Awright heres the situation: Player A just won a battle against player B...now player B counter-attack but Player A decide to retreat. Player A put a command counter in a adjacent Hex that is closer to player B's Home system. After pre-combat+the round of battle, Player A move his fleet in the adjacent Hex. After other ppls turn, Player B decide to attack the retreated fleet again. And player A do what he did at last attack...so he retreat in the Hex next to player B's Home system. If we put this together you have fleet that has moved 3 times and put player B in a crucial situation because if A plays before B in the next game round, he can manage to do some crazy bull and/or eliminate the player B.

So what i want to know is if there is any restriction for retreating? because yeah it can be very abusive and make the Naalu racial very powerful. we read the rules over and over but its not mentioned for a ''once per turn'' or something preventing multiple retreat. The onlty thing that can prevent this is to be short in command counter or the Action Card that prevent retreat. I'd like to have you opinion on this.

thanks in advance

Well, player A can only retreat to an empty or friendly system, so player B should probably spend an action placing a destroyer or cruiser in the problematic system, thus blocking A's retreat path, before attacking A's already activated (and therefore immobile) fleet.

In the expansion (with the rule for tactical retreats), this is even more of a danger.

Assuming each system that player A retreated into was empty (I'm guessing they weren't friendly) then this play is perfectly legal. As Azure mentioned, player B can easily prevent this by keeping one or more units in hexes near his home system, which he probably should be doing anyway. He could also prevent it by not continuing to attack the same fleet belonging to player A over and over again once he released they were retreating toward his HS.

Turtling can be a problem in TI3, so I'm always glad to hear about players who aren't afraid to go out and mix it up, but it sounds like player B might be going little crazy with bloodthirst here, and he's screwing himself in the process.

thats what i thought....its legal and can be prevented...but at what cost lol? spending Command counter for tactical moves just to block hexes is clearly at the advantage of all other players since theres less CC to complete your game round....hmmm...a clever move....well i guess ill have to add those kinds of move in my ''dont forget that ****'' list.....still i think it should have some restriction..awright we'll just do with it boooooooo

Saikoro said:

If player B had spent his second attack moving a small fleet into the hex between his HS and player A's fleet, instead of attacking him a second time, then he wouldn't be any worse off for CCs, he'd have as many or more ships on the board (depending on if he took any casualties in the one round of combat that took place) and he'd have a fleet in place in case player A continued his aggression in the following Action Phase.

This particular tactic can really only work if player B leaves himself open to it - player A's fleet can't retreat anywhere unless it's attacked. It's just a question of recognizing your opponent's strategy and figuring out how to counter it, which is sort of the meat and potatoes of most war games. =)

I would also like to point out that:

1. Tactical retreats cost 1 Command Counter from Strategy Allocation, so you cannot do it "at will".
2. Unless player A was Naalu, the retreat happens after the first combat round, so if player B attacked with enough units he should have depleted player A's fleet somewhat for it not to be that much of a threat.
3. If he was Naalu, poor him, because fighters are nerfed by Shattered Empire so much that Naalu's +1 is nigh useless. So making their retreat ability more meaningful is only fair in my opinion.
4. If you have an Admiral in your fleet and the other player does not, he cannot retreat.
5. Since you cannot pick up units when retreating, player B has played poorly to let himself be in such a position to be eliminated like that. Even if Player A could blockade Player B's home system next round, Player B should be able to drive him out with the 2 attack fleets.
6. If player B did not attack with enough force, and has left the path to his Home System free of ships with the knowledge that he does not have initiative on player A in the next round, I think you can say that player A did a very smart move! I would go as far as to say that this sort of stuff makes TI3 such a good game.

magicoctopus said:

For what it's worth, there are two exceptions to this:

- Skilled Retreat

- Naalu ability

(In the FAQ, both are specifically mentioned as ways to bypass the Admiral ability).

I have not played the expansion. In the original I can't see how this situation would be possible except if player B does not see the waring of player A putting a cc next to his home system without doing anything and Player A being so sure of Player B's attack that he sacrifies a CC for the posibility.

Has it happend/worked to anyone? Or attempted by anyone?

Imnos said:

Tactical Retreats is an optional rule from the expansion that allows a player to declare a retreat and then place a CC in an adjacent empty system from his Strategic Allocation. If they were playing with this rule (as many players do with the expansion) then player A would not have had to place the CC before the attack came, as long as the system he wanted to retreat to was empty when the combat began.

Hence why some posters were saying all Player B needed to do was keep a small presence in systems around his HS to prevent the retreat.

Steve-O said:

For what it's worth, as clarified in the FAQ, the system you are Tactical Retreating to doesn't have to be EMPTY, it just has to be free of enemy units. IE, you can retreat there if there are friendly ships there already (though you'll be "locking down" the system if you do).