Hey guys,

Not gonna lie it's been too long since my last game of Armada

While the wave 3/4 stuff has me excited, I've been out of the loop so long that I've forgotten what popular builds there are to stack my prospective future fleets against

This is a problem because I don't want to invest in two liberties only to discover that I could glanced at their capabilities relative to other shops and determined that the purchase wasn't worth it

For example, the battle cruiser with spinals hits 5 red dice out the front and that just hits me with an instinctive appeal (esp with gunnery team), clocking in at 130 with x17s leading shots and a medical team (which, despite my absence , just seems absolutely sick for its price)

But is such a thing worth building around?

Last I remember, the big dogs were Demolisher (nothing's changed there I'm sure), Akbar and TLRC cr90s

If Akbar's still huge, then those 5 red dice + gteam shots from the liberty seem far less impressive (hello afmk2!) even if it rolls twice the dice at close/medium

Tlrc cr90s are a more difficult issue to parse as they're nearly 3 ships and the mechanics governing defense tokens + a cr90's durability make it an issue of play style rather than just raw dice per points

So, what do you guys compare ships to nowadays?

Well, to be honest, not much has changed....

Demolisher is still #1. Although we've started working counters to him.

Ackbar's not as high as he was, because people started working out how to counter the Swirl movement... That, and although you can take him on things like Assault Frigates, you're relying on raw dice, as there's no Dice modification for those en masse yet.

That, and Rieekan got a resurgance over Demolisher.

TRC90s are still the most efficient little red-die buggers in the game....

The Liberty is just a change-up because its basically the same straight-forward playstyle of a Star Destroyer, but on the rebel side... Remember how people used to whine that Rebels had all the Tricks, but the Imps were simple because they straight forward?

The Liberty is the best of both worlds... If, and only if, that's your Jam.... (Its not mine)

There's a lot that is popular out there that's been doing well:

Demolisher is still around. He's a staple in Imperial lists of many different varieties. We had s swing in the meta in February/March because a key list exploited a fully decked out Demolisher with first activation and activation advantage.

You're also right that TRC Corvettes are still a thing. They can show up in just about any list.

Ackbar was the second winniest Rebel after Rieekan at Regionals. He's still easy to play, but he doesn't dominate the Rebel meta.

One way to think of the meta as a series of reactions to whatever the latest impressive build is. So you caught the game in Ackbar's prominence. Although he's still got some popularity, he's expensive and there are other options. A Demolisher with multiple small units (DeMSU) reacted against that. So then the meta reacted against that build. Rieekan emerged as a way to preserve your ships against the threat of Demolisher, he helped block and trade effectively. He also opened up a lot of different maneuvering options. Rhymerballls never really went away, but they feasted on the fact that DeMSU sacrificed squadrons and that the rest of the meta was partly reacting against Demolisher by trying to do the same thing.

In terms of units and builds, I've seen all of the unit types played in lists. If a unit variant, it is likely because the meta has emphasized one variant so far, and the reaction in the meta has not quite gotten around to showing us how a unit can be effective. This is common. After all, in the midst of Clon showing us what a tricked out Demolisher MSU can do, we had two threads over 14 pages long each, one claiming the DeMSU was unbeatable and that the Raider was the unit that enabled it, and one claiming that the Raider was essentially unusable and a terrible unit. You won't see many Gladiator 2s or AFMKII-As, but their day is coming, no doubt.

so, it's far more varied than the initial Akbar paranoia led everyone to believe ?

well, that doesn't make list building any easier, but it does assuage fear of Home One melting everything without ECM

The most common quoted parts of the Data from Regionals that was collected is distilled down to these dot points:


* Imperials Win More Regionals
* Demolisher almost always appears.
* Major Rhymer and a Ball of Doom of one sort or another almost always appears.

* Rieekan was the most Successful Rebel Admiral.

So, no. List Building isn't any easier than it was 6 months ago... But that's mostly because everything still has a chance - its all in how you fly it.