Seems Imperials can get 6 ships (1 demo+5 raiders) for around 371pts

But an even better MC30 Torpedo, would be Ordnance Experts, ACM, and H9 Turbolasers, guaranteed 2 Accuracy on the double arc, no brace, so long as you can get an average roll, and a black crit (decent chance on 3 black dice with a re-roll) equals one very dead Demolisher. Comes in at 82pts, seems competitive to me, that MC30 Torp build will also annihilate Raiders.

Rieekan CR90B's with SW7's counter Demo. They will die, but will do improportionate damage to Demo on the way out.

Welcome to the brotherhood, SW90B brother!!

It does, if you out-bid Demo. Otherwise, any competent pilot will just keep Demo from getting focused and bounce around stomping your corvettes one at a time. Not saying you can't beat it without outbidding it, but it's nontrivial.

Agreed.

But you've seen my fleet. I've got my own big weapon that Demo has to take note of, and the only way to get to it (for the Demo at least) is to go through the corvettes. (Or to kill it with the other ships in his fleet as deployment is to block Demo only).

This is the thing that I think a lot of the suggestions here miss (not pointing yours out specifically, Aman, just generalizing here): if your solution is a direct "kill Demo" approach, but it doesn't work fast, it doesn't address the issue. Demolisher is going to die (in most cases)--it's just going to take something bigger or more important with it before it goes.

No problems I enjoy the process and am learning some good things.

There is always a bit of "theory crafting" going on, and I understand that my opponent can lock me down and upset my actions.

Now I just plonked down some models and interestingly if I deploy too close opposite of Demolisher then he can bounce past the fighter screen as they need a turn to get to their jump off point. So I want to set up maybe over a range ruler to the left or right of Demolisher as to let the Squadrons get some distance from my ship. I think speed 2 gives me the best flexibility for my first move and those that will follow.

IF I can manage that and keep my intel in reserve then next turn they can get into Demolisher as it gets range on my ship.

Now the trick is here I speed up and turn into Demolisher, which should then make its follow up turn difficult as that would move me towards the squadrons, and hopefully avoid seeing Demolisher out of range.

Now you may be right, there may be a metric truck load of dominoes that all have to fall exactly right.

I think dropping the third MC30 and taking 2 MC30's and 2 Corvettes and having a 13 point bid with Lando in there may also just help a little.

Would it be possible to run a screen of two or three smaller ships in such a way that, if the demolisher wanted to avoid them to strike at your flagship, it would have to activate last and move into your screen, and then activate first to move through the screen unscathed in order to move into attack range of your flagship? Wouldn't this remove the 'triple' element of the dreaded triple tap, since you've forced the Demolisher to do it's double activation in order to avoid harm? Or am I taking crazy pills? I mean, a large part of the problem seems to be the whole 'leading with the chin' element of leaving the Demolisher a free run at your flagship? Now granted of course it's not that easy, your opponent is obviously going to try his hardest to prevent your from setting up that kind of screen effectively, but wouldn't that work?

Yes in theory.

I have had a Rebel player set up running parallel to the table edge, and his screen of fighters at the edge of his max activation range between my side and his ships, which started at speed 1, it effectively meant I had to either jump into range of his Squadrons, and then sit there till the following round, or activate it again and move it past his squadrons, and into range of his ships, and only fire once, before he activated anything.

The other option I had was coming in at a really oblique angle, either behind or in front, which presents it's own set of issues to surmount. (I did not have Instigator, so I couldn't try pinning some of his squadrons.)

But having a row of small cheap ships parallel to your Admiral ship would prevent that movement, you would have to go around, through or kill one of them.

As a peace offering, I have posted a Rebel fleet build in the relevant section, that I feel would deal very well with the 5 ship Imperial build.

Would it be possible to run a screen of two or three smaller ships in such a way that, if the demolisher wanted to avoid them to strike at your flagship, it would have to activate last and move into your screen, and then activate first to move through the screen unscathed in order to move into attack range of your flagship? Wouldn't this remove the 'triple' element of the dreaded triple tap, since you've forced the Demolisher to do it's double activation in order to avoid harm? Or am I taking crazy pills? I mean, a large part of the problem seems to be the whole 'leading with the chin' element of leaving the Demolisher a free run at your flagship? Now granted of course it's not that easy, your opponent is obviously going to try his hardest to prevent your from setting up that kind of screen effectively, but wouldn't that work?

This is partly what I argue above when flotillas come out. The idea being that the flotillas position in a way that demo can't finish its go last and finish its movement in black die range due to overlap with about 3 flotillas screening the valuable target. The flotillas would use scatter to survive a round of demo fire and the bigger target would hit demo.

Not easy but doable with flotillas.

If you are screening with small ships then:

Your small ships must not be one shottable by their long range dice chuckers (ISD mainly)

Your flagship must be able to one shot Demo. (Not that tricky tbh)

I will 100% agree that there are builds that will give demo a headache.... but those must be built to entirely fight a demo list and fail or be limited against the bulk of other fleets. THAT is my definition of a problem...

One card, combo, whatever you wanna call it, should not upset the balance to where you MUST build a fleet to fight a specific ship. That is kooky and unbalanced.

I am not picking a fight or trying to upset people. Just pointing out, that after MUCH playtesting and actual playing against real live human opponents of varying skill and builds, Demo, high activation just rolls over lists with impunity. Its not rocket science to play and cannot effectively be stopped from happening.

Has anyone else noticed how the tempo of this thread has become a kind of herky-jerky rapid transition between extreme and unhelpful hyperbole, actual discussion/problem-solving, and small flame wars? I can never quite tell what I'm getting whenever I check in on how it's doing. It may be the least predictable thread in the Armada forum right now.

Which leads to a request that we try to focus more on the productive element and less on the hyperbole and flame wars.

Just pointing out, that after MUCH playtesting and actual playing against real live human opponents of varying skill and builds, Demo, high activation just rolls over lists with impunity. Its not rocket science to play and cannot effectively be stopped from happening.

My analysis is that the presence of this fleet in the meta makes a big under bid an absolute necessity. That underbid needs to be a lot more than the 10 points of the Demolisher upgrade cost. Something that requires a lot more points to counter than the upgrade cost itself is kind of the definition of unbalanced to me.

Mike is not some guy complaining about being beat by Demolisher, he's a guy that has used this fleet to win 5 Store Campionships in at least three states and is getting ready to to repeat the cycle with Regionals. Folks can continue to theory-hammer about the Demolisher all they want, but unless they accept a huge under bid, Mike and others using this fleet build will just continue to roll the opposition.

Demo lists overloads on black dice.

Ackbar lists overload on red dice.

How about we mix it up a bit?

I'll have to see how my games go. It may be that the Demolisher is a winner. Salt Lake City has a regional this year. I'll wait and see what comes from that and from Worlds before I agree or disagree that the Demolisher is unstoppable.

Just pointing out, that after MUCH playtesting and actual playing against real live human opponents of varying skill and builds, Demo, high activation just rolls over lists with impunity. Its not rocket science to play and cannot effectively be stopped from happening.

I agree. It's a 10 point upgrade that causes potential opponents to spend (or give away in a low bid) a hugely disproportionate amount of points in order to have even a small chance of surviving. I had the privilege of being on the receiving end Mike's Clonetrooper fleet at a recent event and have thought hard about the "could" have and "should" haves that I might have taken to mitigate the crushing defeat his fleet dealt me.

My analysis is that the presence of this fleet in the meta makes a big under bid an absolute necessity. That underbid needs to be a lot more than the 10 points of the Demolisher upgrade cost. Something that requires a lot more points to counter than the upgrade cost itself is kind of the definition of unbalanced to me.

Mike is not some guy complaining about being beat by Demolisher, he's a guy that has used this fleet to win 5 Store Campionships in at least three states and is getting ready to to repeat the cycle with Regionals. Folks can continue to theory-hammer about the Demolisher all they want, but unless they accept a huge under bid, Mike and others using this fleet build will just continue to roll the opposition.

Well a correctly set up opposing player can prevent this with a 21 point bid. There - Demolisher triple tap got countered for fewer points than the Imperial player spent.

The tricky part is knowing how much of a buffer you need to get first.

I'll have to see how my games go. It may be that the Demolisher is a winner. Salt Lake City has a regional this year. I'll wait and see what comes from that and from Worlds before I agree or disagree that the Demolisher is unstoppable.

Well we will have Wave 3 before worlds so we may see a new squadron meta come in with Bombing command, I can see 12 Y-wings, HWK + bombing command being a thing.

Folks can continue to theory-hammer about the Demolisher all they want, but unless they accept a huge under bid, Mike and others using this fleet build will just continue to roll the opposition.

This is one of the reasons that I think the whole 'bidding for first turn' idea is a bit wonky. It can be such a huge advantage in certain situations, that it shouldn't be dependent on a one-off secret bid. It should be something concrete, like whoever has the least activations can pass until both sides have the same number of activations, or whoever has the least activations automatically has the choice of first or second player, etc.

If you are screening with small ships then:

Your small ships must not be one shottable by their long range dice chuckers (ISD mainly)

Your flagship must be able to one shot Demo. (Not that tricky tbh)

Well, the thing that makes Demolisher scary is the activation count. If they're also bringing ISDs, then it's almost certain that Demolisher won't be able to do the last-then-first activation that makes it so scary.

Well to be fair what we're talking about isn't just a 10 point Demolisher upgrade. For this to work, Demolisher MUST go first. So you need to include the cost of Demolisher's bid as well. So assume a 20 point bid. 30 points total.

Well a correctly set up opposing player can prevent this with a 21 point bid. There - Demolisher triple tap got countered for fewer points than the Imperial player spent.

The tricky part is knowing how much of a buffer you need to get first.

And sure, if I know he's bidding 20, I can outbid him. The problem is, this fleet continues to work without a really dramatic decrease in effectiveness over about a 50-point range. I built a version that's all the way down to 348 (4x OE Raider-1's w/Instigator, Screed, pimped out Demo, and APT on everything clocks in at 348 after a pair of TIEs). "Just omit 1/8 of your fleet" is not a serious answer to a 10-point threat.

Folks can continue to theory-hammer about the Demolisher all they want, but unless they accept a huge under bid, Mike and others using this fleet build will just continue to roll the opposition.

This is one of the reasons that I think the whole 'bidding for first turn' idea is a bit wonky. It can be such a huge advantage in certain situations, that it shouldn't be dependent on a one-off secret bid. It should be something concrete, like whoever has the least activations can pass until both sides have the same number of activations, or whoever has the least activations automatically has the choice of first or second player, etc.

On its face, I really like the idea of low activation count getting to choose initiative. Tiebreaker can go to points. I'm a little concerned it might kill swarm fleets, would want it playtested. But an excellent thought either way, IMO.

The ‘problem’ with the bid for initiative system is that it’s an ‘all-pay, blind bid’. If you bid 380 and I bid 379, I didn’t pay 21 points to go first, I really only paid 1.

A few potential solutions (if deemed necessary):

1) If you do not have the lower bid, you can add your bid to your final score (so in the above case, you’d add 20 to your score)

2) Players can bring a ‘sidebar’ of upgrades/squadrons and if they don’t have the lower bid, they can add those sidebar items to bring their list up to 400 (again, in the above case, you’d add 20 points worth of your sidebar to your fleet for that match).

Either of those would eliminate some of the ‘risk’ of blind bidding and make it less of an overly rewarded guessing game.

BUT I think if the bid mechanics work for almost every other match up (ie, going first is worth what is paid for it) then I would have to agree that the card that is ‘breaking’ that mechanic is the culprit. I honestly don’t have a horse in the ‘Demo is OP/No it’s not!’ debate. But from a purely mechanics point of view, I think a serious look has to be taken for anything that completely breaks down the structure of the game into a few basic component….activations and initiative.

Just my $.02

Folks can continue to theory-hammer about the Demolisher all they want, but unless they accept a huge under bid, Mike and others using this fleet build will just continue to roll the opposition.

This is one of the reasons that I think the whole 'bidding for first turn' idea is a bit wonky. It can be such a huge advantage in certain situations, that it shouldn't be dependent on a one-off secret bid. It should be something concrete, like whoever has the least activations can pass until both sides have the same number of activations, or whoever has the least activations automatically has the choice of first or second player, etc.

On its face, I really like the idea of low activation count getting to choose initiative. Tiebreaker can go to points. I'm a little concerned it might kill swarm fleets, would want it playtested. But an excellent thought either way, IMO.

At least SOMEBODY thought my idea was at least worth some merit.

The problem with changing how initiative is determined is it creates entirely new incentives for certain kinds of fleets. Deciding it based on number of ships (lowest chooses) might create some other unforseen circumstances such as giving preferential treatment to fleets focusing on larger ships to the exclusion of smaller ships (which already had been a problem in my local meta after wave 2 hit, although it seems to be restabilizing). I'm not necessarily opposed to discussion on the subject, but it seems unlikely FFG would change such a fundamental aspect of the pre-game.

If we were redoing Armada from the ground up (with a time machine!), I think an alternating first player system (I'm first, then you're first, etc.) might help with some of these problems but you'd need an entirely different way of doing objectives. I don't think that kind of change given the game state right now would work whatsoever, though.

The problem with changing how initiative is determined is it creates entirely new incentives for certain kinds of fleets. Deciding it based on number of ships (lowest chooses) might create some other unforseen circumstances such as giving preferential treatment to fleets focusing on larger ships to the exclusion of smaller ships (which already had been a problem in my local meta after wave 2 hit, although it seems to be restabilizing). I'm not necessarily opposed to discussion on the subject, but it seems unlikely FFG would change such a fundamental aspect of the pre-game.

If we were redoing Armada from the ground up (with a time machine!), I think an alternating first player system (I'm first, then you're first, etc.) might help with some of these problems but you'd need an entirely different way of doing objectives. I don't think that kind of change given the game state right now would work whatsoever, though.

I guess it's possible to move to core set style initiative flipping, battles to the death for the tourny scene with objectives being optional.

Don't think that's going to happen any time soon though

I do think it makes for a good change of pace for a casual game though.

If you are screening with small ships then:

Your small ships must not be one shottable by their long range dice chuckers (ISD mainly)

Your flagship must be able to one shot Demo. (Not that tricky tbh)

Well, the thing that makes Demolisher scary is the activation count. If they're also bringing ISDs, then it's almost certain that Demolisher won't be able to do the last-then-first activation that makes it so scary.

Glad I - Intell Officer, Engine Techs, APT's, Demolisher

Raider I - Instigator

Raider I - Vader

Raider I

ISD I - Avenger

2xTie Fighter

389pts.

There are many ways of running a 5 ship demo list.

The problem with changing how initiative is determined is it creates entirely new incentives for certain kinds of fleets. Deciding it based on number of ships (lowest chooses) might create some other unforseen circumstances such as giving preferential treatment to fleets focusing on larger ships to the exclusion of smaller ships (which already had been a problem in my local meta after wave 2 hit, although it seems to be restabilizing). I'm not necessarily opposed to discussion on the subject, but it seems unlikely FFG would change such a fundamental aspect of the pre-game.

If we were redoing Armada from the ground up (with a time machine!), I think an alternating first player system (I'm first, then you're first, etc.) might help with some of these problems but you'd need an entirely different way of doing objectives. I don't think that kind of change given the game state right now would work whatsoever, though.

Wouldn't this actually make the triple tap worse? If you are second player with Demo and can definitely ensure last activation and then go first the next turn?

I want to once again return to this point:

For all the hand-wringing on this topic, it's all Demo. We don't have "Oh my god I got double tapped by that ISD1!" threads popping up everywhere. I don't think going first is the broken mechanic. I don't think Demo is the broken mechanic. I think the problem is Demo in conjunction with going first after it also went last.

This does not require a fix that targets the entire game sequence, it just requires something that breaks that precise combination of things generating excess synergy, so to speak. And, knowing FFG, if they want to deal with it, it will come in the form of a very simple upgrade card in Wave 3/4 if this proves to be a problem.