As a nerd writing nerdy articles for nerds, perhaps this isn’t the right spot to use sports analogies. I’ll try anyway, though, and now seems like as good a time as any considering a new NFL season is right around the corner. The sports movement towards analytics has helped shape how I approach statistics and indirectly inspired some previous articles. Today, however, I’ll make the link much more explicit.
For those unfamiliar with American Football, imagine Blood Bowl but somehow more violent. I’ll give a quick summary of the rules that are relevant for this article: on offense, teams will have four attempts (called “downs”) to get a total of 10 yards. If successful then a new set of downs is given to get 10 more yards, and so on until the team either scores or fails to get a first down. To score a touchdown, the ideal final outcome, teams often have to go about 65 yards in total.
Successful vs. Explosive Plays
Successful Play Rate
As noted above, teams do not have to get 10 yards all in one play. Gaining five yards on first down means the offense now has two or three plays (often the fourth play is used to kick the ball away rather than attempt getting a first down) to get five yards. The new situation would be 2nd and 5 (2nd down with five yards to go), which is relatively manageable. However, gaining only one yard on first down sets up 2nd and 9, and that’s much harder. Quantifying this into a statistic, we get Successful Play Rate, or Success Rate. On first down, 50% of the needed yards is usually the benchmark for “successful,” so on 1st and 10, five yards is successful, and 1 yard is not. However, on third down, the threshold for success is 100% of the needed yards, so five yards on 3rd & 10 is not successful.
In the world of Shatterpoint, I think this framing of success would roughly equate to flipping one objective every turn. If you keep doing that consistently then you’ll probably have some OK success. Of course, turns when you fail to flip and objective can be very punishing and are generally much more impactful than a single unsuccessful play would be in football, so the analogy isn’t perfect. Generally speaking, though, in both Shatterpoint and football most turns/plays are about staying on schedule and keeping things manageable.
Explosive Play Rate
Another useful offensive metric used in football is explosive play rate. As you probably guessed, an explosive play is one where the offense gets a lot of yards all at once (generally 20+ with a pass or 10+ with a run, depending on where you look). It isn’t reasonable to expect these every play, but when they happen the effect is huge. What might have taken many successful plays can be accomplished with a single explosive play, and that is incredibly important. Sure, you can theoretically string together long scoring drives of 10+ plays where you are consistently successful, but that opens up a lot of room for error. One play netting big yardage relieves a lot of pressure.
For Shatterpoint, explosives usually mean flipping multiple objectives in a single turn, or perhaps opening a struggle by taking all three or four of the unclaimed objectives. Due to the zero-sum nature of objective control in Shatterpoint and the tug-of-war scoring system, making an explosive play often pressures your opponent to make one of their own or else the struggle can quickly get away from them*. It’s possible to grind out games where you are merely having successful plays, flipping one objective every turn, not leaving yourself vulnerable, and slowly making progress. However, one mistake by you or great play from your opponent can cause everything to come crumbling down. Explosive plays are critical.
As much as I enjoy watching football, I wouldn’t consider myself to be much of a ball-knower. The seemingly smart people I listen to seem to believe that the ability to create explosive plays is now more important than ever, and I think Shatterpoint is in a similar spot.
*As a small side note, one statistic I’ve long wondered about is how often a player loses a struggle after controlling all possible objectives at some point. I can’t imagine it happens often. Stay tuned and maybe one day I will figure out a way to capture data like this efficiently.
Creating Explosives
I’ve been a long-time Luminara enjoyer, and I have the receipts to prove it. She brings many useful abilities, but the dash when you get a wound is the showstopper. She’s often been my go-to pairing for kill-y primaries, whether it was Maul or Vader in the early game, Boss before the nerfs, or now Grievous and Riff. By default, many of these characters have limited or no option to move friends on their own turn so Luminara helps make them more well-rounded. However, if Luminara instead gave Maul a tactic that let him move anyone, it wouldn’t quite feel the same. It would make his turns more consistent, surely, but the explosiveness of the list would change. It seems obvious in retrospect, but it all clicked for me with one simple thought: wounds are already a key part of explosive plays.
Obviously, if you’re getting a wound, then the turn is probably going pretty well already. One or two bodies are no longer contesting, which makes it easier to flip objectives. On future turns that’s one or two fewer bodies your opponent can use to flip objectives. Shoves and Force Push are great, but often units can just walk back into position afterwards. Unless your opponent has Hera that’s less of a concern with wounds. Adding an extra dash to a turn that was already going well means that turn has a high chance of being explosive.
For a long time I’ve thought about whether win-more really exists in Shatterpoint, and usually my conclusion is it doesn’t. Stacking effects together isn’t a recipe for win more, it’s a necessary part of creating explosive plays to swing the game in your favour. It’s a classic situation where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. A wound here or a dash there can help you stay on schedule, stay successful, but both together can make you explosive. One of my favourite examples comes from half of my worlds premiere list, Lumi/Boss. Sev and Scorch could make two attacks, have Rex follow up, and if someone got a wound in all that then Luminara could dash someone. That’s a fairly reliable explosive play! Longtime readers will recognize that explosives are really about stacking abilities to have high swing potential, because everything comes back to Swing Theory.
When it comes to defending against explosive plays, the other half of my worlds premiere can be a helpful reference point.
Revenge & Defending Explosives
This might be a hot take, but before the nerfs I don’t think Kanan/Cassian was an incredible list when it came to generating explosives. It was certainly very strong when it came to aggro play, and using the Shatterpoint card for Baze and Chirrut or rebel commandos felt awesome, but compared to something like the above Boss/Lumi play that’s just not as much swing. However, the success rate was very good and explosive plays still happened. The true power of the list came in preventing explosive plays.
Revenge lists can certainly create dead turns for the opponent, lowering their success rate. Sometimes there are situations where a unit can’t flip any objectives without getting a wound. However, the ability for revenge lists to prevent explosive plays, especially the now old-school Kanan/Cassian double revenge lists, is truly impressive. I argued above that wounding is often a factor in explosive plays, so it stands to reason that a list can lessen the damage if it can respond immediately after suffering wounds. Needless to say, it was very difficult to flip multiple objectives against Kanan/Cassian. If you can’t get explosives and you’re maybe equal on success rate, at best, then you are going to need some luck to pull out wins.
Of course, big bad Cassian has received his well-deserved nerfs, so what now? Double revenge lists have taken a big hit in both defensive and offensive capability, and early meta returns don’t look promising. That could change, though, so clearly you need to come back often to read my latest articles! There are other defensive options beyond revenge. Both Steadfast and Mind Trick can be good at lowering opposing success rate and explosive play rate. I generally feel like they impact success rate more, but that’s open to debate. Revenge also still exists, just not as strong as before. Something like Padme/Mace combines a big defensive aura with reactive movement from Padme and (sometimes) Sabe. It’s rising in popularity, but whether it has the juice long-term remains to be seen.
One new element we’ve had since May is the introduction of zombie units. Night Troopers and B1s can stand back up and contest immediately after being wounded. I wouldn’t call this revenge, but it can have a similar effect. One great way to flip multiple objectives is to wound a support until that has one body each on two different objectives, but zombies stop that. If the wounded-but-now-injured unit was also moved off the objective then at least they are still a living body that can be moved back into position in following turns.
The Arms Race & Meta Discussion
Another approach is to lean into proactively making explosive plays. Ki-Adi/Vader is a pairing that many competitive players are high on, and it excels at creating explosives. Discounted Mind Tricks from Obi-Wan don’t hurt, either. Separatist lists like Grievous/Lumi or Riff/Lumi can have absolutely incredible turns, but they are also often vulnerable to explosive plays from the opponent due to poor defenses. All of these aggressive lists use their attack as a main part of their defense. If you proactively kill everything it will be hard for your opponent to do much. It doesn’t matter how much movement they can generate if all of those bodies are dead. I’ve had many a game where, once we’re into late struggle 2 or struggle 3, I only have two or three units alive at any given time. It’s hard to keep success rate decent at those times, let alone generate explosive plays.
I don’t think I’m going out on a limb to say that a high success rate is non-negotiable for competitive Shatterpoint lists. In the NFL 50% would be fantastic, but for Shatterpoint I’d want something closer to 85%. When it comes to explosives, my hunch is that the best lists will be really good at either creating or defending, with a little bit of tech for the other. Being decent at both but great at neither seems like a tough spot to live. I hope we see a mix of offensive and defensive lists going forward, but often I feel offense wins out.
When it comes to list building, I have a personal example that can work as a bit of a case study for this article. For the past months I have been enjoying the new Kit Fisto a lot. He pairs with everyone and brings a lot of tricks to the table. However, he mainly affects success rate. His dash and shoves mean you will reliably take control of an objective he’s near and his defensive jump could create a dead turn for your opponent. When it comes to explosive play rate, however, Kit isn’t contributing as much as I’d like. The rest of the list can pick up the slack to an extent, Republic has lots of really great units, but I am worried that Kit lists are merely good at creating explosives when they need to be great. Partly because of these thoughts, and because trying different things is always good, I’m focusing more on other primaries for a while as I refine my republic lists. It will almost certainly mean a small step back in the success rate, but an increase in explosive play rate should make for a worthy trade.
Wrap-Up
I’ve been wanting to write this article about Luminara and explosive plays for a while, so I’m glad to finally put my thoughts on the page. It’s fun that the article related to American football drops right before the new NFL season, and I hope the analogy was clear enough for even the non-sports people out there. At the end of the day, both are games and both require you to stay efficient until you find a chance to go for the big play. Sometimes it’s go big or go home!
