My brother is bringing his CR90 when he comes to visit. I don't have one yet and haven't faced off against one. I played against a transport once that ran over all my ships.
What are the best practices for Imperials to take down a CR90? What are some pitfalls to avoid?
Thanks.
Don't try to joust one. Try to come at it from the sides, then you can't get turned into bugs on the windshield.
Also the thing has a pretty big blind spot in the back, if you can get behind the engines it can't shoot at you.
then again, crashing 8 ties into the front is a sure way to cripple it
Ion tokens take energy away too, that might be viable.
then again, crashing 8 ties into the front is a sure way to cripple it
Come at it from the sides. 3 ion cannons a round will cripple it.
Don't try to joust one. Try to come at it from the sides, then you can't get turned into bugs on the windshield.
This is a pretty bad idea. Most of the Corvette's firepower is in its broadside.
Don't try to joust one. Try to come at it from the sides, then you can't get turned into bugs on the windshield.
This is a pretty bad idea. Most of the Corvette's firepower is in its broadside.
it is, and it is not
the best idea is to attack from the back
the next one is attack from the side
the worst idea is attacking from the front
This is a pretty bad idea. Most of the Corvette's firepower is in its broadside.
No not really. You only have 3 options really. Front, side and rear.
Front is fairly suicidal because you can just get run over. Rear is safest because you can't get shot back.
Side is second best, yes you have more guns pointing at you, but it's still a much better option then jousting with it. If you get get behind the blue line then you'll have at most 1 hard point shooting at you.
This is a pretty bad idea. Most of the Corvette's firepower is in its broadside.
No not really. You only have 3 options really. Front, side and rear.
Front is fairly suicidal because you can just get run over. Rear is safest because you can't get shot back.
Side is second best, yes you have more guns pointing at you, but it's still a much better option then jousting with it. If you get get behind the blue line then you'll have at most 1 hard point shooting at you.
I have never really been close to having ships run over, though perhaps the the huge ships may not have been maneuvering aggressively enough. Are you really seeing Battering Ram as a strategy in your games?
There's still a lot of room in the front, and the Corvette may decide to turn to bring his broadsides rather than face you.
Here's the bottom line: The Corvette is armed with a primary 360 4-attack turret that fires out to range 5 on the front. You're always going to have to deal with that. Fortunately on the approach you get boosts to your agility.
But approaching from the sides? The corvette can hit you with secondary weapons. Single Turbolasers let you double your agility but in the face of 4 attack dice that auto-convert a focus to a hit. Quad lasers are short range but they can fire again if they miss.
AND the ship attacks once with each secondary weapon and a primary. So, a CR-90 loaded up with every weapon is going to fling 4 attacks at once if it has the energy to power all its secondaries.
That said, it has no agility.
Defensively the Corvette can do two things: Reinforce one section to give a free evade result to every attack and Recover to burn all energy and for each energy, repair a shield. The problem with that second action is that it'll burn the energy the corvette needs to power all those impressive guns if it's on the attack.
That's without considering any other upgrades of course, like Raymus Antillies or C-3P0.
As Empire my attempted strategy would be this: Academy TIEs in the lead with a few bombers armed with proton torpedoes and seismic charges. Approach the CR-90 from the front and let him decide if he wants to let your TIEs close to range 1 or gun them down and let the bombers live to fire off their torps. When you get into range 2 or so break the formation (the corvette moves last) so he's not hitting all of your bombers when he moves. Then on the next turn drop seismic charges to either knock out some of the rear shields or hit more of the foreard hull (to disable those weapons).
Once the forward section is down all you have to worry about is whatever secondary is on the back end and 2 attack from the remaining 360 turret.
The Corvette is armed with a primary 360 4-attack turret that fires out to range 5 on the front.
That's not completely accurate. It can't fire past the blue line so it's not a full 360, and it can fire from range 3 though 5, so it can't shoot at range 1-2.
The corvette can hit you with secondary weapons.
And again, the single turbo's can only shoot range 3-5. The Quads can only shoot again if they have a extra energy assigned to them.
I would mix Jonus with some bombers and some HLC shuttles.
4 - Scimitar Squadron Pilot with cluster (20pts)
1 - Jonus (22pts)
3 - Omicron Group Pilot with Engine Upgrade, Heavy Laser Cannon (32pts)
7 - Academy Pilot (12pts)
1 - Howlrunner (18pts)
I would take the ties on the left the rest on the right and alpha strike the crap out of the front and swarm the back. If the Cr is still alive I would crash my ties into for extra damage.
That or 12 phantoms would eat it's breakfast ;-p
1. Bombers
2. more Bombers
3. bombers, bombers and more freaking bombers.
4. Shuttles (Jendon) with HLC's and FC
5. Missiles and Torps...
Done. With no evade dice and moving after everyone else its easy to TL and focus and nail with either Gamma's or Scimitars.
So, as a corvette player, some notes that might help you:
The best tag team in the business of killing Rebel Huge ships is none other than:
Maarek Steele + Marksmanship + Cluster Missile
Rexler Brath + Opportunist + HLC
They will chew through Huge ships. All you have to do is deliver them.
Since your targets will be deploying first, try to already start off deploying from the rear of the CR90. This limits the fire you can receive from the front guns, and the possibility of getting run into.
If your opponent is the CR90, he will be short 150 points of fighters. You need to gain air superiority. That means fast anti small ships. I wouldnt take a Shuttle as the CR90 will pound it. Same for the Bomber (you would think Bomber vs huge ships, but once they blow their load they suck and but the 2 Agility really makes it hard to dodge the main gun on the way in. Tie Fighters and Interceptors are your bread and butter, try to get as many as you can between Maarek and Rex and the rebel CAP.
The first objective is to cripple the Aft section of the huge ship. You want to do this for the following reasons:
1) limits movement. It cuts the Straight 4 and bank 2s (arguably the most dangerous manuever that beast makes, aka the powerslide of doom).
2) it limits energy carry over. The ship goes from being 5 energy to 1 energy. It can still generate energy by moving, and depending what it has left, can generate up to 4 energy per turn, but thats a fair bit less that it was doing before.
3) it removes Jam. This is big. Jamming kills us. The inability to take an action on Turr or Fel gets them killed.
4) it makes a big blindspot to fly in.
With an action, ideally Maarek can put 1 crit up a turn. His ability is tremendous here, as it lets him choose the best ship crit (hint, there are no goo ship crits, getting crit of a huge ship sucks. With some luck, Rex can add a whack of crits by turning hits into crits with his ability, and the CR90 wont generate any tokens to prevent Opportunist.
Defend them and they will murder the CR90 or Transport almost with contemptous ease.
My brother is bringing his CR90 when he comes to visit. I don't have one yet and haven't faced off against one. I played against a transport once that ran over all my ships.
What are the best practices for Imperials to take down a CR90? What are some pitfalls to avoid?
Thanks.
Swarm works great if they don't choose the Reinforce action. Then the swarm does nothing.
Firesprays are phenomenal.
Ion Cannons are nasty, as you can force them to run over a friendly ship (by Ionizing the friendly ship). They can also sap the big guy of Energy.
Heavy Laser Cannons are nasty, as you can just rip the ship apart.
If you control their allies, then you control the CR-90, unless its controller is willing to crush its own allies in its haste to kill you.
Not sure if this has been mentioned, but Ion Pulse Missiles may work well against them too. Extraordinarily easy to hit with (you retain your target lock like you do with Homing Missiles), deal some damage, and sap 2 energy from its next turn. Plus they are only 3 points. Cheap bombers or Defenders could make great use of them. Vader could make good use of them too, since you could TL and then evade. Plus all three ships have excellent range 3 control (bombers and defenders have 1 maneuvers, and vader can move forward and barrel roll back if need be while still target locking). Range 3 matters if they've taken Toryn Farr because really, why wouldn't they? It's one of the best ways to protect a Huge ship.