The Season 4 Bootcamp - Keep your defenses up with Defensive Stance and Counter-attack

Welcome to the next post in the Season 4 Bootcamp! This time we look at our defensive Options: Defensive Stance and Counter-Attack.

If you don't use these options, you are not doing everything to win your game. If you mindlessly use it, you will certainly end up starved for momentum and will pretty much never win initiative. So, how do these options help you out?

Defensive Stance

Upping your Defense by 1 for the one attack where your opponent rolls more dice seems like a good deal for 1 Momentum, but there is still a good amount of situations where you don't want to defensive stance.
One the one hand, charges have a pretty high chance of wrapping. If you can stop the Wrap, it is usually a good idea to use the defensive stance, since the momentum difference will stay the same (you lose 1 momentum and your opponent gains 1, if you don't stance he will gain 2, if he takes 2 momentous results) but you will take one result less.
If you think your opponent is going for a high playbook result (For example, a Tackle-Double-Dodge on Velocity) it might also be a good idea to up your defense.
A good amount of time your opponent will just charge in because he can't jog and attack and is looking for a low result (let's say the Knockdown from Tapper) and you have a good enough defense that the wrap is unlikely. In this case, the momentum is better saved up.

Counter-Attack

This option first of all has the advantage of not just working against charges. But that doesn't mean that it is always worth it to take the option. First of all, some model's counterattacks suck. Take Millstone for example. Against any Armor, she will not hit her double-push and she will even have problems hitting her single push against 4/1. Against an opponent that is base-to-base, that means that the counter-attck will not achieve much of anything. Better keep that momentum to heal her up! If you look at Iron, that is a juicy counter. Double Push on 1 hit means a very likely disengage against all models that are not base-to-base and 2" melee.
The second thing you have to consider when thinking about counters is knockdown. If your opponent attacks with a model that has an easy access to knockdown, he can just deny you the attack. If you think the Knockdown is not the preferred option for your opponent, you should still counter and force him to take it instead of, for example, a damage result.
Lastly, if your opponent started his activation engaging you, a disengaging counter is not really useful, since he can use his advance to get back into you.
There are, as outlined in the first post of this series, counterattacks that don't disengage, but that will trigger character plays. Hitting things like Singled Out from Anvil, Dirty Knives from Friday, or They ain't tough on veteran Graves can make your next activation better without even needing to activate this certain model for setup.

Getting into when to use those defensive options and how to play against them will need a certain amount of experience. Take the above as a rough guideline and just keep playing!