I've been trying to prove to local friendly haters that the B-wing is viable and, while it's seemingly an uphill battle, I realized the last couple times I played that my fleet has one glaring weakness.

I can't really do much if my opponent just deploys on the other side of the board and runs away for 6 rounds. I imagine this must be a problem in a lot of lists. Two nights in a row, I've had opponents pick objectives like Precision Strike or Superior Positions, then deploy out of the way and never come in for a fight. I'm obviously slow rolling toward them and I might sink a kill or so in the last couple rounds but ultimately the game ends uneventful and I take a 6-4 or 7-3 with a low MOV.

I can't imagine this mentality. Why even come to the table if you don't want to play. Anybody else experiencing this?

While I haven't seen it, I certainly hear people talk about being willing to do it if a tournament situation 'warranted' that sort or approach to maintain good standing.

As you said, it's really just a mentality/attitude issue that varies from person to person, so you can't really anticipate it unfortunately, just try to discourage it locally and hope that has some sort of effect.

Have you considered "Independence"?

I guess this might be the value of Independence, though I still think its a ton of points for what it does. But it might help keep runners in range of at least your bombers.

Edit: BiggsIRL beat me to it

To be clear, this isn't a weakness of the B-wing. It you have an opponent deploy his MC80 on the opposite side of the board going the opposite direction, there's just nothing you can do. Y-wings wouldn't help, Scurggs wouldn't help. A-wings would get a couple shots off and then be stuck around with no activators doing not much and getting shot by AA.

And I'm not complaining about people who use this as a viable tactic, like those deploying Corvette fleets whose entire goal is to take long range pot shots at you. More power to those guys. I'm talking Large ship on Large ship engagements where the opponent deploys on the other side of the board with the intention of staying out of engagement. Like... You just deployed 140 points of nothing. Why?

tl;dr: Come at me bro.

Edit: This is just another example on Mon Mothma being the absolute best commander the Rebels have. Try running away from a speed 4 Mothma swarm.

Some opponents just do it because they see no other positive outcomes.

Minefields is a big one where this happens too

Well if you suspect that your opponent might be considering this...would you choose to go second, and out-deploy him to prevent this?

Lots of good points

Edit: This is just another example on Mon Mothma being the absolute best commander the Rebels have. Try running away from a speed 4 Mothma swarm.

I was totally with you until this.

Also, if your opponent is picking your Superior Positions, how can he possibly be escaping you? He deploys first, then you... I think I'm not tracking on something here.

Good point. In both situations I believe they picked Precision Strike. I threw out Superior positions because I was thinking they were picking everything except Contested Outpost, which is the one mission I don't care if they ran away. ha.

Also, Mothma is the most useful commander in my experience. Her ability is always present and she completely shuts down the Imperial wonderboy Screed, especially when paired with Admo and Foresight.

Well if you suspect that your opponent might be considering this...would you choose to go second, and out-deploy him to prevent this?

These are just friendly games. I honestly don't suspect anybody would do this in a tournament. But I have been going second just for practice.

Good point. In both situations I believe they picked Precision Strike. I threw out Superior positions because I was thinking they were picking everything except Contested Outpost, which is the one mission I don't care if they picked.

Also, Mothma is the most useful commander in my experience. Her ability is always present and she completely shuts down the Imperial wonderboy Screed, especially when paired with Admo and Foresight.

Yeah, so long as you're not running MC80s... Or even, arguably, Assault Frigates - as that one Evade doesn't last long compared to the price of the Ship...

Mothma is good if your fleet is supported by her.

There are Fleets where she just does not make enough of a difference...

Everybody and everything is good only if you build a fleet to support it. The Rebels have 1 ship without an evade token. And I'd argue Mon Mothma would still be a **** good commander if you brought an MC80 and like 3 corvettes. It's not advisable but she'd still shine in that fleet.

She is, hands down, the most reliable commander the Rebels have, and you get that commander for the low low price of not bringing a fleet full of MC80s, which is the best bargain I've ever struck, especially given the dilemma that is the subject of this thread.

That said, I run Bel with my B-wings.

Edit: I didn't insert enough italics, how will you know where the points are in my post.

Edit: I didn't insert enough italics, how will you know where the points are in my post.

Your Snark-Fu is weak... Perhaps with more practice, you shall achieve the level of Snarkiness without Editing

I've never been witty enough for the unedited snark. I'm the guy coming up with much better comebacks in the shower hours later.

To be clear, I'm not saying I think other Rebel commanders are bad. I'm saying Mothma (and yes, specifically Mothma swarms, though I've toyed with other builds) presents the best solution to the most problems in the current meta. This will no doubt change in future waves.

Which, honestly, is a completely legitimate opinion to have, after all

I've just seen too many people try the Mothma Swarm and end up saying "Yeah, the extra Dice evade was nice... But it didn't help when he was throwing 8 Dice at Two of my Ships because of his Gunnery Teams, and then rerolled what he wanted..."

Our one major Swarm player actually switched out to Ackbar to take out our Store Championships...

To be fair, if you're hanging out in front of an ISDs front arc no commander is going to save you.

That was just it.

The Justification of it was, the Multiple ISDs (and Broadsides of MC80s) were ever-present, and the one evade wasn't making the difference anyway, so he switched out to Ackbar, did his damndest to run at just Red Range, and throw more dice (relatively speaking) back...

Because Mothma was only kicking in when he got to the Blue Death Range of either large ship, which he was seeing more and more...

But, hey, that's second hand from an interview anyway - I never had the buying power to run a Mothma Swarm anyway

To be fair, if you're hanging out in front of an ISDs front arc no commander is going to save you.

One will...

Where are you deploying? When using low speed ships / squadrons (VSD, MC80, B-Wing,YZ-666), even moderate speed 3 fighters, or deploying with low starting speed (without Ouzel) if can be detrimental to set up in the corners. At low speeds you don't really get to make many adjustments and if you deploy at a distance from your opponent (or she far from you) you may never catch up. I personally like to offer Contested Outpost when I play a slow, low maneuverability fleet. It entices your opponent to come to you or risk losing up to 120 free gimme points.

Anyhow I can't really advocate for B-Wings outside of a scenario where you lure your opponent to you.

My missions are Precision Strike, Contested Outpost, and Superior Positions. Most opponents pick Contested Outpost which, as you said, brings them right into my B-wings and my guns. To be honest, I'm mostly just complaining to have something to complain about. I don't really expect this to be a huge issue with people spending 6 turns running away. It just happened to occur twice and was annoying and disheartening to see, especially in a friendly match.

On the B, I think people underestimate it. Even without contested Outpost, getting shots on Turn 2 isn't that rare for me. You just have to be super careful about their deployment and your ships deployments around them. Overlapping a B-wing is not an option. In fighter on fighter engagements, the B has has much more application than the Scurrg. Its the best of both worlds. If my opponent brings their own 120+ point squadron list, we'll go toe to toe while our ships duke it out, and hopefully Ill come out ahead and get some bomb shots the last round or so. If my enemy doesn't bring a lot of squadrons, I hit them even harder.

My biggest fear is a Mothma swarm, which I had Caldias run against me. It was extremely painful, but I was able to salvage a 5-5. I consider Caldias to be an expert Mothma swarmer and I consider his list to be my nightmare scenario.

This topic is one that I try to be aware of when playing competitvly and in fleet building. In a casual game, I'll probably still play agressive and get into a fight, even one in which I'm at a disadvantage, just to see how it plays out, which then helps me tune my play in the future.

However, the game totally changes when you get into a competitive atmosphere. In a case like that, if I'm at a severe enough disadvantage in a fight, I'm not just going to throw myself to the wolves. I really like the option to disengage in Armada, since any real commander needs to know when to fight, and when to run. A 5-5 is better than a 0-10. However, realistically, a 5-5 may not be enough to win the whole competition. This means I'm still going to look for opportunities to snag some points, hopefully enough for a 7-3, 8-2.

Now coming at this from the other side. What if my opponent feels like they are at a disadvantage and try to play for a draw? This is something I plan for in both fleet building (objective choice largely), and deployment. If I'm first player, I usually have the ability to push aggressively, especially if I have a few higher manuverablility ships. Depending on their objective, they might need to be in a predictable spot, which makes my job easier. If they try to run, usually it is at the expense of better positioning. However, this also means I need a fexible deployment plan; one that can respond and engage either an aggressive opponent, or a more defensive one.

If I'm second player, I try to chose objectives that will majorly benefit me as second player, by either giving me points, or predictability on were at least one of my opponent's ships will be. Contested Outpost. Fire Lanes, Intel Sweep, Superior Positions, and Dangerous Territory are examples of these. The Reds can be harder, but Most Wanted can allow you to choose a target to hunt if your opponent is trying to play keep away.

Anyway, this thread is about B-wings, as well as opponents who play for a draw. Independence really does help them, but more than this, deployment is key. If you suspect your opponent will flee, don't deploy in the corner, this only allows them an even farther distance to deploy in the other corner (though you could set a trap by deploying one ship in the corner, and the rest near your opponent's deployment, but this depends on how effective your fleet is split apart, since that is usually undesirable). B-wings can have a hard time getting shots off on fast moving ships, but with the right deployment and spread to limit their options, you can corral even fleeing CR90s.

Simple solution. Pick advanced gunnery and deny your opponent the red objectives?

Superior positions and contested outpost both force the battle.

If your opponents play like that, you may need to rethink your list. Often this is a reaction to powerlists against which the opponent has no joy playing. If that is not the case, simply don't play against them any more.

We've run into this sort of skewed deployment in some of our recent games. Typically it involves multiple CR-90As with TRCs trying to plot a long approach so they can get around an ISD front arc.

If the issue is getting B's into combat in this sort of skewed set-up, I love Independence (Truthiness is to blame ). Running multiple B's with an MC-80 and Independence does get expensive, though, especially if you add the other supporting upgrades like Boosted Comms, Adar, and Yavaris... extremely potent, but it is expensive.

As a more general issue of getting all units into combat with a skewed deployment, I've found that deployment and maneuvering towards the middle of the board can help with this. If your initial deployment is towards the center of the board instead of a far corner, you're looking at a maximum of 1.5-2' of space between initial engagements at the beginning of deployment, just based on the size of the deployment zone. Your opponent can still skew around you, but it usually requires a hard conga line to the opposite end of his deployment zone (in which case you'll be tipped off during deployment in most cases), or a quick bull-rush directly across the width of the board (in which case you should also be tipped off pretty early in Round 1). It's still possible to get flanked in either position, but it's hard to do it without getting at least some ship shots in (for Rebels at least, since they're so many reds--can be harder with certain Imp ships). If you have ships with flexible maneuverability, you should be able to get in position for a flank attempt on your deployment zone side (CR-90s, Raiders, and Nebs are great at this, even at high speeds if you have a Nav dial, Glads (especially with Engine Techs) and AFIIs can pull off that hard-turn at lower speeds, and even ISDs and MC-80s can do a fairly hard turn at speed 2 if you have that Nav dial). Speed 2 B-wings should also be able to make it as long as there's no wasted motion. Independence can help to get a squadron attack in, especially if you're trying to get across the width of the board in just a couple of rounds. It's even easier with Rhymer, of course.

The problem is more difficult if you also deploy at an extreme end of the length of the board, although even then, you have options. If you're first player and your opponent sets down at the extreme other end of his deployment zone, you can counter on his side of the board (or at least closer to his starting deployment) with your remaining ships (a good reason to have 3 or more ships), unless that corner of the board is just terribly set up with obstacles. If you're deploying second, there's not really a reason to have your ships and your opponent's ships set-up at extreme ends of the board, unless you want them to be set-up that way.

Even in that sort of extreme set-up, that leaves about 3' of space between engagements when deployment is said and done. It's possible the enemy could retreat towards the far short end of the board to open up even more distance, although there's only about a foot to go before he flies off (which is a win for you, of course), so at some point they'll have to start turning around. At that point, they can still get around your fleet if you're approaching, but they only have the width of the board to do it. Again, if your rebel ships have red dice, they may still be able to flank, but you can get ship shots in as they pass if your fleet sticks to the middle of the board, and if they make for an extreme edge, you should have at least a round to skew your fleet into their path. Independence again helps the B's get to the right side of the board for a nasty hammer as they pass, but even without the title, the fact that you're moving them along the width of the board (instead of its length) helps. On the Imp side, Rhymer becomes even deadlier if you're playing the width of the board instead of its length.

Finally, objective choice can play a role in this, as well. You can basically make it impossible for your opponent to counter-deploy as second player with Superior Positions (they can still split deploy, of course, but you should be able to set-up an attack on at least part of their fleet, unless all of your ships are incredibly slow with short range). Contested Outpost is probably the best objective for fleets that run away, but Intel Sweep can also be good (albeit with a smaller overall payoff). Reds don't offer a lot of help here, although if your opponent is second and has one of the more popular choices like Most Wanted, running away from you makes the objective totally wasted, while also sacrificing a lot of potential points (and dice!) in the process. I generally stay away from Opening Salvo nowadays, but if your ship count is high enough to get the better of the objective against enemy fleets, the "half-points for ships with 1 damage card" scoring condition can be a big deal if your engagements mostly end with the enemy shuffling off without ever really giving battle.

All that said, depending on the composition of your and your opponent's fleet, any or all of these strategies might not work. If the problem is a fleet of Speed 4 Raiders evading your B-wings and taking their chances at long range against red dice, for example, even Independence is going to have a hard time making hay against that list and combat strategy.