My list just didnt have enough defence the first time around, but my new version should be able to handle gunboats.

My list just didnt have enough defence the first time around, but my new version should be able to handle gunboats.

Well, if the gunboat users all win, don't bet on seeing gunboats in round 2. In fact there may end up being a lot of anti-gunboat lists among the lower pairings, and gunboat-gunboat action in the upper pairings.

Sounds like gunboats are doing pretty well; let's see if that winning streak holds in round 2! I should have assignments ready on the 23rd, I'm just waiting on one more match to finish.

Think it might have been worth making the PS2 gunboat 17 points after all

Well, of all the custom ships we made they did seem the most competitive. But I'm interested in seeing how they do against a decent to hard counter style ship. Like a good arc dodger, turret or ace variety.

I played a good arcdodger against it, but failed at the arc-dodging (bumped fenn and exploded in one round). was doing great until then...

I don't think turrets will be great since most of them tend to be low agility and high hull, which doesn't like autocrits from manglers unless you can also avoid being hit int he first place (super dash/super dengar maybe)

Sounds like gunboats are doing pretty well; let's see if that winning streak holds in round 2! I should have assignments ready on the 23rd, I'm just waiting on one more match to finish.

Think it might have been worth making the PS2 gunboat 17 points after all

Well, of all the custom ships we made they did seem the most competitive. But I'm interested in seeing how they do against a decent to hard counter style ship. Like a good arc dodger, turret or ace variety.

I played a good arcdodger against it, but failed at the arc-dodging (bumped fenn and exploded in one round). was doing great until then...

I don't think turrets will be great since most of them tend to be low agility and high hull, which doesn't like autocrits from manglers unless you can also avoid being hit int he first place (super dash/super dengar maybe)

Yeah I was thinking turret in the sense of a speed/repositioning-based build like fat han / super dengar / super dash

told you guys that 5 Rhos with Manglers would be dumb. tried to warn you.

See i'm f*****. Cause i won my match. Time to go build an anti-gunboat list... Can't wait to play the new "most boring list to fight in the game" list.

See i'm f*****. Cause i won my match. Time to go build an anti-gunboat list... Can't wait to play the new "most boring list to fight in the game" list.

Least this one only lasts for 1 tournament

If the gunboats are OP, they can be adjusted after the tournament. We've only played one round with them; it's a little early to make the call.

Lets be honest. Gunboats might be good, but if someone decided to go all in and bring like Dengaroo with 1 upgrade swap or Palp Aces in the same way, I'm about 90% sure the boats would just get wrecked. Note I'm not advising anyone do this, lol.

Lets be honest. Gunboats might be good, but if someone decided to go all in and bring like Dengaroo with 1 upgrade swap or Palp Aces in the same way, I'm about 90% sure the boats would just get wrecked. Note I'm not advising anyone do this, lol.

This is also what I think, although I think boats would give a decent account of themselves. Gunboats may be the most competitive custom ship in the league, but I'm not convinced they're at or above the competitive top tier. It may be a good idea to run a few playtest a after the tournament to check that out. In the meantime I just hope that other custom ships get a chance on the table.

Considering I''m running Rebels with a custom card tax, we'll see how I end up doing with my fixed list.

well i mean baba, to be fair, when we adjusted the points cost of gunboats, we did so saying that they got destroyed by trip jumps, so it was fine. If you face gunboats, just make a CCL trip jump list.

Oops. Now, jousting wise....Gunboats may be top tier. Nothing else in the game gives you that much accuracy, HP, and attack dice. The onus is on the other list to be able to not only kill a gunboat a turn, but also not lose a single ship because once you do, you can't kill a gunboat a turn, and you're already losing.

The dial isn't great but it's not unusable, either. Better than a Y-Wing dial. at the same statline as a Y-Wing, with almost identical upgrade slots, swapping torps for missiles and turret for cannon.... for 2 points cheaper. The costing on the gunboat did not and still does not make sense.

I don't think Palp Aces could do it against this list. Palp Aces have such a low offensive power, you can't drop 40 HP of stuff before you run out of modifiers and lose a ship. It would take Soontir and Vader at best 2 turns to kill one gunboat. This matchup relies almost entirely on asteroid placement and how well you utilize it to split up the gunboats. A single bad turn for the Palp player could be the game, the same is not true the other way around.

Dengaroo i don't think could do it either, like, at all. Same problem. Dengar works great when we're talking about a small amount of high AGI ships, he does not work well against a lot of high HP ships with high firepower and low AGI that zuckuss cant really do anything against. Dengar is almost incapable of rolling enough dice to kill a gunboat a turn, but all 5 gunboats are absolutely capable of rolling enough modified dice to kill Dengar in one turn. I've run 5 separate simulations for this, and 4 out of 5 times, Dengar dies on the first turn of combat, because even through countermeasures, he does not have enough modification to survive that much dice, not to mention the amount of crits rolling in. Even if Dengar doesnt die outright on turn 1, he's taking so many crits he might just end up useless. A weapons failure crit slashes his attack power. Blinded pilot also kills his attack power. Damaged cockpit means the gunboats shoot first. Structural Damage means he can't dodge damage, ever. And so on.

Positioning is also a huge problem for Dengaroo because Dengar has to telegraph where he's going and make a commitment early to try and avoid the Gunboat's arcs, whereas the Gunboats are free to react to that as they will. I think that Dengaroo has a terrible matchup here.

The best hope a list has of winning against these gunboats are probably going to be triple scum aces. Talonbane of either variety, Reach, Fenn Rau, so on. All these ships are able to get HELLA confirmed defensive modifications, such as autothrusters, glitterstim, etc. This is the one build where i think Fenn Rau with Fearlessness is actually a good idea, because you can run up at Range 1 of all of them, put like 6 damage on one gunboat that one other ship can clean up, and then start on another one with your last ship(both of whom are safe at range 3). So they either choose to shoot at Fenn who gets an additional die plus the guaranteed evade, or the turtled ships at range 3. I've run simulations of this also about 7-8 times, the gunboats have only killed Fenn once, put damage on him twice(counting the time they killed him). Then next turn, run Fenn out of there, approach with your two other ships(in this case Reach and Kihraxz Talonbane) pop glit on both of them, focus evade etc, and wipe another Gunboat, because now they cant grab TLs so they just have focuses.

Scum has probably the best tools of dealing with Gunboat nonsense. But whatever you do, don't think that jousting lists against Gunboats will work, cause it won't. They have the best jousting profile currently available in the game, bar none.

Yah my game I was using fenn cykatro and manaroo. Exploded one gunboat pretty quick with fenn at range 1, but then I bumped and manaroo hit a debris field on the same turn leaving fenn with no modifiers and only 1 of the shots at him ta range 1 (1 or 2 at range 3, 1 or 2 at range 2) and he exploded. The 4 hull and no shields means you're in big trouble if you get hit at all since you're taking a guaranteed crit. Can't just let a single hit through and be ok like you can against most lists. Wonder if you can fit talonbane (SV) fenn and zuckuss in a list together and just throw massive amounts of dice at range 1...

Yah my game I was using fenn cykatro and manaroo. Exploded one gunboat pretty quick with fenn at range 1, but then I bumped and manaroo hit a debris field on the same turn leaving fenn with no modifiers and only 1 of the shots at him ta range 1 (1 or 2 at range 3, 1 or 2 at range 2) and he exploded. The 4 hull and no shields means you're in big trouble if you get hit at all since you're taking a guaranteed crit. Can't just let a single hit through and be ok like you can against most lists. Wonder if you can fit talonbane (SV) fenn and zuckuss in a list together and just throw massive amounts of dice at range 1...

I would prefer Reach over zuckuss for the following reasons:

Has the modifiers to never get hit

Has boost and a fast, agile dial

While her attack power is lower, R4 Agro guarantees a TL. When used with Glit, you're getting guaranteed focus+TL'd 3-dice attack power.

Her up-front attack may be lower, but she's actually got a chance to not get killed on turn 1, whereas zuckuss with 1 AGI will get annihilated by the gunboats.

As for Cikatro, i feel that functions much better against Aces lists than gunboats, who don't care about AGI. You should be trying to maximize the dice you're throwing, which is why i think Reach would be the superior choice over Cikatro here.

My game 1 list was Talonbane(K), Reach, and Manaroo, and it performed exceptionally well. Custom job ensured that Talonbane got Autothrusters on top of his Engine Upgrade for free, which really makes a difference. Reach can evade every turn, get two focuses from Manny, use one to boost attack, use the TL from R4 to modify, and have focus+evade+AT on defense.

well i mean baba, to be fair, when we adjusted the points cost of gunboats, we did so saying that they got destroyed by trip jumps, so it was fine. If you face gunboats, just make a CCL trip jump list.

Oops. Now, jousting wise....Gunboats may be top tier. Nothing else in the game gives you that much accuracy, HP, and attack dice. The onus is on the other list to be able to not only kill a gunboat a turn, but also not lose a single ship because once you do, you can't kill a gunboat a turn, and you're already losing.

(....)

Scum has probably the best tools of dealing with Gunboat nonsense. But whatever you do, don't think that jousting lists against Gunboats will work, cause it won't. They have the best jousting profile currently available in the game, bar none.

I disagree with some of your proposed tactics, as you seem to sugget that Range 3 is safer than Range 1 aganst a cannon-wielding swarm. They ignore the range die from long range, but dont have the primary to tke advantage of a range 1 shot.

In my game, the gunboats dice were reasonably hot- 2 manglers killed a focused 2 agility-5 health support ship on the opening joust- but my Ghost based death star was getting 5/6 die attacks plus a 3 die Ghost dorsal turret, and killed 2 gunboats in 3 rounds before getting PS killed on the 4rd round. sticking to range 1 gave me better jousting without offering the boats a return advantage.

That was all offence, Lt Blount+Finn+FCS and Jan Ors support. My upgraded one has a better balance between offence and defence, and a better setup for the full combo that I never used because my turret kept finishing boats off each round.

Other rebel tools might be Elusiveness Nien numb and M9 Tarn, Nien ramming one gunboat to keep stress away while he forces the manglers to reroll, Tarn just forcing rerolls.

I don't think it's ever been in doubt that gunboats were going to be very strong jouster ships. The fact that the current top-dog jousters are being actively nerfed is in fact a huge surprise; most of us were expecting a hard counter of some sort rather than a targeted errata.

Maybe the gunboats are too good. I'm not saying that they definitely are not, just that we only have a handful of rounds of testing under our belt, and I don't think they've been put to a true test against hard counters. So we have informed conjecture and a small sample set of gunboats flying against what are probably not top-tier lists. So is it shocking that they're doing well? Not particularly, to me anyway.

Does it merit some direct testing of gunboats after the tournament to investigate whether a recost is necessary? So far it looks that way, but it's still just round 1.

well i mean baba, to be fair, when we adjusted the points cost of gunboats, we did so saying that they got destroyed by trip jumps, so it was fine. If you face gunboats, just make a CCL trip jump list.

Oops. Now, jousting wise....Gunboats may be top tier. Nothing else in the game gives you that much accuracy, HP, and attack dice. The onus is on the other list to be able to not only kill a gunboat a turn, but also not lose a single ship because once you do, you can't kill a gunboat a turn, and you're already losing.

(....)

Scum has probably the best tools of dealing with Gunboat nonsense. But whatever you do, don't think that jousting lists against Gunboats will work, cause it won't. They have the best jousting profile currently available in the game, bar none.

I disagree with some of your proposed tactics, as you seem to sugget that Range 3 is safer than Range 1 aganst a cannon-wielding swarm. They ignore the range die from long range, but dont have the primary to tke advantage of a range 1 shot.

In my game, the gunboats dice were reasonably hot- 2 manglers killed a focused 2 agility-5 health support ship on the opening joust- but my Ghost based death star was getting 5/6 die attacks plus a 3 die Ghost dorsal turret, and killed 2 gunboats in 3 rounds before getting PS killed on the 4rd round. sticking to range 1 gave me better jousting without offering the boats a return advantage.

That was all offence, Lt Blount+Finn+FCS and Jan Ors support. My upgraded one has a better balance between offence and defence, and a better setup for the full combo that I never used because my turret kept finishing boats off each round.

Other rebel tools might be Elusiveness Nien numb and M9 Tarn, Nien ramming one gunboat to keep stress away while he forces the manglers to reroll, Tarn just forcing rerolls.

Autothrusters. I dont care about the extra die, i care that im turning a blank to an evade. Fenn Rau can rush into Range 1 because he has a better form of AT, plus he is in fact getting the additional die from his ability. So either shoot at focus+evade+AT ships, or shoot at focus+ +1 die+ +1 evade ship.

Your tactics are too balls-out aggressive and jousty to win. Your support ships dies stupidly easy, and is based entirely around a gimmicky combo that Scum can do better. Fenn Rau also throws 5/6 dice attacks, Talonbane ALSO throws 5 dice attacks, and Reach can punch reasonably far above her weight class. The difference is that those ships are capable of surviving the initial alpha without the whole list falling apart.

Well, you're the one who made it to round 2, so it's on you to prove your theories.

Best I can hope for is to beat the loser's bracket and face a gunboat in round 3.

well i mean baba, to be fair, when we adjusted the points cost of gunboats, we did so saying that they got destroyed by trip jumps, so it was fine. If you face gunboats, just make a CCL trip jump list.

Oops. Now, jousting wise....Gunboats may be top tier. Nothing else in the game gives you that much accuracy, HP, and attack dice. The onus is on the other list to be able to not only kill a gunboat a turn, but also not lose a single ship because once you do, you can't kill a gunboat a turn, and you're already losing.

(....)

Scum has probably the best tools of dealing with Gunboat nonsense. But whatever you do, don't think that jousting lists against Gunboats will work, cause it won't. They have the best jousting profile currently available in the game, bar none.

I disagree with some of your proposed tactics, as you seem to sugget that Range 3 is safer than Range 1 aganst a cannon-wielding swarm. They ignore the range die from long range, but dont have the primary to tke advantage of a range 1 shot.

In my game, the gunboats dice were reasonably hot- 2 manglers killed a focused 2 agility-5 health support ship on the opening joust- but my Ghost based death star was getting 5/6 die attacks plus a 3 die Ghost dorsal turret, and killed 2 gunboats in 3 rounds before getting PS killed on the 4rd round. sticking to range 1 gave me better jousting without offering the boats a return advantage.

That was all offence, Lt Blount+Finn+FCS and Jan Ors support. My upgraded one has a better balance between offence and defence, and a better setup for the full combo that I never used because my turret kept finishing boats off each round.

Other rebel tools might be Elusiveness Nien numb and M9 Tarn, Nien ramming one gunboat to keep stress away while he forces the manglers to reroll, Tarn just forcing rerolls.

Autothrusters. I dont care about the extra die, i care that im turning a blank to an evade. Fenn Rau can rush into Range 1 because he has a better form of AT, plus he is in fact getting the additional die from his ability. So either shoot at focus+evade+AT ships, or shoot at focus+ +1 die+ +1 evade ship.

Your tactics are too balls-out aggressive and jousty to win. Your support ships dies stupidly easy, and is based entirely around a gimmicky combo that Scum can do better. Fenn Rau also throws 5/6 dice attacks, Talonbane ALSO throws 5 dice attacks, and Reach can punch reasonably far above her weight class. The difference is that those ships are capable of surviving the initial alpha without the whole list falling apart.

While the matchups for the tournament are going to be determined by winners and losers, you guys can always settle the question in a vassal match, rather than a forum dogfight...

Yah my game I was using fenn cykatro and manaroo. Exploded one gunboat pretty quick with fenn at range 1, but then I bumped and manaroo hit a debris field on the same turn leaving fenn with no modifiers and only 1 of the shots at him ta range 1 (1 or 2 at range 3, 1 or 2 at range 2) and he exploded. The 4 hull and no shields means you're in big trouble if you get hit at all since you're taking a guaranteed crit. Can't just let a single hit through and be ok like you can against most lists. Wonder if you can fit talonbane (SV) fenn and zuckuss in a list together and just throw massive amounts of dice at range 1...

I would prefer Reach over zuckuss for the following reasons:

Has the modifiers to never get hit

Has boost and a fast, agile dial

While her attack power is lower, R4 Agro guarantees a TL. When used with Glit, you're getting guaranteed focus+TL'd 3-dice attack power.

Her up-front attack may be lower, but she's actually got a chance to not get killed on turn 1, whereas zuckuss with 1 AGI will get annihilated by the gunboats.

As for Cikatro, i feel that functions much better against Aces lists than gunboats, who don't care about AGI. You should be trying to maximize the dice you're throwing, which is why i think Reach would be the superior choice over Cikatro here.

My game 1 list was Talonbane(K), Reach, and Manaroo, and it performed exceptionally well. Custom job ensured that Talonbane got Autothrusters on top of his Engine Upgrade for free, which really makes a difference. Reach can evade every turn, get two focuses from Manny, use one to boost attack, use the TL from R4 to modify, and have focus+evade+AT on defense.

Oh I agree zuckuss will die fast against gunboats. And cikatro definitely isn't great against gunobats, but I didn't know for usre what I was gonna be playign against and wanted to try him out . He's definitely designed to kill aces as opposed to low agi. Not sure I love reach that much either though. You can get 1 round of focused/TL attack at 3 dice with glitterstim. After that, if you want to have 3 attack dice, you have to spend your focus token to roll the extra die, then you have TL to modify the attack, but no defensive modification outsdie of tokens from manaroo. If manaroo doesn't get actions for some reason, is dead, or you want to pass tokens to talonbane you're stuck.

And I'd be tempted to go SV talonbane over Kihraxz. After a 4 point engine upgrade, you're at 32 points anyway, though you save another 2 points with the free autothrusters. SV version gains the extra agility on top of repositioning options. If my SV fix had gotten through (or talonbane had been 2 points cheaper since it didn't) probably wouldn't even be a question. As it is depends on the points you ahve to spend I guess.

well i mean baba, to be fair, when we adjusted the points cost of gunboats, we did so saying that they got destroyed by trip jumps, so it was fine. If you face gunboats, just make a CCL trip jump list.

Oops. Now, jousting wise....Gunboats may be top tier. Nothing else in the game gives you that much accuracy, HP, and attack dice. The onus is on the other list to be able to not only kill a gunboat a turn, but also not lose a single ship because once you do, you can't kill a gunboat a turn, and you're already losing.

(....)

Scum has probably the best tools of dealing with Gunboat nonsense. But whatever you do, don't think that jousting lists against Gunboats will work, cause it won't. They have the best jousting profile currently available in the game, bar none.

I disagree with some of your proposed tactics, as you seem to sugget that Range 3 is safer than Range 1 aganst a cannon-wielding swarm. They ignore the range die from long range, but dont have the primary to tke advantage of a range 1 shot.

In my game, the gunboats dice were reasonably hot- 2 manglers killed a focused 2 agility-5 health support ship on the opening joust- but my Ghost based death star was getting 5/6 die attacks plus a 3 die Ghost dorsal turret, and killed 2 gunboats in 3 rounds before getting PS killed on the 4rd round. sticking to range 1 gave me better jousting without offering the boats a return advantage.

That was all offence, Lt Blount+Finn+FCS and Jan Ors support. My upgraded one has a better balance between offence and defence, and a better setup for the full combo that I never used because my turret kept finishing boats off each round.

Other rebel tools might be Elusiveness Nien numb and M9 Tarn, Nien ramming one gunboat to keep stress away while he forces the manglers to reroll, Tarn just forcing rerolls.

Autothrusters. I dont care about the extra die, i care that im turning a blank to an evade. Fenn Rau can rush into Range 1 because he has a better form of AT, plus he is in fact getting the additional die from his ability. So either shoot at focus+evade+AT ships, or shoot at focus+ +1 die+ +1 evade ship.

Your tactics are too balls-out aggressive and jousty to win. Your support ships dies stupidly easy, and is based entirely around a gimmicky combo that Scum can do better. Fenn Rau also throws 5/6 dice attacks, Talonbane ALSO throws 5 dice attacks, and Reach can punch reasonably far above her weight class. The difference is that those ships are capable of surviving the initial alpha without the whole list falling apart.

I don't really feel that reach punches above her weight class. All hera bility does is turn her into a 3 attack ship at the cost of her focus token, which requires you to have an outside source of modifiers if you want any for defense, requiring you to spend more on it. The biggest thing reach has going for her IMO is that she has the evade action, but then you again need an outside source of tokens (such as manaroo, which means you're spending a lot of points and losing an offense option) or PTL to be able to get focus and evade, plus r4 to get a TL so you can still modify your attack. Meanwhile, I could just take old teroch with title and be at range 1 and get the same evade token the action would give reach while taking away opponent's tokens. Just not as good at long range. Fearlessness old teroch is 1 point cheaper than a ptl/r4/glitterstim/autothrusters reach, and basically just loses the evade at range 2 and 3, but isn't limited to greens and is less vulnerable to blocking.

(Talonbane could also throw 6 hits with fearlessness if you wanted to give it to him)

Sadly i cant just run 4 comcord fawn aces with fearlessness and title since it doesnt have anything custom in it. I suspext that list could outjoust gunboats if you cam arrange to be at range 1 for the first round of combat.

Yah my game I was using fenn cykatro and manaroo. Exploded one gunboat pretty quick with fenn at range 1, but then I bumped and manaroo hit a debris field on the same turn leaving fenn with no modifiers and only 1 of the shots at him ta range 1 (1 or 2 at range 3, 1 or 2 at range 2) and he exploded. The 4 hull and no shields means you're in big trouble if you get hit at all since you're taking a guaranteed crit. Can't just let a single hit through and be ok like you can against most lists. Wonder if you can fit talonbane (SV) fenn and zuckuss in a list together and just throw massive amounts of dice at range 1...

I would prefer Reach over zuckuss for the following reasons:

Has the modifiers to never get hit

Has boost and a fast, agile dial

While her attack power is lower, R4 Agro guarantees a TL. When used with Glit, you're getting guaranteed focus+TL'd 3-dice attack power.

Her up-front attack may be lower, but she's actually got a chance to not get killed on turn 1, whereas zuckuss with 1 AGI will get annihilated by the gunboats.

As for Cikatro, i feel that functions much better against Aces lists than gunboats, who don't care about AGI. You should be trying to maximize the dice you're throwing, which is why i think Reach would be the superior choice over Cikatro here.

My game 1 list was Talonbane(K), Reach, and Manaroo, and it performed exceptionally well. Custom job ensured that Talonbane got Autothrusters on top of his Engine Upgrade for free, which really makes a difference. Reach can evade every turn, get two focuses from Manny, use one to boost attack, use the TL from R4 to modify, and have focus+evade+AT on defense.

Oh I agree zuckuss will die fast against gunboats. And cikatro definitely isn't great against gunobats, but I didn't know for usre what I was gonna be playign against and wanted to try him out . He's definitely designed to kill aces as opposed to low agi. Not sure I love reach that much either though. You can get 1 round of focused/TL attack at 3 dice with glitterstim. After that, if you want to have 3 attack dice, you have to spend your focus token to roll the extra die, then you have TL to modify the attack, but no defensive modification outsdie of tokens from manaroo. If manaroo doesn't get actions for some reason, is dead, or you want to pass tokens to talonbane you're stuck.

And I'd be tempted to go SV talonbane over Kihraxz. After a 4 point engine upgrade, you're at 32 points anyway, though you save another 2 points with the free autothrusters. SV version gains the extra agility on top of repositioning options. If my SV fix had gotten through (or talonbane had been 2 points cheaper since it didn't) probably wouldn't even be a question. As it is depends on the points you ahve to spend I guess.

well i mean baba, to be fair, when we adjusted the points cost of gunboats, we did so saying that they got destroyed by trip jumps, so it was fine. If you face gunboats, just make a CCL trip jump list.

Oops. Now, jousting wise....Gunboats may be top tier. Nothing else in the game gives you that much accuracy, HP, and attack dice. The onus is on the other list to be able to not only kill a gunboat a turn, but also not lose a single ship because once you do, you can't kill a gunboat a turn, and you're already losing.

(....)

Scum has probably the best tools of dealing with Gunboat nonsense. But whatever you do, don't think that jousting lists against Gunboats will work, cause it won't. They have the best jousting profile currently available in the game, bar none.

I disagree with some of your proposed tactics, as you seem to sugget that Range 3 is safer than Range 1 aganst a cannon-wielding swarm. They ignore the range die from long range, but dont have the primary to tke advantage of a range 1 shot.

In my game, the gunboats dice were reasonably hot- 2 manglers killed a focused 2 agility-5 health support ship on the opening joust- but my Ghost based death star was getting 5/6 die attacks plus a 3 die Ghost dorsal turret, and killed 2 gunboats in 3 rounds before getting PS killed on the 4rd round. sticking to range 1 gave me better jousting without offering the boats a return advantage.

That was all offence, Lt Blount+Finn+FCS and Jan Ors support. My upgraded one has a better balance between offence and defence, and a better setup for the full combo that I never used because my turret kept finishing boats off each round.

Other rebel tools might be Elusiveness Nien numb and M9 Tarn, Nien ramming one gunboat to keep stress away while he forces the manglers to reroll, Tarn just forcing rerolls.

Autothrusters. I dont care about the extra die, i care that im turning a blank to an evade. Fenn Rau can rush into Range 1 because he has a better form of AT, plus he is in fact getting the additional die from his ability. So either shoot at focus+evade+AT ships, or shoot at focus+ +1 die+ +1 evade ship.

Your tactics are too balls-out aggressive and jousty to win. Your support ships dies stupidly easy, and is based entirely around a gimmicky combo that Scum can do better. Fenn Rau also throws 5/6 dice attacks, Talonbane ALSO throws 5 dice attacks, and Reach can punch reasonably far above her weight class. The difference is that those ships are capable of surviving the initial alpha without the whole list falling apart.

I don't really feel that reach punches above her weight class. All hera bility does is turn her into a 3 attack ship at the cost of her focus token, which requires you to have an outside source of modifiers if you want any for defense, requiring you to spend more on it. The biggest thing reach has going for her IMO is that she has the evade action, but then you again need an outside source of tokens (such as manaroo, which means you're spending a lot of points and losing an offense option) or PTL to be able to get focus and evade, plus r4 to get a TL so you can still modify your attack. Meanwhile, I could just take old teroch with title and be at range 1 and get the same evade token the action would give reach while taking away opponent's tokens. Just not as good at long range. Fearlessness old teroch is 1 point cheaper than a ptl/r4/glitterstim/autothrusters reach, and basically just loses the evade at range 2 and 3, but isn't limited to greens and is less vulnerable to blocking.

(Talonbane could also throw 6 hits with fearlessness if you wanted to give it to him)

My experience with Reach has been pretty solid. The great thing about the TB/Reach/Fenn list is that Fenn does a s***load of damage to one ship, TB finishes it off, and Reach can use her normal primary to start on another, that way everyone still has defensive modifiers. Additionally, out of the whole squad, Reach is feared the least and as such is targeted last, because Reach really is the weakest in the squad(but she's cheap and effectively has a 3 die primary with the right loadout, which is why i take her). By the time Reach is alone, it's probably just one damaged gunboat left anyways, which is easy for Reach to clean up.

I would say to not underestimate the value of Reach. Just like people ignore a lone A-Wing and pay for it, people will ignore Reach and regret it. But what else were they to do? Ignore TB? Ignore Fenn? No, the smartest play is to ignore Reach until everyone else is dead.

Old Teroch can't be ignored because he strips modifiers, which they need to kill you. In a weird way, because Old Teroch is better, he's worse.

Plus you can't put anything on him. Reach has so much more space for equipment than Terry does, which will probably end up keeping her alive longer than Terry would.

Yah my game I was using fenn cykatro and manaroo. Exploded one gunboat pretty quick with fenn at range 1, but then I bumped and manaroo hit a debris field on the same turn leaving fenn with no modifiers and only 1 of the shots at him ta range 1 (1 or 2 at range 3, 1 or 2 at range 2) and he exploded. The 4 hull and no shields means you're in big trouble if you get hit at all since you're taking a guaranteed crit. Can't just let a single hit through and be ok like you can against most lists. Wonder if you can fit talonbane (SV) fenn and zuckuss in a list together and just throw massive amounts of dice at range 1...

I would prefer Reach over zuckuss for the following reasons:

Has the modifiers to never get hit

Has boost and a fast, agile dial

While her attack power is lower, R4 Agro guarantees a TL. When used with Glit, you're getting guaranteed focus+TL'd 3-dice attack power.

Her up-front attack may be lower, but she's actually got a chance to not get killed on turn 1, whereas zuckuss with 1 AGI will get annihilated by the gunboats.

As for Cikatro, i feel that functions much better against Aces lists than gunboats, who don't care about AGI. You should be trying to maximize the dice you're throwing, which is why i think Reach would be the superior choice over Cikatro here.

My game 1 list was Talonbane(K), Reach, and Manaroo, and it performed exceptionally well. Custom job ensured that Talonbane got Autothrusters on top of his Engine Upgrade for free, which really makes a difference. Reach can evade every turn, get two focuses from Manny, use one to boost attack, use the TL from R4 to modify, and have focus+evade+AT on defense.

Oh I agree zuckuss will die fast against gunboats. And cikatro definitely isn't great against gunobats, but I didn't know for usre what I was gonna be playign against and wanted to try him out . He's definitely designed to kill aces as opposed to low agi. Not sure I love reach that much either though. You can get 1 round of focused/TL attack at 3 dice with glitterstim. After that, if you want to have 3 attack dice, you have to spend your focus token to roll the extra die, then you have TL to modify the attack, but no defensive modification outsdie of tokens from manaroo. If manaroo doesn't get actions for some reason, is dead, or you want to pass tokens to talonbane you're stuck.

And I'd be tempted to go SV talonbane over Kihraxz. After a 4 point engine upgrade, you're at 32 points anyway, though you save another 2 points with the free autothrusters. SV version gains the extra agility on top of repositioning options. If my SV fix had gotten through (or talonbane had been 2 points cheaper since it didn't) probably wouldn't even be a question. As it is depends on the points you ahve to spend I guess.

well i mean baba, to be fair, when we adjusted the points cost of gunboats, we did so saying that they got destroyed by trip jumps, so it was fine. If you face gunboats, just make a CCL trip jump list.

Oops. Now, jousting wise....Gunboats may be top tier. Nothing else in the game gives you that much accuracy, HP, and attack dice. The onus is on the other list to be able to not only kill a gunboat a turn, but also not lose a single ship because once you do, you can't kill a gunboat a turn, and you're already losing.

(....)

Scum has probably the best tools of dealing with Gunboat nonsense. But whatever you do, don't think that jousting lists against Gunboats will work, cause it won't. They have the best jousting profile currently available in the game, bar none.

I disagree with some of your proposed tactics, as you seem to sugget that Range 3 is safer than Range 1 aganst a cannon-wielding swarm. They ignore the range die from long range, but dont have the primary to tke advantage of a range 1 shot.

In my game, the gunboats dice were reasonably hot- 2 manglers killed a focused 2 agility-5 health support ship on the opening joust- but my Ghost based death star was getting 5/6 die attacks plus a 3 die Ghost dorsal turret, and killed 2 gunboats in 3 rounds before getting PS killed on the 4rd round. sticking to range 1 gave me better jousting without offering the boats a return advantage.

That was all offence, Lt Blount+Finn+FCS and Jan Ors support. My upgraded one has a better balance between offence and defence, and a better setup for the full combo that I never used because my turret kept finishing boats off each round.

Other rebel tools might be Elusiveness Nien numb and M9 Tarn, Nien ramming one gunboat to keep stress away while he forces the manglers to reroll, Tarn just forcing rerolls.

Autothrusters. I dont care about the extra die, i care that im turning a blank to an evade. Fenn Rau can rush into Range 1 because he has a better form of AT, plus he is in fact getting the additional die from his ability. So either shoot at focus+evade+AT ships, or shoot at focus+ +1 die+ +1 evade ship.

Your tactics are too balls-out aggressive and jousty to win. Your support ships dies stupidly easy, and is based entirely around a gimmicky combo that Scum can do better. Fenn Rau also throws 5/6 dice attacks, Talonbane ALSO throws 5 dice attacks, and Reach can punch reasonably far above her weight class. The difference is that those ships are capable of surviving the initial alpha without the whole list falling apart.

I don't really feel that reach punches above her weight class. All hera bility does is turn her into a 3 attack ship at the cost of her focus token, which requires you to have an outside source of modifiers if you want any for defense, requiring you to spend more on it. The biggest thing reach has going for her IMO is that she has the evade action, but then you again need an outside source of tokens (such as manaroo, which means you're spending a lot of points and losing an offense option) or PTL to be able to get focus and evade, plus r4 to get a TL so you can still modify your attack. Meanwhile, I could just take old teroch with title and be at range 1 and get the same evade token the action would give reach while taking away opponent's tokens. Just not as good at long range. Fearlessness old teroch is 1 point cheaper than a ptl/r4/glitterstim/autothrusters reach, and basically just loses the evade at range 2 and 3, but isn't limited to greens and is less vulnerable to blocking.

(Talonbane could also throw 6 hits with fearlessness if you wanted to give it to him)

My experience with Reach has been pretty solid. The great thing about the TB/Reach/Fenn list is that Fenn does a s***load of damage to one ship, TB finishes it off, and Reach can use her normal primary to start on another, that way everyone still has defensive modifiers. Additionally, out of the whole squad, Reach is feared the least and as such is targeted last, because Reach really is the weakest in the squad(but she's cheap and effectively has a 3 die primary with the right loadout, which is why i take her). By the time Reach is alone, it's probably just one damaged gunboat left anyways, which is easy for Reach to clean up.

I would say to not underestimate the value of Reach. Just like people ignore a lone A-Wing and pay for it, people will ignore Reach and regret it. But what else were they to do? Ignore TB? Ignore Fenn? No, the smartest play is to ignore Reach until everyone else is dead.

Old Teroch can't be ignored because he strips modifiers, which they need to kill you. In a weird way, because Old Teroch is better, he's worse.

Plus you can't put anything on him. Reach has so much more space for equipment than Terry does, which will probably end up keeping her alive longer than Terry would.

If I'm running Fenn, SV Talonbane and Old Teroch I'm perfectly happy with them targeting old teroch and leaving the two nukes alive longer. And while reach has more space for equipment, she has to USE that space to get to where she can actually have a 3 die primary AND modify it at the same time. At the very least 2 points into r4 agromech to do that. Then if she wants a defensive modifier too, she has to have PTL to get an evade (or choose not to spend the focus on attack, leaving her with an unmodified 2 attack primary). The evade action is really all reach has over teroch (and 2 shields in palce of 2 hull). Teroch gets a 3 attack primary no matter what, so even if he saves modifiers for defense he's hitting harder than reach. At range 1 he's actually harder to kill than reach is, because he gets an evade against all attacks at that range instead of just 1.

I don't think reach is *bad*, just...not necessarily better than other options. If the v-wing had a native 3 attack that'd be a different story.

So after talking with DarthDane about the Gunboat a bit, I realized that it is indeed, almost for certain, undercosted by at least a point, probably 2.

Let's look at this comparison for a moment-

Blue sq B-wing- 22 Points

Rho sq Gunboat w/ HLC- 23 points

For a point more, you get an extra dice at range 2-3, and negate a bonus defense dice at range 3 for the opponent. you lose an extra die at range 1, but that's hardly a heavy penalty in comparison. Dials are comparable, maybe even leaning towards the boat, and all other stat attributes are highly comparable (with the gunboat losing out on the hull v shield trade).

Now I still feel like top level meta squads at least meet what they are capable of doing, so the question really is now do we want our custom cards to meet the standards of the cards that are above the power curve to assure everything is highly competitive, or do we want it all to land on the power curve as to maintain the status quo with new elements in play?

So after talking with DarthDane about the Gunboat a bit, I realized that it is indeed, almost for certain, undercosted by at least a point, probably 2.

Let's look at this comparison for a moment-

Blue sq B-wing- 22 Points

Rho sq Gunboat w/ HLC- 23 points

For a point more, you get an extra dice at range 2-3, and negate a bonus defense dice at range 3 for the opponent. you lose an extra die at range 1, but that's hardly a heavy penalty in comparison. Dials are comparable, maybe even leaning towards the boat, and all other stat attributes are highly comparable (with the gunboat losing out on the hull v shield trade).

Now I still feel like top level meta squads at least meet what they are capable of doing, so the question really is now do we want our custom cards to meet the standards of the cards that are above the power curve to assure everything is highly competitive, or do we want it all to land on the power curve as to maintain the status quo with new elements in play?

I firmly believe that nothing in this tournament should be on the upper edge of competitiveness. Nothing should be top-tier. Why? Because then there is no reason to run any of the other custom cards or ships, because let's be honest, submissions are going to significantly vary in terms of their competitiveness. Some will hit above the curve, some on it, and some below. And, additionally, it is also very probable that nothing that made the vote is capable of countering that top-tier option, leaving it with no legal competition. I was labbing the 5 ManglerRhos against Brobots and it was looking pretty good for the Brobots until i realized that BroBots build cant fit any custom cards. So that option was gone.

I want to say that i was very, very much in favor of increasing the gunboats cost by at least 1 point, if not 2 across the board, and said as much in the committee. Unfortunately at the time, trip jumps were a legal build and could, in fact, fit the requisite custom upgrade to make it a legal squad. With that option gone, i do not believe that 5 Rhos have any significant competition.

I would ask competitors kindly to avoid using 5 Rhos out of respect for the balance of the tournament, but i know that prizes are on the line here, so i understand if you will continue to use them. If anything, i feel partially responsible for this. I could have pushed the issue harder, and i didn't.