INITIATIVE

There are a number of abilities that affect initiative control. This is a summary of those abilities and their interactions. First, here is an inventory of abilities that manipulate initiative.

INVENTORY
Special Abilities:
Master Tactician
Tactics Broker
Tactician +X, Covenant Watch Circle, Imperial Triumvirate
Recon, Smuggler's Luck

Never Tell Me the Odds
Disruptive/Distraction
Ysalamiri

Commander Effects:
Darth Sidious, Sith Mastermind

Force Powers:
Sense the Future
Anticipation

Advanced Battle Meditation


BY CATEGORY
Cancellation abilities. Some of the abilities in the above list may look out of place. They do not actually help initiative. But under the right circumstances, they prevent opponents from using their initiative abilities.

Advanced Battle Meditation and Disruptive/Distraction cancel Darth Sidious, SM's commander effect
Never Tell Me the Odds cancels Master Tactician, Tactics Broker, Tactician +X, Recon, etc.
Ysalimiri prevents Sense the Future, Anticipation, or Advanced Battle Meditation

"Auto-Win" abilities. There are four abilities that result in automatically winning initiative, assuming they are not canceled by the abilities above and they do not run into any other initiative manipulation abilities.

Master Tactician and Sidious SM's CE are considered equivalent. They work the same way, except one is a commander effect and one is a special ability. A player with either ability automatically wins initiative unless they roll a 1. If they face each other, assuming neither is canceled, the player with the high roll between them wins initiative.

Sense the Future is a Force power that lets you trade initiative rolls with an opponent. This can automatically win initiative when facing a player with no initiative abilities, but it will lose to Master Tactician or Sidious SM's CE unless one of the players rolled a 1. On its own, it is not as powerful as the other auto-win abilities, but it becomes very powerful when paired with Never Tell Me the Odds. (Note that there is errata for Sense the Future: this ability takes place after initiative checks are rolled but before initiative is determined. In most games, this change makes no difference whatsoever, but it means that Anticipation happens after Sense the Future.)

Tactics Broker is the most powerful of the bunch, but you pay a price for it. You lose a character each round, and in exchange you make an opponent's initiative check a 1. It beats Master Tactician and Sidious SM's CE because those abilities are canceled if they get a 1, and Tactics Broker makes their roll a 1. Several other abilities, including Tactician +X, are also canceled on a 1. Tactics Broker also beats Sense the Future because even after the Sense the Future player trades dice, that player is still stuck with a 1. Tactics Broker's downside, of course, is that you lose a character each round. It is cancelled by Never Tell Me the Odds, and if an opponent has Reserves that trigger on a 1, then the player with Tactics Broker will probably lose quickly, although the initiative control still works. It is only usable once per round, so if you roll a 1 yourself, you do not get the advantage of Tactics Broker on the reroll.

Reroll abilities
Recon and Smuggler's Luck let you roll twice for initiative if you meet the conditions. (Note that they do not stack because they both say "twice".) You roll two dice instead of one and then choose one.

Anticipation happens once per round, after initiative is determined. This stacks with Recon so you could roll four times overall. Because Anticipation is after initiative is determined, it is a chance to reroll after Sense the Future, so this ability could possibly beat Sense the Future. The odds are still with Sense the Future, though, since that player got to choose the highest of two dice while the Anticipation player has to roll one die and accept the result. Anticipation cannot beat Master Tactician, Sidious SM's CE, or Tactics Broker.

Initiative boosts
Tactician +X, Covenant Watch Circle, and Imperial Triumvirate boost your initiative roll. None of them add up to a bonus of 20 or more, so none of them can automatically win initiative, and each of them is cancelled on a roll of 1. Also, Tactician +X is canceled if there is a tie and initiative is rerolled. In a non-faction game, these abilities would stack so you could theoretically put all of the bonuses together and get a +22 to initiative. These abilities belong to the player, not the dice, so if a Sense the Future trades dice, a player with one of these boosts could still end up winning initiative.

SUMMARY
Tactics Broker
LOSES INIT TO:
NEUTRALIZED BY: Roll of 1, Tactics Broker, Never Tell Me the Odds

Master Tactician
LOSES INIT TO: Tactics Broker, Roll of 1
NEUTRALIZED BY: Master Tactician, Sidious SM, Never Tell Me the Odds

Darth Sidious, Sith Mastermind's commander effect
LOSES INIT TO: Tactics Broker, Roll of 1
NEUTRALIZED BY: Master Tactician, Sidious SM, Disruptive/Distraction, Advanced Battle Meditation

Sense the Future
LOSES INIT TO: Tactics Broker, Master Tactician, Sidious SM
NEUTRALIZED (at least partially) BY: Ysalamiri, Sense the Future, Anticipation (although advantage still goes to Sense the Future), Tactician +X, Covenant Watch Circle, Imperial Triumvirate

Sense the Future + Never Tell Me the Odds (available in New Republic via Tionne/Qui Gon, Force Spirit)
LOSES INIT TO: Sidious SM
NEUTRALIZED BY: Ysalamiri, Sense the Future, Anticipation (although advantage still goes to Sense the Future)

Unlike Tactics Broker and Tactician +X, Master Tactician isn't canceled on a tied roll (even if the tie is a 1). You would still reroll ties, but all that matters is that the final roll is not a 1.

No. They'd still have Master Tactician. As long as they don't roll a 1 on the reroll, they still win initiative.

Loses to Sidious if both roll a 1. Even with a swap it's a tie. Tactics Broker is canceled. Then Sidious wins unless he rolls another 1. 0.225% chance. 99.775% chance of winning init against even the worst matchup is pretty good.

I also remember a time where you forgot your opponent had San Hill, gave him a 1, he got 10 drones, outactivated you and won ;)/

No we didn't finish it, but I do remember hilariously enough in round 3 I rolled a 1 for init anyways.