Battlefield support assets: Offensive and Defensive Air support question

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

If I want to play an Offensive Air Support asset, such as Heavy Bombing Run, when does my opponent choose whether or not to use a Defensive Air asset?  Do I declare that I'm playing an air attack and then they have to choose whether or not to declare a defensive asset before we reveal cards, or do they get to know what actual card I'm playing before deciding whether or not to try countering it?

[Mechman08]

BMM p.75-76 covers BSP air support.  Offensive air support is declared during the weapon attack phase, defensive is declared after.

“After a player announces all Offensive Aerospace Support they wish to use in a given turn, an opponent may reveal their selection(s) of a Defensive Aerospace Support (Light Air Cover) to remove the attack(s).”

Now I would swear there’s some optional rules for playing those cards face down and using decoy air strikes, but I can’t find them at the moment.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

One of the cards is called "Feint," which seems completely useless if the cards are automatically revealed face up.

[Mechman08]

Ah, here we go, Mercenaries box set rule book, p.13.

There’s Hidden Aerospace Rules, but they’re noted as optional.  You’d only use the Feint card if those are in effect.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Ah.

[DevianID]

I will say, if you use feint and face down cards, it makes the air cover WAY worse.  If you have to guess if each offense card needs a light or a heavy cover, because of face down cards or feint, then instead of matching your 1 point light aircovers to 2 point light strikes or 4 point heavy bombing, you now have to attach a 1 point light cover and a 2 point heavy cover to every aerospace attack to try and stop the one heavy bombing card.  With the cheap feint thrown in, it forces a defending player to play nothing but air cover, and you simply cant have enough cover because of the bluff eating your cards.

So while I think a meta of face down cards could have been fun, the cards/feint are not priced for that mechanic.  Its also unfun to see your heavy air cover guess wrong and go on a light strike, while your light air cover ineffectively goes to the heavy bombing/bluff, because of randomness beyond your control.  Its like saying your intercept craft dont have radar and have to blindly blunder into enemy contact, instead of being functional air cover. 

Imagine if you had to guess which mechsheet your gauss rifle was shooting, like all mech sheets were face down and you had to randomly pick a face down sheet.  Oh, sorry, I know you wanted to intercept the atlas attacking you, but you randomly selected the locust, so you have to shoot it instead.  Thats kinda how it feels to me. 

Like, you can literally see a bomber literally flying in for a bombing run on a target, yet you cant just intercept it with your air cover, and have to attack some prop plane instead?  I dont know... the cards just arnt priced for that kind of interaction, meaning its just all bad feelings in my experience.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

This is for a Battle of Tukayyid campaign and I'm playing Clan.  The way I look at it is two ways: in-universe it's part of a much larger conflict and when my aerospace assets are directed onto a target, the Com Guards have only a split second to identify that there's an incoming threat and have to choose to try to scramble something to intercept.  And they're not necessarily well-versed in Clan ASF, so knowing exactly what's flying around at this particular point is not necessarily something they have time to worry about.

From an out-of-universe perspective, I've got significantly less Battlefield Support Assets than my opponent, so they can easily afford to play intercept cards against all my air assets (since defensive cards are cheaper than offensive ones) while still retaining plenty of cards for offensive purposes.  Which I can't do anything about since the rules say that the Clan player can only select offensive air assets or Arrow IV strikes.

[DevianID]

This is for a Battle of Tukayyid campaign and I'm playing Clan.  The way I look at it is two ways: in-universe it's part of a much larger conflict and when my aerospace assets are directed onto a target, the Com Guards have only a split second to identify that there's an incoming threat and have to choose to try to scramble something to intercept.  And they're not necessarily well-versed in Clan ASF, so knowing exactly what's flying around at this particular point is not necessarily something they have time to worry about.

From an out-of-universe perspective, I've got significantly less Battlefield Support Assets than my opponent, so they can easily afford to play intercept cards against all my air assets (since defensive cards are cheaper than offensive ones) while still retaining plenty of cards for offensive purposes.  Which I can't do anything about since the rules say that the Clan player can only select offensive air assets or Arrow IV strikes.

I understand what you are saying, but having less BSPs as the clan player is like an intended thing.  The face down rules make Air significantly better on the strike then the cover, meaning you are almost doubling your strike v cover effectiveness.  It doesnt fix the problem, it just means air cover isnt good and you shouldnt bother with it, focusing on strikes.

It cuts both ways BTW.  Once your comstar friend realizes that trying to use air cover with hidden cards is pointless cause of facedown/bluff, then they can just switch to ALL strikes.  Now you as the clan player cant do anything, as while before you could have used air cover to efficiently make up the deficit, with face down you cant even block them anymore cause even in equal BSP the bluff means you need to spend more points in air cover then in strikes to efficiently stop them.

We played through tukayyid, tried bluffs, and found nerfing cover to make strikes better via bluff/facedown was the most unfun interaction from my 2 play groups.  It also ruined artillery, as when strikes are basically without a counter via the facedown, the more expensive and harder to use artillery just stopped seeing play entirely in favor of more air strikes.  People stopped playing light mechs, cause unstoppable air power deleted any player trying to be helpful and bring a low BV unit, which was worse for clans cause comstar has so many mechs losing some locusts was nothing, but the clans losing a dasher turn 1 was a larger blow.

I mean, try it.  If you have fun, thats all that matters.  I just like to point out that the bluff/facedown mechanic is NOT priced correctly, and making cover worse and thus air strikes better was detrimental to my games.  It went from a neat minigame in concept to feels bad/negative play experience on the table super fast.

[Calimehter]

We had a good time with the bluff cards and the face down rules in a few games.  That said, for those games (where we were trying out BSP Aero for the firs time) we assigned the exact same amount of aerospace to each player.  We usually went with one bluff, 2 strikes or bombing attacks, and two fighter cover cards.  In that setup, the face down system worked.  It added more randomness to things, but in a way that kept the strikes from being as easily neutralized by the cheaper fighter cover, and since each side 'payed' the same amount for the same things, neither side was being shorted out of any investment by what the other player did or did not take.  Furthermore, one player couldn't try to overload things in one direction or another with that setup.  We also found some amusement in the "iocaine powder game" minigame aspect of it ("are you the kind of person who would put your bluff out first?").

When you just get to buy whatever you want, though, I think the potential problems brought up by DevianID can start to be an issue.  Do you purchase any fighter cover at all, knowing your opponent might take no strikes at all, above and beyond any issues with possible randomness of bluff and face down cards (I'm a cautious type, so I've wasted some points in this kind of setup).  Strikes are a good counter to jumping bean Mechs, but if you overload on them, do you just scare people away from taking light Mechs at all?

I think once you get away from specific setups like the one we did, the face down mechanic (and even the question of how much fighter cover to buy) can cause some issues.