Going first or second?

[templarios]

Greetings,

 

I play Nurgle SM, Eldar and IG. 9 times out of 10, I would prefer going first. I enjoy being the aggressor. I act and force my opponents to react thus keeping them on their heels while dictating the flow of the game. Going over the codex and many of the forum topics, one thing has struck me as lacking proper analysis: the initial set-up of the game.

 

Being a small elite army and as long as we have a choice, would it be to our advantage to start the game first or cede the openning turn sequence to our opponent?

 

I only play with painted armies so it will be a few weeks until I'll play my first game.

 

What have been your experiences so far??

 

Thanks,

 

Templarios.

[Marmande]

Kill/Victory Points-based = First

 

Objective-based = Second

[evileyevirtue]

It depends on the army really. With my BA, everything in the army deep strikes, so I always play second. This denies the opponent an entire round of shooting, and being that they are smaller because of all the JP's, it helps. if you're looking at DSing a whole lot, it might be better to go second. However, this is highly situational. If you're foot slogging or taking transports, it would be much better to first unless you have plenty of large terrain to block LOS.

[DV8]

It also depends heavily on the situation and the style of army you play. Mech armies, for example, who lose little to no firepower on the move, might give their opponent first turn in a Dawn of War scenario (even Kill Points) because it allows them to see where their opponent will roll on first turn. Or when Outflanking/Reserving with the entire army (my mech/air-cav hybrid Guard do this quite often), I'll give my opponent second turn, as it'll allow them to potentially bring on their own Reserves as well, allowing me to Alpha-Strike against their entire army (and robbing them of two turns where they do nothing against my army).

 

There are also situations where sometimes you'll simply want to give your opponent first turn in anticipation that they'll steal it anyways (if they have Asdrubael Vect, for example) or if you expect to (if you have Asdrubael Vect).

 

 

DV8