After seeing the results from Worlds and the top lists, I am starting to doubt the effectiveness of bringing large ships to tournaments. They simply take up too much points, and it looks to be a better investment to get 2-3 ships instead.

Has anyone already swapped their large ships for something else?

Who is still planning on bringing large ships to tournaments and how are you making up for your large liability?

After seeing the results from Worlds and the top lists, I am starting to doubt the effectiveness of bringing large ships to tournaments. They simply take up too much points, and it looks to be a better investment to get 2-3 ships instead.

Has anyone already swapped their large ships for something else?

Who is still planning on bringing large ships to tournaments and how are you making up for your large liability?

Not really.

On Saturday my Vader ISD-I whipped some serious ass (and everyone else were bringing 1-2 ISDs or an MC80).

The tournament before that the same.

But I am considering a small-ship build for the regionals, but that's mostly to be contrary.

Took 2nd at Chicago regionals with MC80 Command Cruiser (Home One title) as my lynchpin. 3 way tie at 25 for 1st place, about 150 MOV between 1st and 3rd.

I specifically needed the title, so I can safely say that I wouldn't have won with an equal amount in flotillas, AFmk2, or squads. If I could have stuck that title on any ship, Im not sure I would have gone for a different one. Liberty and AFmk2 can't take the beating that the home ones can.

But just a few weeks ago, we thought the medium ship was dead. JJ showed us wrong at worlds. Just takes one good player to revitalize a ship by dominating in a tourney.

Well it is nice to hear contradicting results. Most certainly in my area there is a lot of small and medium ships, and I typically fly a Liberty and some small support ships.

Rebels locally are a lot of Liberty/HomeOne + Flotilla + MC30/AFmk2 style builds. I typically run double MC80 (Home ones)

Single ISD + Support is kind of the popular Imperial build. Lots of Raiders.

I don't think ship size is what matters most ATM.

Squads are.

Rhymer has suddenly reared his ugly, medium-range head (locally I mean).

Three of five Imps had Rhymerballs of various flavors on Saturday. All of them with at least 1 ISD.

The other two Imps were me (Vader-ISD and fighter screen) and an ISD/Interdictor/Raider/Gozanti/Screen build.

I only fought other Imps, so not sure about the rebels, but I think they went light on squads.

AFAIK the squad game largely decided the outcome of most matches, with the Rhymerballs wrecking everything if left to bomb.

While worlds is always a nice barometer, it can be polarizing when viewed in a vacuum. A lot of people took more ships and more full fighter lists so it looks like dominance. Before worlds the major tournaments were dominated by all ship lists for quite some time but we did start to see a change. I'd just caution against the idea that you "have to take/not take x or you'll lose" mindset. In reality, the fleet builds seem to always fall in the middle ground so don't feel precluded from playing how you want.

1. The next major tournaments will probably eventually see the pendulum swing the other way with an all ship list and then everyone will jump on board the fighter hate.

2. If it doesn't swing to somewhat of a middle ground and fighters continue to dominate, expect FFG to take matters in their own hand and fix it.

Agree with ImpstarDeuces - I think a lot of people get caught up in the "must take this or you'll lose" mentality. End of the day, you can have Rhymer, Demolisher and any other "OP" upgrades going, if you can't fly them you're not going to win.

I recently ran an Ackbar Lib/3x TRC90/ 2x Slicer Transports with 0 fighters and it did pretty good, but only after a 7 or 8 previous games involving my Liberty exploding lots. It's all in the learning. Fighters (or anything else for that matter) aren't essential.

Not ever giving up my ISD. Ever.

Will report back on Florida regionals after next Saturday.

Not ever giving up my double ISD-II list.. Ever.

While worlds is always a nice barometer, it can be polarizing when viewed in a vacuum. A lot of people took more ships and more full fighter lists so it looks like dominance. Before worlds the major tournaments were dominated by all ship lists for quite some time but we did start to see a change. I'd just caution against the idea that you "have to take/not take x or you'll lose" mindset. In reality, the fleet builds seem to always fall in the middle ground so don't feel precluded from playing how you want.

1. The next major tournaments will probably eventually see the pendulum swing the other way with an all ship list and then everyone will jump on board the fighter hate.

2. If it doesn't swing to somewhat of a middle ground and fighters continue to dominate, expect FFG to take matters in their own hand and fix it.

I don't have a "must take this/not take that" mindset, with the exception of Yavaris. Yavaris goes in everything. I just find it interesting that there are only 3 large ships, and their exposure time is not very high because they can make or break your game. We also have 2 more small ships coming out, which may bias the game towards more MSU. Perhaps their point value will be low enough to allow players to once again run large ships.

But as it has been pointed out before, is it cost effective to run a 140+ point ship, and run against a swarm of flotillas, Raiders, CR90s, and MC30s? If you don't have GT, you might be in some trouble because you can't pick off multiple ships in 1 turn from your major arc.

The point of this is to consolidate all the talk about large ships in fleet builds. I've seen this topic pop up in other threads and I made an observation that a lot of people shy away from high point value ships. It is easier to win when you lose a 30 point flotilla than a 100 point ship.

There will always be deviation from the norm. This is expected. But from an analytical stand point, 5 people saying they fly large ships does not represent the community when 95 people do not run large ships. People are winning with large ships, just not as often as it was in Wave 2. Wave 3 is the most represented expansion in the game right now, and I think it it because people traded in their ISD and MC80 for MSU/squad style.

Agree with ImpstarDeuces - I think a lot of people get caught up in the "must take this or you'll lose" mentality. End of the day, you can have Rhymer, Demolisher and any other "OP" upgrades going, if you can't fly them you're not going to win.

I recently ran an Ackbar Lib/3x TRC90/ 2x Slicer Transports with 0 fighters and it did pretty good, but only after a 7 or 8 previous games involving my Liberty exploding lots. It's all in the learning. Fighters (or anything else for that matter) aren't essential.

How does one run a Liberty with Ackbar? Do you just ignore him on the Liberty and use it as a tactical wrench/sledgehammer for the contrast against the TRC-90s?

In a way, this touches on one of my very first observations of Armada. Contrary to X-Wing (or ST:AW) you get a fixed number of defense tokens, which is a fixed number of attacks you can defend against. This means that on a turn where you make a single, massive attack, it can easily be defended against. A brace cuts the damage in half instantly, and a dodge or redirect can trim back the damage that remains.

On the other hand, if I get to roll, say, three blue dice against your ship 5 times in a turn, you are going to feel some of that. Many small attacks are better than one large attack.

Of course, particularly for attacking small ships, one large attack is not to be sneezed at either.

Especially as there is both defence mitigation, and defense strengthening, to those base tokens, through upgrades as well...

I'm looking forward to the new Objectives. I just have a gut feel that there's going to be something there thats large-ship centric...

All three of my games at Vancouver had an ISD in my opponents fleet

Agree with ImpstarDeuces - I think a lot of people get caught up in the "must take this or you'll lose" mentality. End of the day, you can have Rhymer, Demolisher and any other "OP" upgrades going, if you can't fly them you're not going to win.

I recently ran an Ackbar Lib/3x TRC90/ 2x Slicer Transports with 0 fighters and it did pretty good, but only after a 7 or 8 previous games involving my Liberty exploding lots. It's all in the learning. Fighters (or anything else for that matter) aren't essential.

How does one run a Liberty with Ackbar? Do you just ignore him on the Liberty and use it as a tactical wrench/sledgehammer for the contrast against the TRC-90s?

Pretty much exactly that - the Liberty flanking with engine techs speed 4 can occasionally benefit from a cheeky Ackbar if needed. Maybe a little counter intuitive at first, but it seems to work (I love the Lib so much I make it work )

Something to consider, with the rise of floats people are replacing their XI7s with H9s in lists to combat the float presence. This means Adv. Projectors has some room to return in the game allowing for several large ships to wield their wealth of shields to survive for extra turn or two.

People still play them, but that's not the question. The question is if its worth it to play large ships, or do you get scuttled by the control of smaller ship and or mass squadrons on a consistent basis that makes large ships statistically unsound. Do not be noise-confused by conjecture.

Something to consider, with the rise of floats people are replacing their XI7s with H9s in lists to combat the float presence. This means Adv. Projectors has some room to return in the game allowing for several large ships to wield their wealth of shields to survive for extra turn or two.

Yea that's a good point. Something I haven't considered.

The big ship-focused archetype has never been a strong fleet build, even in wave 2 (they got chewed up by Ackbar, sadly). If anything, they're more competitive now than they ever have been. With flotillas around, you can pad your activations far better with big ships than you could earlier AND big ships themselves are the best flotilla hunters available provided they're outfitted correctly. My flotillas want to be nowhere near a large ship with Gunnery Teams and some means of getting Accuracy results and/or Intel Officer. Nowhere even close. The same kind of configuration is still effective against other meatier ships too. We're just waiting for the meta to catch up to it, methinks.

This is particularly true with Imperials, where VSDs simply aren't maneuverable enough to be a reliable threat to flotillas* and ISDs are the only other good option that rolls enough dice at a long enough range to pop flotillas and has the turbolaser slot for H9s or Quad Turbolaser Cannons (+Sensor Team or other shenanigans to fish for that red accuracy).

One of the biggest pitfalls for large ships is non-ideal upgrade suites. It's fairly common to see players not outfit them properly. They do get just the 1-2 big attacks per turn, so any upgrades that make that damage more likely to stick (Intel Officer, H9s, XI7s), less likely to suffer from bad rolls (Leading Shots), and/or more likely to get maximum value from your two allowed attacks (Gunnery Team) should be prioritized.

*Once Jerrjerrod is released, this will be incorrect.

If you take a look at the Regionals Data under Fleet Composition I added something to track fleets containing large ships. The sample size is currently too small, but it will be worth watching.

I appreciate the fact that the way bases and maneuver work, the learning curve for bringing multiple attacks to bear is fairly high (even getting your squads coordinated is not a trivial thing). So in that respect, I'm totally fine with large ships, with admittedly easier to fling dice pools, suffering an efficiency penalty.

I'm finding that the balance of points vs. efficiency is actually getting better with the new releases: this is an amazing feat! Specifically in the Turbolaser upgrade ecosystem- I'm really looking forward to see how FFG brings balance to the force with future releases.

All that being said, I likes me my ISD's- they're not terribad, which is good enough for me.

In a way, this touches on one of my very first observations of Armada. Contrary to X-Wing (or ST:AW) you get a fixed number of defense tokens, which is a fixed number of attacks you can defend against. This means that on a turn where you make a single, massive attack, it can easily be defended against. A brace cuts the damage in half instantly, and a dodge or redirect can trim back the damage that remains.

On the other hand, if I get to roll, say, three blue dice against your ship 5 times in a turn, you are going to feel some of that. Many small attacks are better than one large attack.

The counterbalance to this is that it's dramatically more points-efficient to put upgrades on one large ship than on multiple small ones.

I don't think big ships are having an issue as much as people who want to play big ships are having an issue with a relatively balanced game that tries to mesh all the elements together. Are big ships good? Hell yes. So are small ships in numbers and squadrons when played right. Will big ships continue to get love and support from the community? Yes and so will the other elements of the game.

Armada isn't just about the ISD and MC80 and it never should be but those ships do have support and are good choices, but so are smaller ships and squadrons. But if you yourself are a fan of big ships and get out played by other play styles that doesn't mean big ships are going away anytime soon, it means players need to adjust their game to the current game itself.

I think the game is where it should be, a mix bag of what works for your play style. There is no one way to build a fleet.

Not ever giving up my ISD. Ever.

Will report back on Florida regionals after next Saturday.

Hopefully I'll see you there!