Arc dodgers should be able to get out of firing arc. Autothrusters does a good job against range 3 HLC attacks.

Also Aggressors are the only large base ship that is vulnerable to the effects of flechete torpedoes. They have the same hit points as Y/B-wings.

They are the oddest large base ships out there. They only have 4 hull a single firing arc and 3 agility.

That's funny, so if you take a Hull Upgrade on any IG, does he become immune to Flechette Torpedoes?

Arc dodgers should be able to get out of firing arc. Autothrusters does a good job against range 3 HLC attacks.

Also Aggressors are the only large base ship that is vulnerable to the effects of flechete torpedoes. They have the same hit points as Y/B-wings.

They are the oddest large base ships out there. They only have 4 hull a single firing arc and 3 agility.

That's funny, so if you take a Hull Upgrade on any IG, does he become immune to Flechette Torpedoes?

If I remember right, there is a ruling to that effect in the faq

of course, you're never going to run into it

Auto-thrusters for life

Thanks for the posts all, it has given me something to think about.

RoV

Last night I got my azz handed to me by a dual aggressors. It was a PUG at my FLGS, I flew:

Double D's w/ HLC: (37 points each)

Howlrunner w/ PTL & Engine Upgrade. (25 pts)

Total: 99 pts.

He played

B+C, both with:

-Inertial Dampener

-Mangler

-Push the Limit

-Advanced Sensors

-Stealth Device

-Title

I deployed asteroids in a central cluster, as others have suggested. Without a dedicated blocker, my hope was to spend a couple rounds getting behind him and then force him into the asteroid cluster where he would have a hard time with maneuvers in general and K/S turns specifically. I largely succeeded at that, and I think that is the kicker; he still tabled me. End game: I had stripped shields off both ships and done 2 crits to the C.

About partway through, I realized I was going to need to block him. That was tough to do with the combination of lower PS and his Advanced Sensors + Inertial Dampeners. Those 2 upgrades got him out of most blocks, though a couple times he landed on asteroids, but that was ok, since he still had his action economy.

I found them very frustrating to play against, and not a fun game overall. My complaint is that it is very much a hard counter list, like Phantoms, and I don't find it enjoyable to look at lists and be able to determine a winner before deployment. The game pretty much turned out as I had anticipated it would.

It also did not help that he was not what I would call a good sportsman. He did not deploy his manuever dials next to the ship. He put them both in his corner and it seemed to me he allocated them, a couple times, where he felt was most beneficial. I could be mistaken there, but to me it's proper etiquette to deploy your dials right next to the ship they go with. Additionally, a situation came up where he dialed in a 3 right bank but declared an "Uh oh, I meant to do a 3 left blank"...and so I let him have it. But, at the end of the game, when my last Defender did a 4 k-turn that put less than 1 millimeter of the corner of the base off the map, he declared victory (he would have beat me anyway so that really wasn't the point); it was his lack of generosity here that I found very poor.

Thursday, I'm playing my regular buddy and I asked him to put a dual-Aggressor list together. Here's what I'm thinking about playing:

2 Alpha Interceptors with hull upgrade (blockers, bait)*

Carnor Jax with SoT. Arc Dodger/debuffer, killer

Soontir Fel with PtL. Arc Dodger, killer

For similar points, I could go with 3 tie fighters. Do you think they work better as blockers. I figured with basic squints, if I'm able to position them where I don't have to block, they can still do some damage, whereas academy ties probably won't.

Ok, assuming that there is at least an IG-88B in there (because who does not like a gunner effect?).

General counters that will gain you an edge against most IG builds

- 1 or more ships with a PS rating 7 or higher with abilities to arc dodge to some extent. Even a few named B-Wings can do it. So can a well flown Falcon.

- Stress: a single stress will stop the k-turn or s-loop for the following round, buying you some time. A double stress can wreck an IG, drawing it out of the game.

- Ion: not for the alpha strike (if we assume ion cannons), but if you can land an ion token on one round then you have a good shot at controlling the fight later down the road (maybe force an asteroid hit followed by a range 1 shot).

- Bump fest: an IG's fastest natural move is a k-turn 4. All other moves have a speed of 3 maximum, so if there is a major bump fest then there is a possibility that the IG might simply not be able to get out of it. The presence of advanced sensors or not will determine if that plays out to your advantage.

If the cannons involved are mangler or heavy laser cannons

- Ships with shields and an evade action. If you can control the amount of damage that you take and take only 1 hit, you deny the "gunner" effect and suffer only 1 shield of damage. That makes the difference between a ships that stays in the game for a short while or gets taken out in a single round.

Specific hard counters

- Rebel captive: it was good before, still is now and will continue to be. An IG that shoots at a rebel captive cannot k-turn or s-loop the following round.

- Echo and Whisper with VI: need I say more?

- All other maneuverable ships: Soontir, Turr, Carnor, Vader, Jake, etc, etc, etc

- Engine upgrade on a high pilot skill large base.

- Flechette torpedoes + tactician or flechette cannons + tactician: there's a double stress waiting to happen.

Those are some of the elements that have seriously hampered my IGs in the 15+ games I did with them. There are some finer points like good asteroid placements that will give the advantage to your fleet, but that's up to everyone to figure out and depends on how we each fly.

Lol at those hard counters.

The current breed of large based ships cant deal with 5 potential k turns. With or without engine upgrade.

By now people should be able to shoot down named phantoms with ps2 bwings let alone something as manueverable as iggy.

Interceptors can be hard countered by feedback array.

Double stress is a problem for everything. The problem is that the current vectors for stress arent very good other than the stressbot.

At best these are soft counters. The only true hardcounter is putting more guns on the table than the crazy 88s and not flying like a scrub.

Reiterating what everyone else has said about stress and high-PS arc-dodgers. The highest IG can go is PS8, but that's a huge sacrifice of their EPT slot just to tie Echo and top Dash/Keyan on a PS bid. They have lots of green, but it's basically impossible for them to get out of R3A2's firing arc once they land in it.

Adrenaline Rush can somewhat help them turn around if they took it, but it only works once.

Despite the turret, I've found SuperDash58 to be a very even match. He can arc-dodge like crazy, and his four-dice attacks can overwhelm IG's three evade dice.

Stress it and it becomes predictable. 2x phantoms with Tactician is my fave, Devi with rebel captive is also fun.

-Cal

Lol at those hard counters.

The current breed of large based ships cant deal with 5 potential k turns. With or without engine upgrade.

By now people should be able to shoot down named phantoms with ps2 bwings let alone something as manueverable as iggy.

Interceptors can be hard countered by feedback array.

Double stress is a problem for everything. The problem is that the current vectors for stress arent very good other than the stressbot.

At best these are soft counters. The only true hardcounter is putting more guns on the table than the crazy 88s and not flying like a scrub.

The most of current breed of large-based ships can do their own 5-K turns. People just forget because they're used to arc-dodging with them. But IG really lives as a turret counter, which is what the game needed anyway.

Yeah, they can shoot down named Phantoms with PS2 B-wings, but that's usually through blocking with one or two ships while the others actually shoot it. Double-IG lists don't tend to have a lot of blockers. Plus, veteran Phantom players know how to play the long game, and will wait for opportune moments to shoot instead of just staying in a furball and letting you get multiple shots at them.

Feedback Array has yet to really crack into the meta, in part because it does so little against large-based ships.

Stressbot is easily the most common stress vector, but Tacticians on both B-Wings and Firesprays can be very effective. It also only really takes one stress to severely hinder an Aggresssor. At the very least, they're doing a 1-3 bank next turn to clear it. If they have to hard turn, they're carrying that stress with them, which means they're vulnerable to double-stress.

5 potential kturns. 4 flavors of segnors and one 4-k turn. Its really not hard at all to guess where the fatty is going.

Blockers are your best bet yes.

Stress is only a problem if you dont know how to manage it. The best way to fly the aggressor is to have them scissor and covering each other if they cant focus fire. A ywing isnt going to last long if its getting shot at by an aggressor. Its still a nice trick to have in general though because it works against so many archetypes.

5 potential kturns. 4 flavors of segnors and one 4-k turn. Its really not hard at all to guess where the fatty is going.

Maybe I'm brain farting but what do you mean by 4 flavors of Segnor? He's got 2 S and 1 K turn. Are you adding in the possibility of boosting with advanced sensors before that?

5 potential kturns. 4 flavors of segnors and one 4-k turn. Its really not hard at all to guess where the fatty is going.

Maybe I'm brain farting but what do you mean by 4 flavors of Segnor? He's got 2 S and 1 K turn. Are you adding in the possibility of boosting with advanced sensors before that?

He's probably taking IG-88D's ability into account (using the 3 turn instead of the 3 bank for the S-loop).

My primary X-wing sparring partner has adopted a double Aggressor build as his signature list, so I'm facing those damnable droids pretty frequently.

I think the double Aggressor build was initially frustrating to face because you can't just plunk down your ships and joust your way to victory. The Aggressor, however, can do just that. It has a great dial, and 3 Agility + Autothrusters lets it survive pilot errors better than most ships. It's fairly easy to do well by just pointing your HLCs in the right direction.

On the other side of the table, stress, pilot skill, and blocking have all proved effective against Aggressor builds, but honestly what's made the most difference for me is working on flying better. It's made me think about positioning a lot more, and maybe pointed me in the direction of being a better player.

I'm not looking to get into a heated argument, here, but, don't things like "ease of flying", forgiveness of pilot errors, and "easy to do well by just poining your HLC's in the right direction" mean that a ship is inherently...'unbalanced' (in the strictest definition of the word). If ship A is easier to use (requires less skill) than ship B of the same point cost, isn't there something wrong?

(Btw, I'm not necessairly convinced of that as an absolute truth, but it is pretty telling).

I'm not looking to get into a heated argument, here, but, don't things like "ease of flying", forgiveness of pilot errors, and "easy to do well by just poining your HLC's in the right direction" mean that a ship is inherently...'unbalanced' (in the strictest definition of the word). If ship A is easier to use (requires less skill) than ship B of the same point cost, isn't there something wrong?

(Btw, I'm not necessairly convinced of that as an absolute truth, but it is pretty telling).

My experience with the list, after two casual games and five games at a Store Championship:

It's very tanky, especially with Autothrusters. I don't believe I'm exaggerating when I say that the four points I spent to put Autothrusters on both ships saved me at least 10 points of damage per game. If you can maneuver well enough to secure lots of range 3 shots and minimize your opponents' opportunities at range 1-2, you'll win. That tankiness makes it especially strong in timed matches, because it can be very difficult to focus either of them down.

However, it does not react well at all to receiving more than one stress token. An opponent managed to use R3A2 on a Y-Wing to ultimately stack NINE stress tokens on me. I won the match, but that ship was helpless and ultimately died. Stress kills Advanced Sensors, it kills your ability to reverse directions, and it largely forces them to rely on unmodified dice results on defense. Ions in conjunction with stress are also painful, though three green dice give some solid defense against ion hits.

I'm not looking to get into a heated argument, here, but, don't things like "ease of flying", forgiveness of pilot errors, and "easy to do well by just poining your HLC's in the right direction" mean that a ship is inherently...'unbalanced' (in the strictest definition of the word). If ship A is easier to use (requires less skill) than ship B of the same point cost, isn't there something wrong?

(Btw, I'm not necessairly convinced of that as an absolute truth, but it is pretty telling).

Aggressors are quite balanced

case in point: they have a firing arc and no turret

praise the lord and hallelujah!

but yeah, doing well against Aggressors is more a matter of learning to play against them. I'm not going to go with Laserbrain's "learning to fly better" because god alone knows what "better" means (I don't know where he gets his delusions), but you do have to fly differently against aggressors than other ships.

The long sweeping movements combined with Segnor's and an easy action advantage ala sensors/fcs + IG-88 B gives them a massive advantage if you're just going at them head-on, and they'll slip right through your formation if you don't have practice against them. But that same speed is its weakness because it is incredibly easy to leave a single aggressor hanging while the other works on getting back into the fray. The combination of a single firing arc and a large base does not go well when there are obstructions and enemy ships in the way.

I've found Delta Squadron Defenders (aka. mini-gressors) to be particularly effective against Aggressors. While Aggressors dominate jousts, Defenders just nullify the entire idea of it and their white 4ks let them continuously trade fire without being left in the dust. The key advantage in the matchup, though, is the Defenders' small base lets them navigate obstructions far more easily than their big bro Aggressors and stick together far more effectively. Every game in this matchup has come down to the two Defenders singling out an Aggressor, smashing into it, and then either pursuing it as it flees or training onto the other one. I have been able to consistently engineer a 2v1 match-up with them because the weaknesses of the Aggressors' large base and single firing arc are not to be underestimated.

Now the actual squad was Soontir (PTL, Thrusters, Stealth) & two Flechette Cannon Deltas, but really the Deltas did all of the work (even in one game where I flew Soontir like a scrub and lost him in two rounds) and having Flechette cannon to slap big red "STOP!" signs on the Aggressor's jousting potential really helped a ton

I also faced them in a store championship while piloting rebels and the match did not go so smoothly. Luke and B-wings just don't have the same non-nonchalant attitude towards jousting that Defenders do, but a combination of control (R3-A2, two tacticians) and sturdy B-wing stats led to victory with one 6 health B-wing standing. The same strategy applies, you single an Aggressor out and it's pretty toast (or, at least you get a fair shot at it), only you use Stress to force one away before focusing on the other

The long sweeping movements combined with Segnor's and an easy action advantage ala sensors/fcs + IG-88 B gives them a massive advantage if you're just going at them head-on, and they'll slip right through your formation if you don't have practice against them. But that same speed is its weakness because it is incredibly easy to leave a single aggressor hanging while the other works on getting back into the fray. The combination of a single firing arc and a large base does not go well when there are obstructions and enemy ships in the way.

I've been saying this for some time. Thank you for putting it in new words, and preventing me from jumping into this conversation!

...Wait, I just jumped in to thank you. Crap.

Hi all, I played against a really good combo last night; IG88B and C. On top of their abilty to get and evade after boosting, and their quasi-gunner ability, they had;

autothrusters

sensor jammer

mangler cannon

I was running my YT1300 Reasonably Fat Han with 2x Roookies. Even at range 1, he usually had an evade, plus the free evade, plus turning one of my hits to an eye. It was like pulling teeth try to get hits to stick to them.

My initial thoughts are that HLC carriers would be good, as fewer ships with many red dice will likely do far batter than many ships with fewer red dice.

You thoughts fellow pilots?

RoV

I played against it yesterday, with my crazy 5 bomber list. No missiles, just 4 proton bombs, that, theoretically, could wipe the ig's out. Finally i could not, but ended pretty close, with 2 bombers left, and with the igs with only 2 hull remaining.

I'm not looking to get into a heated argument, here, but, don't things like "ease of flying", forgiveness of pilot errors, and "easy to do well by just poining your HLC's in the right direction" mean that a ship is inherently...'unbalanced' (in the strictest definition of the word). If ship A is easier to use (requires less skill) than ship B of the same point cost, isn't there something wrong?

(Btw, I'm not necessairly convinced of that as an absolute truth, but it is pretty telling).

After playing against and then with a double Aggressor list a few times, it was pretty tempting to write it off as "easy mode." 88B + HLC + FCS can feel pretty unfair when you're on the receiving end, and if we base our judgments on average damage output vs evade probability, some ships can seem unbalanced at first glance. I won't dispute that some ships are easier to use than others, and in my experience the Aggressor is very much a point-and-shoot type of ship. Balance is tricky to define, however, and you can't really ignore tactics in that consideration.

I think it was Paul Heaver who put together the article breaking down X-wing ships into the archetypes of Jouster, Arc-Dodger, and Turret-carrier. Each of those ships likes a different approach, and each suffers when denied its ideal conditions.

If double Aggressors excel in a head-on firefight and I accept those terms, I'm playing to the strength of my opponent and am likely to do poorly. If I deny the Aggressor its ideal conditions by forcing engagements through asteroids and aggressively blocking its movements, I do have to plan my maneuvers more carefully, but I'm also taking advantage of the Aggressor's natural weaknesses. It's a large-base ship that needs more clearance to maneuver and, unlike a turreted ship or a Firespray, it can't effectively respond to out-of-arc threats. This weakness is exploited more by piloting decisions than list-building, but it's still a major weakness.

Hu... havent lost to an IG 88 dual squad yet. Didnt run "hard" counters yet, unless you call the starviper and firespray (didnt lose either in the 5 games, against different players and in a tournament setting for 2 of those) combo I've been running a counter to them. It honestly comes down to the same thing as phantoms, learn their movements and what is best and then fly to counter that.

I wasn't trying to condescend, honest. I apologize if it came off that way.

"Better" isn't particular descriptive, I know, and I was speaking more to my own development than anyone else's. What I generally mean by that is changing tactics -- flying differently, as you said and described well.

Fluency in different strategies, understanding each ship's ideal conditions, and overall adaptability is, at least the way I judge my matches, the goal of me trying to become a "better" player.

no big, I just wanted to make an Empire Strikes Back reference

If you like big turrets and 3-Agility ships with Autothrusters are giving you problems, might I recommend a Firespray? If you can shoot it, it's in one arc or the other; just keep them within range 2. Add Prox Mines and/or Proton Bombs for hilarity.

no big, I just wanted to make an Empire Strikes Back reference

... I took my username from that Empire quote and I didn't even recognize it.

Well, that's embarrassing.

I have recently realized:

The Aggressor is the only Large Ship vulnerable to Flechette Torpedoes.

Use them to prevent catastrophic Segnoring, and in particular screw the ones using Push the Limit.

I have recently realized:

The Aggressor is the only Large Ship vulnerable to Flechette Torpedoes.

Use them to prevent catastrophic Segnoring, and in particular screw the ones using Push the Limit.

Nera, in the house !