Yes, they do. I've been expecting you to leverage Reading the Defense more regularly in order to boost your hits to limit your susceptibility to Riposte. On the other hand, attacking first forces him to burn initiative via Parry interrupts, as he doesn't have the opportunity to use Pre-Emptive Parry first. Given his lack of a second Free Action, that's really handcuffing his offense as he can only really spend his Complex Actions on Reading the Defense after calling Pre-Emptive Parry.
That's been my thinking. Reading the Defense is great for this kind of ceremonial combat -- I find its usefulness in regular combat to be fairly limited -- but James' big advantage is his initiative, so punishing Wilhelm on that front seems the smarter move, at least for first passes. Whether or not that's true -- James has been tagged twice on Ripostes now -- is unclear, because I don't know if James would've been tagged with those extra attacks.
CT7 IP2Free: Called Shot
Complex: Melee Attack
16 dice for the attack.
Melee Attack:
16d6t5 5I will use Reading the Defense for the next pass, as those 3 extra dice for my first pass will be a very welcome addition. I'll go ahead and roll it so we can jump right into the next pass after James defends again.
INT (9) + Close Combat (7) = 16 dice.
Reading the Defense:
16d6t5 5Defense read.
So, that makes:
CT7 IP3Complex: Reading the Defense
CFD woo:
CFD Woo:
6d6t5 3Initiative:
Inititaive:
19+4d6 32Let's go ahead and roll Soak. BOD (5) + WIL (7) = 12 dice.
"Drain":
12d6t5 5That's nice. Wasn't expecting it.
To recap:
James will attack on CT7 IP2
James will need to defend against Wilhelm's CT7 IP2 attack.
James will Read the Defense on CT7 IP3
James will activate his CFD woo powers for Hits -1 CTs, in this case 2. His REA is boosted from 7 to 10, hitting his Augmented Maximum. "Drain" is Soaked.