Right true, on the other hand red dice will get fired most times during teh match due to their range while you wont get as many occasiosn to fire black dice, especially on victory 1 with its turn radious and speed.

Right true, on the other hand red dice will get fired most times during teh match due to their range while you wont get as many occasiosn to fire black dice, especially on victory 1 with its turn radious and speed.

On the other hand the forward arc on a VSD is huge. It doesn't need to turn much to get something into its arc. Each dice has its advantages. GSD is really where Black Dice show what they can do.

AFIIs will definitely be beasts, but so will Vics. From what we can see so far each faction seems fairly balanced, but in different areas. Rebels have awesome bombers (3 of them), Imps have super fast fighter screens. Rebels have mobile capital ships (although the Neb B is a bit fragile for my tastes, especially since its forward firepower is its best arc, which makes it hard to maneuver) Imps have super beastly hull rating and damage dice.

It equals out in the end depending on your play style.

Right true, on the other hand red dice will get fired most times during teh match due to their range while you wont get as many occasiosn to fire black dice, especially on victory 1 with its turn radious and speed.

On the other hand the forward arc on a VSD is huge. It doesn't need to turn much to get something into its arc. Each dice has its advantages. GSD is really where Black Dice show what they can do.

AFIIs will definitely be beasts, but so will Vics. From what we can see so far each faction seems fairly balanced, but in different areas. Rebels have awesome bombers (3 of them), Imps have super fast fighter screens. Rebels have mobile capital ships (although the Neb B is a bit fragile for my tastes, especially since its forward firepower is its best arc, which makes it hard to maneuver) Imps have super beastly hull rating and damage dice.

It equals out in the end depending on your play style.

I can see several potential playstyles fleet comps being common.

1. The 2 Vic big squadron fleet. This fleet will want to seek frontal engagements by any means necessary. So they will seek objectives that require the enemy to move to specific locations on the board. That can be tokens you have to pick up, or simply slugfest objectives where this fleet would protect their command Vic with the other Vic.

2. A 3 GSD fleet. This fleet will seek to close on the enemy quickly and maximize their time at black dice range. Highly mobile and able to move around the board, but not able to play long range shooting games.

3. The 2 neb, 2 corvette fleet. This fleet will try to use the nebs to pummel the shields off an enemy cap ships while the corvettes make a run on it. This fleet will also have 2 highly mobile flankers in the event of a multiple token objective game. The nebs may be fragile but when paired they will provide excellent firepower at long range. This fleet will likely want to open with the corvettes moving first to preserve the nebs for the fight as the corvettes will have speed to disengage.

4. 1 AFII and 2 neb fleet. This will be a flying wedge fleet. Basically the AFII closes with the enemy with the 2 nebs providing support. This could be run with the AFII running the middle with the nebs supporting each side in a true wedge formation, or it could be setup with both nebs on one side of the AFII in an attempt to maximize firepower on one side of the AFII.

5. The corvette swarm fleet. This fleet will be banking on moving and shooting last with a large amount of its firepower while using 1 or 2 ships as flankers who will move early. This setup will be interesting because it could run 4-6 corvettes with a modest amount of fighters. I would think you would want to keep the corvettes individual cost down and run this as a true swarm. One major advantage this fleet would have is the ability to disengage if the speed is kept high. However high speed engagements may result in you overflying the enemy without actually destroying the enemy cap ship you targeted because you will get very few rounds of shooting before you fly back out of range. Can see running this with some ywings and bwings to follow up and get the kills after the corvettes have made their passes.

6. 2-3 AFII fleet geared for ranged broadsides. This fleet will be interesting to see because on paper it will be throwing a lot of red dice, with the ideal strategy being to keep the enemy at red dice range for as long as possible. I'm thinking this fleet comp will do well against GSDs, but may struggle against Vics who will simply run engineering commands to repair the damage. However that said, the AFII fleet will have speed and will have the ability to split up and still provide excellent firepower. One idea I can see would be to run your 3 ships straight across the board with your goal being to pincer one cap ship between each of your flankers and the middle AFII. basically you will be trying to use your split formation to knock the shields off of multiple sides of the enemy cap ships so they cant turn a fresh side to anyone without exposing their rear to another ship. If you run this strat you would want to keep your speed up so you can circle the enemy with your flankers while the center guy can disengage bc he will likely be hurting pretty bad.

As I have stated before I think I will go with a core set and 1 of each expansion pack so I will be several of the fleet comps. Not sure which of these strats will work the best, but I think they all have fairly equal merit until we actually see the objectives and play some matches so see how the lists, rules, and objectives interact. If I was only going to play one faction I would suggest buying the core and the expansions for the ships you get in core plus the fighter pack. I would skip the AFII if you want to save money but if you got the cash pick it up as well for a rebel player. That will give you quite a bit of flexibility in your lists. Beyond that if you find you need or want more AFII, corvettes, or GSDs to fill out one of the specialty lists you wont have a ton more to to buy and at that point your a committed player to the game. Someone on the fence though would be easily able to offload what they bought if they decide the game isnt for them after all (I'm thinking this is shaping to be xwing 2.0 in popularity).

Right true, on the other hand red dice will get fired most times during teh match due to their range while you wont get as many occasiosn to fire black dice, especially on victory 1 with its turn radious and speed.

I would add the following to our analysis of the damage dice: multiply the damage per die by the average probability of having a target in range of that dice on a given turn. This should be valid as we are looking at average damage per die -- not average damage per ship, or arc, or anything else. This probability will vary based on play style and so on, which is why I am calling it average probability (p).

I suggest .75 to .80 for Red to be in range p(Red) = .80. Yeah, that is a stab in the dark, but it feels (close to) right. Blue dice should be a bit less, and Black dice. p(Blue) is a complete guess for me. Let's call it .55 to .60 -- just for sake of argument. And p(Black) at roughly .40 to .45.

Given all the above assumptions: average damage for Red dice becomes .75 * .8 or .60. Average Blue damage becomes .45. And average damage for Black dice becomes .45.

If we assume we want all our fleets points producing damage in the maximum number of turns, this concept might be useful for fleet selection. Once engaged, the dice are either in range or they aren't

I agree that the AF2 looks like a decent all-round ship, its main weakness being it only has one anti-squadron die. That said its currently the best rebel ship for squadron value - stick a few squadrons of A-Wings near it as a screen and add the Gallant title, and it should be fairly well protected, or use it to support bombing runs by your fighters.

I agree that the AF2 looks like a decent all-round ship, its main weakness being it only has one anti-squadron die. That said its currently the best rebel ship for squadron value - stick a few squadrons of A-Wings near it as a screen and add the Gallant title, and it should be fairly well protected, or use it to support bombing runs by your fighters.

Conveniently the Rebels also have a 3AS(I believe one of the Neb variants) ship as well they can pair with the AF2 and/or this is where metagaming comes into play. Most Imperial lists I have seen thrown about are focusing mostly on only token TIEs as screens. and I personally would not be terribly concerned with say 6-7 basic Squadrons of TIEs turning to attack my AF2s if I have the AS NebB or a CR90+a Squadron or 2 of X-wings to make the TIEs hesitate

I agree that the AF2 looks like a decent all-round ship, its main weakness being it only has one anti-squadron die. That said its currently the best rebel ship for squadron value - stick a few squadrons of A-Wings near it as a screen and add the Gallant title, and it should be fairly well protected, or use it to support bombing runs by your fighters.

Conveniently the Rebels also have a 3AS(I believe one of the Neb variants) ship as well they can pair with the AF2 and/or this is where metagaming comes into play. Most Imperial lists I have seen thrown about are focusing mostly on only token TIEs as screens. and I personally would not be terribly concerned with say 6-7 basic Squadrons of TIEs turning to attack my AF2s if I have the AS NebB or a CR90+a Squadron or 2 of X-wings to make the TIEs hesitate

but woe be the list that doesnt plan for bombers in a tourney list and gets matched against a multiple tie bomber list or the dude who is running 4 bwings 4 ywings and some xwings with a few corvettes. Considering the price for fighter expansions you can easily see someone running a fleet like that just to be "that guy" everyone else will complain about.

Not to rain on any parades but honestly you will be building your fleet for objectives so it's really almost impossible to say what will or will not be good tactics until we have a better idea of what those entail. Not sure how Corrupter Bomber combo is going to help you in the dodge the rocks objective (my personal favorite so far).

If you can decimate your foes well enough objectives don't matter!!!

But thats what balanced builds are for. You put Corrupter with a GSD so the GSD has the mobility to perform navigation missions.

Or you pick the most combatyish Blue Objective for yourself so you needn't worry about it if your opponent gets initiative. And if you get initiative, well, its a good bet the worst Red objective is still very killy focused.

Not to rain on any parades but honestly you will be building your fleet for objectives so it's really almost impossible to say what will or will not be good tactics until we have a better idea of what those entail. Not sure how Corrupter Bomber combo is going to help you in the dodge the rocks objective (my personal favorite so far).

I think though a lot of ppl will quickly resolve their issues with objectives. My understanding is you build objective deck if you dont have initiative, and if you do your picking from deck your opponent built. A lot of ppl will be able to build fleets that will be decent at all objectives or at least enough that they can pick something that will work and others will build fleets going for the initiative bid.

As for the corrupter bomber combo I would think he isnt going to be concerned about dodge the rock if thats a serious issue for him he will NEVER see it with that list. You put it in your objective deck he picks something else and he simply doesnt put it in his objective deck. I do realize he has to put one of each category into his deck but that still leaves a lot of leeway for skipping objectives you dont like. In fact I wont be surprised if some enterprising ppl will exactly to 300 points and then build an objective deck out of the stuff that is less played just to get an edge on people.

All things being equal I think being as close to 300 points with a well rounded fleet is going to serve you better than a 280 fleet that aims to get initiative every time.