its not likely to do 5 points of damage unless you happen to shoot at a 3 hull fighter and roll well.

A tie fighter has 3 hull each worth 8/3=2.7pts. So you have to do two damage to a tie fighter for it to be worth 5 points.

There may be more value to be had elsewhere, but cluster bombs IS worth 5pts when activated.

If you don't kill the tie fighter all the way you get no points

its not likely to do 5 points of damage unless you happen to shoot at a 3 hull fighter and roll well.

A tie fighter has 3 hull each worth 8/3=2.7pts. So you have to do two damage to a tie fighter for it to be worth 5 points.

There may be more value to be had elsewhere, but cluster bombs IS worth 5pts when activated.

If you don't kill the tie fighter all the way you get no points

Of course, but its got a good chance of that...

Its got an Equal Chance of that TIE fighter being Mauler Mithel. Or Howlrunner. Or an Interceptor. Or even Soontir Fel.

Which would all be more efficient kills for it.

BUT, the chances of them are all fairly low - because they need to be shooting the ships for it to happen.

...

Its not a great upgrade. Its not even an efficient one. But its not a useless one.

For it has uses. Which have been demonstrated.

I think it's a bit of an uphill climb to try and justify this card outside of extremely niche and unlikely scenarios. Its a fun, quirky, card and not a solid competitive card.

I will never argue that it isn't something fun and goofy you can put in a casual play build for a laugh but you will never convince me its worth including in any serious competitive list.

The argument that "getting value" for it is equivalent to getting >= the point investment you put in it is somewhat laughable as that is a great way to get defeated.

If I build a list that 10-0's my opponent it means that I got roughly double value for my points, if next game I win by 200 points does that mean that all my selections are now only valued at 1.5x it's points? No. Because the value of an upgrade isn't just how many points it will get you back but a combination of ROI (return on investment), synergy, and value. 5 points as an Avenger title when synergized along a list will pay dividends that make cluster bombs look like a wet Chihuahua in diapers.

Every upgrade has a use. So what? Pointing that out is what we call "pedantic"

Sensor teams have a "use"

Compare the "use" of those 5 points against a proportional "use" of those same 5 points invested in another lever, see which one lifts more rocks

If they wanted to make this card a potential must-take instead of a mis-take they should have made it 7 or 8 points, dropped it to 2 or 3 dice and made it go off in a distance 1 RADIUS around the unfortunate recipient. Imagine now you have a rhymerball all clustered for sweet medium range warmth around rhymer and a hapless bomber shoots a ship with "upgraded cluster bombs" and every squad in that ball gets 2 or 3 x 75% chance to hit blue dice. Put that upgrade on 2 or 3 ships and it is a perfect rhymerbal foil and worth every. ****. point (even at 2 dice).

As a bomber reliant list you would agonize over using bombers. As the upgrade is right now you laugh at it.

I meant to post last night, but got side tracked.

First off, this is probably going to be long. The point of a forum is good intelligent discussion, and if you don't want to read, that's alright. We've all got to make choices about our time. Second, one key theme throughout all military history is that we have what is called conventional wisdom, in this case, "Cluster bombs aren't really great." Yet every tactic, strategem, whatever, in military history had its birthplace in intelligent reflection and observation. It happened often because people were willing to challenge conventional wisdom. This isn't to say that we won't reach a place where we conclude that conventional wisdom is, in fact, correct. It simply means that we are right to ask the questions and use our intelligence to explore how something actually works. Most of what is written in this thread in the negative about CB is, in fact, mostly knee jerk. Not all of it, as I do appreciate Hastatior's most recent post, but most of it.

Now, let me say that what put me on the track of thinking about Cluster Bombs was not actually the upgrade itself, but an observation in a different thread on a different subject entirely. Here, I believe Lyraeus was pointing out that the five blue AS dice did a better than expected job against squadrons, despite taking essentially zero squadrons in the fleet. I found this a curiosity that I decided to think on further and playtest, and that's what led me to evaluate not only Cluster Bombs but all of the ship upgrades that relate to AS fire. And I think this is the key starting point. If we conclude that Cluster bombs are bad, but we're already starting off from a fleet design in which they are strategically incorrect, then of course they're going to end up as bad. Almost every upgrade in the game has a situation in which it represents wasted points. In fact, I think much of fleet building centers around ensuring that your fleet has one key theme that it does extremely well while simultaneously having enough to handle the other situations it may encounter in the game.

If we're asking, "Are cluster bombs good?" in a vacuum, we're asking the fundamentally wrong question. If we start instead by asking, what kind of situation could Cluster Bombs potentially be good, then we've got a better question?

Here, we make the following observations:

1. Your opponent must be targetting your ships for them to trigger. If you don't have a build in which that will happen, you're wasting points.

2. Cluster bombs aren't a total defense by themselves, so if you have no plan except Cluster bombs, you're wasting points.

3. You need a defensive slot that you would not otherwise use. I won't dispute the notion that most of the big ships want to start with ECM to protect that brace. Many ships lack a defensive slot entirely.

Put that together and you get the following:

You need a fleet with sufficient anti-squadron dice from your ships and/or light AS squadrons, and you're pretty much limited to the MC30, Corvette, and maybe an MC80 Assault variant.

Hastatior makes an excellent point that the game turns on the question of how effectively can you spend your points. Let's expand that first. If you're investing in Cluster Bombs, you're thinking SOLELY in terms of squadron defense. In fact, you're trying to handle that squadron defense by spending fewer points toward it than your opponent, or than you might otherwise do. That's where point efficiency matter. Can you do more for less?

The point efficiency of Cluster bombs is straight-forward: .6. 3 average damage by 5 points. You only get it once, and I think that's where people have the problem. We're almost knee-jerk conditioned in every game to react against one-time events. Armada, however, is of such short duration (6 rounds) that what happens once often matters a great deal. The community initially reacted strongly against Lando, but being able to reroll a large pool of dice for lesser damage has made the community appreciate just how valuable he is.

Since we're speaking of point efficiency in the task of anti-squadron defense, the comparison is with a relatively low point investment in AS fighters, let's say the typical 40-50 points. If you're investing more than that in squadrons, you are already working with a different build and Cluster Bombs is not a great fit. Let's say 4 A wings or 3 and Tycho. You're also talking about a context in which the opponent has brought squadrons and is therefore firing back at whatever squadron defense you brought. That means we cannot assume that your defense will be around long enough to take multiple shots. In fact, it is likely to get shredded and give your opponent 40-50 points. Your first A basically gets one attack and makes 2 counter attacks, or 3.5 average damage for an 11 point unit. Your second A might suffer the same fate. You pick up a bit more average damage out of that third and fourth fighter. The point efficiency ends up being something like .41 for those A-wings. I think where people go off is in the fact that Cluster bombs is just a 5 point card. If you spend 50 points on something, then of course you're going to do a higher level of statistical damage. The total amount is substantially less.

This leads us to another key point: This game really favors what I call burst damage. If you can a lot of damage all at once to the same target and remove it, you also remove attack dice that your opponent isn't rolling. You can do that by taking a huge shot from a ship at an opponent, or by taking a lot of small ones provided they are on the same target in the same round. Either way, you need to remove a target. Cluster bombs does a lot of damage all in one pop. It won't kill a squadron straight up, but it opens the door for minimal ship fire to finish off that one squadron, thus removing it from the opponent's pool of active damage-doers. It really isn't that hard to get a Corvette with an arc on the enemy ship and an arc on their squadrons, and then take your two shots in that fashion every turn.

Now, in a ship swarm versus a heavy squadron list, you're going to lose a ship or two. The question is whether you can get enough boost performance from Cluster bombs to put your ships' AS fire over the top.

Hastatior speaks of making the upgrade a must-take instead of a mis-take. I happen to think that any upgrade that is a mustake is probably also a mistake. We don't want auto-includes. That is bad for strategy and bad for the game. What we want are upgrades that have specific uses and which can be built around. My sense is that it can.

While we're at it, I also looked at the other AS ship upgrades. I skeptical on QLT because of the Rhymerballs in the meta. PDR really requires 2 blue dice and there aren't many of those. Then it becomes ok at the 6th Anti-squadron shot.

The point here is not to argue that it deserves consideration in every competitive fleet. I think the point here is that it largely does not deserve the condemnation it has received, and that some builds might, in fact, find themselves more competitive than the received wisdom, in retrospect. After all, if you can spend about 20 points in Cluster bombs to do about the same job as 40-50 points in squadrons, while spending those additional points shrewdly with the rest of your build, you've got the strategic mismatch to build a winning fleet.

Your forgetting the one true best use of this card: folding it in half to chock the leg of your gaming table to stop that slight wobble it had...

...or using it as a coaster for tequila shots while playing Armada.

You're supposed to be using your Point-defense reroutes for that...

I raise you: Sensor Teams.

Sensor teams are likely to be quite useful on Imperial ships in the next wave.

I think you are ignoring the very important point of the efficiency of opportunity cost. You can't simply take 20 points of cluster bombs and expect the same applied efficiency as 40-50 points of squadrons. In fact, that statement is rather absurd and I can give you a few examples why:

-Any player who takes a token 30-50 point fighter force to counter bombers will tell you, you don't take them to guarantee multiple shots on enemies or even to destroy enemy fighters. You take them to TIE UP enemy bomber formations. Every single round bombers aren't shooting at ships (their most efficient target) you are getting extreme value for points. those 50 points are DENYING VALUE to 120 points of bombers. Do that for enough rounds and they don't have to fire a SINGLE SHOT to be more point efficient than any one-shot upgrade.

-In cases where you face no to low fighter lists, those 50 points of squadrons are now....bombers! (this is where x-wings shine), cluster bombs are now....DEAD POINTS!!

- Cluster bombs cannot and do not provide enough firepower to kill a typical bomber in one shot, bombers in danger of dying can just run away if points are close and with less points for fighter cover, you aren't stopping it. Also, squadrons with rogue or with commands can shoot then move, so yeah I'll shoot you, take my CB then scoot out of range and keep bombing you with the rest of my bombers with impunity. Do I even CARE that you have CB on 3 other ships? no, because I'm chasing your most expensive one around with bombers you can't stop and it WILL die.

You might argue, ok, so I bring clusters and a token fighter force....but then you are actually spreading your points inefficiently...so what is the point of such a niche upgrade...like I said, its "fun", a cute middle finger to a single squadron. But its still a waste.

The OP summed it up quite nicely:

In this particular 4-man scenario, running that particular build, then he might as well spend his last 5 pts on Cluster Bombs (but he'd take something different if he could afford).

Just won another game using Cluster Bombs where one of the spectators said 'The Cluster bombs did nothing!'

THAT MEANS THEY WORKED!

Just won another game using Cluster Bombs where one of the spectators said 'The Cluster bombs did nothing!'

THAT MEANS THEY WORKED!

and like 3 of your opponents agreed with him lol

it seemed to have a weird effect that made it so Boba fett could never catch the mc80!

Starting in the nearby corner and moving at speed 3, Boba Fett could have caught the MC80 if he'd really wanted to.

I was surprised to see some posts in this thread defending them for general game play, but they do seem to do something useful in this scenario.

Why are people trashing sensor teams? It's an amazing upgrade!

Sensor Teams just needs a certain Platform to be Fantastic...

That platform needs to have:

- A lot of Dice to throw.

- Some of those Dice being Blues or Reds (Contain an ACC symbol), but have them in the Minority.
- Have a Gunnery Team slot.
- Have limited ways of manipulating dice beyond the Sensor Team

- Lack a Turbolaser Slot.

Of all of those, only the Gladiator-II is really a boat for Sensor Team... And even then, it misses out on the manipulating dice theory, as between Screed, Vader, and other bits and pieces, the Imperials have a Dice Manipulation system in place.

That being said, I think the Glad-II is the best boat for Sensor Teams... But it is a firepower tradeoff - Locking a Brace vs Additional Damage potential...

With Flotillas, we may see them, as the Scatter is never going to be protected by ECMs, and is needed to make a difference...

* The MC30 fails the test due to Turbolaser Upgrade Slot

* The Gladiator-I fails the test due to lack of Red/Blue in the Side (damaging) Arc
* Most rebel Ships fail due to Turbolaser Upgrades, or lack of direct Black Dice Damage potential

Sensor Teams just needs a certain Platform to be Fantastic...

That platform needs to have:

- A lot of Dice to throw.

- Some of those Dice being Blues or Reds (Contain an ACC symbol), but have them in the Minority.

- Have a Gunnery Team slot.

- Have limited ways of manipulating dice beyond the Sensor Team

- Lack a Turbolaser Slot.

Of all of those, only the Gladiator-II is really a boat for Sensor Team... And even then, it misses out on the manipulating dice theory, as between Screed, Vader, and other bits and pieces, the Imperials have a Dice Manipulation system in place.

That being said, I think the Glad-II is the best boat for Sensor Teams... But it is a firepower tradeoff - Locking a Brace vs Additional Damage potential...

With Flotillas, we may see them, as the Scatter is never going to be protected by ECMs, and is needed to make a difference...

* The MC30 fails the test due to Turbolaser Upgrade Slot

* The Gladiator-I fails the test due to lack of Red/Blue in the Side (damaging) Arc

* Most rebel Ships fail due to Turbolaser Upgrades, or lack of direct Black Dice Damage potential

An MC might go Sensor Team to combine it with XI7. This, however, prevents it from taking Ord Experts...so back to square one.

An MC might go Sensor Team to combine it with XI7. This, however, prevents it from taking Ord Experts...so back to square one.

Yeah, nooooo way. In fact, that's the problem with these criteria:

That platform needs to have:

- A lot of Dice to throw.

- Some of those Dice being Blues or Reds (Contain an ACC symbol), but have them in the Minority.

- Have a Gunnery Team slot.

- Have limited ways of manipulating dice beyond the Sensor Team

- Lack a Turbolaser Slot.

If it has #2 and #4, those are the criteria for needing OE, which I think is even more important than ST. Not for killing flots specifically, of course, but for anything with black dice that you're sinking this many points into, you really need to make sure those blacks count.

So, one more criterion for Dras' list: it needs to have TWO weapons team slots. Which... Yeah...

An MC might go Sensor Team to combine it with XI7. This, however, prevents it from taking Ord Experts...so back to square one.

Yeah, nooooo way. In fact, that's the problem with these criteria:

That platform needs to have:

- A lot of Dice to throw.

- Some of those Dice being Blues or Reds (Contain an ACC symbol), but have them in the Minority.

- Have a Gunnery Team slot.

- Have limited ways of manipulating dice beyond the Sensor Team

- Lack a Turbolaser Slot.

If it has #2 and #4, those are the criteria for needing OE, which I think is even more important than ST. Not for killing flots specifically, of course, but for anything with black dice that you're sinking this many points into, you really need to make sure those blacks count.

So, one more criterion for Dras' list: it needs to have TWO weapons team slots. Which... Yeah...

Well, Gunnery Team would be a nice addition, but not Required.

Because, Honestly, how often do you see Gunnery Team on a Gladiator, already?

An MC might go Sensor Team to combine it with XI7. This, however, prevents it from taking Ord Experts...so back to square one.

Yeah, nooooo way. In fact, that's the problem with these criteria:

That platform needs to have:

- A lot of Dice to throw.

- Some of those Dice being Blues or Reds (Contain an ACC symbol), but have them in the Minority.

- Have a Gunnery Team slot.

- Have limited ways of manipulating dice beyond the Sensor Team

- Lack a Turbolaser Slot.

If it has #2 and #4, those are the criteria for needing OE, which I think is even more important than ST. Not for killing flots specifically, of course, but for anything with black dice that you're sinking this many points into, you really need to make sure those blacks count.

So, one more criterion for Dras' list: it needs to have TWO weapons team slots. Which... Yeah...

Well, Gunnery Team would be a nice addition, but not Required.

Because, Honestly, how often do you see Gunnery Team on a Gladiator, already?

Ordnance Experts, not Gunnery Team. Sensor Team takes up the OE slot. Anything that meets your second and fourth criteria wants OE more than it wants ST.

Yeah, I'll concede that - and that's what makes it really tricky to balance for... Although if it has another source of limited manipulation - Screed/Vader, etc, then it could forgo OE...

Could.

I was very surprised that Ordnance Experts was a Gunnery Slot when it was released...

As it is, I do believe Sensor Team has its place - but as we are rapidly coming to, its place is becoming more and more absurd in its application...

I dont see why not having a turbolaser slot is a key criteria here.

VSD II with sensor team and x17s.....

Now I am not suggesting people start using vsd II for this, but theres the ship for it. Not a black dice chucker.

Isd II as well with second player advanced gunnery taking fleet...

I dont see why not having a turbolaser slot is a key criteria here.

VSD II with sensor team and x17s.....

Now I am not suggesting people start using vsd II for this, but theres the ship for it. Not a black dice chucker.

Isd II as well with second player advanced gunnery taking fleet...

The reason why I put it there is this:

If you're looking to fish an ACC, and you have a Turbolaser Slot, then H9 Turbolasers are a better alternative to Sensor Team... Due to it being a Dice Mod, rather than a Dice Discard-then-Mod...

That's all,.

I dont see why not having a turbolaser slot is a key criteria here.

VSD II with sensor team and x17s.....

Now I am not suggesting people start using vsd II for this, but theres the ship for it. Not a black dice chucker.

Isd II as well with second player advanced gunnery taking fleet...

The reason why I put it there is this:

If you're looking to fish an ACC, and you have a Turbolaser Slot, then H9 Turbolasers are a better alternative to Sensor Team... Due to it being a Dice Mod, rather than a Dice Discard-then-Mod...

That's all,.

However, if you are happy to go without gunnery teams and ordnance experts, then the accuracy combines soooooo well with x17s.

In some circumstances therevare greater uses of the turbolaser slot, and THATS when to use sensor teams.

I would agree with that sentiment, indeed...

The crux of the matter is, we don't have anything that is so far, a "perfect fit" for Sensor Teams... Although the Glad-II gets closest, and the Vic isn't too far behind it.

Ackbar assault frigates without home one...

Accuracies are better for killing small ships than intel.

Ackbar assault frigates without home one...

Accuracies are better for killing small ships than intel.

With nothing but Red+Blue, They should be rolling enough ACCs on their own without needing it.