Giving your opponent turn 1

Heads I win, tails you lose.

Giving your opponent turn 1

Now most of us around here that remember 5th edition remember that turn 1 wasnt necessarily the game changer that most of us have seen since 6th ed. Its not really a rules change, or even a codex change, as much as a change in the meta. See 6th edition and to some extend 7th, the idea was the best defense was a strong offence, and spent the entire game trying to wipe the opponent off the board with glass cannon units rather than tough units that could hold an objective for a few turns. With the new maelstrom mission, tougher units are slowly making a come back. But, if your opponent is trying to destroy you as quickly as possible, why would you give them the first turn?

Well it all depends on army composition. Sometimes its really wise to go second.

I know most of you will scoff, remember that time that the guys Eldar army took 1/2 of yours of the board turn 1, and roll your eyes and say what would he know. But maybe you and your opponents armies were not suited for you to go second. Which also means his army is likely to be equally screwed if you went first.

If your opponent has a really long range army, going first could mean they deploy out of your range, which makes you have to advance, which gives them a free turn of shooting. Giving you 1 less game turn, and they still shoot you first. 

This is common of turtling armies, like a lot of tau builds, where they look for where you deploy and pick the opposite side. If you deploy bottom right, they deploy top left. If you spread your army across your board edge, they pick a corner and have to deal with half your army at a time as the opposite corner units spend their first few turns getting into range.

Alternatively, if you have the long range army, you can let them go first and see how they deploy and counter it. If they spread out (most players do) then just pick the corner which appears the fastest and deploy in front of it. Yes it does mean they close the gap faster, but it means their slow stuff, like their vindicators, spend turns 1-3 getting into range.

Now if you had turn 1, yes you would have an extra turn to shoot them before the vidicator got there, but! For every turn you get, your opponent also gets one. Which means if your opponent wastes their turn 1 advancing the distance you made by deploying second, you just got an extra turn at the end of the game.

I know it seems counter intuitive. But if you assume the game lasts to turn 7. Then deploying first means they shoot you for 7 turns, but you get the alpha strike. If you let them deploy first, and gain a turns worth of movement by deploying right, sure they made that up in turn 1, but now you only weather 6 turns of shooting from them. 

Now this is harder if the enemy is really mobile, in which case this tactic doesnt work as well. Unless your opponent is only semi mobile. If you read some of my previous posts, you'll see that making them split their army up and take you wave by wave makes life a lot easier for you.

If you are the shorter range army, then deploying second also helps. You wait to see how they deploy and take the shortest route. If they take the middle of their edge, follow suit, if they deploy top left corner, take bottom left. If they spread out, find their weakest point and aim for that 

Going second also helps in the mirror match. You put your antitank infront of their tanks, and your antiinfanty infront of their infantry. If they bunch in the center you can deploy in the 2 corners, with the bulk in one corner, and a unit or 2 of long range sniping units in the other. This means if they focus your main army they get shot by snipers who arent worth dedicating a portion of the army to deal with. And those snipers go a whole game without being harassed. If they spread along their edge, then you pick a corner and deploy there aim for the same corner on your opponents board edges (top left if youre bottom left) and then walk right dealing with their army in waves. 

There are plenty of other situations I will get into in the future but for now Im going to play some games!