Here I will outline how I am going to write the battle reports and why I am doing it this way. My reports always follow the same template. This allows me to be more or less concise with important information and still let my thoughts meander around when describing the game itself. I will write about both defeats and wins in an equal way. I hope to remain critical of my choices independent of their outcome.
For the map I use this classification by Biophysical (check out his blog!) to describe the positions and directions in an unambiguous way. I always set up in the south, my opponent starts in the north.
The Template
Date, Context (tournament, league or neither)
My list
vs
His list
General notes or comments. The following is an ideal case. But you will see that I do not always cover all questions or points. Some might be too obvious, some might be forgotten.
Opponent’s determining action and my target priority: This is a first look at his squad. What can he do, what are important card interactions, what does he want to achieve? What are his threat maps? What engagement does he want, and what is his desired end game scenario? And then, based on these answers and the same questions for my own list, I decide what is the largest threat, and what threat I have to consider first. Here is where I decide on the general plan for the game. Include an alternative plan. Think in variants!
Deployment: This is all about turn zero. Which rocks I choose, where I place them, what I want to achieve or prevent with them. But also where my own and my opponent’s squads are set up, and how they are set up. Here is where I already have a plan in mind and start to put it in motion, to lay out the foundation for it. Many good player say that games get decided at this point. And sometimes I have no clue what I should be doing at this stage.
The gameplan for the first turns: This part finishes my opening. The plan is now refined and the first concrete actions are defined. I can still do some fine tuning with repositioning actions, and I need to be aware under which circumstances I will abort my plan and fall back to an alternative that I hopefully thought about during the first step.
How it went: This is a turn-by-turn description of the game. I want to focus on broader ideas and concepts, highlight important turns, mention my mistakes and explain my reasoning during the game. I will also add probabilities for (un)lucky events. Very often, the first few turns are kept short, followed by roughly 4 very detailed turns where most of the game is decided. Sometimes I combine some turns or shorten the rest of a game into few sentences. The descriptions will vary in detail due to the images. If you have an image then I can focus much more on the broader strokes, whereas a lack of image means that I will put more effort into the exact descriptions.
Lessons/Conclusion: This is a list of key points that I should remember in the future and that I should have learnt from the particular game. It is followed by a short recap and conclusion
Images: Here I will throw in and caption images from the individual turns. Sometimes I leave a turn out or include an extra end-of-turn image
That’s it for the structure of my battle reports. Maybe you find it useful to approach your games. Of course I can’t think through everything in detail when setting up at a table, but more and more practice – and writing these battle reports – helped me to get more of it done in a shorter time frame.
At the moment I have added just this tournament to my blog. But you can already read 32 battle reports about the 5 RZ2-A-Wings on the FFG forums if you don’t want to wait until I move them over here.
X-Wing Analytica 