The problem this forum has, and that the game maybe has, is that people are trying too hard to win in the metagame and not hard enough to win in the game. If you want to kill off the turret, you need to train people to kill it. Strategy threads on blocking it, boxing it in, denying it actions and focusing firing it into slag are what you need, not calls for FFG to nerf Broken Ship #3. "This is broken" is an advert for it. Training the masses to kill it is how you'll bring it down.

I would love nothing better than to hear from the best about how to crush primary turret ships. Yes, I'd love to see your favorite counter-turret lists, but even more so I'd love to read a description of how you fly your list against a primary turret opponent.

So this is NOT a fix, buff, nerf, or even a b**** thread... How bout a good ol' strategy thread? What kind of page count does this topic get?

Bring a turret.

I tend to just unload on primary ship no matter what, it tends to work well for me. The dice where with me this weekend and I killed a devestator in two attack rounds, he only got to fire once. It was chirpy with VI, first round pilot crit him to ps 0 then unloaded with a double small explotion crit and finished him. It was EPIC I couldn't belive it, then I 1 shot echo.I love my XXB Build and I ended up winning the tourney

Rule 1: Your answer cannot be "attack it with dice"

Rule 2: Your answer cannot be one sentence long.

Rule 3: Do not post an "answer" if someone reading it would come away no more knowledgable.

Rule 4: Do not complain about turrets.

Rule 5: Do not suggest that turrets are EZPZ to win against.

Rule 6: Profit.

there's not much counterplay to turrets apart from being able to favorably trade dice. So, instead I'll focus on the other lesser half of the list.

Certain pilots, particularly Soontir Fell and Corran Horn, have been popping up a lot in the current meta mainly because they are pretty hard to kill; especially by turrets. The turret's weakness is that, though it'll dumb the game down to a dice trade, is that it "only" gets 3/4 dice. You bring along anything with Fat Han level of damage cancels (namely evade + thrusters/r2-d2 shield regen) + 3 agility, and you can eat their unavoidable fire all day long.

This durability, however, flags when there are multiple shots incoming unless you have the magic touch of dice (stupid green dice).

There are plenty of ships with Soontir/Corran level durability to choose from, so flying against the drudgery of 2-ship lists w/turret mostly comes down to only taking one attack on the ship you're invested in. While the PWT will attack you no matter what because its incredibly poorly designed advantage negates most counterplay, Corran Horn or Soontir Fell are mere arced ships that actually have to care about their facing. This means you can indirectly control a 2-ship list's damage output by controlling their wingmen. You'll have to learn to threaten enough so that the arced wingman will eat tons of damage if it comes at your squadron (especially if blocked, a blocked Han loses nothing apart from evade/boost since gunner, predator, ability AND 3po are action independent but Corran and Soontir are just sitting sucks), or will have to veer off and not contribute the fight for 2 odd turns (if stressed) because, unlike turreted ships, arced ships actually have to make a decision between offensive and defensive maneuvering

.

Note this doesn't mean hunt down their wingmen like maniacs. Most savy players will dangle bait in your face and then just zooom the hell out of dodge. The most important thing to remember about two ship lists is that they're almost always faster than you, and that even if you want to chase you won't be able to. Once you're in a position to force the wingman to get blocked or veer off, get ready to engage the turret. This is something you should come to grips with against basically every 2-ship list, especially aggressors, unless you're flying one yourself.

When flying 2-ships against PWTs, you have to find the certain conditions to fufill before your ships can readily 1v1 a fat PWT (in Dash's case, it's range 3 + double focus & target lock), while trying to combine your fire and deny your opponent their ability to combine theirs

Rule 1: Your answer cannot be "attack it with dice"

then we are all doomed

I actually had good luck cracking a Firespray-31 (not necessarily a turret) with howlrunner, maj. Rhymer with push the limit and protons, and tie swarm. Target lock, focused down, then let him have it with all barrels. Disappeared 2nd turn and was so crippled it was useless.

Can't imagine a YT of any other large based ship would fair better

The best solution I have found to dealing with turrets is to focus fire. I usually will play the first turn slow to find out which will be my first target, depending on their speed and direction. Beyond that, I just pour as much fire as I can into a single ship until it explodes. If it means that the first two ships of the four I run get the kill and the other two are left wanting, then I am ok with that. The more guns on a target at once will speed up its demise.

I've had a huge amount of success with a combination of Prockets and Corran. If it's PS9+, I prefer to block it with a Prototype so it can't run away. Preferably both Tycho (Procket platform) and Corran previously acquired TLs, which is simple to do. Then you zoom in on the R1 engagement, F+E on Tycho, E with Corran. This is a requirement most turns in order to styme the hurt the 4 dice can do. If you feel dangerous, feel free to F with Corran as well.

Now you're throwing 13 dice in one turn, 8 with a single modifier, 5 with dual modifiers. Your expected <boom> count is 10.375. Now, if it's against a Decimator, that's just straight up damage. Against a YT-2400 (which isn't that large of a threat in all honesty), you're looking at 2.26 + 3.94 + 2.26 = 8.46 damage. And against a YT-1300, 1.25 + 4.31 + 2.25 = 7.81 damage. So, if you're strategic about when you do this (read, after you've done 2-3 damage), you can easily wipe out the target in one large assault. The YT-2400 falls apart really easily, as does the Decimator. The YT-1300 (especially with double droids) is the only one at all that presents an-ongoing challenge. But if you got 3 damage prior to the burst round, it's left with only 2 hull.

Furthermore, in my experience it's not uncommon for it to be sporting several crits - all of which can be devastating. Not only is there the obvious Direct Hit card, but all of the pilot crits are nasty, and most of the ship crits are too (exceptions being muntions failure and thrust control fire).

In short, a single burst attack round can often cripple any large ship (this is also how I deal with Aggressors), drastically turning the tide of battle. If you are successful in killing it that round, then Corran can run away and regen any shields that were lost, or your opponent can be upset that he failed to kill Tycho prior to him getting his rockets off (and now feels like he wasted those shots on Tycho).

The best counter I use against turrets is stress mechanics and numbers. Stress severely slows the ship down, having to green to do actions or lose the ability to boost. Focusing fire with multiple ships to limit damage mitigation methods like C3P0 and Ysanne.

One list I've ran that has been very successful against turrets is the following:

B-WING: Blue Squadron Pilot (22)

Flechette Cannon (2)

Accuracy Corrector (3)

B-WING: Blue Squadron Pilot (22)

B-Wing/E2 (1)

Tactician (2)

B-WING: Blue Squadron Pilot (22)

B-Wing/E2 (1)

Intelligence Agent (1)

B-WING: Blue Squadron Pilot (22)

Flechette Cannon (2)

The flechettes are great to cancel extra evade dice at a distance, so they work very well against YT-1300 and Decimators.

The turret I'm still having issues with this list is Dash with PTL. Flechettes are useless and its hard to get him in R2 with B's being slow.

Overall, stress, ion, blocking and numbers are usually the most common ways I've been able to take down turrets.

Dash PTL is one of the many reasons r3-a2 is the best stress card by a mile

suck on that, rebel captive!

General advice is difficult as a lot depends on what you are running.

The best advice I can give is to try and funnel it into an unfavorable position. Rocks and board edges are your friend and much easier for smaller ships to maneuver around. I fly a lot of 3+ small ship lists and when attacking a turret ship I will try and attack it from multiple directions at once. It limits the locations that the turret ship can move to and increases your chances of blocking it.

Stress and lots of ion help too. When you limit a large turret ships movement options, its 3 attack dice become pretty inefficient for the cost.

Being Corran.

Focus ion fire has worked for me. It might not be THE answer, but it is MY answer. Even if you can't drag them off map you control and limit where they will be next turn to hammer them again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSN5TPKMJ24

As Yoda said: "Control, control, you must learn control"

I have some experience fighting Super Dash's but not much vs Decimators or Fat Han's.

VS a Super Dash (assuming HLC Turret, Kyle Katarn, PTL, Engine Upgrade) keep an eye on stress tokens. If they put one on themselves, then be ready for a green maneuver follow up, and then a boost. Try and block it if you have the ships for it. If you can put a stress on Super Dash, then go for it! Double stress is ideal, but if you can only deal 1 at a time, you're still controlling how they move. Keep in mind that the 1-Banks and 1- and 2-Straights are green...if you're in close range, their follow up action will likely be boost or barrel roll.

In a perfect situation, you've either managed to block, or force him to go on an asteroid to avoid you. If you're not in a perfect situation, don't half-ass block, as Dash will likely avoid you. Try and set yourself up for the next turn instead. if you've only got 1-3 ships, you're gonna have a hard time with this. Instead, try to draw him through asteroids. He can easily avoid them, but you're forcing him to spend his actions on repositioning, not offense. Hopefully, you can turn on him unexpectedly and get into close range while he's stressed.

Also, Dash is vulnerable to lots of different crits (Weapons Malfunction, Damaged Sensor Array, Injured Pilot, the one that gives a stress token) so anything that can throw extra crits at him will eventually pay off. Anyone of those could be crippling to the Dash player, so should one go through, be ready to capitalize on it.

As always, focus fire. You can't hurt him if you don't shoot him.

Anyway, it's hard to give specific examples (I'm a veteran player, but not a seasoned player) but keeping those philosophies in mind has always been successful for me.

EDIT: A lot of the success of the Fat Turrets is due to their action economy. During list building, anything that can nullify those actions really helps you out. Wes Janson, Carnor Jax, Palob Godahli(!!!!!!); these guys make Evade and Focus tokens useless, or even a liability.

mind you, control helps it won't do everything for you

Control'll wreck Soont's and Horn's ****, but the Falcon still has a bevy of bull that doesn't care about the little red tokens (predator, pilot ability, gunner, c3po, turret advantage) and predator is simply no fun to face with generic stress inducers. The Deci's a little more SoL if it doesn't get exceptionally lucky (re: you get unlucky and deal no damage)

might have to break about the Biggs, maybe?

Some things that I think are useful for killing turrets:

1) Outmaneuver. No agility dice means no C-3P0; this forces Han and Dash to actually get you in arc, rather than just playing a game of chicken.

2) Control. Stress means no boosting and ion means predictability; both of these allow you to line up more Range 1 shots.

3) Board edges. If you pin a big ship against the edge, you've changed its options from "move any direction" to "move forward or turn in."

4) Intelligence Agent. Knowing where half of your opponent's list will be is incredibly valuable, assuming you have BR or boost capability.

Joust them. Slow roll.

Fly in the centre of the map and try to force them onto a predictable railroad track along the edges.

Never boost/barrel if they're already in arc (unless you're blocking).

That's the strategy that has worked for me. Remember, PWT's are the least cost-effective ship class in the game when jousting. If you look at MajorJuggler's Mathwing statistics, you can see how just much of a PWT's cost goes into its 360 arc. If you exploit that with your own cost efficiency, you'll be fine. Joust a ~60-point RAC with its points equivalent in TIE fighters, Z95's, or B-wings and tell me how it goes. I personally fly high-PS Firesprays which aren't even considered great jousters, but I still usually come out on top against their even less joust-efficient cousins.

But what about the Soontir component in Soontir RAC builds and Corran in Corran Super Dash builds? Well you have to account for those, too. And you'll still have a glaringly bad matchup against other lists. But that's how this game is. Those are strong lists, but they are clearly not dual PWT lists. If PWT's were so bad, dual PWT would be the monster we're hunting - not the aforementioned lists (and Brobots) which stand on synergy and balance. PWT's aren't broken - they're just really popular due to relatively forgiving (and arguably easier) playstyle and benefits more from MoV.

We just need to think a bit outside the box. I've been flying Imperial Kath with VI, Mangler and Rebel Captive for the past 2 weeks, and can't for the life of me figure out why she's not seeing more use. I've given her a strong jousting counterpart and you can shut down Soontir/RAC hard. Once the Raider finally ships, Imperials will also have high-PS jousting options in the TIE Advanced. I wouldn't be surprised if PWT's become much less popular in a few months....

Alpha Squadron + Autothrusters

Alpha Squadron + Autothrusters

Alpha Squadron + Autothrusters

Alpha Squadron + Autothrusters

Alpha Squadron + Autothrusters

This might help against a turret.

Something no one has mentioned specifically yet is: block with the ship they want to shoot at. If they are bumping you they are not shooting you. If you can orchestrate a way to keep your injured ship touching/blocking, they cannot finish it off. Swarms do this pretty well but when it comes down to 2:1 in the end game it can "point fortress" for you if you're good at predicting movement...easier said than done but it's a nuance to blocking that hadn't been mentioned yet.

I think people are misunderstanding me: When I say don't JUST say "attack it with dice", is because that doesn't help anyone. We are already trying to do that. Its public knowledge.

Here's a more specific question:

How do you determine blocks and how to cover area of a large based ship with boost?

What asteroid set-ups have actually significant help against large based ships.

How important is blocking? What should be used to block?

When is it a better idea to recoup for a big turn of fire instead of trailing and firing every round?

How do you predict against a very very good dial if the large ship isn't stressed or otherwise obviously going to choose a certain move?

What deployments work?

Is it a viable stratagy to kil the PWT with a swarm, then stall for time to avoid having to kill corran/soonts?

Alpha Squadron + Autothrusters

Alpha Squadron + Autothrusters

Alpha Squadron + Autothrusters

Alpha Squadron + Autothrusters

Alpha Squadron + Autothrusters

This might help against a turret.

3 Green Squadron w/PTL + thrusters

2 Prototype Pilots w/thrusters

refits all round

What asteroid set-ups have actually significant help against large based ships.

I think a big cluster...kind of like the "5" face of a six-sided die. Try to keep them as close as you can to the minimum distance away from each other. It limits their ability to zoom across the board, and the large bases makes it difficult for them to complete turns. Even vs. Dash, he often has to choose between landing on an asteroid and not firing, or boosting/barrel rolling off beyond R3 and, again, not firing.

!!!! Keep in mind, this is assuming you're NOT also a Fat Turret and your ships have the maneuverability to move comfortably through the 'roids.