Talk:Initiative/@comment-91.96.111.161-20171225184400/@comment-454133-20171225192340

I initially went into the game assuming initiative was better, and that low Pilot Skill is bad. Not so, and this complexity is part of what makes X-Wing such an awesome game. ^_^

Initiative is not intended to be universally good! It's a very complex matter, and you need to understand your fleet well (and possibly your opponent's fleet) to know the right choice to make when you get to choose initiative. Quite often you want to give initiative away, but other times you want it for yourself.

Some ships want to shoot first to kill a foe or crit it early, or activate Advanced Cloaking Device. Consider Kylo Ren (Crew) giving the victim I'll Show You The Dark Side, choosing, shooting the foe before they can shoot, and getting a crit with RAC's pilot ability. The end result is the enemy gets Blinded Pilot and doesn't get to attack, because you shot first. In some cases, ships want to shoot last e.g. to exploit enemies that have used all their tokens.

Most arc-dodgy ships want to activate last, so they can reposition at maximum effectiveness (barrel rolling or boosting out of arc or range, so they avoid being shot entirely, or Fenn Rau boosting into range 1). Ships that need to target lock for munitions or abilities tend to want to go last as well, thanks to how the positioning shuffle works during a joust (as you pointed out).

However, Spacetug Tractor Array and Black Market Slicer Tools work best on rock-bottom Pilot Skill: you want to go before your opponent has a chance to escape your planned maneuver, or clear their stress. If you match the PS of your opponent, you may want to take initiative to make sure you go first. Low-PS ships in general do well as "blockers", which move in the way of an enemy to force them to bump and miss out on their action and other abilities (like TIE/x7); even high-PS ships with initiative can pull this off.

In some very special cases, initiative affects the order in which abilities resolve. For example, if you hit your foe with Harpoon Missiles and give them the "Harpooned!" condition (which triggers with the same timing as if it were owned by the opponent), then hit them with a Twin Laser Turret and score a crit, initiative will determine whether Harpooned triggers before the TLT cancels all its dice. There are a few crazy edge cases like that.

And even if there are no shared pilot skills between your two teams and no abilities that trigger at the same time, Initiative may still be valuable for determining who places the first vs last obstacle. Proper obstacle placement can actually win or lose some games, or at least contribute to it. For example, if you're fighting TIE Defenders, you don't want to give them too many easy jousting lanes. Many fleets rely on trying to lure the foe into the asteroids.

Initiative itself can be so important that fleets hinge on it for their victories. Consider the "initiative bid": players will leave their squad at 99, 98, even lower points so that they will get to choose who has initiative. Sometimes it's mandatory for their squad to get initiative, other times it's very important to give initiative to the opponent. Sometimes it simply does not matter. But they want that bid so they can choose when they need to do so.

For your Soontir? Probably give the foe initiative. It's nice to attack first, but the Simultaneous Attack Rule still lets them return fire. Unless you hit them with Blinded Pilot, Weapons Failure, etc, then their attack could wreck you. Instead, give them initiative so you can boost, barrel roll, etc and escape the murder zone. There may be other circumstances that have you wanting initiative though! So keep an eye on what your opponent has, and weigh that with how you like to fly.

I hope that helps!