Thoughts on Movement

This was originally supposed to be a War College post but it's more of a set of disjointed, random thoughts about Movement systems and Movement within the game.  And for a next to last post in a random, disjointed year this will do nicely.

There's always a lot of confusion with new players about Movement systems and the "special ability" for that System and when it's available.  All the other Systems get a "special ability" when you equip two of those Systems.  Movement has the "special ability" front-loaded meaning it exists when you just have one of this System.  Although I have a long standing joke that the "special ability" for two Movement systems should be the ability to execute a Ramming attack like you can in Intercept Orbit.

Movement is what enables you to capture Stations -- which increases your score -- and allows you to run away from fights -- which keeps your score from decreasing, at least for a little while.  In one of the recent games we played the battlefield was built on a long, thin table.  As you can see from the battle report, the three attackers had trouble closing the distance to capture the Defender's Stations.  So you can see right there how important Movement can be in a game.

There are currently three Archetypes in the archive that feature Double Movement.  Two of those, the "Shoot & Scoot" (2Rd+d8/2G/2W) and the "Moving Wall" (2B/2G+d8/2W), might make a good fireteam if you can keep them close to each other while moving through the battlefield.  According to my (current, personal) Archetype statistics spreadsheet you currently have a 9% chance of encountering the first and an 11% chance of encountering the second archetype in a game.

Also in my Archetype statistics spreadsheet six other designs with double Movement systems have seen use in games.  Including the prior mentions, the full list is as follows: Moving Wall, Shoot & Scoot, Melee Sprinter (2Rh+d8/2G+d8), Fast Assault (2Rd/1B/2G), Fast Armored Scout (1B/2G+d8/1Y), Fast Stalker (2Ra+d8/2G), Fast Sniper (2Ra/1B/2G), and Fast Assault Scout (2Rd/2G/1Y).