As a Rebel player, I’ve found it very difficult to deal with a heavily upgraded Demolisher Gladiator Star Destroyers. I’ve found the combo of either a Gladiator I or Gladiator II with Expanded Launchers, Engine Techs, Admiral Screed, and the Demolisher title to be able to destroy weaker ships in one attack.

The ability to perform one attack after a moment is devastated when combined with 4 black dice. Has anyone been able effectively counter this in any games they’ve had? I’ve had some success using an Assault Frigate with bombers close by it because the Assault Frigate can survive one salvo and use the bombs to inflict some extra damage to hopefully destroy the Demolisher in one turn before it can attack again.

Seven blue-dice CR90s should do the job.

Lose one? No problem. You have six more!

Unfortunately I don't have seven corvettes...so I haven't really tried.

As rebs, you have to force a trade. The demo will be more expensive than anything other than a fattie. If it dies to kill a corv or neb, you come out ahead.

So how do you force a trade when it comes screaming in before you can wear it down? You need similarly excessive firepower.

For said firepower, rebs have

a) paragon

b) salvation (barring bad rolls)

c) bwings

d) concentrated fire from several ships

Bwings are probably the simplest to enable. Keepvthem around where you don't want demolisher to show up and hit her hard if she does. From experience, some five shots (yavaris, baby) + corv shotb+ 1 neb shot + neb ram were enough to down a motti vsd in one round. The gsd with its one redirect and five hull isn't even HALF of that

You can cover yourself similarly by keepingvship arcs pointed at that location, but it's a bit more unwieldy than leaving bwings loitering in the area

Your opponent will of course try to counter by throwing fighters at them, but that's a given. Covering your power pieces,usingbthem effectively, and preventing your opponent from doing the same is where the strategic part of the game kicks in.

i was able to force him to trade the gladiator for my c90 last night. i put the cr90 between our ships then fighters then my assault frigate. he went took the c90 put a front volly into the AF, and then moved. Then with a squadron command, my fighters and Assault frigate melted him.

If you try to trade the assault frigate for the gladiator, your gonna have a bad time.

Also if they Glad1, take advanced projectors. lets you spread that damage like buttah.

I'm going to relay a unique suggestion I heard that seems to make sense to me. I haven't tried it out yet in a match, but initial experiments with the models I have seem to support it

Essentially, the GSD is going to close the distance. So put the good old rebel minefield in his way: B-Wings

A flight of several B-Wing squadrons can tear apart a GSD, especially with special characters like Luke or Keylan with them, or fleet support from something like Yavaris or Talon. Keep the squadron ahead of your main fleet (this means moving slow at first), and wait for the over eager GSD to plow right into them.

Keep in mind he is GOING to get those dreaded black dice out before he sinks, so try and bait him into wasting them on an empty vessel. A lighlty upgraded corvette would be perfect for this. You're going to end up trading ships, and trading a 50 point corvette for an 80 point frigate seems like a good trade to me.

Basically, use cheap bait to lure him into a minefield of B-Wings.

As someone who uses Demolisher I can say it goes down fast when you focus on it. The front arc may hit like a VSD but it isn't. It can one shot a corvette, but most other ships can survive and when you shoot back at close range, you should be able to get two arcs planted onto it.

Make sure you choose to move the ship most likely to be hit by the Demolisher first if you have initiative. Do not position your ships so that all their best guns are pointed in the same general direction. If you can afford to, stand your ground so that you could always have a good return fire. GSDs can kill fast but they can also die fast.

ECM means you should be able to use a brace token, and mitigate the damage. I have had Turbo ACM demolishers come up on my AFII, knock down some shields and get blown away the next turn

As someone who uses Demolisher I can say it goes down fast when you focus on it. The front arc may hit like a VSD but it isn't. It can one shot a corvette, but most other ships can survive and when you shoot back at close range, you should be able to get two arcs planted onto it.

Great point. I've noticed as well that the very nature of the Demolisher means that when it launches it's generally exposed to multiple attacks. It can take shrug off one attack from many things given its tokens and shields, but like a Neb it crumbles quickly if focused upon.

I like to shove an assault frigate with Raymus aboard in front of it with a turn three engineering. Of course, that means I am spending either similar or possible more points on addressing the Demolisher. Fact is it's a great title and is a no-brainer in my opinion on the first Glad in any list.

Cheaper ships work great. Just to give you an idea, if you trade a stock VSD-I for a GSD-I, Demolisher and Assault Concussion Missiles, you're even. Find a sacrificial lamb to obstruct the attack on more critical elements in your fleet or die in the attempt.

I use Salvation and the XI-7 Turbolaser. 2 damage on each crit roll and him limited to only redirect 1 point of damage brings the GSD down pretty fast. I started to use Dodonnas Pride as bait, and it works great - he hates that ship (bypassing shields vs a ship with not so many hullpoints is really pita). I also throw in Dodonna himself (but not on the Corvette of course) from time to time to maximize the Corvettes effect. That's almost a guarantee to have him shoot the Corvette :-)

If he plays fighter heavy I hit the GSD hard, sometimes killing it in one turn, but most times not, and then I go for the second ship (the one acting as carrier, and where Creed sits); the GSD, being hit that hard and near to death, takes a turn off to regenerate. That is enough time to destroy the VSD (everything firing at it and ramming with every ship). So the games always end with a badly damaged GSD having to decide if he wants another try against my 2 - 3 ships, which are all more than eager to ram it to death.

Ramming and Dodonnas Pride (both doing direct damage, bypassing the shields) gave every GSD a pause so far - they simply don't have enough hullpoints to get hit by that for 2+ turns.

I am looking forward to Demolisher versus MC30 point-blank-shootouts. I don't know why, I guess it just appeals to the part of me that likes explosions and massive damage with no hope of emerging unscathed...

This game is so great!

Historically, cheap swarms of motor torpedo boats would rush in and unload a sales of torpedoes against much more expensive cruisers and battleships.

Motor torpedo boat destroyers were introduced to destroy, you guessed it, MTBs. The name was eventually reduced to destroyers.

The cheapest rebel ship is the CR90. Keep a cheap one between the demolisher and you heavies. The Demolisher can't unload on your ships unless it can move into black die range.

I watched a friend run into the Demolisher last week. It wasn't pretty. Basicaly Demolisher + Expanded Launchers + Concentrate fire = A world of pain. It gutted an Assault Frigate in a single round of shooting (then annihilated it on the next turn). Everybody was like 'OK that's a bit nuts'. Not really sure how I'm going to deal with it at the moment.

57 + 10 + 13 = 80 points (88 for techs)

I'd expect it to do some harm

With that many points, I'm sure you guys will figure something out

I watched a friend run into the Demolisher last week. It wasn't pretty. Basicaly Demolisher + Expanded Launchers + Concentrate fire = A world of pain. It gutted an Assault Frigate in a single round of shooting (then annihilated it on the next turn). Everybody was like 'OK that's a bit nuts'. Not really sure how I'm going to deal with it at the moment.

Huh, the AF2 must of not had any defensive tokens left. It takes somewhere around 30 damage to kill it in a single round without accuracies on a 1v1 engagements (more than 2 attacks starts significantly lowering this)

Pive had haven 2-round in two occasions, but not just cauSe of the gsd.

First round:

Rhymer plus 2-3 bombers hit the side. The gsd then swings in and snugs itself in the simply frontarc of the fattie Before demolishing out a side arc barrage of the FAR more reliable skreed + ACM. The dust settles; the whale is at least shieldless.

Next turn , Demolisher Activates (always has initiative) unloads its sides and hits ACM into the hull through the arc rhymer opened last turn, navigates and techs to the other side, demolishes out the front arc for more ACM to the hull. If anything's left , rhymer finishes It off.

Won both of those games though

Game 1 was ignore demo, acquire skreed vsd instead And win on points. game 2 was paragon revenge killing demo and making up the very slight difference in enemy squadrons.

It's not so easy to apply demo When you're covering yourself with squadrons and another angry whale

I have 2 blog post "interviews" on this topic.

Surviving the Imperial Tactics: Gladiator Star Destroyer

Rebel Fleets: Countering the Gladiator Star Destroyer

I watched a friend run into the Demolisher last week. It wasn't pretty. Basicaly Demolisher + Expanded Launchers + Concentrate fire = A world of pain. It gutted an Assault Frigate in a single round of shooting (then annihilated it on the next turn). Everybody was like 'OK that's a bit nuts'. Not really sure how I'm going to deal with it at the moment.

Huh, the AF2 must of not had any defensive tokens left. It takes somewhere around 30 damage to kill it in a single round without accuracies on a 1v1 engagements (more than 2 attacks starts significantly lowering this)

Well at close range he couldn't use his evade. The Demolisher player rolled an accuracy on one his red dice so negated brace. Therefore the Assault Frigate had to tank something like nine damage (with a crit) on his side shields with only a redirect to help him out. He could either redirect to the rear (taking more hull damage) or to the front (still taking a critical hit). I think it didn't really matter at this point which option he took as the Demolisher activated at the start of the next turn and threw another ton of dice at the Frigate.

The Alpha strike from this thing is so **** scary.

Thus Advanced Projectors are amazing

Thus Advanced Projectors are amazing

So are Electronic countermeasures. Unfortunatly he'd set up his Frigate to deal damage and control his squadrons.

Thus Advanced Projectors are amazing

Also, Mon Mothma evades FTW!

reds have 1 accuracy in 8 faces. Without sensor team (bump the EL demo up to 85, 93 with techs) I wouldn't expect them to be able to cancel much in the way of defense tokens without getting very lucky. Four black dice with an accuracy are quite scary, however, and you basically want to be a Neb or an ECM fattie at that point.

sensor team would explain why the GSD-2 "upgrades" to a red over a black die on the side arcs, however

reds have 1 accuracy in 8 faces. Without sensor team (bump the EL demo up to 85, 93 with techs) I wouldn't expect them to be able to cancel much in the way of defense tokens without getting very lucky. Four black dice with an accuracy are quite scary, however, and you basically want to be a Neb or an ECM fattie at that point.

sensor team would explain why the GSD-2 "upgrades" to a red over a black die on the side arcs, however

Don't forget to Concentrate fire. It gives you an extra black dice (more damage) or an extra red dice (better chance at finding that accuracy).

CF is a weird issue, though

the GSD isn't terribly impressively maneuverable (it's decent, like a Neb), and while you can't really stop Demolisher from ******* your face you can wreck it fairly easily too if you know where it'll end up. Its a pretty expensive ship and does don't trade well.

This is why techs seem so popular on it, they let it zoom into a ship's bad arcs and while aligning its own for an attack with demolisher that it normally wouldn't have. Of course, techs need navigate to work, which is why I seldom see CF (not that they really need it, between ACM and Skreed) and instead see the cheese wedge zooming around like it owns the place.

some people have taken Wulf with the GSD, though. That navigate token they bank on the first round lasts the entire game, letting the GSD dart in and out and go wherever it wants, basically. Then, I start seeing concentrate fires. Of course, Wulf is 7 points and running him on the ACM + Techs GSD-1 costs you 88 points (94 if launchers) so it's not exactly something you can just toss at the enemy.