Just got done with an awesome wave 3 game with JJ on Vassal (gg again, man!), and, man... I love flotillas. Sorry vile oppressors, this was a Rebel-on-Rebel training match, so it's all from the good guys' perspective.

I ran my W3 version of I'll Shoot, You Run, and he brought:

AF2A (Haven, Ruthless, and QLT)
Yavaris naked
CR90A (Jaina's Light, TRC, Cracken)
CR90B (Engine Techs)

GR75 Transport (BC, Bright Hope, Toryn, BCC)

XXYYY+Jan

We played his Advanced Gunnery.

I was definitely feeling the lack of speed and intel for my squadrons. Found myself wishing more than once that I had a pair of A's and Jan, and maybe a Jamming Field for a bit of resilience. That said, the X's actually did their job famously against the super-turbo'd X's and Y's in his Haven/Jan/Toryn/BCC fortress of squadrony doomnation, disrupting them long enough for my torpedoes to tackle the carriers and GTFO. So maybe I'll try a few more games and see how they do in other contexts before switching them up. They were definitely solidly in squadron defense role this game, but the two or three times I really needed them to switch over and get that last point or two of hull damage, BCC made it happen (despite the X-wings' valiant attempts to choke).

I actually put Dodonna on his own little GR-75 and just orbited the battle with him, doing absolutely nothing. Which worked great for delaying, but would be scary against, say, Demo. Not sure how I feel about that.

Some of my big takeaways:

BCC is unsurprisingly awesome. We both had it, and it served us both very well.

Toryn is also great... but make sure you're not dropping your squadrons a pixel outside of her range like I did THREE TIMES for no reason. Generally speaking she is a little hard to keep in range of the squadron battle if you're on the offensive, but I think she might be awesome against Rhymerballs, where she can be up in the **** without having to stray too close to the carriers.

I had 6 activations; JJ had 5. If the new median activation count is going to be in that area, this game just got significantly more complex. In my mind, the challenge level was comparable to playing a CR90 swarm list, but also with squadrons involved. Determining activation order, keeping track of where everything was, what all the threat zones are, etc, was seriously not simple. Now, part of that was the nature of our lists (the MC30T's always ratchet up the activation order intensity, and Yavaris is much the same), but a big part of it was the delaying activations interspersed throughout the game. There were also a lot of layered effects going on, especially with the squadrons: reroll zones, Haven, Jan's brace and Intel zone, different squadron activation ranges, Heavy, Escort, etc.

Torpedo boats are hard to block. This will apply to Demo/GSD's just as it does to the MC30, but... he tried using the ET'd CR90B to run interference against the two MC30's, and, while it was effective in forcing me to change my plan, it didn't actually stop it from happening. I'll be interested to see the community's skill level develop in this regard, particularly using the flotillas in this role.

I can see Cracken being good, but, just like Montferrat, it's not just a build-it-and-go thing: you really have to make sure you're actively playing in such a way that you're leveraging him. Jaina's Light was the only one that I felt really played to Cracken in this match, but because she did, it took me 2x double-arced MC30 shots (with admittedly fairly poor rolls on one broadside, but still) to take her down.

Debris fields + flotillas = baaaaad juju. Lose a shield + a facedown, even if you're at 100%. Nasty.

Bright Hope is super good. Auto-include for me, right now. The fact that it cuts a die off of each attack, stacks with everything, works at speed 0, works at every range... Yeah, it's good.

Sorry this was a little rambly. Getting late here.

Edit: Oh, also, we remembered about a third of the way through the game to hit record. Blarg. I need to find a way to script that out so I stop forgetting. :/

I think this game is gonna be pretty good with flotillas. And I do expect it's going to be much tougher to play perfectly now.

Also I think MC30s gain the most from flotillas. They gain enough other small ships to get serious activation advantages and also that the flotillas are good for AA and commanding squadrons for AA. Mc30s lacked squadron defense the most.

So happy to see two shrimp lists. I have two and now I can see them totally being double killers in competitive play.

How important do you think its going to be to take a h9 flotilla killer?

My main response to the wave is to think about refitting one of my ships into that role.

Nice report - I caught a bit of your game in the middle.

Against your own list Ard*, do you think the flotillas are vulnerable to being taken out early and losing you the activation game? As you say, activation is everything with those torpedo shrimp!

*sorry, temporary loss of brain

This is awesome. I appreciate the write-up. I'm really looking forward to this wave, too.

How important do you think its going to be to take a h9 flotilla killer?

My main response to the wave is to think about refitting one of my ships into that role.

I think it kind of depends. I really wouldn't call H9's themselves an auto-include; I do think you want to have a plan for addressing flotillas, but there are lots of ways to do that. Four damage is not a lot, especially when you can zero-consequence ram for the fourth one. I think the best ways to deal with flots will be when people are able to augment their fleets with small things that are incidentally useful in killing flotillas. That's why I have the H9's on my shrimp: those H9's are invaluable in killing flotillas and corvettes quickly and efficiently, but they're still very useful in attacking the bigger ships too.

Nice report - I caught a bit of your game in the middle.

Against your own list Ard*, do you think the flotillas are vulnerable to being taken out early and losing you the activation game? As you say, activation is everything with those torpedo shrimp!

*sorry, temporary loss of brain

Very much so. I think it's pretty important to get the shrimp in fast and hit very hard up front (back to the H9 thing, this is why I use those instead of Intel Officers in this fleet: shutting down defenses a little less reliably right now rather than discarding them for next turn is a big deal for me).

That said, for me, activations tend to be most important in the first two turns, sometimes three, for delaying getting into red/squadron range before I'm ready. It's pretty hard to get something all the way across the board that fast and then kill a flotilla with it (this, more than any of the big-ship-killing doomsaying, is the strength of the ET/Demo in my experience). After that, hopefully either I've killed something of theirs to keep activation parity, or they have bigger problems to worry about than killing flotillas.

This is where all the incremental mitigation will be really nice: just slowing down their death forces your adversary to focus on gnat-swatting with so much firepower and attention that could otherwise be on your heavy hitters. Evade, Scatter, and Bright Hope are all ideal for this.