I'm running a casual game against a new found rebel player...and so far all I've seen on the raider is overload pulse and it does in the first round of shooting.

I want to know the common types of a single raider in a list...maybe paired with a ISD AND VSD 1.

Are the black dice on it good or is it a flat out starfighter killer?

I think you're going to find some people that say "nothing, it's good for nothing." But I think it's a reasonable ship, personally; it's a good way to load up some sort of glass cannon shot (either overload pulse or some ordnance, depending on the build) for anti-ship work, it can scoot and snag tokens for certain objectives, or it can handle anti-squadron work (tying down fighters or slinging multiple blue/blacks at 'em a round), and it's a good way to pad activations.

I think you're going to find some people that say "nothing, it's good for nothing."

With that title? Nah it'll be "absolutely nothing"

I use it as a multi-purpose flanker, objective ship, activation, and finisher. I love that it can turn 90 degrees at speed 2 without spending any Nav tokens/dials, and tend to speed it on on turns 4/5/6 to finish a straggler or someone that may have zipped by the fleet without quite dying.

Gladiators with Engine Techs are better at pretty much everything other than anti-squadron, but they also cost a lot more points, especially since I leave it un-upgraded (Vader keeps the damage consistent). Using a Raider instead of a Glad provides room for a pair of TIEs, which helps with deployment advantage.

Lastly, people tend to underestimate them, especially if you just toss one in as 'a token activation', and are surprised when it flies in and blows something up lategame.

So I would say that when I run a single raider, I tend to run it with Raider 1 + Instigator + Ordnance Experts, because it serves the role of being able to throw any squadrons near it into a blender, essentially. It's also great to stall for activations. I think what throws Imperials is that you have to play it like a rebel ship (go wide, come in from the side and double arc), so it's not going to fit in their battle line often the same way the Neb B can be a weird ship for Rebels to use because it does the opposite of most of their other stuff.

....the cheapest imperial activation...

Until the gozanti

I'm running a casual game against a new found rebel player...and so far all I've seen on the raider is overload pulse and it does in the first round of shooting.

I want to know the common types of a single raider in a list...maybe paired with a ISD AND VSD 1.

Are the black dice on it good or is it a flat out starfighter killer?

Raider-Is are my preferred Raiders, but I think one can make an argument for SW7 Ion Cannon Raider-IIs. The Overload Pulse Raider-IIs are very hit or miss - when you can get them to activate in just the right order and team up with later stronger ships (most spectacularly, the Avenger) they can be very effective; getting all those pieces to fit just right is seldom as reliable as one might hope (not even mentioning the problems with consistently critting outside of Screed). It's definitely a configuration that gets better and worse at a far more exaggerated rate depending on opponent skill (hopefully that makes sense). The SW7 Ion Cannon Raiders just get consistent annoying amounts of medium-range damage that are in packets that defense tokens aren't great against.

Anyways, back to the Raider-Is: my default configuration is a simple Raider-I + Ordnance Experts. You can consider outfitting them with Ordnance upgrades if you're counting on them to be your heavier hitters* but in general keeping them cheap is how I prefer to do it. Both titles are all right and in higher-level play Instigator can be a godsend to the right kind of fleets that are relying on one poor Raider aggroing a bomber cloud for a crucial turn. Raiders have a few things to recommend them:

1. Cheap activations
2. Very powerful flak/works well as squadron support
3. Great at waiting for enemy ships to blunder into them

Trying to use Raiders like Gladiators (charging them in) just results in vaporized Raiders. Hell, just charging in blindly against good arcs tends to result in vaporized Gladiators as well, but Gladiators can handle moderate harassment fairly well. Raiders really can't, especially at shorter ranges where their two Evades do little to nothing and their single Brace (no Redirect!) is easy to lock down with Accuracy. That's why they need to be used differently. I'd recommend giving the post-Adepticon tournament thread I started up a good read, as I talk about Raiders a bit there, how I use them, and link to a Boardgamegeek article I wrote on getting use out of small black dice ships. Raiders were absolutely essential in the fleet I ran and they're good ships but frequently misunderstood and underrated. They'll require some practice to get the hang of, though, so buckle up for the long haul to get the hang of them.

*In those circumstances I'd consider a cheap crit upgrade like Assault Proton Torpedoes if you're rolling with Screed or an expensive but mean upgrade like Expanded Launchers in all circumstances (even with Screed, you can reroll to fish for hit+crits and use Screed as your safety mechanism to ensure big damage rolls).

All depends on your fleet build, if you want to be player two, they work excellently as support ships for an ISD and squadron fleet.

If you want a high activation fleet, designed around being player one, and having more ship activations than your opponents, they can really dish the damage.

Sorry Snipafist, I don't buy into this they can't be used like Gladiators, that is exactly how I use mine, and they do the job just fine. You do not want anything shooting from any opposing ship strong arcs, once you have that thought indelibly printed into your mind, Raiders are fast enough to jump into PBR at the end of one round, then go first the next round, and then move off into long range of the opposing ships, where its evades do work.

Look at the dice, 2 blue + 2 black is better than 2 red + 2 black, the side arc is (with conc fire) 1 blue + 2 black, worse than 4 black, but not actually by that much working on average damage rolls you will be 1-2 points less damage, but you get that back from the front, so comparably you should see only slightly less damage from a Raider I than a non Demolisher Gladiator. Gladiators rarely if ever get a chance to take Conc fire due to needing Nav commands for Engine Techs, and a command value of 2, where as the Raider with a command value of 1 can quite easily take that Conc Fire the round it needs to. it costs 75pts for a basic OE/ET/ACM Gladiator, compared to 55pts for a OE/ACM Raider I.

I have run 2 Gladiators 3 Raiders fleet through several tournaments and placed first twice, 3rd(Made a move error in my 2nd game and paid for it) once with it, Raiders can and have done a monumental amount of damage in them games, but it requires you getting them in last and then out first, but that is the whole point of the fleet, jump in & jump out, nothing is supposed to be sitting around at close range.

Telling people they can't work as damage dealing platforms is doing the Raider I a real disservice.

The Raiders serve as a fast attack craft for the Imperial fleet and give you a versatile anti-fighter and anti-ship craft.

I really like my Raiders. I usually run two without any upgrades. Deploy them at speed 2.

Best bits -

- At speed 2 you can basically choose when and if they get into the fight. The game runs for six turns, if your raiders do nothing all game but give you activations until turn 5, when they clobber something in the melee, that's a good result.

- Command 1 - Awesome for going concentrate fire at the perfect moment

- Combine with Tarkin and they reach massive levels of awesomeness - any sort of token makes a BIG difference to what they can do.

I used to think Raiders were garbage too, until I realized that they can punch above their weight if given the chance, and they need to be treated like delicate flowers to defend as few times as possible in a turn. You don't run a raider like a normal ship, you MUST have activation advantage if you want to run Raiders as a significant portion of your list.

The typical load-out I see around here is where they carry APTs, and Screed is their patron saint. These kinds of lists focus only on APT delivery on a single target to take it apart, and typically have a Demolisher. So in that way you have the Raider-I... a cheap torpedo delivery platform that flies at speed 4 (possible to cross a range ruler in one move), and a reliable way to trigger critical hits.

This is pretty much its only function that I can see. You could kit them out with Ordnance experts to help the 2-black AA fire re-roll against targets in close range, but unless you have fighters to also lock down your prey they'll turn around and blow up the Raider attempting this trick.

Another nice thing about a raider is with a conc fire command and dual arc it is a fair chance of one shotting a TLRC corvette and mauling something bigger. So you can set them up in conjunction with your bigger ships so that they have a good shot at the same time, which puts a lot of pressure on the other players activation choices.

Babysitting Demolisher.

Or giving new players a headache when they try and net-list the Vassal champ.

Raider 1 is a great escort to the isd, keeping squads of the big ship. But it's true use is as a single use roadblock/shotgun. Load expanded launchers and keep it behind the isd. Run both towards the nose of the conga line, and at the last moment accelerate the raider to land right in front of the rebel lead ship. This causes the rebel conga to jam up bad, usually dropping at least on ship to prone, and if the raider lives till its next activation it can unleash a devastating 5 black and 2 blue dice (concentrate fire) and make its escape. Meanwhile the isd is on track to obliterate what's left of the faltering conga. I've run this strategy multiple times

I've seen a fair few ISD/VSD/Raider lists, and generally I'm unimpressed with a single Raider instead reworking the list for a pair of Raiders, but even just one can do plenty of work in such a line of battle. They're vicious to squadrons, especially with either of the titles, though with only one I'd only run Impetuous and then only if that Raider's entire job is anti-fighter screening. They make great flankers, and do excellent work as pickets, putting ships and activations in awkward positions for your opponents. They hit just hard enough to actually have a mean bite, while seeming harmless enough at first glance many players who haven't seen one before will ignore it. As mentioned above, be sure to play them cautiously given their less than optimal defense token loadout, but don't be afraid to use them to leap into gaps and cause chaos way above their size and point classes. They, and the Gladiator, but these more so than the Gladiators, in my opinion need more practice than any other Imperial warship, and a more delicate hand at the helm, but can combine their agility, Command 1, and potentially Ion Cannons or Ordnance upgrades to be a little package of evil to rival a TRCR90. My two cents.

Not true. It would be a very good title in those agreed upon draws I have been hearing about for 5-0 move on. I don't play tournaments, but that was a fun thread.

I think you're going to find some people that say "nothing, it's good for nothing."

With that title? Nah it'll be "absolutely nothing"

I'm trying to marry a Raider to an NK-7 Ion Cannon, and then let Admiral Screed start deleting defense tokens. A pair of those, backed up with an ISD packing SW-7 seems a likely team.

Haven't gotten to try it yet, but I'm hoping to field it Saturday.

I'm trying to marry a Raider to an NK-7 Ion Cannon, and then let Admiral Screed start deleting defense tokens. A pair of those, backed up with an ISD packing SW-7 seems a likely team.

Haven't gotten to try it yet, but I'm hoping to field it Saturday.

Our local Screed addict has tried this and it never seemed to do as well on the table as it seemed like it should do in his head.

For what it's worth, a Raider-II with an NK-7 Ion Cannon comes in at a hefty 58 points minimum before any other upgrades, and it exists primarily to zap a single opponent-chosen defense token per turn under ideal conditions. I feel like you're probably better off putting the NK-7 on a platform that also hosts an Intel Officer (an ISD of either description, more likely an ISD-II, or even a VSD-II), so you can aggressively chew into opponent defense tokens.

If I'm running a Raider-II to assist my heavier hitters, I usually go with Overload Pulse, although as I said before I'm less a fan of this plan the more you are relying on it to always work for you. If I want them to just kind of harass, SW7s are a pretty reliable upgrade as well. Normally I default to a Raider-I, though.

Being the hard counter to wave 3

I'm trying to marry a Raider to an NK-7 Ion Cannon, and then let Admiral Screed start deleting defense tokens. A pair of those, backed up with an ISD packing SW-7 seems a likely team.

Haven't gotten to try it yet, but I'm hoping to field it Saturday.

Our local Screed addict has tried this and it never seemed to do as well on the table as it seemed like it should do in his head.

For what it's worth, a Raider-II with an NK-7 Ion Cannon comes in at a hefty 58 points minimum before any other upgrades, and it exists primarily to zap a single opponent-chosen defense token per turn under ideal conditions. I feel like you're probably better off putting the NK-7 on a platform that also hosts an Intel Officer (an ISD of either description, more likely an ISD-II, or even a VSD-II), so you can aggressively chew into opponent defense tokens.

If I'm running a Raider-II to assist my heavier hitters, I usually go with Overload Pulse, although as I said before I'm less a fan of this plan the more you are relying on it to always work for you. If I want them to just kind of harass, SW7s are a pretty reliable upgrade as well. Normally I default to a Raider-I, though.

Good advice Snipa. Especially the NK7/Intel officer combo.

I keep my Raiders up to date on the latest Intel. I intend to use 2 Raiders with Intel Officer and NK-7, plus an ISD with SW-7s. And a smattering of fighters. As you say, chew up the Defense Tokens, then ISD with SW-7 can use those Accuracys for damage.

I tried using VSD in the place of the raiders, but they are still more expensive, and too slow.

Hoping to clean up on Saturday.

The problem with Intel Officers on Raider-IIs is the Raider-IIs won't be doing enough damage to tempt opponents into actually spending tokens. At best they may allow an extra damage to get through when opponents don't use the targeted Brace. Not great. On a VSD-II or an ISD, the damage amounts are high enough to get those targeted tokens spent.

Also I would like to politely request you don't use this as a list-building thread. There's a sub-forum for that.

Sure, sure. Sorry, I wasn't really looking for advice, just showing what I'm using. Let me adjust that to be less list-buildey.