Glimpse of Luna is a game based on positioning your cards to be able to kill enemy units without losing yours. In order to achieve this goal, there is 2 basic concepts of board game that needs to be understood.
The first one is contesting.
A contested tile is a unoccupied tile on which you can inflict damages on next turn if a enemy goes into.
The purpose of contesting is to deny positions to your opponent to reduce is ability to plays freely.
The second one is threatening.
A threatening is a enemy unit that you can kill if the enemy doesn t react.
The purpose is to force the opponent to leave positions or to lose the unit.
Be careful with threatening, with the moral mechanic just killing a unit is not enough. The threatening unit should be of lower or egal moral value than the threaten unit so you can take a favorable trade.
Also remember that it works on both ways, you have to contests and threatens but also identify what the opponent is contesting and threatening itself before playing.
Now lets be practical with a game.
It is a Nordur playing first vs Naphas.
Lets analyze the starting position :
Some things have to be identified :
- Viktor and enemy Jathazi are threatening each other. As Viktor is a pioneer and Jathazi a warrior and Viktor will be killed if he go kill Jathazi so it is not a good thing to use Viktor to go kill the Jathazi because you will lose 2 moral to kill 1 moral.
- The center (Blue circle) is a death zone, any unit going here will be likely be killed for nothing (except Erik because the 3 positions he can reach are only contested by 10 total damage from Naphas).
- The right flank(Yellow circle) is quite open. The Drax have 4 attack and only 1 move so he cannot reach a lot of tiles and don t do a lot of damages. It is possible to move units in this area
Moving units in this area will also allow you to threaten the Drax and to contest more tiles especially the ones in the enemy deployment zone.
- The green tile is threaten by the 6Attack Sisash so moving Lorik here will makes him killed.
Now lets analyze the position after each player made their first move :
- As the right flank was open, Nordur units move into, you can now see that Drax is threatened by Lorik + Gantur, meaning that you can kill it with Gantur getting probably killed next turn but it is a good trade (-1 moral vs -2) also Gantur can go kill the Jiro. As Jiro is 2 movement he can kill Night or Gantur next turn while Drax is not theatening anything and still don t contest a lot of area so it is perhaps better to kill Jiro instead for an even trade but allowing Nordur to keep the position in the left. Night could also do it but the 2 position in green that allow to kill Jiro are contested by the 6 attack Sisah so if Night goes there he will be killed next turn.
- As Viktor didn t go kill Jathazi, the Jathazi could advance, in his position he is now threatening Viktor and Ygridd still an unfavorable trade for Nordur but Ygridd have nowhere to escape him so it is time choose if
- You go kill Jathazi with Viktor losing him next turn and saving Ygridd.
- Save Viktor by moving him on the right side but let Ygridd be killed
- Deploy something in front of them to block the path of Jathazi (like Fyora and Elmar)
- With the reinforcements and Varlak advancing, the Naphas are now strongly contesting all the blue circle area. It is blocking any advance for Nordur in this area to fear of being killed
- All the yellow circle area is contested by the Nordur (if Jiro is killed), you can even advance Lorik to be able to contest more area into the deployment zone and deals 8 damage on anything the Naphas can deploy here
As you can see, with only the starting 5 and the first turn of each player, you already have a situation where Nordur is contesting a critical are that will drasticly reduce the Naphas reinforcements possibility with the risk of the Guardian becoming exposed in a few turns. The Naphas are contesting less area but are able to advance on the right freely and they already have the possibility to take a good trade with Jathazi. Drax is still in a delicate position and will perhaps have to retreat to a safer position for example if you deploy the Jesper in range to attack him on your next turn.
With this basics notions of contesting and threatening, you will be able with some practive to better understand where you can move your units where they can be dangerous or reduce the opponent posiibilities of play without being themselves exposed helping you to gain positions and even favorable trades without letting your opponent kill freely your units.
Sir! You are great! Exactly it is what I need to better understand GoL. Your posts as comentary to YT gameplay video would be awsome!!