Puzzle 8 – Whisper 101

Rebel list // Imperial list // VASSAL file

Whisper. She’s a real tricky number. But so is this advanced sensors/daredevil Corran! In this game we have a 1-hull Corran remaining against a 1-hull cloak n’ choke Whisper. The Rebel player has killed 140 points while the Imperial player has killed 155. There are 30 seconds on the clock: Whisper will choose to cloak or not, then there will be 1 final round. Corran moves first. Today’s puzzle asks: can Whisper can reduce Corran’s chances of winning to 0%? Or does Corran have a move which guarantees arc on Whisper? Else what are the chances that Corran will catch Whisper in arc, and what are the optimal moves to do so?

The best replies on the FFG forums, Reddit, or on the Xwing Puzzle Club blog site will be added as solutions to the blog post!

Answer to last puzzle:  Dice of Derring-Do

Solution

Lots of great discussion with this fairly tough situation! To answer the question: can Whisper guarantee a win, 100%? The answer for all you Whisper fans out there seems to be, by all my reckoning, NO.

Reddit user mfive_ sets the stage with the win condition:

lesson 1 – win conditions: how does whisper win? ^{100%, no hoping on dice, no speculating on enemy maneuvers}

A: at the start of the engagement phase, have corran (green) tokenless in arc at range 0-2 to kill him with vader.

B: deny corran a shot to win on points.

C (A+B): find a position where corran can avoid B only by (advanced sensors) action moving into an A situation.

And Reddit user Smikies points out:

Regardless of anything, you definitely cloak at the endphase. The element of where am I going to go and be, with a guaranteed evade if you do uncloak, is to strong.

I generally agree with this. But let’s take up Reddit user Kyoreth’s point for a second:

My take is this: whisper doesn’t cloak and threatens a 4k, which means corran has to respond by getting a token with AS. Whisper then dials in a 1 sharp to a side.

This scenario is pretty interesting. However, this puzzle involves a concept of ‘bluffing odds’. I.e. the game is going to be decided purely on the bluffing game. This solution simplifies the Corran player’s decision tree down to two options: Token up or call the bluff and go for his own 4K. The game is now 50/50.

Cloaking up creates a headache for the Corran player, such that the decision tree is actually greater than 2. Probably the most anticipated move would be the following out of Whisper, advocated by many, and in my opinion among the best viable moves. Forum user pyoinator was the first I believe to suggest the decloak back, hard turn in:

I think whisper just dials in a 1 hard and picks decloak right/left. If corran doesn’t have a shot, imps win. If corran gets caught without a focus, imps win. If whisper bumps, imps win. If they shoot each other, it’ll be unmodified corran vs focus/evade whisper. Any way you slice it, it’s hard for corran.

The odds here are actually pretty good. If the Corran player decides to AS-focus Sloop or 4K, hoping to catch some wily shenanigans out of his opponent, the decloak/turn in maneuver can be swiftly followed up by a barrel roll out of Corran’s arc, for any sloop, regardless of whether Whisper went left or right!

This brings the ‘bluffing odds’ down to 33% for Corran. Either he turns around to catch some sort of wiliness out of Whisper, goes left, or goes right. At this point, Corran needs to take a short maneuver and hope he guessed the correct way. As pyoinator points out, even if the match does come to blows, the odds are in Whisper’s favour! This pushes the ‘bluffing odds’ even greater in Whisper’s favour, since now the dice are on Whisper’s side!

Thanks again to everyone for contributing to this lively puzzle.

Note: I made a mistake here as several of you pointed out. Corran would CERTAINLY have used his double tap at Initiative 0, basically breaking this puzzle. Nevertheless mistakes do happen, so we’ll just gloss over this minor detail 😉