If you win the side roll, is it to your advantage to let the opponent set up first if you are playing the Golan Turret? My thinking is this "If you have the Golan Turret you would allow your opponent to set up first taking the advantage of the Emplacement ability to set yourself up for a first round shot." This is especially true, I believe, if one were to play on the Mustafar map with a Han Cannon squad and the MTB. The thought is that you could take your attacks at your opponent in his starting area before he would have a chance to move them. However this situation is most promising coming from the good side of the map, which anyone who forfeits the chance to set up their squad first on Mustafar, will not be playing from, making that a terrible example.

On the Hardboard Map most people will choose pit side, I believe that the golan could be set up to take a shot at most of that starting area, but only after seeing where an opponent had set up. On the first round on some maps it is very difficult to see any opposing starting areas and for those maps, of course this choice is non-viable. But Splash is never more effective than on the first round, because pieces are usually not as bunched up after the first round. Anyhow, Thoughts?

i think when you have the golan there could be times where you would want to set up 2nd.
In that situation you are almost guaranteed gambit on the first turn so you should be able to advance at your leisure.

However, i don't like Golans. They rarely contribute their points worth against the high power of the top teams.
Most maps have a favorable side so i think its better to set up first.

What if the map is a particularly open map and you know that you will win the first initiative (Via the MTB lets say) is it appropriate if you have one of those high speed pieces that could conceiveably take say 4 shots before your opponent has a chance to activate?

your talking about either Han cannon or a speeder cannon i take it and on the Starship most likely.

On the starship i would always choose side and if he has a golan give him ugnaughts as first target. There is far too mch advantage to the reactor side. Same can be said for Rancor and even the starship throne room to some degree.

I was talking about a han/speeder cannon. I was actually thinking specifically about a squad that I faced last month that used huges, and I know how restrictive it is to have to set those up on the hardboard map. I am really trying to be on top of things come this monday. I wish I had vassal running on my computer to try these idea's out.

It depends on the level of my competition. Very rarely against Deri or Matt will I allow them to choose side on most maps (there are some that I might not care). However against lesser competition, I like being able to set up second, which can often be more of an advantage than side is, especially since I am usually playing a less than ideal squad.

There are also situations where a squad you build might be built to take advantage of the bad side, and so you can defer.

For example, Exar Sings. If I win map, we play on the Rancor Pit. I can take advantage of either side, and in fact, I almost prefer the right. Setting up second is a much bigger advantage in this case. Example two, would be what Dr. Divot did at the Champs. Broken Boba almost worked better from the "bad" side, so he also would defer and set up second.

I will say though, that this is the minority of cases. Most of the time, you want to choose the side.

I had a game recently where I wanted to lose side roll so i'd get to set up second. 150 points on the hardback map and i was using a Golan. I didn't need the reactor side to get first round gambit since the Golan was getting placed in gambit, but I did need to know which section of the map he'd be setting up in so I could place the Golan because hardback map is set up so that everything seems to happen either on the top half in line with the conference room or on the bottom half in line with the reactor.

See that is my thinking. Is letting your opponent set up first worth getting a round one attack off.