War College: Gaming the System

When putting together a squad for a game there are several questions you should ask yourself when choosing the number of Frames and number of Systems.

How many players are there?  Is it a Skirmish or a Battle?  Do you want to be Defender, Attacker, or Primary Attacker?  Figuring out where you want to be in the initiative order and how you want to play will help you construct your squad.

First step: How many players are there?  Knowing this gives us the range of Frames we are allowed to use.

Second step: Is it a Skirmish or a Battle?  Knowing this either increases or decreases the amount of Frames we are allowed to use.

Third step: Do you want to be Defender, Attacker, or Primary Attacker?  Now we start selecting how many Frames we want to have and how many Systems we want to carry.

Now that we've gone over those steps let's try and figure things out.

Let's just state right out, it's easy to be Primary Attacker.  Just show up with the maximum Frames and Systems for the number of people/game size your group has chosen.  If there's more than one of you it's a die roll to determine who the Primary Attacker will be.  This doesn't require much work.

Aiming for Attacker or Defender is a little more of a balancing act.  Underbid in an aim to be in the middle of the pack when everyone else comes in heavy and you could be an Accidental Defender.  Underbid too much and you're left with inadequate forces to survive the game.

The Oasis 4 game has a decent spread so let's look at that one.

1st & 2nd Step: We had five players and had chosen Battle for the game size.

3rd Step: I wanted to try the Sniping Turtle Formation so I underbid on Frames and Systems to try and take Defender, I chose (4 Frames & 15 Systems).  Nikko came in heavy -- full Frames and Systems -- aiming for Primary Attacker, he chose (5 Frames & 20 Systems).  The other three players underbid on Systems aiming for Attacker, Chuck chose (5 Frames & 18 Systems), Occam's Spork chose (5 Frames & 18 Systems), and PJ Nicht chose (5 Frames & 19 Systems).  

That lead to me being Defender (7 PpA * 5 assets) = 35 points. Chuck, Occam's Spork, and PJ became Attackers (4 PpA * 6 assets) = 24 points. Nikko became the Point Attacker (3 PpA * 6 assets) = 18 points.  Did it all work out?  I won, so I'm biased in thinking that it did.  :-)

If you have an established group, keep records of games, or post game reports online -- gee, who could I be talking about? -- it can be easier to estimate what your opponents are bringing to the table.  If you're playing against a group of strangers it's more of a guessing game and you could end up as Primary Attacker or Defender.