Link: http://iff.podbean.com/e/eoisode-v-judsons-koiogran-turn/

The crew members of Intensify Forward Firepower are back in Episode Five to break down their first experiences with all the highly sought after Wave 1 new releases. Things start of with a recap of recent Star Wars Armada maneuvers from the gang before a certain cast member needs to go back on everything he had said in the last episode. The value of squadrons is discussed at length, as well as the intensely forward-firing Demolisher. Before too long, the foursome is forced to end the episode regardless of the fact that they all have much, much more to say about the Armadaverse post-Wave 1.

Love the intro, could Dano have said Star Wars any more times.

Awesome as always.

took a while

@Amanal "Stah Wahs"

@Marine Thanks, I think?

@Steven, at the next tournament at Dragon's Den I am going to show both you and Kevin the fury of my new Rebel build.

Great podcast....

Gallant Haven a trap? Psh it destroys fleets.

Gallant Haven a trap? Psh it destroys fleets.

You make a compelling argument. I'm forced to agree. Gallant Haven is win.

/drip

Assault Frigate with that title is a little op.

@Steven, at the next tournament at Dragon's Den I am going to show both you and Kevin the fury of my new Rebel build.

Great podcast....

Dragons Den NY? in poughkeepsie? If so feel free to advertise the events in the facebook group in my signature. I used to go there for other games.

@Steven, at the next tournament at Dragon's Den I am going to show both you and Kevin the fury of my new Rebel build.

Great podcast....

Dragons Den NY? in poughkeepsie? If so feel free to advertise the events in the facebook group in my signature. I used to go there for other games.

No, its in VA.

@Steven, at the next tournament at Dragon's Den I am going to show both you and Kevin the fury of my new Rebel build.

Great podcast....

Dragons Den NY? in poughkeepsie? If so feel free to advertise the events in the facebook group in my signature. I used to go there for other games.

No, its in VA.

Gotcha. Listening to the episode now.

@Overdawg- looking forward to the next tournament!

enjoyed the episode. I disagree a bit on the squadrons, i dont feel like im playing 100pts down. I do get the fact that its easier to lose due to losing all your ships. X-wings have 4 health and only suffer damage on a hit. Vettes have 4 hull, and typically require 8 (if no accuracy) damage to destroy. they suffer damage on hits and crits. Not sure the X-wing is the easier thing to kill. also you get 3 x-wings for 1 vette.

I do feel that how much you invest in squadrons is very meta dependent.

I disagree a bit on the squadrons...

I think this is why I enjoy the podcast as much as I have.

It's just a bunch of mates talking about their games, my friends and I used to play Flames of War and we spent as much time playing a game as we did arguing what we did right or wrong, what we could have taken to improve the army list and even rules that came into play.

One reason my friend and I plan to play random fleets for a while is to avoid a cookie cutter net build that we don’t have any attachment to. So this friendly banter is exactly the podcast we are looking for.

@Bergerfett: I like squadrons too, but there isn’t much you can do when your bomber rolls a miss or accuracy or a fighter throws up that or a crit. So there are reasons for and reasons against. I like to think that the squadrons are best used to worry down a ship, maybe finish off a ship that is already damaged but you have flown past as they are far more manoeuvrable than a ship.

In a very general sense I see there are 3 phases in many of my games. What I see squadrons doing at each stage I have added in blue.

The Joust: Where the two fleets fly towards each other and jockey for their positions. If the Imperial player keeps you in front of his ship for a turn extra the Rebel is in trouble, if the Rebel blows past with minimal damage the Imperial is in trouble. Squadrons will engage other squadrons or just mill about and see if they can get a shot or two, you may also try and engage a ship on a flank and hope it turns into the squadrons if they do manage to damage the ship a little.

For instance if you hit a ships port and get its shield down a point or two perhaps he will turn to port? Keeping his better starboard shield aimed towards your fleet.

The Dance: Here is where we are trying to keep our strengths aimed at our opponent and our weaknesses aimed elsewhere. Having a ship in reserve that goes jousting into your opponents dance can be very disruptive and play to good effect.

Here you end up just looking for targets of opportunity, finishing off a ship, worrying a ship with dangerously low shields or even just adding to the firepower of your ships in order to discard defence tokens.

The Fly By: Even the most agile ship can only manage a 112.5 degree turn, so if you end up flying against your opponents turn you may get a few rear shots or side arc shots. If you fly into your opponents turn then you may get one more good shot at your opponent, or a half-hearted shot if he jinks away from you in turn 6.

This is the key stage of the game, you are in the final hunt for VP, the AF/VSD with next to no hull and shields is heading away and just avoiding further damage. Keeping some pressure on it and making it fight to stay on board is far better than watching it fly past.

It is a bit of a waiting game here, you need to engage with your opponents Squadrons if present and get rid of them as fast as possible and with as many as possible to exploit this phase of the game. If your opponent doesn’t have squadrons of his own then the trick is to be patient and use these little hammers to worry away at him but not over commit, so that you can respond to the needs of the final stage of play and try to take down a ship or two.

Great show as usual!

I disagree a bit on the squadrons...

I think this is why I enjoy the podcast as much as I have.

It's just a bunch of mates talking about their games, my friends and I used to play Flames of War and we spent as much time playing a game as we did arguing what we did right or wrong, what we could have taken to improve the army list and even rules that came into play.

One reason my friend and I plan to play random fleets for a while is to avoid a cookie cutter net build that we don’t have any attachment to. So this friendly banter is exactly the podcast we are looking for.

@Bergerfett: I like squadrons too, but there isn’t much you can do when your bomber rolls a miss or accuracy or a fighter throws up that or a crit. So there are reasons for and reasons against. I like to think that the squadrons are best used to worry down a ship, maybe finish off a ship that is already damaged but you have flown past as they are far more manoeuvrable than a ship.

In a very general sense I see there are 3 phases in many of my games. What I see squadrons doing at each stage I have added in blue.

The Joust: Where the two fleets fly towards each other and jockey for their positions. If the Imperial player keeps you in front of his ship for a turn extra the Rebel is in trouble, if the Rebel blows past with minimal damage the Imperial is in trouble. Squadrons will engage other squadrons or just mill about and see if they can get a shot or two, you may also try and engage a ship on a flank and hope it turns into the squadrons if they do manage to damage the ship a little.

For instance if you hit a ships port and get its shield down a point or two perhaps he will turn to port? Keeping his better starboard shield aimed towards your fleet.

The Dance: Here is where we are trying to keep our strengths aimed at our opponent and our weaknesses aimed elsewhere. Having a ship in reserve that goes jousting into your opponents dance can be very disruptive and play to good effect.

Here you end up just looking for targets of opportunity, finishing off a ship, worrying a ship with dangerously low shields or even just adding to the firepower of your ships in order to discard defence tokens.

The Fly By: Even the most agile ship can only manage a 112.5 degree turn, so if you end up flying against your opponents turn you may get a few rear shots or side arc shots. If you fly into your opponents turn then you may get one more good shot at your opponent, or a half-hearted shot if he jinks away from you in turn 6.

This is the key stage of the game, you are in the final hunt for VP, the AF/VSD with next to no hull and shields is heading away and just avoiding further damage. Keeping some pressure on it and making it fight to stay on board is far better than watching it fly past.

It is a bit of a waiting game here, you need to engage with your opponents Squadrons if present and get rid of them as fast as possible and with as many as possible to exploit this phase of the game. If your opponent doesn’t have squadrons of his own then the trick is to be patient and use these little hammers to worry away at him but not over commit, so that you can respond to the needs of the final stage of play and try to take down a ship or two.

This is all accurate.

I really enjoy the show. Even if they didn't have 80s music this go around. I spent way too much time in the Warmachine dojo so a lot of my actions come from that. I really enjoy this game and i enjoy discussing it. I do feel meta effects list builds. I am also at the point where rhymer is an auto include in my lists simply because if the assault frigate is doing strafing runs its easy to anticipate where it will be and is going and sit a group of squadrons right their and keep pegging away.

squadrons are very dicey vs ships but if you expect nothing to happen youll be surprised. if you are going in thinking you will do a crap ton of damage you will be disapointed. its one of the most dicey roles in the game right now.

In terms of squadrons I agree they can be dicey (hehe) if you dont have a lot of experience in playing them but from a Rebel perspective I have played maybe 1 game in 10 where they were not game changers. In fact I played one yesterday where Luke single handedly did 5 damage to a Gladiator with one die. Now I will admit it was the perfect storm but he rolled a hit and a crit that ignored shields and with Dodonna I picked Projector Misaligned (Ship - Your hull zone with the most remaining shields loses all of its shields, if multiple are tied, choose between the tied hull zones, then flip this card face down) and dropped his front shields from 3-0.

Without question the Rebels have the superior bombers but I think this is very true to the cannon. Either way what I love about this game is the constant debate on which side is balanced and whether squads need fighters or can go without, etc. To me this just means that the game is balanced very well and much of it comes down to the opponent across the table from you.

Really enjoyed listening, thanks for the efforts!

Agreed that Luke is a potential monster. The other night he took down a Gladiator mostly singlehandedly in two turns after an Adar double tap. An Adar double tap Luke can potentially drop 6 hull pts of damage onto a ship...

I don't see the Imperial squadrons having the same impact on ships as Rebel Squadrons - you can't over invest in bombers as they will fold against rebel fighters - while the vanilla TiE's seem too inefficient in Squadron commands/damage to stay on top of the faster Rebel ships.