Strategic Initiative: How to Pay to Flip

 

Hello and welcome back to another edition of Strategic Initiative! In this edition, I'll be covering some of the basic tactics involving what are commonly called Pay to Flip scenarios.

First things first, what are Pay to Flips? They're a type of Secure scenarios that are called like they are because, instead of having to secure it by having more contesting models than the opposing player, you have to control those points by interacting with them, which usually involves a dice roll and different threshold which we'll cover later. As with every other Interact, doing so costs the character 1 power and is limited to once per turn per objective token. This means that you cannot try to roll and take control of a given secure with the same character twice in their turn. 

Now let's take a look at the available scenarios which fit this description.

 

 

From the scenarios here, we can see that all but one of them work off a defensive stat, which means that the better the stat, the more dice you roll (and the better your chances of taking control of the secure). An important thing to keep in mind, is that for all the ones using a defensive stat, you only need to roll more offensive successes (hits, crits and wilds) than the number of healthy enemy characters contesting the secure. This means that, often, later in the game, fewer models are usually able to make you dice roll more difficult. The last one, Sword Base, is particular as any enemy models contesting forces a die roll but instead of rolling a value based on a defensive stat, only a single die is rolled, and an offensive success is required to take it over.

Now that we've gone over how they work, let's talk about how they play. Some key aspects of those scenarios can be summarized through «volume»; be it volume of dice (rolling more dice gives better chances of taking control of points) or volume of attempts (the more models/power you have, the more changes you get to flip them). There are multiple ways of getting more attempts at flipping the secures. The first and most simple is just by having a lot of models. As a rule of thumb, having more models on pay to flips is generally helpful because it gives you more opportunities and chances to flip secures. Having access to models that generate power well is another advantage, as the cost of multiple interaction builds up surprisingly fast. Bringing more models than the opposing player also usually means that you'll have the last activation of a round. Being able to activate last lets a model interact with secures and not have to worry about the opposing player try to take them back again right after. This allows to build momentum and pressure secures and scenario points very effectively, especially if your last model is mobile and can attempt multiple flips. 

Now let's do some math to get a better idea of things. 

Series 0 represents the odds of rolling success with 2 dice

A character with 2 defense dice, if you're rolling on a pay to flip that's uncontested (or contested by a model who doesn't increase the difficulty of the roll) you have a roughly 75% of successfully taking control of it, and 25% if it's contested by one model.

Series 1 represents the odds of rolling success with 3 dice

A character rolling 3 dice has pretty close to 90% of securing an uncontested pay to flip and a 50% chance of getting one that's contested by a single model. Considering 3 is an extremely common stat value, having a 1/2 chance of flipping a point over a model is something to keep in mind.

Series 2 represents the odds of rolling success with 4 dice

A model rolling 4 dice is where the math becomes interesting. Having a roughly 2/3 change of taking control of a secure over a contesting model is a pretty solid chance. While far from being guaranteed, it can help inform when and where you want to take chances with your attempts to flip. With 4 dice, you also have a little over 30% chance to flip over 2 contesting models, which is nothing to scoff at.

Controlling the last activation is a tool that you can leverage surprisingly well and that, in the course of a game, should inform your decision about picking which models to attack. Working proactively to get rid of priority can be an impactful strategy as stealing activations away from your opponent denies them opportunities to flip secures, and can let you get the last activation from a situation where you wouldn't otherwise have it. 

Mobility is another key aspect of trying to win these types of secures, especially if that mobility is tied to attacks. The rationale behind it is that, most characters build power by attacking opposing models, and having access to attacks or powers that moves a model around, lets you double-dip by moving around to flip multiple points in a turn, and building enough power to fuel those interact rolls. Knowing some key distances and how far your models can go, especially on round 1 if you have the last activation, can help you a lot.

Let's look at an example.

Here we see that Beast can use his 50mm base and medium movement to move twice and be in reach for the Mutant Madmen trap on the opponent's side of the board. With the last or the penultimate activation, especially on models with a high stat for the roll, being able to go and take it away from your opponent can be a huge point swing very early, especially if the model nearby can't punish you for it.

One of the hardest things to learn about pay to flips is not so much the general ideas that tend to work well on these types of scenario as much as how they play, and the tempo they give to a game. Being able to move away from secures and still score them can seem like an insurmountable advantage when leveraged well, but knowing how and when to build momentum from taking the lead on secures is, in my opinion, what's the most helpful at understanding how to play pay to flips.

A thing to keep in mind is that those concepts work together holistically, that not a single one of them provides an answer or technique to play those scenarios. They work conjointly more as guidelines than a prescriptive plan. Knowing when and how to leverage the tools at your disposal is something that takes practice, and evaluating when and to what extent you can take risks comes with experience. My advice would be to play games on pay to flips, even with teams that are not traditionally good on those types of scenarios as understanding their play patterns helps out a ton when playing them.

Thanks again for taking the time to read this piece and as always, don't forget to have fun!