ASSAULT FRIGATE OP, IMP'S GOTTA WAIT TILL WAVE TWO!

(trolololololol, messing around. Actual write-up below)

(disclaimer, this is only with red on blue situations, no experience with blue on blue yet)

After 4 3 correctly played games with the assault frigate now, I am starting to think that ffg was too favorable on it. (for the record, the model also looks pretty good, paint-job is meh though)

I am primarily talking about the double fish.

-Main culprit is the Paragon with Enhanced Armaments. (9 times out of 10 I also pair up sensor team to turn 2 blanks into 1 accuracy basically)

-Another glaring issue is Electronic Countermeasures (a LIFESAVING seven points) and Mon Mothma (too expensive at 30 points)

Putting anything on the offensive retrofit slot currently is rubbish and a waste of points (EXCEPTION: Shield build)

The only officers that you should ever staff on a AFMrk2 are Veteran Captain, Raymus, or Intel Officer (EXCEPTION: Shield build).

Gunnery Team is 7 points, and should always be left at home. If you NEED to fill the team slot, insert sensor team. Do NOT insert said team into slot if you have Enhanced armaments uninstalled. (EXCEPTION: Shield build commonly uses flight controllers. Do not attempt to use flight controllers on wedge unless you are a horrible person. If so, proceed.)

Some other things of note:

• You should only, and always take the Mrk II A at 88 points (the electronic countermeasures come pre-installed) unless building "The Shield", because of that 2 anti-squadron attack, and the boosted front and rear arc.
• If you are not ALWAYS moving at speed 3 then something has gone horribly, horribly wrong. Do NOT wait for your B-wings. Place brick on petal and LEAVE it their. (it is however a good idea to have a nav token on standby in-case brick needs to be removed.)
• Their are 2 main builds with the titles, one is called the Shield (Gallant Haven, pure starfighter support), and the other is called the Sword (Paragon, pure dice rolling). Let the shield and sword guild your battle. (that was a reference)
• Do not attempt to use said shield and sword builds in the same list. It is not as good as it seems.
• Saying to yourself "Screw Strikecraft" multiple times over and over will lead to you realizing that 2 AF MrkII A's and a Neb-B Escort is 6 anti-squadron dice, and at speed 3 means you can pretty much ignore them. This is situational, and actually works better when you get up initiative and use all 300 points. Make sure to take the title with the extra repair buff on the Neb, you might will need it.
• Garm looks good on paper. In reality, you have the first 2, maybe 3 turns to already build up a stockpile of tokens, and while the 5th turn tokens are good, they are simply not worth 25 points. Mon Mothma with electronic countermeasures lets you ALWAYS use evade, even against strike craft (re-rolling hit-crits or double hits mainly). Dodonna seems good, but the damage Mon Mothma prevents (I ended up using evade every turn after round 3) lets me take engineering commands less, and concentrate fire commands more, effectively boosting my offense.
• Build your obstacle's like a 3 bank in X-wing. It takes practice, with trial and error, to see how much to have the angle, how close to the middle of the board, and how dense the field needs to be. You want to deploy at one end of your engagement zone, and angle to the other side of the board. Use the obstacles to prevent them from coming down from below, or turn into you. Do NOT cross the T. You want to force them to sail right past you. And on one side. About that...
• Split their fleet. Always. Make it a 300 points vs 100-200 point 1 turn engagement. If you don't kill it, thats fine. Keep moving at speed three. Attack another part of their fleet. Once they are both doing nothing but repair commands, swoop in. Imperial players like to place their victories next to each other. Engage at range 3 (or 2 if your crazy er, bold) on ONE side of them, so the second cannot shoot because it is out of range. If they deployed with their two ships far apart from one another, enjoy the easy match.
• Tie Bombers and Vader are actually scary, and can hamper the well-being of your space guppies. Keep yourself at speed 3, and force them to either take nav actions to keep their front arcs on you, or engineering actions to keep their shields up, and that will keep the bombers at bay. X-wings also might help, but you kinda move faster than them...
• Place the station on the opposite side of the board from you, closer to them. You can use it as a pit stop on turn 5 or 6 if you REALLY need it, but mainly it is to stop your opponent from doing the same thing.
• If the option is their, pick Advanced gunnery and choose Paragon as your objective ship. Even as first player this works very well. The first attack of 4 red (maybe a blue) will weaken their defenses in terms of shields OR defense tokens, then the second attack with 4 red, 1 blue, and 2 black and a reroll (use concentrate fire command and a token then, and you should be planning to set these attacks up) to to them in. Sensor team that brace, and then either have them redirect away ALL their shields, or break through into that juicy hull. You could also sensor team the first attack and make them use the brace, so they need to discard it the second attack to stay alive, crippling them for the rest of the game. Intel officer also works well here, but he is also 7 points. And combining that with Sensor team is a **** move (not saying it is a bad one per-say, and in fact is a hard counter to the guppy itself). (A heavily upgraded Paragon with advanced gunnery is actually op as ****, and your friends will hate you for it. You tell them, why did they pick/give it to you as a choice? Advanced gunnery however should seem like the good pick out of your three cards, the other two should just be evil)
• Again, Contrary to what you think, gunnery team is bad and means you positioned yourself so 2 ships can fire on you, not "you can fire on two ships". Use your maneuverability to pick your fights and attack angles. Victories are super easy to predict where they will be, angling yourself will be easy. Typically though you shoot once with the boradside, then anti-squadron out the front/back till you set up a front/back and side arc attack with a concentrate fire command and token.
• Evade those blue crits, especially if screed triggered for them. Overload pulse is your BANE.
• Same with Concussion missiles. You NEED your shields more than the Victory does.
• Use common sense and don't put your commander on Paragon.

Wow, this has turned into a wall of text.

I guess if you don't want to read it all, remember this. Upgrade your guppies to be around 100-120 points. Take Mon-Mothma. Throw in a Neb-B escort or some fighters. Set dials to 3, and never take that brick off of them.

How can imperials counter this? It is a REALLY easy to fly ship, and you will have a heck of a good time flying it. Very satisfying.

I am thinking maybe a Dominator pure damage build, but the gladiator is too prone to being killed in 1 turn of combined fire. You need assault missiles and overload pulse, but that **** evade that you can't stop (thanks ECM) with Mon-Mothma buffing it leaves only VERY lucky dice rolls or huge coordinated fire on the same target will trigger the effect. And they are super duper maneuverable. Like holy crap. How are you supposed to concentrate fire on one? How can victories KILL the **** things?

Another counter was Victories with Enhanced Armaments and Rapid Reload, to make 3/4ths of your fire arc's deadly, but then I was told that you can only have 1 modification equipped, so never mind. Bomber swarm might do it, but you basically only have one shot at it before you are forced into playing catch-up the rest of the game. Or they shred you with the 2 anti-squadron dice. You might get 2 chances if they made a mistake or timed it wrong.

Oh, last thing. Play aggressive with them. Probably playing passive/defensive with any squadrons you have is a good idea till your anti-squadron dice kill the enemy off, but be agressive with your guppies. Make their commands they take REACT TO YOU. Nothing is better than getting a victory to keep pulling nav commands to keep you in his front arc as you spin around him at range medium/long (if you have initiative, you start at range medium, then circle around 45 degrees to long, he shoots, then does a 1 or 2 45 degree turn to medium... cycle continues). Demolisher Gladiator is a problem at first, then when they throw their 2 red and 4 black, you force a reroll of their best result, brace, then redirect all of it to your front or something. Then muffle your mouth, and do your best storm trooper impression of "Blast them!" as your two guppies blow him away. Didn't I say last thing already?

Okay, how many games has this build won? Against what? If Imperials have no hard counter then do the Rebels have a hard counter that is not a mirror list?

Answer these questions then tell me what is OP and what is not.

Mr Corvette, I am getting the idea that you life the AF mkII...

Too many statements, not enough supporting anecdotes or even basic reasoning for statements, complete lack of data, trollish headline.

Unfortunately, have to class this as "waste of time".

The guppy is both an easy to use ship, and a ship with a high skill cap. Two of these compounds this.

Also, I am talking about general hefty broadside built ones.

I tried a few with gimmicky one off ****, like Gallant and Yavis with getting Luke into position to attack 3 times in the beginning of the game, or other carrier role stuff with strike craft. Doesn't work as well.

I am just saying that you should not be surprised to see a rise in dual guppies placing in tourneys as players begin to find what these ships are really capable of. Or, the exact opposite as some obvious counter that we have not seen yet becomes prevalent and wrecks dual guppies.

Also, you should try dual upgraded guppies. It may take a few games and tweaks, but flying broadsiders is really fun and exciting!

I personally have had like 3-5 games with them, in various lists, and one recent 400 point game where I tried to do said gimmicky "luke attacks 3 times through your shields" ****. In short, I lost everything by turn 4 except my objective ship "Paragon, the Sword". It was an 'A' variant with Paragon, Veteran Com, Sensor Team, ECM, and Enhanced Armament. And Advanced Gunnery Objective (the first player 1 version) and Mon Mothma.

Turn 3 the "Shield" was dead, after stripping some shields off a decimator gladiator who had killed it, (and then proceeded to kill my Neb B two turns later) and luke rolling 3 blanks in a row on his attack on a victory. Luke died, wedge died, only had 3 X-wings left, 1 with the paragon holding off 2 bombers and vader, and the other on the victory, who killed the rest of the ties unill it died.

Meanwhile, the "Sword" duels the victory one at long range, eating at its shields and killing all the strike craft tied up by the X-wing with its 2 anti-squadron attack, and then gets a combo attack in to cause over 10 hull damage to it in 1 round, with just 3 shields missing from various arcs in return. The gladiator with engine techs and extra frontal black dice zooms up to me after killing my last other surviving frigate, but not close enough for black dice. It dies in 1 round of combat from my glorious whale. The Paragon and victory circle each other for a bit (2 or 3 turns), slowly closing the gap as I stock up on tokens and top off shields and he pulls nav commands to prevent me from seeing his side or rear arcs. Finally we close, he gets range first. 3 double hits, brace and evade turn it into 2 hits, redirected to the front shields. My turn, I get 2 4 dice attacks, and the second one also has 2 black dice. I break and strip basically all his shields then, as I prevented him with accuracy from using brace.

Opponent called the game then, disappointed that a 3 to 1 lead in points turned into his last ship being basically hulked. I also felt kinda dirty, I kept playing at first after loosing my first guppy early on because I wanted to be a good sport, and because my opponent wanted to get a "good, solid route of the rebel scum" after last game. (last game I had "dangerous territory" as the second player, and the first asteroid field he hit gave him a "direct hit" (so 2 face down damage cards) on his gladiator, and the derbies field he didn't get off of in time, and did 4 damage total in shields to his victory. I had taken just 2 guppies and a neb, no fighters, while he had fel and other interceptors and bombers. Lucky and combined fire of anti-squadron dice was brutal for the fighters and bombers, and basically killed all of them off in 2 turns.)

I felt dirty after that comeback, and analysed what I did.

Before anything else, let us note that this analysis of the Assault Frigate MkII is coming from a Corellian Corvette, largely considered impotent by comparison, and therefore suspect to, shall we say, a Napoleonic bias.

As you were.

Before anything else, let us note that this analysis of the Assault Frigate MkII is coming from a Corellian Corvette, largely considered impotent by comparison, and therefore suspect to, shall we say, a Napoleonic bias.

As you were.

I think he called you short CC.

...you trolling fiend, you


The Afmkii is powerful, but any discrepancies in power between it and the other rebel ships simply comes down to ease of use. The Afmkii's doesn't have any favorable arc and is going to preform quite well out of all of them (especially the very generous sides). While I'm positive the skill cap for any ship is high, the AFmkii is thus far seemingly the easiest ship to get used to the game with (certainly more forgiving than Mr. Spindly-sides )

also, not putting your commander on paragon is one thing, but never put him on haven

from the games I've played, they love victories but really don't enjoy engine tech gladiators or rhymer, the jolly old-timer

for a ship that only recently came out, I thought the OP was rather interesting. I may not agree with all of it, or even tested it yet, but not a bad review.

My Guppies have been performing very well for me but it sounds like you're playing non-standard 400 point games with unlimited turns, which has little bearing on the 6-turn 300 point game.

Paragon is amazing.

ECM is a must-include.

X-17 Turbolasers are strong as an upgrade, I prefer them over Enhanced almost.

Garm is better in the 6 turn game where you close on turn 2 and need that turn 5 boost for the win. I won't discount Mon Mothma in a 3+ ship build though.

My GSD Insidious blasted my sister's Iblis RAF into deep space frontally at point blank. She only got 2 salvo pair off her RAF before GSD dumped concussion assault missiles into the shields and into the hull.

I won't say that it's OP but it is indeed a heavy hitter.

My GSD Insidious blasted my sister's Iblis RAF into deep space frontally at point blank.

this is about the rarest example of doing it right and doing it wrong

What's an RAF?

What's an RAF?

Royal Air Force

It's a good ship. So is the Victory. And the Gladiator. And the Corvette. And the Flying Sniper Rifle.

What I'm getting at is all the ships are good.

What's an RAF?

Royal Air Force

Or Rote Armee Fraction (German leftwing terrorist group), but neither are relevant to Armada. I guess it is R(?) Assault Frigate, but I can't explain the R. Rebel perhaps?

double, sorry.

Yeah, after watching a game with the Salvation in it, I'm more afraid of that then the Assault Frigate. Demolisher will demolish the Paragon, but that Salvation is terrifying with the Double crit turbo lasers.

Too many statements, not enough supporting anecdotes or even basic reasoning for statements, complete lack of data, trollish headline.

Unfortunately, have to class this as "waste of time".

Yeah, after watching a game with the Salvation in it, I'm more afraid of that then the Assault Frigate. Demolisher will demolish the Paragon, but that Salvation is terrifying with the Double crit turbo lasers.

well, you could demolish the salvation more easily

...but then you'd get paragoned

Too many statements, not enough supporting anecdotes or even basic reasoning for statements, complete lack of data, trollish headline.

Unfortunately, have to class this as "waste of time".

I quit reading after the first couple of sentences...

Though I have to agree the style could be more respectable, the content is very well worth the reading.

Before anything else, let us note that this analysis of the Assault Frigate MkII is coming from a Corellian Corvette, largely considered impotent by comparison, and therefore suspect to, shall we say, a Napoleonic bias.

As you were.

I think he called you short CC.

How dare he use clever and well crafted sentences against me! The nerve of some people!

My Guppies have been performing very well for me but it sounds like you're playing non-standard 400 point games with unlimited turns, which has little bearing on the 6-turn 300 point game.

Paragon is amazing.

ECM is a must-include.

X-17 Turbolasers are strong as an upgrade, I prefer them over Enhanced almost.

Garm is better in the 6 turn game where you close on turn 2 and need that turn 5 boost for the win. I won't discount Mon Mothma in a 3+ ship build though.

One game was a 400 point game. And we only went over turns because he wanted a complete route. (To be fair, I thought I lost, this just shows you the power of comebacks or something). I was just humoring him after the first 2 games where I used objectives as the second player to win.

Too many statements, not enough supporting anecdotes or even basic reasoning for statements, complete lack of data, trollish headline.

Unfortunately, have to class this as "waste of time".

I quit reading after the first couple of sentences...

Though I have to agree the style could be more respectable, the content is very well worth the reading.

It was 2 or 3 am after 3 Armada games in one day. I was too restless to sleep and too brain dead to realize that the 'style' (or lack of it) might be offending. Or maybe I did it on purpose, I actually can't remember. XD

What did you guys think about the doctrines?

About what to take in slots?

About Mon mothma and ecm's?

About taking 2 each around 100-120 points?

About the ease of use and the high skill cap?

Guppy build as described in OP, minus an officer, with Mon Moth.

Neb B Salvation, no other upgrades

2x CR-90 B's with Overload Pulse, One touting Leia.

CR-90s fly with Guppy, then peel off to over-load-pulse any target the Guppy plans to attack. That is 299 points, 1 point under for bid to initiative. No fighters. Mobile as hell.

Dual CR90B will rip apart a gladiator's shields and keep up with it if need be if someone decides to get close... Neb + Guppy have enough anti-fighter to deal with bombers.

still working with Garm, personally

I don't find much opportunity to generate tokens on my own but I love the flexibility they give fatties

Raymus would approximate that, but then that's 2 points over Garm (general D + Raymus) for just one fattie to benefit.

ECM...yeah it's awesome with or without MM. I don't actually use it on both my fatties, but instead I put it on Gallant Haven while Paragon derps around. The Haven's conspicuous position (and complementary school of minnow X-wings) means it's basically always the center of attention; Paragon has barely been shot at so far.

Been using the x17 turbo lasers for a while, but I'm going to swap out for EA next games to see how I feel about those. Chucking 4 dice out the side seems sexy, especially with paragon

I'd argue fatties with the lowest skill floor because they're very well rounded (both in arcs and in model ) but, like everything in this game, have a very high skill ceiling. Not losing your fatties to mistakes is all well and good, but if you're flying paragon and end up never triggering its ability, then it and the fat lot of points spent on that fattie will be doing you a fat lot of good.

Basically, much easier to not embarrass yourself with, but will need careful positioning to have a decided impact on the game (just like everything else)