Hey folks

How is it possible to beat BBBBZ regularly (withouth having too much luck)

I know that some squads are terrible to play against BBBBZ, but if you just have regular 3-4 ship builds, how can you beat them? How you increase survivability at first contact. At the beginning, B-wings can easily adjust by barrel rolling and therefore make a kind of drag net and shoot their 14 attacks at you. How to play against them, and survive (at least not to lose your ace ships)? I know, it depends on your own squad too, but are their some basic rules agains B-wing swarms for early and mid-game? I don´t want to play large turret ships and try to stay at distance (but anyhow I think that would not be the best idea).

Any ideas and suggestions?

I personally think one of the biggest things is to force R3 with all of your ships, but limit the number of his ships engaged. This can be easily done with higher PS ships with boost since you can play conservatively if he plays agressively, but then boost into range, or if he's aggressive, then you have your action to make him hurt. Beyond that, B wings hate Ions - it can (and will) completely take a ship out of the fight, and more often than not change their target priority to the ionizer instead of your Ace.

After the first round where you do 3-4 shields damage to 1 B with taking minimal return fire, you want to ideally end up just outside of R1 the next round. It prevents them from getting extra dice, while you can still easily kill off the injured B. Now there are only 3 shooting back at you... but they can't K turn since you're right outside of R1 (which is 2.5 bases away from them, and they need 3 to K turn). Now if you want to K turn, you can get free shots on them to bring another down on health.

From there, it's easy enough to kill the second one, and then arc dodge at least one of the two remaining Bs. Just pay attention that they're more than likely to use the Z as a blocker and annoyance than anything else.

Avoid a straight up joust as much as possible. Focus fire. B-wings have a fairly restricted dial (without advanced sensors) so use it to your advantage.

run 4 Ys with ion turrets... the scum Ys are actually better at this because of the agromec.. just keep ioning the crap out of them!! if your feeling frisky lock down the turrets for an additional attack however you sacrifice the turret aspect. so it makes keeping them ioned more problematic.

Thanks for the tips

I don´t want to make a special squad in order to just beat BBBBZ (and suck against many other lists then). And it is hard to avoid jousting when B-wings can fine-tune with barrel roll. It sounds like mind-games, but I rarely see situations where you can trick your opponent and avoid getting into the firing arc of at least three of his B-wings

Dont try to out joust it take ships with superior agility that can flank and fly circles around them they cant afford AS so k turning will stress and seriously defang their shooting.

There is a few different ways

As stated

Ion works good, makes them easier to dodge

Fast maneuverable ships again easier to get in behind them, and stay far away

Low or equal point score with the initiative bid

You move first so blocking them and action denial is another possibility

Stressing them can really take the funk out of them as well.

Pair up ion and stress effects really takes a bwing out of the fight

Using rocks to split up formation before engaging is a good way to go vs any formation flying squad. Idk if all BBBBZ fly in a formation though. Just like any squad, the goal is to fire more shots than you take each round, and also focus fire, etc etc. Beating BBBBZ is like beating any old jousting squad, this one just happens to have the stats to hang in high agility, low # of accurate shots meta, where the Tie Swarm can falter a bit with only 2 Red Dice and the uncanny ability to get popped by accurate 4 Dice shots.

One note is to take advantage of outplaying that 2 K Turn. Placing ships to block their 2 K Turn the round BEFORE while still being able to perform your K Turn the next round is a good recipe for getting free shots in their sides, barring you survive hopping into range 1 on the previous round.

Yeah, definitely rocks. Against similar lists, I like to set up a tight triangle of rocks to help break a tight formation up. A spread out formation is something you can attack, as the Bs don't really concentrate fire as well once spread out. Just being near rocks can be useful, because it can limit their ability to concentrate fire all one one target. Being in range 1-2 of 3-4 B-wings is terrifying. Being in range 1 of a B-wing with no action, range 2 of a B-wing shooting through an asteroid, while a third B-wing is pointed somewhere else so it wouldn't land on a rock is a lot more manageable.

The rocks are a huge deal against these lists. The tips given above are perfect. I find pincer ing them works well too; Attack from two angles, make them commit to an attack path through the rocks. Feign with the group they advance on and stalk for time whilst you press the Attack with the other group. Aim to reconvene your forces after a couple of rounds of combat. You should hen have your mostly untouched fleet against thiers with a dead b wing or a couple of injured at least.. If they split, perfect. Trade ranges shots whilst you use your generally faster ships to regroup and attack one part of them.

Basically, anything you can do to limit thier firepower for a couple of turns whilst you get some free rounds off shooting in will help even the odds. BBBZ becomes quite easy if you can get to that point mostly undamages.

The rocks are a huge deal against these lists. The tips given above are perfect. I find pincer ing them works well too; Attack from two angles, make them commit to an attack path through the rocks. Feign with the group they advance on and stalk for time whilst you press the Attack with the other group. Aim to reconvene your forces after a couple of rounds of combat. You should hen have your mostly untouched fleet against thiers with a dead b wing or a couple of injured at least.. If they split, perfect. Trade ranges shots whilst you use your generally faster ships to regroup and attack one part of them.

Basically, anything you can do to limit thier firepower for a couple of turns whilst you get some free rounds off shooting in will help even the odds. BBBZ becomes quite easy if you can get to that point mostly undamages.

This is really true. For some reason once that first B goes down without your squad sustaining major damage, things get a lot easier.

Focus Fire is the key to beating lists like BBBBZ, Panic Attack and Thug Life. You need to reduce their firepower and numbers as quickly as you can. The worst thing you can do against those lists is spread damage around.

Do not joust with them unless you are playing a swarm, and do what you can to lure them into tight asteroid formations where their ability to maintain unified firing arcs will be restricted. If you are using a fragile arc-dodger, you might have to keep it out of the fight in the early game until the rest of your list can kill off a B-Wing.

One trick I use with my arc-dodgers against BBBBZ and similar lists, which I call the Gingerbread Man opening, is I deploy right across from their formation, which is usually along the edge, with my arc-dodger. I slow roll forward on turn 1 like I'm gonna joust with them, then on turn 2 I hard turn and boost/barrel roll my arc-dodger away towards the middle of the board and out of their range while they zoom forward into an empty space, with the rest of my list on their flank.

Edit: It takes some practice with that opening for any ship that isn't Dash to be able to judge how far forward you need to go (or how far back you need to deploy) to be able to move straight on the first turn and then clear the asteroid on turn 2 with a hard turn towards the middle, but you could easily practice that at home or on Vassal.

Focus fire plus control works for me; have beaten this with YYZZZZ.

The only thing I can add is that their low pilot skill is to your advantage. They will most likely be placing their entire team before you... so you can place your entire team on the other side of the map. The idea is that you need to make them turn and navigate the asteroids which is not always easy to do.

Once they are amongst the asteroids they will many issues... they will often not be able to maintain formations, the ability to barrel roll becomes more restricted, etc.

I like Tvboy's tactic of giving them a target that can entice them up part of the map and then cut and run, leaving them no choice but to turn and face rocks.

I like Tvboy's tactic of giving them a target that can entice them up part of the map and then cut and run, leaving them no choice but to turn and face rocks.

Hehe, I tried that on Tvboy just the other day.

It didn't work.

He slaughtered me that game.

5 bombers with semic

5 bombers with semic

Wait, when did Ravnica enter into this discussion?

My suggestion for BBBBZ: Know your fleet better than they know theirs.

The real trick with this is that B-Wings are MONSTERS at close-range, even without their Advanced Sensors, and Swarms want to get in close as well.

The tangent to this is that B-Wings also really enjoy Range 3 combat.

A game in which the combat tends to remain at R2 is one that the BBBBZ fleet is surprisingly likely to lose.

The other thing to know about the BBBBZ fleet is that concentrated fire is its main tactic, and also its main weakness. It wants to gang up on one of your ships, but doesn't like it when you are able to gang up on one of its. 8 HP behind 1 agility is too daunting for incidental damage, but falls off pretty quickly if you squint at it

Run circles around them with dash while murdering them and laughing.

One at a time

But what if you come up against Bs with a to ship build?

Fly the Decimator round the edge away from them, dragging them through the field whilst the Defender gets into a good HLC position seems my best best.

It's good to have thread explain things and take away some of the 'oh s**t Bs'.

Take out the Z early and often - it may not be as powerful as the B's but it's a gun you can drop faster and more consistently on the first pass (if you can drop a b-wing on your first pass for certain, go ahead and do that - but if you're not certain, hit that Z.

Concentrate fire - don't let your damage spread over multiple ships.

Delay - get them to set a path to you, knowing where they are going will help. Split your force deployment to do this. If you can pull the group through asteroids here - so much the better. Be prepared to RUSH with the group that isn't being targetted - and either arc dodge, or range control with the group that is being targetted. If you can time your merge to have all of your ships firing from both sides - save your focus for defense.

Get the enemy to spread damage on you - This is done in a variety of ways, by fleeing with damaged ships, offering up a better shot on another ship that can take the hits, by positioning so that none of your ships are in ALL of the enemy ship arcs and lastly by blocking/being blocked as described below.

If you have to fly directly into the maw of the BBBBZ on the opening with part of your group - try to jump in from the range 3 band into blocking distance - if you can block (or be blocked) in the right position, the blocking ships won't be able to fire at you.

optimally, in the first exchange you destroy the Z or a B for a slightly damaged ship - and in the second exchange you get them to spread damage and avoid trading a ship, though if you can't, you trade that damaged ship for the Z or a heavily damaged B. - That's a bit more dice dependent.

How dumb would 4 Daggers with Enhanced Scopes be?

Still four B-wingy goodness. Move first and shoot before pretty much all swarms?

I can't decide if its stupid or genius.

How dumb would 4 Daggers with Enhanced Scopes be?

Still four B-wingy goodness. Move first and shoot before pretty much all swarms?

I can't decide if its stupid or genius.

It´s not bad But I think you will definetively miss that one Z95

I like Tvboy's tactic of giving them a target that can entice them up part of the map and then cut and run, leaving them no choice but to turn and face rocks.

Hehe, I tried that on Tvboy just the other day.

It didn't work.

He slaughtered me that game.

Well, just because I'm immune to my own strategies doesn't mean they won't work on other people. You have to give me some credit that if I'm openly explaining a strategy, I'm going to have figured out how to counter that strategy.

And I actually thought your opening was fine that game, even though I didn't take the bait, I still had to turn hard to meet your flanking firesprays which put Echo on my flank on turn 2. The disaster was when you k-turned Echo.

If was going to do a "Matador" Opening, as I have now decided to call it, with Echo, it would probably look like this. 4 straight on turn 1 and cloak, which will never put you in range of a B-Wing on turn 1. On turn 2, decloak right and back, with a 3 bank right to create maximum distance while still allowing you to turn back into the fight on the next turn if you want to. Barrel Roll away if you're in range of their guns, otherwise recloak. You will have to be very careful about avoiding the obstacles with these maneuvers of course, you may have to practice different obstacles placements so you can create an ideal obstacle setup on your side of the board before the game begins.