This has proberly been up in another tread.

Seeing that Wave III and IV adds another expanded dimension on squadron support, one starts to think, is Wave III and IV the beginning of the end of the Squadronless fleets???

With so many diverse upcomming upgrade cards that helps players to use Squadrons even better than before, how would a squadronless fleet be able to handle themselves once the shooting starts?

A fast squadronlees fleet could always opt to run away for a whole game, but that would almost defeat the purpose of playing the game.

But what will they do when cornered, because they run out of space to run to, or they get slowed down???

I've made a lot of lists recently and everytime I find having less than four squadron, it feels to me the list has a huge weakspot, or its not good enough, when considering the upcomming waves as well as the current environment.

And even at four I always have the urge to squeeze in another two, just to be safe.

So what do you all think?

Will Squadronless fleets be far between in the future?

Or will a local meta prevail?

Another Ewok Snowball from the Kiwi Rat

This has proberly been up in another tread.

Seeing that Wave III and IV adds another expanded dimension on squadron support, one starts to think, is Wave III and IV the beginning of the end of the Squadronless fleets???

With so many diverse upcomming upgrade cards that helps players to use Squadrons even better than before, how would a squadronless fleet be able to handle themselves once the shooting starts?

A fast squadronlees fleet could always opt to run away for a whole game, but that would almost defeat the purpose of playing the game.

But what will they do when cornered, because they run out of space to run to, or they get slowed down???

I've made a lot of lists recently and everytime I find having less than four squadron, it feels to me the list has a huge weakspot, or its not good enough, when considering the upcomming waves as well as the current environment.

And even at four I always have the urge to squeeze in another two, just to be safe.

So what do you all think?

Will Squadronless fleets be far between in the future?

Or will a local meta prevail?

Another Ewok Snowball from the Kiwi Rat

I hope so. Squadrons add a very interesting (and very thematic) later of complexity to the game, but they've been gimped recently in favor of burst damage. I loved mixed carrier/gunship fleets, but you just couldn't say no to the Demo build.

Wave 2 changed the meta of the very low- to no-squadron fleet due to Rogue, Intel, and Firesprays in particular, and squadronless fleets were already on the decline around me. You can still find squadronless fleets from time to time and they can do well in the right circumstances, but they're hoping to not hit a decent bomber fleet if they're going into a tournament. I think flotillas and Bomber Command Center will be the final nail in the coffin on this one. BCC makes bombers much more reliable as a source of uncontested damage and flotillas allow for squadron-based fleets to keep up on activations with more ship-focused approaches and they can boss around squadrons well and consistently provided you're not looking for a special title ship (Yavaris, Corrupter, Independence) to do much for you.

Wave 4 helps a bit with Fighter Coordination Team and less so with Flight Commander, but they're more garnish for the "bombers are seriously going to mess you up, stop pretending they won't" meal platter.

Goddess Above and Below.... I hope so....

I'd imagine it's more flotillas specifically enacting this change

Not only do they make supporting squadrons easier than ever (so cheap!) They REALLY piss off demo by being pain in the ass blockers, having scatter, and being too cheap to be worth trading for

Goddess Above and Below.... I hope so....

Dude, I want to join that religion. How do I convert?

Wave 2 changed the meta of the very low- to no-squadron fleet due to Rogue, Intel, and Firesprays in particular, and squadronless fleets were already on the decline around me. You can still find squadronless fleets from time to time and they can do well in the right circumstances, but they're hoping to not hit a decent bomber fleet if they're going into a tournament. I think flotillas and Bomber Command Center will be the final nail in the coffin on this one. BCC makes bombers much more reliable as a source of uncontested damage and flotillas allow for squadron-based fleets to keep up on activations with more ship-focused approaches and they can boss around squadrons well and consistently provided you're not looking for a special title ship (Yavaris, Corrupter, Independence) to do much for you.

Wave 4 helps a bit with Fighter Coordination Team and less so with Flight Commander, but they're more garnish for the "bombers are seriously going to mess you up, stop pretending they won't" meal platter.

Agreed, especially the highlighted bit. Just the other day I was flying a Rhymerball that couldn't hit the side of a Death Star.

As it stands, it seems like there's too great of a danger to invest too much in fighters, because there's a great of a chance that you'll face a squadronless fleet, which largely makes the points you spent on fighters sub-optimal. Intel and Escort also means that if you don't get enough fighters, that the bombers will slip away.

People have been complaining about the prevalence of the Rhymerball. It seems that the dominant answer has been to go with a squadronless or squadron-light (De)MSU list. Those, they hope, can scoot past and unload on the capital ships. Statistically speaking, the Rhymerball has still been the winner.

So, hopefully (even though I love my great balls of Rhymer), by making the Rhymerball more effective, it will mean that fighters will become a better investment, which might deter pure Rhymerballs, and have bomber-minded people diversify their squadron complements more.

Well for me there never has been any. even yesterday in a game for fun, I slammed a fleet in a 2nd wave game with no R&V's that took 3 A wings I had 2 Ties 2 Tie int 4 bombers and a tie advance the A wings were dead end of turn two and My fighters did telling damage to a AFII and dropped alot of shields on a MC 30 by Turn 3. It only went 4 turns and we call it because his MC30 was more then Half dead and in a bad place (side on Mid range to the port bow of an ISD) and his 3 CR90 were going to get hit by the fighters and 2 GSDs and I had 40 points from holding the station My fighters did a lot of damage and took only 6 points of damage the whole game.

So, hopefully (even though I love my great balls of Rhymer), by making the Rhymerball more effective, it will mean that fighters will become a better investment, which might deter pure Rhymerballs, and have bomber-minded people diversify their squadron complements more.

...and this will allow squadronless fleets to exist. So I don't think they'll be dead, however they'll become much less prevalent.

the success on squadronless fleets will depend on how good people are with Clonisher raiders and how reliably we can stuff enough bombers into a rhymer ball to wipe out a TLRC CR-90 in a round

Not at all! I tested a squadron less fleet vs eight squads and bomber command center. It's tough but definitely doable. In fact. I'd say even more doable than it used to be.

To investigate this we need to look at two questions.

1) Why do people choose to go squadronless?

The nieve answer is; they simply dont like playing with squads. And this wont change no matter how many waves come out. Lets discount this group of players from this discussion.

The more reasoned answer is: they dont want to dilute their commands with squadron commads. Now to get the best out of a fleet, you need a good idea what your dials will be in any circumstance. To make this easy, simply remove an entire command from the choice, squadron. This generally limits players to the choice of navigate or command fire at any moment. Its simple.

Now this leads to fleets which rely heavily on navigation to avoid squadrons rather than simply say "I'll weather their shots". Apart from admonition and bright hope, ships really dont like getting shot at by squadrons. Anyone choosing to go squadronless is choosing to navigate around their threat range rather than engage directly. Just because squadrons now have bomber command doesnt make them any less easy to avoid. It actually makes it simpler. Squadron heavy players will have a lot of points tied up in squads or squad ship upgrades now. This means their is less to navigate around.

Second Question: Which fleets do well without squadrons?

As I have said above, squadronless fleets tend to rely heavily on navigation. There are two major types of fleets which do this well, single threat ship builds and multi threat ship builds.

The former, single threat ship builds, are most well known in the demolisher with raiders list. In this case the number of activations allows a single ship to navigate with complete immunity from the enemy, before delivering high burst damage. These waves have done very little to prevent this from being a viable tactic. The only issue is that squads now deliver very high burst damage themselves. Potentially, if you are looking for burst damage, squads are a better place to look.

Now the latter, multi threat ship builds, are when the list features multiple ships capable of delivering a high amount of damage. PT's two ISD list fits this, my Ackbar star destroyers fit here. In these lists, there are multiple options for taking the fight to the enemy. With this redundancy the player is not forced into a particular move making them quite unpredictable and very flexible. Squadron heavy lists need to align the squads to their carriers and fly in a strict formation. With a multi threat list there will always be an opening in which a ship can navigate into close range of the enemy, and there will always be a ship able to do so, whilst the rest keep themselves clear of danger.

So to put it simply, no wave III and IV does not put an end to squadronless fleets. It wont end the ill thought out squadron less fleets, and no it wont put an end to the well thought out squadron less fleets. Squadrons are predictable, and thats their biggest weakness.

The inter squadron game has changed massively, it has in my opinion become much harder to hold up a squadron force with a light squadron list. That will have much greater ramifications.

I think its the beginning of the end.Not the end yet. I feel that the flotilla really helps even out activation counts. Also all the interdictor stuff plus tractor beams slowing stuff down helps prevent the hit and run.

Ultimately it will depend on how Ffg wants it to be. If they released a bomber squadron that had 2 black ship dice and no anti squad dice for example. I think it would be hard not to take squads.

As long as every arch-type has a solid counter im perfectly happy. It may never be the end but i do feel squadronless fleets will be the minority. In Tacoma regional it felt like more than half the fleets had no squads.

BTW if you have 25pts or less in squadrons and never use a squad command, its a squadronless fleet. In my opinion. Lol

Gink,

this is a very good analysis, however I would disagree on the following:

1. Squadronless players don't want to dilute their commands with squadron commands.

I don't think so, otherwise they would just go and use rogues. It's more about exploring ship/upgrade combinations that are impossible to do, once 60+ points are invested in squadrons.

2. Squadronless fleets mainly rely on navigation to avoid squadrons

I think there are two types of squadronless fleets: fleets relying on speed/navigation to avoid bombers and fleets that are relying on high hull/high AS to kill bombers (or force them to disengage) before they'll do a critical amount of damage to ships. I think with wave 3/4 a second strategy may end up being more viable.

Odd, I feel its just the opposite. With points being moved from battle vessels to support, there is more desire to run no squads and just run through enemy ships asap ignoring squads. We shall see.

After countless battles with many squads on both sides, I would prefer games with a lot less squads. Theh simply make the game take a lot longer to play and make moving a pain because they clutter the battlefield.

I love a nice battle without any squads!

My meta consists of 3 players, two of us at the moment will take a good number of Squadrons, the third just wants to take 5 VSD’s as his dream fleet. So for me this topic is quite relevant.

At a strategic level I would say that 400 points = 400 points, you build your list and I build mine and in theory if we are both of equal ability we would have in theory an equal chance of winning. However, at a tactical level, I may have given myself better more pertinent choices. The fellow in my group that plays Demo highlight this to me, he wins most of his games when he plays with Demo and we go about 50/50 when he doesn’t.

On the other hand I played our guy that likes 5 VSDs with a list of Y-Wing spam and Ruthless Strategists. He took 6 APT Corvettes, proceeded to attack me at speed 2 and spent 3 turns before he was able to shoot two ships at a single AF. In this instance it wasn’t the lack of squadrons, or the lack of strategic level options. Here, it was his complete inability to nuance the list and play it correctly.

Which leads me to my third thought: As per my fencing tactical advice “If you are doing something and it works, keep doing it. If you are doing something and you fail, change what you are doing.” I do not adjust anything when I am winning, it is not for me to lose to you to create a fair game.

Consider that as a generalisation:

• No Squads will do well against some Squads (Scissors)
• Some Squads will do well against Max Squads (Paper)
• Max Squads will do well against No Squads (Rock)

I would leave it to you to decide what constitutes each category, myself I go 0-40, 45-80 and 90+ with the empty bits classed as maybe one or the other based on my feel for the squads taken.

If you keep playing Scissors in a Rock fight you have to change what you are doing. Keep in mind that when you do take Paper to a Rock fight you will still have to learn some of the tactical nuances that your opponent may have already learned playing the same list successfully for a while. So don’t expect to win against an opponent who is better practiced either. Also, your opponent may start adjusting his choices based on your reactions. So you cunningly take a Paper Fleet to a Scissor fight.....

My final point is that various cards and effects work into all this, in Wave 3+4 there may be a preponderance of fleets + squadrons because of the card choices. But this often tends to be subject to a point in time: In Wave 1 Motti was not an ideal choice for the VSD and GSD ships, with Wave 2 and the ISD he can be used to good effect. So even if Wave 3+4 see the downplay of "Zero Squadron Fleets" that could change with Wave 5 or even with some not so obvious choices being played.

I am rather loath to make comment as to specifics, at this point in Wave 2 Tractor Beams was the card of the set and how could you not take that card. Theory Crafting without playing games is just guessing, we keep seeing many fleets that have the ships that use the single dice of anti-squadron and the driver to upgrade to those with 2 dice anti-squadron may be the squadron cards from this set.

I'd have to agree with Ginkapo and PT106's emendations.

I don't think high hull, high AS fleets have quite seen the day like they could.

I think zero squadrons are becoming harder with each wave, but still doable in the current state of the game. Imperials have an easier time without squadrons, since their cheap raiders are really good squadron killers, as well as their ISDs. The Liberty is gonna do wonders to help full a much needed gap in that regard. One thing that squadrons, especially rogues, lend is that they are flexible. If a ship is limping away with one or two hull remaining, a squadron can be sent to go deal with that threat while the ship activating it focuses on other prey.

I doubt that zero squadrons will ever become not viable, but I do think it will become riskier, unless something changes suddenly. Let's not forget the deployment advantage that even just a few squadrons lend. And I say this as an avid rebel scum no-squadroner.

The inter squadron game has changed massively, it has in my opinion become much harder to hold up a squadron force with a light squadron list. That will have much greater ramifications.

Jan Ors and Dengar in particular stuff up everything because they have Brace and Scatter, so if your force is too small they can scatter out of the way and be done with it. But for the most part 4 hull is not that hard to overcome. Neb-B Escort X2 + Torynn Farr: Would be something that scares squadrons, at least a little. Throw in a few X-Wings and that looks like an option.

Not disagreeing with your hypothesis or how you got there. Just making a small and minor point to what you have made.