Hi all, I’m Andrea Mainini, one of the authors of the game.
There are MANY REASONS that, COMBINED, explain the lack of the first player advantage on ORION Duel:
1) the two-colors tiles; each time you play, you play a little bit also for your opponent;
2) the main and only rule of the game forbidding the first player to immediately collect galaxies or to make the opponent to collect black holes (while the second player can collect immediately galaxies or to make the opponent to collect black holes); and in case the first player begins playing a one-color tile not allowing the second player to immediately collect galaxies or to make the opponent to collect black holes, he/she will have lost the possibility to use those powerful tiles when really needed on the intermediate/final phase of the game;
3) the initial and always different setup of galaxies and black holes making impossible to know the “perfect first move” and the “perfect sequence of moves” for any possible sequence of countermoves of the opponent;
4) there is no single ideal position to place a first tile; there are many possible positions in relation to a specific setup and to the various types of tiles available; and the second player, in relation to the first player's move, has many interesting positions to respond the first player (and not necessarily adjacent to the first tile);
5) the combination of 3 different highly interdependent and intertwined OBJECTIVES;
6) the overall architecture of the game determining a constantly "fluid" situation where normally it is not possible to consolidate strong dominant positions; with every move a possible advantage situation can be reversed and the fate of the game can change; this means that even a sequence of “perfect” initial moves (assuming you know them... which is not possible) do not give a steady/assured advantage.
Anyone who thinks that there is a first player advantage should be able to indicate which is the right TILE to play, in which POSITION of a board that each time presents a DIFFERENT SETUP, in a game that offers 3 DIFFERENT OBJECTIVES; after that he/she should be able to indicate which is the third move to play following all the possible second moves of the opponent .... and so on for the following moves in order to protect and exploit that presumed advantage of the first move;
to know which is the first move that can (theoretically and possibly) give an advantage to the first player, assuming you are a TOP PLAYER, you should start studying one of the countless possible setups; after that you should play with that setup many many games (hundreds).... and maybe you can guess if there is an advantage by adopting a certain first move on that setup (what kind of tile in which position, etc. etc. etc.); done this work for the first setup you have to continue with the other countless possible setups...
In any case, apart from all the theoretical and practical reasons that explain and argue the absence of a first player advantage, the statistics collected over thousands of games (both during the development phase and during the "BGA phase") do not show the slightest sign of a possible first player advantage….. and even if there was a tiny bit of first player advantage left, it would be absolutely irrelevant to the "humans".
