The problem with Riekkan, while he may "win" you the match....the Riekkan player wouldn't do well in a tourney. While you win, you will not get a high MOV if all your ships (or many) are dead.

The concept of intentionally or by design allowing your fleet to blow up doesn't sit well with me...hehe... And, competitively, it will not do well.

The thing about him is, you're not building your list to blow up. You are building to maximize the advantage you gain by allowing those few that do die to stay on the table 1 round longer, while mitigating the impact to your own MoV of losing them. My strategy for this is running a pile of CR90B's. Out of 6-7 games so far, I haven't lost one yet; every game has ended with me tabling my opponent; and in all but one I've had no fewer than 4 corvettes left on the table. That's still a 224 MoV. This is obviously no guarantee that it would perform this way in a tournament, but it's a pretty good indicator, and I'm okay with reliable 9-1's.

I will agree that building and running your list with the explicit intention of killing by ramming is a terrible tactic that doesn't work well at all, regardless of who your admiral is.

I really think that ffg should look at the ram rulings.

I'm sure that they have.

And 6 corvettes, double ramming, could kill a non-Motti ISD.

The problem is that this is a very difficult maneuver to set up. You would have to be so precise, and of your corvettes have taken any damage you may well lose some to ramming (unless your opponent is running a single ISD, and isn't using it to attack, but don't expect to run into that build very often.)

Yeah, this is virtually impossible to pull off. And if you have 7 corvettes surrounding an ISD, just shoot the **** thing with your guns and watch it go down like a ton of bricks.

Ardaedhel,

If you are winning and "tabling" your opponents (not really sure what that implies?) without losing ships with Riekkan, then...why are you using Riekkan? Point being, you are good enough to win without his ability...why not use a different Admiral?

The end of it is, with the new MOV table, Riekkan fleets, by their very nature, should not do well in a competitive environment. When, Yes, you may when and "table" your opponent, but lose 50-75 percent of your fleet....you end with a 5 or 6 point win. THat wont put you into the top bracket.

Just saying...

I'm sorry,I may have been unclear: I'm not losing no ships, I'm losing no games. I'm an Armada internet badass, but not that badass.

As for MoV, as I showed above:

in all but one I've had no fewer than 4 corvettes left on the table. That's still a 224 MoV. This is obviously no guarantee that it would perform this way in a tournament, but it's a pretty good indicator, and I'm okay with reliable 9-1's.

It is possible, whether you think so or not, to maintain high MoV's despite losing ships, especially when every game ends in a tabling (destroying all of the adversary's ships). The breakpoint for 9-1 is 220, or barely over 50% of the fleet total. 8-2 is only 130, which means you can lose fully 2/3 of your fleet and still get a solid MoV as long as you table your opponent. Very rarely are we seeing 10-0's in any competitive tournament I've been in recently, and the fleets getting them have glaring weaknesses that usually result in losses elsewhere.

I get what you're saying, that building a fleet expecting to lose ships is counterintuitive to being successful competitively. I'm giving a counterexample to show why that's not necessarily the case. Losing ships, especially in a competitive environment, is not a problem unique to Rieekan. He's just the only one who has a plan for what happens when you do lose them.

Ardaedhel is really on to something with how Rieekan works, something that has become abundantly clear for me since the first few games of Wave 2.

Up until that point many players and I were building around the Commanders' abilities, trying to maximize its use to secure the points investment. But when some Wave 2 commanders were released (especially Rieekan and Ozzel) the fact that you can't build around them drove me to look at Commanders more as a fleet wide buff than a lynchpin of the strategy.

Can't agree more with Ardaedhel's "He's just the only one who has a plan for what happens when you do lose them.". Does that mean that you have to play to lose your ships to have Rieekan makes its points back ? Heck no. Besides "making its points back" is probably not the right metric when it's so easy to counter ships.

But, when you do need the Commander's ability, it's cool that it is here. And the same could be said for any Admiral. Does Motti makes its points back when your ISD only took 8 points of damage out of 14 total ? Nope, but is that really a problem ? Does Dodonna makes its points back when all the crits you can choose from are not really benefitting you in any way ? Nope, but is that really a problem either ?

Same goes with Riekaan in a ramming fleet : the opponent has enough CR90s to be able to choose which one he rammed or not, and if I had to destroy one then he would have no beef ramming it twice (thanks to Engine Techs).

The problem with Riekkan, while he may "win" you the match....the Riekkan player wouldn't do well in a tourney. While you win, you will not get a high MOV if all your ships (or many) are dead.

The concept of intentionally or by design allowing your fleet to blow up doesn't sit well with me...hehe... And, competitively, it will not do well.

Really depends on the list. Playing and building a Rieekan list is whole paradigm shift that's really hard to express, and you won't really get until you've both run it and played against it a few times. He's picking up popularity in our group, and there are a lot of cool things he allows you to do.

The thing about him is, you're not building your list to blow up. You are building to maximize the advantage you gain by allowing those few that do die to stay on the table 1 round longer, while mitigating the impact to your own MoV of losing them. My strategy for this is running a pile of CR90B's. Out of 6-7 games so far, I haven't lost one yet; every game has ended with me tabling my opponent; and in all but one I've had no fewer than 4 corvettes left on the table. That's still a 224 MoV. This is obviously no guarantee that it would perform this way in a tournament, but it's a pretty good indicator, and I'm okay with reliable 9-1's.

I will agree that building and running your list with the explicit intention of killing by ramming is a terrible tactic that doesn't work well at all, regardless of who your admiral is.

Now you have - lost I mean

Snow White and the seven dwarfs...8 CR90Bs with SW-/s and Rieekan commanding. Versus Screen, ISD-I, Demolisher, 2 Raider Is, and a mini-fireball.

When you revealed your fleet it seemed so... boring? Just eight small ships, all kitted out the same way. Many was I wrong - it turned out to be one of the most fun and exiting games ever. Fleet Ambush it was and those corvettes came screaming in, threatening to overwhelm me.

When I only got 1 (and other had 1 shield and 1 hull remaining) on the 1st turn, I thought I was done for. But over the next two turn I killed me 5 more, at the price of the raiders and Demolisher (I got good mileage from all of them). What turned things my way was Dengar (not so much), Rhymer and my 2 Firesprays. With Rhymer, the Firesprays were able to move around and finish of weakened CRs. Without this support I would surely have been massacred around turn 3, with maybe half your CRs lost?

Even with 4 ships down you'd have gotten a good MoV, so I think Rieekan is indeed viable.

I do, however, thing that maybe a few squadrons (and one less corvette) could be a good idea. It's hard to coordinate so many ships on target at the same time. And stuff like bombers really do make short work of unattended CRs. And maybe your JL could be an A? Give it the ability to finish of critically wounded enemy ships? I dunno.

But it was very fun to play against - and I suspect, very fun to play WITH.

Now you have - lost I mean

Snow White and the seven dwarfs...8 CR90Bs with SW-/s and Rieekan commanding. Versus Screen, ISD-I, Demolisher, 2 Raider Is, and a mini-fireball.

When you revealed your fleet it seemed so... boring? Just eight small ships, all kitted out the same way. Many was I wrong - it turned out to be one of the most fun and exiting games ever. Fleet Ambush it was and those corvettes came screaming in, threatening to overwhelm me.

When I only got 1 (and other had 1 shield and 1 hull remaining) on the 1st turn, I thought I was done for. But over the next two turn I killed me 5 more, at the price of the raiders and Demolisher (I got good mileage from all of them). What turned things my way was Dengar (not so much), Rhymer and my 2 Firesprays. With Rhymer, the Firesprays were able to move around and finish of weakened CRs. Without this support I would surely have been massacred around turn 3, with maybe half your CRs lost?

Even with 4 ships down you'd have gotten a good MoV, so I think Rieekan is indeed viable.

I do, however, thing that maybe a few squadrons (and one less corvette) could be a good idea. It's hard to coordinate so many ships on target at the same time. And stuff like bombers really do make short work of unattended CRs. And maybe your JL could be an A? Give it the ability to finish of critically wounded enemy ships? I dunno.

But it was very fun to play against - and I suspect, very fun to play WITH.

Yup! Shortly after writing that, too! Man, it was a great game though.

I don't know, I've got a couple of iterations I've been keeping in my back pocket, I'll have to get a couple of those on the table and see how they do!

That game sort of sounds like mine against the crazy CR90 list on my channel. . . **** SW90's are EVIL!