Hi guys, today we have the armada national in italy (not many people, only 10 ). I brought a list of Rebel with a lot of squadrons, and i arrived first.

My list is:

A little fun fact: we found that in italian rules the squadrons activation is within medium range, but in the english rules is at . Not knowing which of the two was right we used the english version.

A little fun fact: we found that in italian rules the squadrons activation is within medium range, but in the english rules is at . Not knowing which of the two was right we used the english version.

My book says:

"[squadron Command]

Activate a number of friendly squadrons...that are at close- medium range"

(Pg. 3)

Thanks for the report.

Translation error!

C3PO, do your job

Anyways, sounds like you are a very good commander. The rebels are lucky to have you.

Thanks for the nice writeup! It's encouraging to see the squadrons doing well.

Congratulations on the win!

That being said, I think in the larger meta your list is sub optimal. The only really challenging match up you had was the last one, and from the sound of it your opponent really misplayed it, a VSDI and 3 GSDI with Screed and ACMs should have eaten your list for lunch.

Personally, I would drop the A-Wings and add a third ship for activation advantage or switch them to B-Wings.

I'd also change my Yellow objective to Fire Lanes, Hyperspace Assault can backfire on you VERY badly with two ships, see my earlier comment on your last match (He should have played Superior Positions, IMO)

Congrats again on the win, and I'm not trying to be a jerk, I promise (though I'm using my brace for incoming kickback) just offering some constructive criticism.

Hope to see you at Worlds.

Congratulations on a good win, Aresius.

Well done.

Congratulations on the win!

That being said, I think in the larger meta your list is sub optimal. The only really challenging match up you had was the last one, and from the sound of it your opponent really misplayed it, a VSDI and 3 GSDI with Screed and ACMs should have eaten your list for lunch.

Personally, I would drop the A-Wings and add a third ship for activation advantage or switch them to B-Wings.

I'd also change my Yellow objective to Fire Lanes, Hyperspace Assault can backfire on you VERY badly with two ships, see my earlier comment on your last match (He should have played Superior Positions, IMO)

Congrats again on the win, and I'm not trying to be a jerk, I promise (though I'm using my brace for incoming kickback) just offering some constructive criticism.

Hope to see you at Worlds.

Feedback is good, but i take issue at "That being said, I think in the larger meta your list is sub optimal".

Irrelevant. You should always build to beat the meta you are in, not the hypothetical "larger meta". I see this line of thinking tons too in the Warmahordes tournament circuit...so many people build to beat "the meta" without stopping to think that the meta they are building against is at national level or in a different area entirely. They then end up getting a kicking from their own meta (or that of the tournament) which is entirely different.

That aside, i actually agree with your comments overall, just not the "meta" bit...its a personal bugbear of mine

Congratulations on the win!

That being said, I think in the larger meta your list is sub optimal. The only really challenging match up you had was the last one, and from the sound of it your opponent really misplayed it, a VSDI and 3 GSDI with Screed and ACMs should have eaten your list for lunch.

Personally, I would drop the A-Wings and add a third ship for activation advantage or switch them to B-Wings.

I'd also change my Yellow objective to Fire Lanes, Hyperspace Assault can backfire on you VERY badly with two ships, see my earlier comment on your last match (He should have played Superior Positions, IMO)

Congrats again on the win, and I'm not trying to be a jerk, I promise (though I'm using my brace for incoming kickback) just offering some constructive criticism.

Hope to see you at Worlds.

Feedback is good, but i take issue at "That being said, I think in the larger meta your list is sub optimal".

Irrelevant. You should always build to beat the meta you are in, not the hypothetical "larger meta". I see this line of thinking tons too in the Warmahordes tournament circuit...so many people build to beat "the meta" without stopping to think that the meta they are building against is at national level or in a different area entirely. They then end up getting a kicking from their own meta (or that of the tournament) which is entirely different.

That aside, i actually agree with your comments overall, just not the "meta" bit...its a personal bugbear of mine

Funny you mention the Warmahordes tournament circuit... my FLGS owner is Will Pagani and a good chunk of the American WTC players are from my store. Will also plays Armada and is one of my playtesting buddies. So our local meta for Warmahordes *IS* the national/world meta

Congratulations on the win!

That being said, I think in the larger meta your list is sub optimal. The only really challenging match up you had was the last one, and from the sound of it your opponent really misplayed it, a VSDI and 3 GSDI with Screed and ACMs should have eaten your list for lunch.

Personally, I would drop the A-Wings and add a third ship for activation advantage or switch them to B-Wings.

I'd also change my Yellow objective to Fire Lanes, Hyperspace Assault can backfire on you VERY badly with two ships, see my earlier comment on your last match (He should have played Superior Positions, IMO)

Congrats again on the win, and I'm not trying to be a jerk, I promise (though I'm using my brace for incoming kickback) just offering some constructive criticism.

Hope to see you at Worlds.

Feedback is good, but i take issue at "That being said, I think in the larger meta your list is sub optimal".

Irrelevant. You should always build to beat the meta you are in, not the hypothetical "larger meta". I see this line of thinking tons too in the Warmahordes tournament circuit...so many people build to beat "the meta" without stopping to think that the meta they are building against is at national level or in a different area entirely. They then end up getting a kicking from their own meta (or that of the tournament) which is entirely different.

That aside, i actually agree with your comments overall, just not the "meta" bit...its a personal bugbear of mine

Funny you mention the Warmahordes tournament circuit... my FLGS owner is Will Pagani and a good chunk of the American WTC players are from my store. Will also plays Armada and is one of my playtesting buddies. So our local meta for Warmahordes *IS* the national/world meta

Hah, awesome. Will is an amazing player, and i expect he'll know EXACTLY what i mean. People copy his lists all the time, which are generally built for the US national meta. When they get copied by people in the UK and Australia, they tend to run into very different matchups, often ones the lists aren't built to handle.#

Like i said, i do agree with your list changes. I just find people tend to assume there is one monolithic "meta", which isnt the case. Though given your play group, i guess for you it actually almost IS the case....

I test a lost of time vs VGGG, and i feel confortable with my list. Of course my sparring can't be a good player, but i think is not an autolose when i play against that list (only if we play my mission, if i go fist, i can win ). Btw i understand your critics .

Results are the only measure of the efficiency of a list and a player, and you had good results. If people try to take consolation in the fact that their list was better built even if you wrecked them, more power to them but even according to that own logic they conceded without noticing it that they played abysmally

So kudos on your win and long live the squadrons !

I don't know about sub optimal. . . For one, the US Nationals winner never face a squadron heavy list. So who knows how that could have gone if he had faced a squadron heavy list with a competent player (remember that US Nationals had many players who were still new at the game so they did not have the experience that the Iceqube had, or other players) since US Nationals, people have practiced a lot with squadrons and are getting very good with them.

To be honest, i think the game is too young still to really say what is good and bad.

As Lyraeus said, even though it was Nationals a lot of players are still pretty inexperienced, and theres very limited list options. After a year or two practice we'll really start to see what the "best" options are (and there will be best options, there is in every game).

But i do pretty much agree that we can't say Squadrons are bad right now until there's a bigger sample size of top tier games and results.

Still....the important thing here is: Congratulations Aresius!

I took part in the same tournament: all lists that did heavy use of fighters outperformed those that did not (that was indeed a common trait of the lists that ranked 1st and 2nd). That was mainly because of the short time Wave1 had been sold in Italy to that point in time and because of the influence the American meta and its contempt for fighters' features expressed in these pages.

I personally believe fighters can be devastating, Rebel especially.....and B-wing even "more especially"; I am now testing the might of the Empire squads-wise as to see if quantity can make as good as quality.

I wonder how things will change when metas will encompass a heavy use of fighters: will it lead to even more fighters in the fray or FFG's foretellers will issue Imperial Raiders just about the right timing to provide "a second option"?

there's no need to believe squadrons can be devastating

the raw amount of dice they throw out is already completely ridiculous for the points invested

four B-wings (or 2 with Yavaris) routinely pop a GSD a round with the Neb pitching in after

problem is, every squadron heavy list I see is two ships (and because it's nothing but me and the imperials, those are Corrupter and Demolisher) so they're crutching hard on poor rhymer to get the results they need and they leave themselves open to a wipe after a bad mistake. Saw that happen when the 2 imp + squadron list took on VGGG spam

now me, I don't like specializing too much in an area and I took claims of importance of having a good number of activations to heart. Having 3 ships trolling around with just enough B-wings to scare the piss out of any imperial ship turned out to work far better than I had hoped

Given enough time, someone will find the ideal ratio of squadrons : ships as well as how to issue up commands without giving up manuevering potential (essential to not getting blitzed by gsds). As of now, I have seen nothing to convince me that that ratio is Haven + Yavaris and 100 points of squadrons nor squadronles, because as scary as GSDs are uncontested B-wings are simply far more frightening.

Congratulations Aresius, sounds like a fun event.

Your list sounds fun and fluffy. I think squadrons can be devastating if used well and/ or not countered properly. The important thing is to find a list that works with your play style. I personally love big ships (VVG), as that is what I love about Star Wars and this game!

I think Armada is very 'chess-like' in that rewards player skill. And some good attack dice rolling doesn't hurt!

Just to better explain myself: this is an image of TURN SIX of one of the last games in the tournament. Just so you know, the objective was SUPERIOR POSITIONS. :-o

Indeed, ficklegreendice!

Now, I never had the chance to see a swarm of Bs having to deal with swells of TIEs breaking into their ranks and that is the moment I'm waiting for.
Beyond that piece of analysis, I am pondering on the fact TIEs are devastating as anti-squadrons-fare (as much as being effective against squadrons can be in Armada) but are pretty sucky when it comes to confront ships therefore, provided that you usually don't know the list you will be playing against, what proportion of fighters should you inject in your alchemy?
TIEs can be useful for instance to simply pin down enemy bombers approaching to your position (provided you are Player 2 or have at least 3 squadrons, so that you can move after enemy bombers) thus buying you some time to bring your GSDs at firing distance before Rebel bombers make short work of TIEs and ravage them but.......what if your opponent has no fighters? That would mean a pure waste of fleet points.

To better investigate this doubt I created two VSD+GSD+GSD lists all-in-all very similar to each other but of which one is more squadrons-oriented and one rather raw-ship-firepower-oriented; last Saturday I played against an Imperial that deployed no squadrons and I intentionally chose the squadron-oriented of my lists just to see how badly I would be hammered. I did not fare that bad (when we prematurely stopped the game I was in advantage) but I could not find an answer to my question marks yet.

The Firespray (provided its costed effectively) should help the Imperials get their all-rounder to counter the B-wing and provide a bomber threat to the board that isn't trash to enemy fighters. This will help with the meta overall as we should see more squadrons overall, and then the efficacy of bringing specialized anti-squadron fighters like the TIE Interceptor will go up.

The Firespray's faster speed (relative to the B-wing) should help those players who are scared off by the speed 2, or just don't feel like playing rebel.

Congratulations on the win!

That being said, I think in the larger meta your list is sub optimal. The only really challenging match up you had was the last one, and from the sound of it your opponent really misplayed it, a VSDI and 3 GSDI with Screed and ACMs should have eaten your list for lunch.

Personally, I would drop the A-Wings and add a third ship for activation advantage or switch them to B-Wings.

I'd also change my Yellow objective to Fire Lanes, Hyperspace Assault can backfire on you VERY badly with two ships, see my earlier comment on your last match (He should have played Superior Positions, IMO)

Congrats again on the win, and I'm not trying to be a jerk, I promise (though I'm using my brace for incoming kickback) just offering some constructive criticism.

Hope to see you at Worlds.

Well, I think it's apparent that in at least two games, Hyperspace Assault worked quite well (pairing Yavaris with three ship-killers, I'm not surprised). It's definitely a riskier move than I'd do with just two ships, but then again, I haven't won a national.

So the moral is, avoid hyperspace assault with Yavaris and B-wings. Even if there's only one ship on the table to start. It's a trap!

Firespray = bomber = corrupter = speed 4 or speed 3 chiri

Rogue? What rogue?