The Complaints:

I think we have all heard complaints about first turn alpha strikes dominating the game, be it guided missiles vs null deployment, some kickass tag gunning you down, or bears, but is there really any indication that winning the LT roll matters at all?

At our recent, well, semi-recent at this point, Shipyard Showdown 2 day event in San Diego we actually took some data! Who knew!

Lets just dig into the data a bit and then talk some of the details after. Keep in mind for all of this data that this was an event with reinforcements, and is a very small data set.

The Data

So, here we see that first turn did have some statistical advantage, but it was hardly decisive. Additionally you can break this down as first turn as a 50% Win rate and a 50% lose/draw rate.

That LT roll win percentage looks really suspiciously familiar, and that is because it should because inexplicably it matches the first turn win rate. This was pure dumb luck that the data lined up that way, since no single mission had the same LT Win win rate as the first turn win rate.

Here is the raw data broken down by mission. Clearly mission selection can have some impact on first turn win rate but even that advantage can be pretty dubious. The big outlier here is supplies. On supplies specifically people who won the LT roll at the start of the game disproportionately lost the game. Supplies having a strong first turn win rate is not super surprising to me as the ability to grab a box and run off to a corner is strong, but clearly people did not make the best decision after winning the LT roll.

Supplies and power pack had significant, but opposite first turn win rates as well, nearly balancing each other out. Power pack with Reinforcements felt a way, as it was pretty trivial for those reinforcements groups to capture all the relevant objectives on the bottom of 3, which likely lead to that skew.

So, does first turn give an advantage? The data presented here does not support that conclusion in a significant way. Additionally, it seems players at this tournament did not see a significant advantage from winning the LT roll and getting to decide on either turn order or table sides.

Factors that make things complicated:

The San Diego/SoCal meta makes diverse and interesting tables, with some emphasis on not making table sides equal. That can effectively counter any advantage that could exist for going first. Additionally…this data set is small, and if the better players at the event win one or two more LT rolls than average it could easily skew any of the results.

Also, skill levels can skew this greatly. Luckily for us this was a more regional event which does better distribute skill levels.

Conclusion

This one is easy. Don’t blame your loss on turn order or winning the LT roll. Any advantage given to either of those is relatively small, and there are other factors throughout the game that will dramatically increase your chances of winning. Deployment, list construction, and decision making are going to easily outstrip the possible advantage from first turn or LT roll win.

My local group will continue to collect some of this data for leagues and I will continue looking at the results to see if there is anything interesting there. For now, I would recommend that you concern yourself less with who wins the LT roll and more on your deployment, list building, and decision making skills in game.