you win this?

Sense helps out a bit, but so does SpareParts - This should put fear in Kylo, as Ahsoka can drop the spare parts to double/triple stress and really limit Kylo. Sense vs double reposition in a 1v1 loses a lot of power, since he has so many ending locations.

Depending on board state, I can win this anywhere from 35-60% of the time.

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Situation 3: Mace 7B R2 Sense AfterBurners or SpareParts (80) vs Kylo AdvOptics (80).
Mace has a more solo type of ability. You could also swap out any of these upgrades for what you want, up to 80 points. Could you win this?

Ahsoka has the better solo ability. Do people not realize that Ahsoka's ability affects herself? Focus + TL + 1 force > TL + 3 force, specially since Ahsoka can always have atleast focus + TL, whereas Mace may be down to Force + TL

Otherwise same concept: Keep your distance for a wider arc that's harder to arc dodge.

Depends on bid, for final points. If we are both equal, Jedi only have 2 final salvo vs 3 for Kylo. Probably around 30-55% though, depending on board state.

Every mid initiative vs high initiative fight I've won has been because the mid-initiative ship had strengths that supported fighting at long range. This lets them minimize the maneuverability advantages of the higher initiative ship. One of the problems is that 7bs aren't great in a long range fight because they rely more on maneuverability for defense than their green dice. Kylo outmatches Ahsoka at her chassis' strengths on this matchup.

Agreed on that front; trying to engage at range 3 with primary weapons is not especially effective at the best of times, but against an agility 3 target it's really hard to make damage stick.

Call me crazy, but there's a 12pt difference between baseline Ahsoka 7B and Kylo, why should that be winnable? Should a Red Squadron X-Wing stand a chance against Wedge?

2 ships separated by 6% of the total points available in the match, should be pretty far apart and if they're not, one of them is costed wrong.

If you want some really messed up costing, an Imdaar Test Pilot is 1pt away from a Red Squadron Vet and 3 pts away from a Blue Squadron Escort. If you had to play a match of a blue squadron escort vs the test pilot, could you even win that 10% of the time? Red Squadron at least is the same initiative, but the Phantom likely still takes it 60-70% of the time.

In short the answer is that as Ahsoka you need to be real intentional, but aggressive. You have lower initiative with a worse stat line, and are behind on points. It is absolutely winnable though, but you need to outplay your opponent and find a way to take the initiative away.

What I mean by that is dictate the terms of engagement. Force them to spend their actions repositioning, not getting shots to avoid your shot. And get a little cooperation from the dice. If you do things right you may get one or two real good cracks at Kylo without retribution. If the dice blank on you then, not much you can do. Sometimes a 4 dice lock and focus shot rolls blanks into blanks.

But the key is try and force them i to position where they get stressed. Once Kylo becomes stressed then Ahsoka has a maneuverability edge. If you can establish that, you have a chance. If kylo is always having to get stressed then you can get into advantageous positions where there is either mutual shots where you have better mods, or where you get unreturned fire. Or just nobody shooting. Get behind and force him to stay stressed and you can win. Slower is better, barrel rolls to move back and create space are great too.

But if you can restrict Kylos dial, limit the options, you can have a chance. But the reality is that you need to play better than your opponent at that point to have that chance. Which may mean doubling down on a win or go home choice where if you are correct gives you a great opening, but if you are wrong probably creates one against you. But knowing when that move is there and choosing to use it is hard to tell, you just need to be able to read it correctly. But often in this case would mean blowing both force charges to reposition, focus, and lock and hope Kylo can not escape the trap.

Remember. This isn’t meant to be fair. Not at all. Especially situation 1.

Its a question of how unfair is this based on real table experience. What percentage is the win rate? Are mid init pure fodder for high init?

Also remember it’s 1v1 no other ships in the list. Completely in a vacuum with 6 obstacles. What can you do?

Be interested to see what people’s results are from trying it are. Anecdotally.