Hello there idiot, welcome to Chapter 4 of an Idiots Guide to MCP. In chapter 3, we discussed the social contract, and we're now ready to jump into our first game. Turn 0 is arguably the most important turn in the game, as many games can be decided in this very early turn so it's important to get your strategy right. We're going to look at some key concepts that can help you make better decisions in turn 0.

The Priority Roll
You might be sat looking at your scoreboard right now looking a bit puzzled asking why there isn't a 0. That's because technically round 0 doesn't actually exist, it's just a term players use to describe the crisis and squad selection element of the game. It is however, arguably the most important turn in the game, as mistakes here are going to have a lasting effect for the duration of the game.
Let's first look at the priority roll, and the decisions that need to be made in this phase. There are two elements to this as your choices and decision are going to be different depending on whether you won or lost priority in the roll.
So let's assume you have won priority, you now have to choose whether to select your own secures or your own extracts. At this point, it's important to compare these to your opponents crisis, you may find that they are running the same 3 secures as you, therefore you may want to take your extracts as you're going to be playing one of your secures anyway. You should also be looking at both your own and your opponents rosters here, and try and assess what the game plans are for both. It might be that your opponent is running a very attrition heavy list with very narrow secures and slow scoring extracts, and you're running a very different crisis combination in wide secures and high scoring extracts, so it's important to assess which is the better option for you and which one is least favourable for your opponent. Is it better to be on your opponents narrow secure whilst still having high scoring extracts or is it preferable to have a wider secure but slower scoring extracts? There is no black and white rule here, as the answers to these questions are going to vary depending on both your own and your opponents rosters.
As the player who won priority, although you now do not have the decision over the threat level of the game, you can still have an influence on this. This is also something you should consider when determining crisis selection, but it should be secondary to the points mentioned above, as you're not going to be making the final decision over the threat level. For example, your opponent may have a 15 threat extract in their roster, but not a 15 threat secure. You know that you have a number of high threat characters that you typically like to use, so 15 threat would make it far more difficult to be able to fit them all into your squad. If you do not have any 15 threat crisis in your roster, you can guarantee the game won't be played at 15 threat if you select your extracts, as that then means the opponent will be using their secures - none of which are 15 threat.
Once the player with priority has selected either their secures or extracts and the crisis has been selected, the player that lost priority now needs to pick a threat level from the two cards that were drawn. Whilst this player only gets to choose the threat level and has less influence on the crisis selection as a whole, before they make their decision they now have absolute clarity on the crisis as at this point the crisis have been selected, so this makes the decision process slightly easier. As mentioned above, your vein of thinking here should be the same. Given two threat levels at 16 and 18 for example, does one benefit you more than your opponent, can you play that crisis more effectively at 18 threat more than 16? Does 16 threat make it more difficult for your opponent to include key characters in their roster? Again, there is no black and white rule here, these are just elements you should consider. Sometimes, it might be that both crisis selected are the same threat level, in that case, fate has decided for you and you have no decision to make, just roll better in your next priority roll!

Squad Building
Now the crisis and threat level have been selected, we now move on to building the squads for the game. There are a number of things to consider here, and players will prioritise these in different ways so there's no order of importance here, more just things that should be considered collectively. The first of these, is we need to think about how wide or tall we want to go. If I'm playing an attrition team, do I want to try and manipulate priority and go first every turn by having less models than my opponent? Is it a high scoring extract on the table but characters only hold 1 each, so is it going to be beneficial for me to play wider with more models on the table so I can hold more extracts?
You also need to consider how your characters interact with the crisis, is the crisis a pay to flip based on a specific defence stat, could you take characters that can help manipulate that with a high defensive stat? Does the crisis give out certain conditions, could you take characters that are immune to those conditions? If the crisis damages your characters, you could take characters with healing factor that then negates that damage. If there's a stand on secure, you could take characters that have lots of displacement to move activated enemy characters off the secures.
It's at this stage you should start to think about what roles you think you might need to play the crisis effectively, if it's a narrow secure, this often clusters up characters in the middle of board and into a dogfight, so you might need to take some more attrition focused characters to help with this. Alternatively, if it's a fast scoring extract, do you want characters that can pick up extracts safely with plenty of movement to rotate the board? You might need to balance your squad and have a mix of both depending on the crisis.
A final point to note, and this is something I personally found useful to become a better player, is to consider how your opponent wants to play the crisis. For example, your opponent might have a high threat character in their roster, do you have a high threat character or a set of characters in your own roster you could use to go toe to toe with that character, or a tactics card that might help you deal with that character? Does your opponent have characters that are weak to certain attack types that you use against them? This also works in the other direction though, does your opponent have anything in their list that might be a counter to something you want to play? In that case, you might want to consider whether you want to use it. There is an element of chicken here, as you're essentially trying to second guess you're opponent, and sometimes this won't pay off so it's important not to jeopardise your own game plan in doing so.

Tactics Card Selection
Selecting your tactics cards is the final step of Turn 0. Whilst the strategy for this stage isn't quite as in depth as squad selection, tactics cards can outright win you games so it's still an important element. We're going to process many of the same thoughts here as we did with our squad selection, so I'm going to keep this bit brief. Take into consideration your own game plan, what cards might enable you to play that game more effectively, and think about how these might interact with the crisis. If your playing an extract focused game, have you got cards that can help you run away more effectively or negate damage more easily? The crisis might have a number of central extract grabs, so you may have tactics cards that help you grab them safer.

And that brings to an end a whirlwind tour of Turn 0 strategy, this isn't aimed at being a definitive guide, but hopefully it's given you a basic idea of how to approach Turn 0.
As always, thank you for reading, and please check out our sponsor www.protechgames.co.uk for all your MCP needs.
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