I'm pretty poor at flying my Gladiator at the moment. That and my opponents know to try to stay the hell away from it's black die range so I usually roll with the Gladiator-II so I can still get at least one shot off if I'm not in close range. Even with the ACMs on the Gladiator-I I've had such bad luck having it go off without Screed. But that's just me, it seems to work waaaaay better for lots of people on this forum and for that, The Empire salutes you!

I'm not in the top percentile for competitive gaming, but I like the Glad 2 when my lists have just a small squadron presence. While my thin air force ties down the enemy squadrons to slow them down, the Glad 2s (when they are unoccupied) can contribute fire out their extra arcs to help the squadrons either live longer or even win their air battles. Squadron points can help you get that extra margin. However, one can certainly make the argument that it's better to just "go for the throat" and kill their ships faster....etc.

Hey guys ! It's MoffZen with once again a tactical debate thread !

This time, we're pitting two Gladiators together : the Gladiator I and the Gladiator II !

Compared to the other Imperial ship, the Victory, the two platforms are very close in terms of features. For 6 points, you gain an extra anti-squadron dice and you switch one black die on both sides for a red die.

The floor is yours ! What are in your opinion the strength of both Gladiators classes ?

To me, it seems that the Gladiator I is the most suited for the title upgrades (Demolisher because it allows to apply a healthy dose of black dice early on, Insidious because it allows to apply a healthy dose of black dice later on). The Gladiator 2 seems like an off-carrier ship when you want to coordinate a small and accurate force of fighters. The extra blue dice will help against squadrons, while the repartition between red dice feels like a smaller scale Victory I (one less red dice on each side).

hey MoffZen, I like your idea of mini-carriers,heres something I been messing with recently, actually won a game with it, i think my friend thought I was crazy, but it worked quite well.

Vic II w/motti, weapons L

Glad II w/ Chirp, FC

Glad I w/ ET

Rymer

Vader

bomber

300 pts

Cheers and keep up the cool topics!!

gotta love Vader!!

Nice to see someone thought about the mini Carrier too

Out of curiosity, how did Chirp + FC go ? I was theorizing that both seemed rather mutually exclusive (Chirp for moving out of the engagement, FC for sticking in and overcome it), so I'm eager to hear your report on that.

Nice to see someone thought about the mini Carrier too

Out of curiosity, how did Chirp + FC go ? I was theorizing that both seemed rather mutually exclusive (Chirp for moving out of the engagement, FC for sticking in and overcome it), so I'm eager to hear your report on that.

I also thought the same thing,however, I more or less used Chirp as a backup/emergency escape if needed. Expensive, I know, but having only 3 squadrons, I was thinking of living alittle longer with them. Also my luck was with me too,I was able to squeek down side shield on a Gup, followed up with close range Glad II put a crit on the bugger and managed to damage a couple of his squadrons aswell.

All in all I think practice is needed on my part.....flying by the seat of your pants is tense.....however, Vader is a really good presence, nobody likes flying near him.

Using a glad as anything other than a missile carrier is a waste of points. The glad should be concentrating on getting close to the enemy and unloading those black dice. For this, Glad I with ACM backed by Screed is the most efficient. Anything else is inefficient. The only exception is Demolisher, but this actually increases the likelihood of getting off those black dice.

If you all want to use Glads for anything else but this, go ahead. I prefer to use a ship efficiently.

Lupine, not sure if you are trolling of...

Discounting all builds that aren't ACM plus Screed is letting yourself get surprised !

I never troll.

I'm serious in my assessment. The Gladiator as built has one clear purpose, and that is to spew as many black dice over an enemy ship. Any other use of it, and anything that doesn't maximize this effect, is totally ineffective. I've won two tourneys 30-0 so far following that philosophy.

This is assuming that you're building your fleet to max the use of the glad, with vsd's as support.

Now you can of course have a different focal point to your fleet, at which point an alternate load out would be acceptable. However, as the current meta stands, the Gladiator heavy list is by far the most effective Imperial list out there...although something could be said for three VSD build. With Rebs, I would say three Frigates with some support is the best right now.

All the above is of course merely my opinion.

There are currently only 2 ships for the imperials. Using the Glad II as a carrier for a small group is not out of the realm of possibility.

If you GSD-I fans want to keep wasting turns when you're out of range be my guest. In my experience you don't go from out-of-range to close-range, you go from long-range to close-range. That's efficiency,

I'm not really sure that there are "best" lists in Armada. There are however proven lists, and like you said these fleets have a focal point and ships that are built around it. I think people are still trying out the fleet builds and since everybody is pretty new, their opponents make mistakes which make less optimized lists decent on the tabletop (me included).

But a fleet needs ships that work together (even more so with Rebels).

The Glad I is obviously the best answer for raw damage in ship to ship, and due to a high crit chance, it's great for ACM. With Demolisher being good for early game damage and Insidious for late game damage (once it has passed the enemy fleet).

For straight to the face boxing, it's really good.

The Glad II might be better to take advantage of the red/black combination. Like others said, Sensor Team can clean up blank dice back to accuracies.

So, targeted damage over raw damage. However to maximize this, Concentrate Fire commands would be the best to maximize the effectiveness of that Glad.

I do think that there is quite the potential for the GSD as a micro carrier.

Now, in you guys' opinions, what kind of squadrons would the Glad be better suited to manage ?

At first I was thinking that a micro Bomber Wing would be good for the Glad II. But the 2 anti-Fighter blue dice kind of don't really mesh well with managing Bombers because of two different targets.

On the other hand, on a Glad I, throwing 2 Bombers really helps to give damage at range.

But, now that I think about it, a Glad 2 might be great to manage a small and elite Fighter screen. Think about Glad II with Flight Controllers managing Vader and another advanced. 8 blue dice + 1 black thrown at squadrons plus 2 blue dice of anti fighter barrage. You're going to eat the squadrons super fast, then the Advanced can still damage ships later on. Maybe a Vader with Mauler and Chirp.

Using a glad as anything other than a missile carrier is a waste of points. The glad should be concentrating on getting close to the enemy and unloading those black dice. For this, Glad I with ACM backed by Screed is the most efficient. Anything else is inefficient. The only exception is Demolisher, but this actually increases the likelihood of getting off those black dice.

If you all want to use Glads for anything else but this, go ahead. I prefer to use a ship efficiently.

I agree with you completely Darth Lupine, efficiency is very important when planning for tourney. Right now, I have only had a dozen real games. Aside from play testing,podcasts and watching vids(shout out to Lyraeus & Steve and the boys from IFF). The chaps and i are are still stumbling through objectives....so I've haven't reached the efficiency stage as refined as most.

In fact, I probably(maybe) never will play tourney, however, I play war games for fun and comradeship. This game offers many fun options to try and "doing it wrong"

does not exist when trying new things. It teaches those of us who are still learning.

Cheers! fly casual and have fun

^^^ good post that.

So a simple list to try if you have 3 GSDs.

Motti

3x GSD-2

6x TIE Bomber

3x TIE adv

Comes to 300 exact. Three mini strike groups.

Sadly have to agree with lupy

The gsd's generalist stats are offset by HOLY BLACK DICE, BATMAN

The one red out of the gsd2 doesn't seem enough long range punch to warrant much consideration (sensor team shenanigans noted) and 2 anti squadron by itself is not terribly impressive. Similarities to the neb extend only to the statline, with the lil frigate getting away cheaper (for AS shots) and with more impressive long range punch amd support (yavaris)

But never forget you get squad 2 for "free" and you could always catch an opponent off guard with that if you ever include squads

About the only reason I can think of taking a Gladiator II (bar the improved anti-squadron defence) is to use Sensor Team to negate the opponant's brace token.