What’s in a Plan?

10th Aug 2026

Barry

5 mins

As readers of any of my batreps might note – I often state that I don’t have a plan. Repeatedly. If you have ever played me you’ll almost certainly know that’s very true. I’ve waxed lyrical about this before to describe my thinking on this. I’ve also been keen to stress that just because I don’t have a plan doesn’t mean I don’t have a clue. I clearly have some kind of intent.

What’s with that?

I’m going to make some efforts to break down some of this and define some things here to bring clarity with how I like to communicate a players intent. We are going to break down the difference between strategy, plans, and tactics – because these are not interchangeable terms you should use to sound knowledgeable.

They are however, interconnected.

The Context

The first thing to clarify though is that there are many domains these terms are used. They are used in business management, risk management, and military concepts (where another layer of confusion exists), and clearly they do not all mean the same things. Sometimes you might see it hyphenated like “strategic-planning” which one could competently argue is something business executives use in conferences or meetings in a word-salad of business idioms.

The context in which we use these terms is clearly important. Especially when games make use of these terms all over the place juxtaposed with words like, “phase”, “step” or “turn” as part of the game breakdown.

Strategy

Strategy is your goals and it has a couple of “big-picture” elements that it covers like the environment, your approach, and resources you will need. Certainly, there are aspects – like the environment – that will be unknown and you cannot influence. Like what your competitors are doing?

In the context of tabletop games, strategy happens as part of your list building:

• Environment: your local meta or what’s been doing well elsewhere.

• Approach: are you going to try and overwhelm an opponent with firepower, out-last them through tankiness, or outplay them with objectives or some kind of disruptive tricks.

• Resources: what you actually have available in terms of game pieces available.

Generally – and this is important to remember so I will repeat it – when developing a strategy you have little to no influence on environment. You respond to strategic effects like environment or resources. There is always an unknown quality to it – whether you acknowledge it or not.

e.g. “I hope to win this tournament in Canberra because I expect there’s less Sydney-players and Canberra-players won’t be up to facing the attack output of my list with my objectives.”

Now be honest – you know someone who clearly thought that at some point in time. At some point in time before a competition starts we have all had someone sagely explain to us how amazing their list is, or how they’ve calculated it and it can tear x, y or z apart with ease.

Sure, it probably can - provided they ignore the other players agency entirely.

While we might describe that as a poor strategy it is a clearly stated one – they have done some measure of their environment and decided Canberra is easier to win in than Sydney, they have their list available and assume that it will overpower other players at the event.

Think about what your strategy actually is – whether it is to have fun and make “pew-pew” noises or win the whole thing. It frames how you will feel going playing the games.

I always have a strategy.

Plans

A plan are the medium term actions that translate strategic goals into reality. For our purposes – this is when you are at the event and have a measure of your opponents. It is where you find out if your strategy survives contact with reality – does your approach meet the reality of the environment?

Unlike a strategy – plans can change to meet your need. However, you need to recognise the need to change your approach for the bad pairings. It requires some self-awareness across the course of the game. Your plan needs to account for the setup, the objective, and the opponent.

This is where you will see people have very specific setups, or deployments. Players can be meticulous to a fault – remember how players would place obstacles and ships for X-Wing 1st Edition Imp Aces?

Pepperidge Farm remembers. It was rather predictable.

This is where players – like myself – can make themselves known by confusing setups by lobbing obstacles without measuring. Setting something up to other side of the board without any rationale requiring another revision of the plan.

Even more so for Armada players that find themselves in the position of playing the opponents objectives, finding them completely incompatible with their strategy – assuming the strategy accounted for that. Going through objectives and looking for something that you can use to salvage it, and sometimes you can’t.

This is where my derision of having a plan does start to emerge - if I do not have one from the outset, you might start questioning the merit of yours. My strategy rarely includes a specific plan – I don’t honestly know what I’m going to do, especially in situations where I’m deploying first and into unfavourable objectives.

In these situations I’m wholly invested in my approach and hoping that I can establish momentum with the next level of thinking instead.

Tactics

Tactical decisions are short-lived actions that will deliver on the plan. They are lowest level of the hierarchy but possibly the most important because they are where you most influence your opponent. This is challenging in a game like Armada where you might have to make decisions multiple turns ahead (revisit plan if you are confused) and so the tactic you are able to employ might have to be shifting activation order, or triggering an ability to adjust positions.

The tactical level will absolutely influence the effectiveness of your plan in an ongoing loop. Because this is the level, that momentum can shift back and forth – with an extra layer of randomness where dice are concerned.

If you are like me and couldn’t conceive of a plan before starting the game – this is where one might start to take shape as you gather more information about your opponent. This is where you’ll recognise the need for disruptive tactics.

My favourite.

In military thinking this might be best likened to System Confrontation/System Destruction Warfare – it requires recognition of the opponents capability and exploiting the weak point. Part of my thinking for this in games was a long time ago in X-Wing first edition, and our friend Suresh was explaining his exploits from a competition.

He explained opponents in one tense game had the opponent had a verbal memory exercise for themselves – repeated ad nauseam – to remind them of the steps in their kill-chain. At the time Suresh said it just sounded like a broadcast of all the ways his opponent intended to kill his list – but it does provide an insight.

This is literally straight from an episode…

Somewhere in there is the means to break that kill-chain – but you need to be able to deliver it and take out their centre of gravity. If your approach has no consideration for that your options are limited – you might need to block them or conversely run from them. The tactical level is where that exploitation will need to be realised.

Conclusion

It’s important to recognise that your strategy may not yield results. I literally discovered this some time ago while playing X-Wing, as my Resistance list (designed for volume and objectives) was absolutely torn to shreds by Bonedancer’s Imperial list with its higher initiative and immense damage output.

Whilst I might have snuck away with the win in the end – I don’t think I’ve ever explored that deep in the salt mines of poor sportsmanship on that journey. As Ando always says at the beginning of any tournament he TO’s, “don’t be a d&*k.”

I definitely skipped that advice…

The game exposed deficiencies in the list – the absence of initiative depth and any ability to spike damage.

It highlighted to me that clarity about why strategy matters, it forms and influences your game and will help you prepare for the variety of opponents you will undoubtedly come across. Having a plan when you are playing is also – despite the rank hypocrisy of my saying so – also a great thing to have if you are in the competitive scene.

The other week I put that list back on the table without a strategy – forgoing my prepared list for another run of it because there was already so many Imperial lists. This meant I played it without a plan (QED); and combined it all devolved into poor tactical decisions. In the end it really influenced whether I had fun – or was fun to be around - which is absolute poison for any game that survives through community engagement.

So I will surmise this with a few two points - have a strategy no matter what, and, don’t be a d&*k if it doesn’t survive contact with reality. Reflect on it, learn from it and adjust for next time.

-          Barry

  - Barry