The turning point: Post match analysis.

So with a bit of free time this afternoon I wanted to experiment with a little idea I've had for a more in-depth analysis of key moments in a match.
Now before I go into further details which might be spoilery I suggest you take the chance to watch the Shuffle and Cut invitational video below, then join me after the jump where we will get into the meat of this post.



So the first spoiler is Max won.
Second spoiler is from turn six, which can be found on the video at 43:52
Now if your interested in guessing moves this game was pretty much straight forward up until this point where both players made an "error" (I'll explain the quote marks later).
The maneuvers for the two B-wings are pretty obvious, A 2 speed Koiogran turn would set them up behind whisper and at close range.
Whisper's maneuver also seems obvious, the number one move done by phantoms is to do a 90 degree turn after their decloak and most commonly it is done at the 1 speed. In this case David chose a 2 speed left turn.
Max's Y-Wing seemed obvious to me, I was certain he was going to make a maneuver to the left. Instead Max revealed his dial and went for a 1 bank right instead.
I was left thinking what-if, what would have happened, and then I went to work.

The above images show the start(left) and end(right) of Turn 6.

I did this to those images...

Then I turned those into maps for Vassal and checked everything lines up. Click to see full res versions to be able to see better.

Not bad, aside from the Phantom being slightly offset by about 15% which you could put down to player error when moving.

So now I can use Vassal to project the outcome should Max have chosen to move left.

First here's how things actually went down with the Y-wing being smack in front of Whisper.

Now I'm guessing the reason that Max didn't go left was that asteroid but let's take a look.

 If Max had of taken a 1 bank left, he wouldn't have made it to the asteroid and still have had space to maneuver straight or right on the next turn. However it would appear he would still catch Whisper's firing arc, although with a little margin for error he may have been all clear. Just in case lets go one step further.

Here after a 2 Speed left turn Max still manages not to touch the asteroid. and falls out of whispers arc. his next turn would have seen his maneuver template overlap the asteroid, but rolling once dice on the next turn is better than defending against five attack dice with one agility die.

Now in the case of this game Max's Y-Wing was at full health, David's Whisper was down to one hull point and had received the Damaged Sensor Array card meaning that his he would not be able to perform his cloak action. The VT-49 was limping over on the far side of the field having already received about 8 damage cards.

Maybe Max decided not to risk getting so close knowing that his Y-Wing could take everything Whisper could throw at it but he couldn't have known that David would fail is opportunity to turn his damaged sensor array face down.

Under any other circumstances a Y-Wing should have taken a left maneuver to try to move out of firing arc and leaving whisper without a target and without the opportunity to cloak using his Advanced Cloaking Device.

So that's what you could consider to be Max's error what about David.

David did great anticipating that Max would move right and masterfully placed himself to be directly in range one of the Y-Wing. But as I mentioned before Phantoms are notorious for their 1 speed turns after decloaking, and in this case David chose the 2 speed turn anticipating his opponent moving towards the board edge. but had he of chosed the 1 speed turn...

Had Whisper chosen a 1 speed turn Max's Y-Wing would not have been able to escape his firing arc. 

So that concludes this post. Please take a moment to let me know what you thought of this little experiment and I'll keep an out for other opportunities to try it out in the future.