Because I can't find any other than it's good not to have it.

If you and your opponent have a pilot with the same skill, you get to attack first.

You get to move /take actions after your opponent of the same skill level. So you get to see what action they chose before committing to your action.

Not quite.

Page 16: Initiative

"When ships of equal pilot skill value are activated, the player with initiative activates all of his ships with that pilot skill value first . Then the opposing player activates his ships. Initiative also applies during the Combat phase; the player with initiative resolves combat steps for his ships with that pilot skill value before his opponent (see “Simultaneous Attack Rule” above). If multiple abilities resolve at the same time, the player with initiative resolves his abilities first."

In summary:

Initiative means when you have the same pilot skill you activate first and you shoot first. If your abilities resolve at the same time, yours go first.

Remember:

It is generally better to move/activate second (you can react to your opponent after seeing his movement/action)

It is always better to shoot first (before you get blown up by the other guy)

So having the initiative is kinda not great. I think I would rather move/activate second and shoot second than activate and shoot first. Given the choice between building an army a few points short to gain initiative, I would rather hit 100 exactly to avoid getting it. Shooting first can be good too. Just depends.

Oh, sure Dave. That's only if you want to play by the rules .

oops.

Ha! Stupid facts, always getting in my way!

If you are not playing by points the initiative goes to Imperial, and since they usually got beat in the movies, that may be one other reason initiative is not always best.

So far, I like moving first and shooting first (so, I'd rather have initiative). When moving first I can avoid crashes and losing an action, and I will know who is going to be in range if I want to do a target lock. I agree, there are a few times when knowing what your opponent has done can help you choose an action (but, if there is a collision you lose your action and that advantage anyway). But, I've only played a couple of group games and a couple of solo games, so it's possible I'm missing something. But, my initial impressions are that I like having initiative.

I think the reason we have an Initiative rule at all is to handle rare cases where you have pilots from both factions having to act at the same time. I don't think that in broad strokes we can say whether or not having Initiative in the game is inherently advantageous or not, but rather that it can create some situational tactics that you can exploit.

For instance, let's say I have Darth Vader with no shields and 2 damage cards on his ship, flying along with his buddy Mauler Mithel. Wedge sees an opportunity to finish Vader off once and for all with a Marksmanship/Proton Torpedo combo to ensure maximum amount of overkill and wound the Imperial player's pride. Wedge gets a target lock on one turn, moving around on his next turn to take a head-on run at Vader.

What's this?! Vader just Swarm Tactics'ed Mauler to run with him at Pilot Skill 9, AND the Empire has the Initiative?! Vader answers Wedge's foolish gambit with a Marksmanship/Cluster Missile Combo at Range 2, and Mauler (who was conveniently spaced at Range 1 from Wedge, and another Range 1 from Vader) opens fire with 4 attack dice (+1 for Range 1 to Wedge, +1 for being Mauler).

Wedge takes 10 attack dice worth of TIE Cannon fire before he can fire off the missiles to finish off Darth Vader. If the Force is strong with the TIE pilots, Wedge will explode in a giant ball of flames, and Vader will still be alive to harass the rest of the Rebel player's ships for the duration of the match, which will likely be over soon, if Wedge just got blown up.

I realize that's HIGHLY situational, but if you're playing in a tournament, where all the rules regarding squad building and initiative are enforced, you could aim for coming with exactly 100 points of ships and upgrades and make that happen, since the Empire will always get the initiative if that player builds to the points limit exactly.

Of course, the advantage to Initiative is typically great for the Combat Phase, going second means you can spend your Focus action to score an extra Evasion result from your opponent's shooting, if it means surviving long enough to get your shots off. Shooting first, you can look at your attack die results and decide if you want to spend your Focus now; if it means getting the clean kill, go for it, if it doesn't, you may still want to preserve the Focus for when the opponent's ship fires back.

So the short version; having the Initiative (or not) in the game is a situational effect that a good tactician will remain aware of, and look for opportunities to exploit that position for maximum benefit. Read the table and try and think a couple of turns ahead, or outside of the game, try and imagine other scenarios where having Initiative or not might be crucial.

Don't forget that Wedge can still fire his missiles before blowing up - in your example all of them have 9 skill - pilots can still fire back even if they incurred lethal damage granting they all have equal skills. (See Simultaneous Attack rule)

ArcticSnake said:

Correct. Minor oversight in my above example. In the above example, you're going to be able to resolve your die rolls ahead of Wedge, but he will still get to make his attack after that.

For Wedge, depending on what happened with the die rolls from Mauler and Vader, could decide to alter his original intentions, and go with targeting Mauler with his primary weapon. In a case where Vader and Mauler had initiative and failed to wipe out Wedge with that giant volley of red dice, it might make sense to attempt to vaporize Mauler and keep the target lock on Vader and set up another Torpedo run on a subsequent turn.

Wedge could then take advantage of his own ability to reduce his target's Agility by 1, turning Mauler's Agility into 2. Since we established Mauler cheaply moved himself into range 1, Wedge can open fire with 4 attack dice with Marksmanship and potentially tear Mauler apart.

The way the rulebook provides an example implies that the player who doesn't have initiative (in this case, Wedge), waits until the player with initiative (Vader and Mauler) resolve their attacks before acting in the Combat Phase, so they do not have to commit to a course of action until the other player has finished theirs.

There are so many angles to look at a case like this when determining who really comes out the winner on having initiative or not, and I like how situational it all becomes.

cleardave said:

So no discernible benefit….other than the player with initiative hopefully becomes a better player due to the extra thinking he or she has to do.

I can't say there is no reason to field an imperial squad in a tournament, but those who favor the Empire will have to put some considerable thought into squad building.

I guess it's basically a balance mechanism more than an "advantage." I don't see it as a disadvantage though, because I think firing first is useful more often than not, so far in my limited gameplay.

qwertyuiop said:

Situations can arise where BOTH players need to do some thinking because of the timing issue. Like I said, while I don't believe that having the initiative or not is either good or bad, it just creates interesting little tactical moments every so often, that a more experienced player can potentially exploit for advantage.

Firing first is not always useful;

Let's look at Vader and Wedge, playing chicken with each other. Both players have no ships left, so it's man vs machine (and a twisted and evil one at that). It comes down to both pilots playing a deadly game of chicken for all the marbles. Vader has the initiative, so after he moves, he will have to choose his two actions wisely, not know what action Wedge will take for his movement.

Wedge can look at what actions Vader chose, and select an appropriate response based on that.

When it comes to the Combat Phase, Vader fires his primary weapon at Wedge. One of Vader's actions that turn was to Focus. His two attack dice come up as a Hit and a Focus. Does Vader spend the Focus token to make it two hits? I guess that would depend; would getting the second hit destroy Wedge? If so, I would say spend the token and close it out. If the second hit would not finish Wedge off, Vader might opt to save it for when Wedge is allowed to return fire, which isn't a bad idea since Vader will lose an Evade and might need all the help he can get.

Once Vader has made a decision to use the Focus or not, Wedge can roll his dice to defend the attack. At this point, he will have a clear picture, based on what Vader chose to do with the Focus, on whether or not to use his ("his" being Wedge) own Focus token if any Focus icons come up, and we're into the usual scenario of going second in Combat like every other encounter. The difference here is that Wedge got to Move and select his Action AFTER Vader, where normally a pilot that would be shooting second (because of a lower pilot skill) would be moving first.

It never hurts to keep an open mind to the tactical possibilities this game has to offer. There are certain situations we can agree are "good" combinations, like Luke/R2, Marksmanship/Cluster Missiles, but I think initiative is going to be one of those things that truly is whatever you make it, so make it a good one.

cleardave said:

But they have the same skill, so Vader would need to save his focus to make sure he doesn't die in Wedge's attack since the simultaneous attack rule will come into play with these two and Wedge will still fire at Vader whether he suffers a death blow or not. It's still strategic, so you're totally right about that.

Budgernaut said:

He may very well need to save his Focus to make sure he doesn't die, but it still comes down to several factors in that Vader vs Wedge hypothetical scenario;

Will Focusing for the extra hit be enough to finish Wedge off? If it is, you might consider using the Focus to guarantee that Wedge will be toast, and gamble that Wedge's attacks will not be able to finish off Vader, leaving you the victor in that engagement

If it isn't, the conservative move would be to save it for Wedge's attacks, with the hopes of negating enough damage to survive as well.

It comes down to decisions, and because this is a dice-based game, sometimes you just need to take the longshot for the fun of it and see what happens.

cleardave said:

This is assuming that Vader even takes a Focus action. He has to choose his actions before Wedge moves.

qwertyuiop said:

Correct. This is all hypothetical discussion to illustrate how your spot in Initiative can be advantageous, under the right conditions, regardless of whether you go first or second. It's just a matter of reading the situation and making the most out of your options.

The only advantage to having initiative that I've seen winds up lying with critical hits. If you manage to land a crit on the opposing ship with equal pilot skill, shooting before it will help you. Otherwise it makes no difference in the combat phase, as the rules for simultaneous shots mean the ship without initiative still gets to fire.

Also, the tournament rules use different criteria for determining advantage. If both squads have equal point values, you flip a coin.

AngryMojo said:

I don't see anything in the official tournament rules document that would support that…

It does have that in there, because in tournaments you could have Imp on Imp battles or Reb on Reb battles, so there would be no automatic determining for initiative.

magadizer said:

Page number? I just reread the tournament rules and still didn't see anything about flipping coins (other than determining the color of ID tokens in mirror matches if players can't agree). For Rebel vs Imperial battles at least, the tournament rules actually say that the rules from the main rulebook determine initiative (pg 1: "Sanctioned tournaments are played using the rules in the X-Wing core set rulebook," combined with no rule contradicting the rules for determining initiative).

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/x-wing/support/X-Wing_TournamentRules_V1.0.pdf

Page 2, Squad Deployment Procedure, section 4

Thanks. Figured I had to be missing something…

AngryMojo said:

This is the only benefit I can see from gaining initiative. IF you score a crit and IF the crit affects the target's attack, then it was worth it. It's a pretty fringe case though as only 8 of 33 crit cards affect a ships ability to attack. 2 of those only apply to secondary weapons, 2 apply to primary weapons, and 2 apply to talent cards and pilot abilities, thereby minimizing the situation further. Contrast that to always moving in reaction to your same skilled opponent and I think it's clear that having initiative is the weaker option. It could be totally game changing if you happen to crit, kill your target, and pull the blinded pilot crit that cancels his attack. Outside of that, it's a marginal advantage.

I think we're so used to having the initiative be a good thing that it becomes strange when it's actually suboptimal. Weird that the tournament rules also force the coin toss "winner" to have initiative. It'd be better if the winner had a choice, even if that choice was usually to defer initiative to your opponent. I guess if you had a squad that focused on scoring crits most of the time, it might be a little better but you're going for some pretty marginal set-ups to capitalize.

Let say you don't have initiative but you do have the lowest and the highest pilot card in the game. Won't you still move first and fire first? Then all the other pilots will fire in order of course using initiative. Or am I reading the rules wrong?