u/-Cranktankerous-

I recently came upon a moment in my last game where the opening two missions on a Terraform game forced me to take objectives and kill stuff. The first turn, going second, against some infiltrators and some T1 Deep Strike from my opponent (his Dark Angels to my Sisters). This means that there were some targets I could shoot, objectives I could take, and Terraforms I could stop.

But, it meant exposing quite a bit of stuff on my board to potential clapback and countercharge. Now, I want to avoid things being left up to dice to decide (at least, this early in the game since Sisters can do dice rigging). But, if my play worked, there were two potential T1 Terraforms that I’d get established, and I could pick up some valuable pieces before they got used. But, it felt like a big risk to expose so many resources to him so early.

My question is, how early should your “go” turn be, and what should influence that? Should I have simply let those two missions go more or less unscored, and objectives unterraformed? Or, should I have gone halvsies and only reinforced my board while doing light skirmishing? I feel like this option is safer, albeit I’d be on the back foot points-wise — but what’s the “right” amount of conservative when it comes to going behind early?