So... If ndru has no friendlies at range 1 or 2 he gets to add an attack die. If he is using guidance chip does he turn a die into a hit or into a crit?

I assume just a hit but i have been wrong before

Just a hit. His ability doesn't change his primary weapon value.

Compare it with the wording of Expose, which in theory would make him add a crit, but in practice would be stupid to use.

Adding dice isn't the same as increasing weapon value.

Expose on a TIE Bomber though...... That would be a bit silly maybe.

HA! I was just looking at this same thing this morning. Yeah, it adds a die, not increases his attack value. Too bad. Still, pretty good for him. He can give a 5 red die Homing Missile with a TL and no Evade tokens.

HA! I was just looking at this same thing this morning. Yeah, it adds a die, not increases his attack value. Too bad. Still, pretty good for him. He can give a 5 red die Homing Missile with a TL and no Evade tokens.

Cluster Missiles are N'Dru's jam. Getting the extra die twice in a turn is awesome.

HA! I was just looking at this same thing this morning. Yeah, it adds a die, not increases his attack value. Too bad. Still, pretty good for him. He can give a 5 red die Homing Missile with a TL and no Evade tokens.

Cluster Missiles are N'Dru's jam. Getting the extra die twice in a turn is awesome.

Works better in theory than practice I've found.

Range two is much harder to reliably get on a target than range three, and staying St range three you give nduru a much better chance of staying alive if he's being shot at before or after he fires his missile.

I used to be all about the homing missile, but concussion has done me so right lately.

5 dice, with Glitterstim, 2 blanks become hits. So you've only gotta roll three hits/crits/eyeballs on five dice to max damage and if you completely whiff and come up all blanks, at worst you're doing 2 damage.

I've never whiffed though, in about 7 games. Worst I've done is 4 hits.

Worth saving the extra point from homing. Put that point into vi to make sure he shoots early. Done.

In theory I like cluster missiles with lone wolf, glitterstim and chips for dice modification. I flew this loadout three times on Saturday and got him killed each time before he ever fired the missiles (I should have stuck with the concussion missiles ) but what he did achieve was to totally dictate my opponents' opening moves. Everybody went for him, allowing me to close the rest of of my ships onto their flank, with varying degrees of success.

I'm up to double figures of games trying to get it to work with Lone Wolf, Cluster Missiles, Glitterstim and Guidance Chips

The first 3 or 4 were a disaster as I relied on just looking at the board and using my best estimate of where everything was to try and get to range 1 or 2. I either ended up at range 3 or got blocked.

I then applied some maths to problem working out starting distances and taking into account max / min moves on both sides. A bit of practice and learning the error of my ways later I'm now 95% confident of getting him to range 1 to 2 of his target. This is assuming I set him up opposite the target and we fly towards each other.

My regular opponents have now changed their strategy. They've accepted that flying towards N'Dru and expecting to avoid range 1 to 2 doesn't work. I think this should be to my advantage but I haven't played enough games yet to confirm it.

It's been a steep learning curve but the "I hate N'Dru" cries of the fallen have been worth it.

I was running Lone Wolf/Cluster but was disappointed half the time. VI/Concussion has been way better.

HA! I was just looking at this same thing this morning. Yeah, it adds a die, not increases his attack value. Too bad. Still, pretty good for him. He can give a 5 red die Homing Missile with a TL and no Evade tokens.

Cluster Missiles are N'Dru's jam. Getting the extra die twice in a turn is awesome.

HA! I was just looking at this same thing this morning. Yeah, it adds a die, not increases his attack value. Too bad. Still, pretty good for him. He can give a 5 red die Homing Missile with a TL and no Evade tokens.

Manaroo can do a nice token gift to N'duru to bring him from 0 threat (no TL or focus) to fully operational, its nice to try to trick the enemy that way.

Manaroo can do a nice token gift to N'duru to bring him from 0 threat (no TL or focus) to fully operational, its nice to try to trick the enemy that way.

Nice call. Would be great so long as you can get both actions from Manaroo, and the appropriate ship nduru has his sights on target locked.

Suoer finicky, but it could ve a game winner

Adding dice isn't the same as increasing weapon value.

Expose on a TIE Bomber though...... That would be a bit silly maybe.

hmm Imperial Veterans might be a good idea to experiment on.

Then again if the crit was such a necessity I would just take Proton Torpedoes.

HA! I was just looking at this same thing this morning. Yeah, it adds a die, not increases his attack value. Too bad. Still, pretty good for him. He can give a 5 red die Homing Missile with a TL and no Evade tokens.

Cluster Missiles are N'Dru's jam. Getting the extra die twice in a turn is awesome.

Works better in theory than practice I've found.

Range two is much harder to reliably get on a target than range three, and staying St range three you give nduru a much better chance of staying alive if he's being shot at before or after he fires his missile.

Why do you have to be R2? Are you thinking Adv Homing Missiles?

HA! I was just looking at this same thing this morning. Yeah, it adds a die, not increases his attack value. Too bad. Still, pretty good for him. He can give a 5 red die Homing Missile with a TL and no Evade tokens.

Cluster Missiles are N'Dru's jam. Getting the extra die twice in a turn is awesome.

Until you're shooting at a shiny new X7 Defender sitting on its shiny Evade token. Or Soontir. Then you'll really want that Homing Missile.

I dunno, to be honest. I'd far prefer to shoot Soontir with two four die attacks, even with him being able to spend tokens, than one five die attack. I want to strip tokens from him, and one attack isn't going to matter as much as two for that.

But then, I'd more or less never expect N'dru to get Soontir in missile range with a lock anyway.

In theory I like cluster missiles with lone wolf, glitterstim and chips for dice modification. I flew this loadout three times on Saturday and got him killed each time before he ever fired the missiles (I should have stuck with the concussion missiles ) but what he did achieve was to totally dictate my opponents' opening moves. Everybody went for him, allowing me to close the rest of of my ships onto their flank, with varying degrees of success.

This is my real feel as to his value. If he gets to blow his giant payload, that's all to the good, but if he controls our opponent so they gun for him harder than he's worth gunning for, that's just as good.

He's like the Stresshog or Omega Leader in that respect. Ignore him and he will punish you. Gun for him and the rest of the list will punish you.

Indeed. The thing is, with Lone Wolf and his ability active, he's got a 3-dice attack with a reroll and agility 2 with a reroll, making him a pretty fair match for an X-wing or Khiraxz. The missile is just a one-use moment of glory.

Homing Missiles and Crack Shot are a nice pairing - it's not auto-hit like blount, but it's still pretty good for getting that critical one hit on TIE bloody interceptors.

I dunno, to be honest. I'd far prefer to shoot Soontir with two four die attacks, even with him being able to spend tokens, than one five die attack. I want to strip tokens from him, and one attack isn't going to matter as much as two for that.

I just looked at the averages and it seems a lot better to fire with Homing Missile, GC, and Crack Shot than to fire with Cluster Missile, Lone Wolf, and GC. Your average with the Homing Missile is 3 hits, while the Cluster can expect about 1 with each shot. That seems that you are stripping Focus off him and doing 3 damage, which should be enough to kill him.

I dunno, to be honest. I'd far prefer to shoot Soontir with two four die attacks, even with him being able to spend tokens, than one five die attack. I want to strip tokens from him, and one attack isn't going to matter as much as two for that.

I just looked at the averages and it seems a lot better to fire with Homing Missile, GC, and Crack Shot than to fire with Cluster Missile, Lone Wolf, and GC. Your average with the Homing Missile is 3 hits, while the Cluster can expect about 1 with each shot. That seems that you are stripping Focus off him and doing 3 damage, which should be enough to kill him.

That may well be right, I've not actually done the maths, and I know gutfeel isn't really reliable in these situations.

The converse argument also is that... evades just aren't that commonly taken. It's great when you have the Homing Missile and you have a target that took an Evade, but wouldn't concussion missiles normally be better? Squints, Vader and Defenders get them a lot, f/os might have them with Comm Relay, but most ships go focus>lock>evade IME.

I also suspect that the Crack Shot is what makes more of a difference there. Put it on Cluster N'Dru and see what the difference looks like then maybe?

I know what you mean by gut feeling and not really running the numbers. It can be quite annoying as I'm not a numbers guy. Personally, I don't really think there is a "bad" option there. Both would be effective. One just might be more effective. You also run into situations beyond Soontir Fel, too. I will say that I've used Homing Missiles vs. Soontir and it does frustrate him. There are times he wants to turtle up and a Boost or BR won't get him out of arc.

Well, if I run it with Cluster Missiles and Crackshot...and Crackshot and GC used in the first shot...you end up with like 1.12 hits the first and 1.6 the next. So....it's close to averages. What I find, though, is that I like Homing Missile. There are times when your dice utterly crap out and you roll all blanks. The TL allows you to re-roll them all and get a much better result.

There is the whole average vs potential damage that you need to think about. I've found that if I'm spending my points on ordnance then I prefer the better average. I've used Tie Bombers a lot and they really need to make their shots count. So, the averages for Homing Missile is better than Concussion Missile due to those outlier times when you roll terrible.

There are also more Evade tokens out there than just Soontir, especially with the new Tie Defender X7 coming out. Bro Bots also get them often enough.

HA! I was just looking at this same thing this morning. Yeah, it adds a die, not increases his attack value. Too bad. Still, pretty good for him. He can give a 5 red die Homing Missile with a TL and no Evade tokens.

One could use expose to increase the Primary Weapon Value, that would mean regular four dice attacks if he goes all out offense, and you could use guidance chips every round you used expose. 5 dice clusters, or a 6 dice concussion would be sweet... though Action economy would suck, as you'd need to get the target lock first, then expose on another round. Still ... it could make N'Dru a 4-dice mini-monster even without missiles. I personally would like to see the expression on someone's face when you get in their six at range 1 with a Z95, and toss 5 dice at them...

Yeah, it would be fun for laughs, but really hard to pull off. You would need some way to have the TL already on him and then do Expose as an action. So, two round set up, PTL, or some other action pass off to make it happen. That, and then pay 4 pts for Expose, which is a hard sell if it were 1 pt. It's possible, but I wouldn't ever do it.

I know what you mean by gut feeling and not really running the numbers. It can be quite annoying as I'm not a numbers guy. Personally, I don't really think there is a "bad" option there. Both would be effective. One just might be more effective. You also run into situations beyond Soontir Fel, too. I will say that I've used Homing Missiles vs. Soontir and it does frustrate him. There are times he wants to turtle up and a Boost or BR won't get him out of arc.

Well, if I run it with Cluster Missiles and Crackshot...and Crackshot and GC used in the first shot...you end up with like 1.12 hits the first and 1.6 the next. So....it's close to averages. What I find, though, is that I like Homing Missile. There are times when your dice utterly crap out and you roll all blanks. The TL allows you to re-roll them all and get a much better result.

There is the whole average vs potential damage that you need to think about. I've found that if I'm spending my points on ordnance then I prefer the better average. I've used Tie Bombers a lot and they really need to make their shots count. So, the averages for Homing Missile is better than Concussion Missile due to those outlier times when you roll terrible.

There are also more Evade tokens out there than just Soontir, especially with the new Tie Defender X7 coming out. Bro Bots also get them often enough.

Yeah, I tend to forget a little about the TL remaining for Homing Missiles, which does help a lot.

But then, I don't think I've rolled less than all [boom]s with Cluster N'Dru yet, it's super reliable.

I like having the Cluster for the low-agi ships, too; I've successfully wiped t65s in a single round of shooting with N'Dru before, and being able to plant 8 damage on a VCX or Decimator in one go is huge.

The real trouble I have with N'Dru is the ease with which he can get PS killed. He packs a LOT of punch with either loadout, but in the end, he's still a z95, and he can still only put up a maximum of 4 evades at range 1-2. Two higher-PS 3-die ships getting into r1 can easily wipe him.

Yep, the Cluster Missile is good vs a lot of ships. It certainly doesn't hurt that you roll really well, either! I've just had the dice roll like 1 hit and all blanks....use the TL and maybe get one more hit out of it. It's......disappointing.