By Zach Shephard

In addition to being one of the avenues for winning a game, completing missions comes with the appeal of garnering rewards. Rewards can be great – they can assist in your road to victory, hinder your opponent’s progress, and, if you’re lucky, impress the ladies.*

So, in a deck driven by the motivation to win via mission completion and collect rewards along the way, the goal would appear to be completing missions as quickly as possible, correct?

The answer to that question depends on what your opponent is playing. Should your opponent’s primary plan of attack revolve around destroying your vehicle, he or she likely won’t be particularly concerned with mission completion. It’s when you get a mirror-match – mission deck vs. mission deck – that things get tricky.

This article will give you some tips on selecting your assaults wisely, in an effort to cause your opponent to waste his maneuvers and assault phase. Often times, this is an objective that is met by choosing not completing missions.

Sounds crazy, I know – and maybe it is. But you know what they say: one man’s insanity is another man’s trash.

… or something like that.

The strategy of not completing a mission when one has the option doesn’t come into play until the mid-game. Around the time the forty- and fifty-difficulty missions are on the virtual table is when this tactic should be employed.

Let’s take a look at the following screenshot for an example of how this technique works.

As you can see, Rubber_Chicken (RC, henceforth) has the option to complete Miner Irritation on his current assault phase. However, that’s not the primary option to take. Instead, he will assault Iron Hills Patrol with Resilience. Why would he do this?

Because it’s as good as tossing Rubber_Chicken2 (RC2) into a pile of fertilizer – it puts him in a crappy position. Whichever mission RC2 assaults will simply be completed by RC on his following turn, using Resilience. This means that RC2 had to waste a maneuver on a mission his opponent was just going to complete anyway – this cost him a precious assault phase and a card.

Much to RC2’s dismay, he can’t just skip his assault phase. Both missions now have a maneuver stashed by RC (remember, RC opted to assault Iron Hills Patrol with his Resilience), so the mission RC2 picks for his assault won’t really matter. He opts to assault Iron Hills Patrol, which RC completes on his following turn.

When the game comes back to RC2’s turn, the playing field looks like so:

Note that RC2’s only viable option for assaulting is Raid Derelict Monastery, because RC will complete Miner Irritation on his following turn. Using a simple tactic, RC was able to complete two missions during the time his opponent completed zero – all because he opted not to complete one when he had the chance.

Now that you’ve got the strategy to work with, let’s take a look at another screenshot and see just what kind of a master you are. It’s Rubber_Chicken’s assault phase – which mission should he assault, and which maneuver should he stash?

So, have you got your plan formulated? Being that I can’t see your response (as this article isn’t being written in live-action), I’ll just assume you said “yes.” With that in mind, let’s see how you did.

The correct answer is to assault Raid Derelict Monastery with Rev the Engine. This leaves you the option of completing whichever mission the evil Rubber_Chicken2 assaults on his turn, causing him to waste a maneuver and an assault phase on a mission he can’t possibly complete before you. Then, whichever mission was not assaulted will be yours for the taking as well, on a future turn.

And with that, you’ve mastered the mid-game mission-assaulting process. Just be sure to keep this strategy in mind when you find yourself up against another mission-completion deck, and you should be able to out-maneuver your opponent on the road to victory.

*Yeah right, don’t count on it.