So I thought I would share some observations from the tourney I attended this weekend.

I tried a few new things and for once wasn't punished for experimentation (as I write this I just realized that all 3 times I experimented at a tournament with my list without testing it first I have come in 6th and when I played a tested list I win or am in top 3...).

The 4 things I did with my list and the lessons I learned

1. NEVER EVER take demolisher without reroll or dice modification mechanic of some sort. Learned this last tourney the hard way and this one saw my demo with ordnance experts to good effect, also going second and having precision strike in your objectives gives your ships a CF token that can mean the difference between an APT proc and NOT.

2. Tie advanced is over-rated. I ditched the tie advanced from my rhymerball and did not miss it much. With experience, cap ship support, good use of intel and an understanding of threat, I did not miss it at all and rhymer, dengar, 4 firesprays worked very well. That being said, newer players should keep it until you figure out how to apply bomber wings clinically.

3. Admiral Montferrat on demolisher. Why did I not try this before? Montferrat saved my demolisher some serious pain (and it's skin). Sure, it looks insignificant for 5 points to be treated as obstructed, but in an Ozzel list the demo will always be striking while at speed 3 and will always be a priority target. Consider against swarm lists with many sets of few dice its suddenly gold and add in the use of evade at long range and all of a sudden a great number of potential attacks are neutered.

4. Needa and TRC on ISD. I had used Needa on my carrier ISD in the past since I usually like to stand off with it if possible and the evade saved me a good bit of damage at long and medium range, but after observing that inevitably in the late game there is some medium/close range engagement and the evade token rapidly devalues I decided to try TRCs as I found them so annoying on rebel spam lists. I think it is now a potential auto-include. I can't stress enough how impactful this was. You might think that they are better in small dice pools with lots of evade tokens on the ship but good golly when you are throwing 8 or 9 (CF) dice and your blues lock everything down and you can guarantee extra damage on the reds it literally was the difference between killing ships and not. And late in the game when you don't GAF anymore you can ditch that evade token to make your double arc a s-ton of guaranteed damage.

Nice post,

My Needa lesson is don't use him to swap out a redirect when going up against a Rhymer Ball. I still had plenty of shields when I blew up, but blew up I did.

Interesting thoughts on the TLRC too. I have just been spamming Xi7s lately, but I can see the benefit in blue range!

Sw7's and Needa TRC's. Lotsa damage and maybe an accuracy in there.

Nice post,

My Needa lesson is don't use him to swap out a redirect when going up against a Rhymer Ball. I still had plenty of shields when I blew up, but blew up I did.

Interesting thoughts on the TLRC too. I have just been spamming Xi7s lately, but I can see the benefit in blue range!

I don't think you should ever ditch the redirect. "Contain" is telling choice to swap when using needa.

So what about needa on vics, is that loss of a second redirect to much ?

So what about needa on vics, is that loss of a second redirect to much ?

My gut says "yes". I don't think i'd put needa on a Vic. In my opinion, Vics are backfield sweepers and/or cheap carriers. In both cases, I think they are best run with very few upgrades.

Nice post,

My Needa lesson is don't use him to swap out a redirect when going up against a Rhymer Ball. I still had plenty of shields when I blew up, but blew up I did.

Interesting thoughts on the TLRC too. I have just been spamming Xi7s lately, but I can see the benefit in blue range!

I don't think you should ever ditch the redirect. "Contain" is telling choice to swap when using needa.

Against few heavy hitters, I sometimes prefer to keep my contain but am willing to drop a redirect for Needa. It very much depends on what the other guy brought, as well as your own build. If it's all APT/ACM, yeah, always dump contain cause it's useless to you. Against a few (2 or 3) ships without special critical ammo, that contain might be a big deal, but your redirects less so. Particularly on an ISD-2 with ECM to mitigate the hit from losing that redundant redirect.

Nice post,

My Needa lesson is don't use him to swap out a redirect when going up against a Rhymer Ball. I still had plenty of shields when I blew up, but blew up I did.

Interesting thoughts on the TLRC too. I have just been spamming Xi7s lately, but I can see the benefit in blue range!

I don't think you should ever ditch the redirect. "Contain" is telling choice to swap when using needa.

Against few heavy hitters, I sometimes prefer to keep my contain but am willing to drop a redirect for Needa. It very much depends on what the other guy brought, as well as your own build. If it's all APT/ACM, yeah, always dump contain cause it's useless to you. Against a few (2 or 3) ships without special critical ammo, that contain might be a big deal, but your redirects less so. Particularly on an ISD-2 with ECM to mitigate the hit from losing that redundant redirect.

I pretty much always ditch the contain. My ISD simply does not take much damage if I play correctly. I think this past tournament the most cards it had was 4 (2 from collisions), contain is fairly useless in this context. I toyed with the idea of putting devastator on it instead of relentless but relentless is soooo good for sooo cheap and devastator is way too much and way too situational. The only case I could make for it is with TRCs late game you gladly ditch the evade on a 2 arc firing round and then you have an extra blue die. provided you liberally toss a redirect you now have 2 extra blue dice. If you brought SW7s it could make for a fearsome front arc. Can't justify the points for this in this build, however.

See I always get good use of the contain, whereas I find I either take big lumps of damage at a time, so a single redirect accounts for my shields fairly quickly, or I am getting hit by big damage and Xi7s, which the second redirect doesn't really assist with anyway, but the Evade can usually ditch two damage straight up.

But this doesn't hold true for Rhymer Ball, or I suspect other scenarios were you are facing multiple low-mid damage attacks.

To get back to Hast's OP, bullet #4...

but the other part of this is, if you take Needa, ditch <whichever defense token> to gain evade, so that you can purchase and trigger TLRC....you're also giving up your Turbolaser slot and NOT getting XI7's...which...I don't know how I feel about that overall. So it's not just giving up <redirect OR contain>. It's also giving that up and giving up XI7.

No.3/4, always wanted to try Thanks for the share!

To get back to Hast's OP, bullet #4...

but the other part of this is, if you take Needa, ditch <whichever defense token> to gain evade, so that you can purchase and trigger TLRC....you're also giving up your Turbolaser slot and NOT getting XI7's...which...I don't know how I feel about that overall. So it's not just giving up <redirect OR contain>. It's also giving that up and giving up XI7.

Yeah except I've been leaving XI7s behind pretty much entirely lately. Its down to a play-style thing. I have practiced and gravitated to a focus-fire style of play with my list where my damage dealers synergize.

Like 7 times out of 10 before my ISD ever shoots at anything it has been plinked by my bombers, I usually save up a squad token so that when I am at strike range with my ISD I can activate rhymer and all 4 of my firesprays. It's a treat to watch the opponent agonize over whether or not to use up defense tokens on the 1 and 2 damage (that adds up to significant total damage), they wince when they realize they need to spend a redirect or I'm through to hull and then they wince again when my next firespray moves to and shoots at the arc they just redirected to because now that arc has less ability to absorb more redirection. By the time my ISD actually shoots I have to roll like a chump to not disintegrate anything on a small base and possibly most anything on a medium base. I find that the TRCs help immensely with this as you can flip a single hit to a double hit to go to an odd number and mess with the brace effectiveness, a few blues hitting accuracies to block that critical token and *poof*. I can honestly say that across 3 games the TRCs sentenced a ship to death probably 3 times.

I would also add that with no bomber wing I would probably rate XI-7s a bit higher on the must-take list, but again, the needa evades do give the ISD a defensive advantage. Another thing I notice is that given a single accuracy at long range opponents will often target that evade. Imagine if it wasn't an evade? It would be a brace they target, it gives the ISD more viable defenses to have to lock down which also has a hidden value.