So this is dumb and obvious, but I'm just asking for my peace of mind.

Played my first game of Alpha Strike with a friend, I brought the box set and talked him into trying it, and we played the introductory skirmish (Northwind Highlanders with a Phoenix Hawk, Blackjack, Locust and Wasp vs Clan Jade Falcon with a Nova and Pouncer). I let him pick a side; he went with the Highlanders so I took the Clannies.

It was short. He successfully landed only two attack rolls and the rest of his rolls were total squibs - terrible luck. Tabled him very quickly. The main point of consternation though was as follows:

>Highlanders player loses initiative
>Zips his Locust around behind my Nova, pointing guns straight into its back in short range
>Because I won initiative, I move last, so I simply kick the Nova into reverse and move instantly behind the Locust instead before any shots are fired
>The locust can no longer fire at the Nova during firing phase, and the Nova fires straight into the Locust's back and blows it apart instantly
>Highlands player is upset that this feels like a "free kill" and that there may have been some mechanic missed where I needed to roll or something in order to Fist of the North Star him like that.

Did we play this out right or should I not have been able to do that to him? My intuition is that losing an initiative roll is a big deal and in a round where you don't have initiative you should be a lot cagier with mech movement, keep your distance to prevent getting lapped and flanked like that, but it does feel odd that this one coin toss will pretty much decide who "wins" a given round outright in a lot of cases.