3 hours ago, Tokra said:

Yes, i had isard in the list. But to be honest, she helped me only on one game (and it didnt really matter on that match). On all other matches ir was useless to check the comands, because it was obviously what they had.

But i had as well the only tarkin (again ☺)

But without isard i would had a chance against ben. Because he had 398 and i had 400 points. Without her i could have choosen to be first player.But being second player did not help and really hurt. And cost me the game.

I had to play against ben already earlier. And in that game my main goal was not to lose to high (was a 5-6 in the end). But this tactic does not work in the final ?.

He well deserved the win. This list was better than mine, and he was flying with no errors. Sadly i was the one that kicked both lists, that did beat him (and were able to do it again), out of the match. One in the last swiss round by beating him to bad, and the other in the top 4.

Hey Tokra, well done and thanks for all your insights.

Was just wondering if you could give us some discussion of why you took Tarkin in a list with minimal token carrying ability and how you found him?

I really like Tarkin but I find him overpriced at the best of times, and to me your list (with a bunch of command 1 ships that can't carry tokens over from round to round) and only one shuttle wouldn't seem to maximise the value he has?

Well I know it's not as exciting as seeing stuff from the top tables, but Armada still looks good buried deep down the rankings so here's some images from my weekend.

Round 1 vs Milan Ostermeier:

Round 2 vs Chris Davies:

Round 3 vs Kevin Horseman:

Onto Day 2 and Round 4 vs Jean-Baptiste Belot:

Round 5 vs Alex McDonald:

Round 6 vs Daniel Peat:

And round 7 vs Rikki Porter:

2 wins and 5 losses reminded me of how much I like the tournament scoring in Armada; if you can keep your losses close and get a few big wins you can still climb back up into an alright (if a little disappointing) spot on the charts.

And as a bonus, here's the (rather poorly planned) side event on the Sunday where I teamed up with Rikki Porter against (if my memory serves me well here) Nigel and Steve. Hope they figure out what they're doing with side events before Nationals as that was a bit of a shambles at Europeans and I don't recall it being particularly good at Nationals last year either. Game itself was fun to play once we got going though!

1 hour ago, Akhrin said:

Well I know it's not as exciting as seeing stuff from the top tables, but Armada still looks good buried deep down the rankings so here's some images from my weekend.

Round 1 vs Milan Ostermeier:

Round 2 vs Chris Davies:

Round 3 vs Kevin Horseman:

Onto Day 2 and Round 4 vs Jean-Baptiste Belot:

Round 5 vs Alex McDonald:

Round 6 vs Daniel Peat:

And round 7 vs Rikki Porter:

2 wins and 5 losses reminded me of how much I like the tournament scoring in Armada; if you can keep your losses close and get a few big wins you can still climb back up into an alright (if a little disappointing) spot on the charts.

And as a bonus, here's the (rather poorly planned) side event on the Sunday where I teamed up with Rikki Porter against (if my memory serves me well here) Nigel and Steve. Hope they figure out what they're doing with side events before Nationals as that was a bit of a shambles at Europeans and I don't recall it being particularly good at Nationals last year either. Game itself was fun to play once we got goin

Number 5 was probably my favourite game of the weekend - tense and fun throughout, despite my 9/2 loss! Your token-accruing abilities were sublime!

1 minute ago, GammonLord said:

Number 5 was probably my favourite game of the weekend - tense and fun throughout, despite my 9/2 loss! Your token-accruing abilities were sublime!

Yeah, 9-2 didn't feel like the way that game was going! All came down to a couple of dice rolls mid-game, and when my MC80 escaped your MC30s intact that protected so many points and let me keep farming the mission for the rest of the game. My list didn't run as intended most of the weekend, but that was one time the plan worked.

Hi guys, (classic?)Ben here. I'm not a forum regular but I thought I'd leave my thoughts here.

I'm really pleased to have won the Euros and I have to say that all of my 9(!) opponents were excellent players. If list match ups and/or dice had gone differently, any one of them could have won the day. Dennis was particularly unlucky as originally my list was 400 points but minutes before registering my list I dropped a coms net for a 2 point bid which gave my list a huge advantage over his. I also think that people not being familiar with my list and not practicing against it was an advantage.

I designed this list back in autumn 2016 specifically to counter Rieekan-Yavaris which had become dominant in the Bristol meta after the release of flight commander and fighter co-ordination teams and the list has literally not changed since (except for the last minute 2 point bid swap). I stopped playing it in January after my local group got sick of fighting it and experimented with the wave 5 and CC stuff. After the Worlds results I thought even more people would be taking Rieekan so I went back to my old counter list. I was concerned when I couldn't see any Yavaris on the top tables but luckily my list proved to still be effective.

I was also surprised by the high activation counts. In local tournaments I am used to most lists having 4 or 5 activations but I played against 2x 5 ships, 6x 6 ships and 1x 7 ships. As I was on the top 2 tables for the whole event and had the second highest strength of schedule, I think its safe to say from this sample that the majority of the best/most successful players had 6 or 7 ship lists.

I see people debating EU vs US meta which essentially seems to boil down to "is Rieekan-Yavaris the best list?". I don't think it is and I would be surprised if all the top players at the Euros hadn't practiced repeatedly against it and were confident that they could beat it.

I am concerned that the game is turning into "taking 1 good ship, as many flotillas as you can and max fighters" but we have a new wave about to drop, so we'll have to see how it all shakes out. FFG have the data and will keep releasing new things. I'm still holding out hope for a CC-a-like box with titles and upgrades for the bad ships. In an ideal world every ship and Admiral would be viable but sadly at about half of each arn't.

p.s I think 9 is too many games. They had planned 10 but had to drop one due to a late start. Was worlds 6 games? Does anyone know why the organizers decided on a 10 game marathon? That's 2 or 3 games past the "king of swiss".

p.p.s Check out an Armada podcast I'm sometimes on, Comms Noise https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/comms-noise-a-star-wars-armada-podcast/id1163167458?mt=2

33 minutes ago, bedgar said:

p.s I think 9 is too many games. They had planned 10 but had to drop one due to a late start. Was worlds 6 games? Does anyone know why the organizers decided on a 10 game marathon? That's 2 or 3 games past the "king of swiss".

Judges are going to suggest 5 round swiss. 8 player cut for next year.

The "classic" ben thing is a forum joke. Its got a long back story now.

19 hours ago, Drasnighta said:

WINNER:

ISD-1
- Motti
- Wulff
- Flight Controlelrs
- Boosted Comms
- Exp Hangar

Gozanti
- BCC

Gozanti
- BCC

Gozanti
- CommsNet

Gozanti

Mauler
TIE Fighter x4
Rhymer
Jumpmaster x2
TIE Bomber x5

RUNNER UP:

Gladiator I
- Demolisher
- Ordnance Experts
- Engine Techs
- APTs

Gozanti
- Grand Moff Tarkin
- Director Isard

Gozanti
- Jamming Field

Gozanti

Gozanti
- BCC

Gozanti
- Vector
- Admiral Chiraneau
- Expanded Hangar Bay

Colonel Jendon
Maarek Steele
Major Rhymer
Valen Rudor
TIE Bomber x2
Mauler Mithel
Gamma Squad
Black Squad
Saber Squad

Two Jumpmasters in the Final? Nerf the darn thing alrea.... oh wait wrong game.

Congratz to the winners. The number of rounds sounds like a royal pain in the everything.

1 hour ago, bedgar said:

I was also surprised by the high activation counts. In local tournaments I am used to most lists having 4 or 5 activations but I played against 2x 5 ships, 6x 6 ships and 1x 7 ships. As I was on the top 2 tables for the whole event and had the second highest strength of schedule, I think its safe to say from this sample that the majority of the best/most successful players had 6 or 7 ship lists.

I am concerned that the game is turning into "taking 1 good ship, as many flotillas as you can and max fighters" but we have a new wave about to drop, so we'll have to see how it all shakes out.

Hey man, congrats on your win (and for evolving into Ben-Prime)!

Your instincts appear to be right.

I go into it in more detail here:

https://intelsweep.wordpress.com/2017/06/05/keeping-score-worlds-and-euros-top-8/

But basically, at Euros (where we have a more complete data set), 20.2% of the fleets were 6-7 ship lists, but they comprised 62.5% of the Top 8. You actually were an outlier! The two other 5 ship lists to make the Top 8 finished 7th and 8th respectively.

3 hours ago, bedgar said:

...
Dennis was particularly unlucky as originally my list was 400 points but minutes before registering my list I dropped a coms net for a 2 point bid which gave my list a huge advantage over his. I also think that people not being familiar with my list and not practicing against it was an advantage.

And i did the opposite. I have been at 398 and added the Jamming field (at least it was useful).
But i should have kicked the Director Isard as my teammate was suggesting.

3 hours ago, bedgar said:

p.s I think 9 is too many games. They had planned 10 but had to drop one due to a late start. Was worlds 6 games? Does anyone know why the organizers decided on a 10 game marathon? That's 2 or 3 games past the "king of swiss".

I find this many round really good. because one bad pairing or bad match is not ruining your score.
In the end an average of 7.00 was enough to get into the cut. This means if you win every game just with a score of 7, you are fine. And even if you lose a game (unless you get hammered by a 1-10), you can still get back on the top.

I had 56 (average of 8.00) and Aresius had a score of 48 (average of 6.86). We were lucky that it was a clear cut (the 5th had 47 points). So it was not the MOV that decide who gets into the cut.

But i agree, one more round would have been to much (but only because we started so late). So going down to 7 from 8 was a good call. 4 rounds a day lead to errors. A lot said they made some stupid mistakes in the last (7th) round. But this is as well part of the game (trying to keep focus, even after a long day).

i did not see anything about the range/Distance ruler so far (to many new posts).

But the new EC Range and Distance ruler are already pay to win . They give a clear advantage to the owner.

We even asked ahead of the tournament if the ruler are better than the double side ones.
And they said, they are perfect, and fitting really well.

Ok, if longer means perfect, ......

And for everyone who can not see how big the difference is: it is 4mm (0.1575 ″).

The difference from the green one to the orange or red one were 2mm. And this was already to much. These are total out of line.

They are going to check it, and the top 8 might get new ones. This time 4mm short, so they even out .

6 minutes ago, Tokra said:

i did not see anything about the range/Distance ruler so far (to many new posts).

But the new EC Range and Distance ruler are already pay to win . They give a clear advantage to the owner.

We even asked ahead of the tournament if the ruler are better than the double side ones.
And they said, they are perfect, and fitting really well.

Ok, if longer means perfect, ......

And for everyone who can not see how big the difference is: it is 4mm (0.1575 ″).

The difference from the green one to the orange or red one were 2mm. And this was already to much. These are total out of line.

They are going to check it, and the top 8 might get new ones. This time 4mm short, so they even out .

I'm cringing just looking at the variance in the range 1 lengths....

3 minutes ago, Card Knight said:

I'm cringing just looking at the variance in the range 1 lengths....

This is why the Rules on them are written the way they are.

2 minutes ago, Drasnighta said:

This is why the Rules on them are written the way they are.

Oh definitely. The range 1 ruler isn't a huge deal as most of the time squadrons have a bit of leeway in their movement and that difference might not make a big deal, but that 4 mm extra total length would be a pretty big issue in my opinion. That could pretty drastically affect threat ranges and such.

I suppose I could understand if they were like "Oh, they won't use the range 4 ruler for range 1 measurements, it doesn't need to be perfect" but these are just all over the place.

9 hours ago, Ophion said:

Hey Tokra, well done and thanks for all your insights.

Was just wondering if you could give us some discussion of why you took Tarkin in a list with minimal token carrying ability and how you found him?

I really like Tarkin but I find him overpriced at the best of times, and to me your list (with a bunch of command 1 ships that can't carry tokens over from round to round) and only one shuttle wouldn't seem to maximise the value he has?

Tarkin give one of the biggest flexibility of all commanders (imo). But he is the most expensive one. As soon as most are trying to adjust the fleet, the commander is the first that is reduced. And if you reduce a Tarkin to Motti, you gain 14 points. That is quite a lot.

The gozanti may only have one "slot" for the tokens, but this is fine. You gain a lot of options with him. If you need, you get the squadron tokens for extra activations. Or if you have to move the gozanti out of the way, you can give them a navigate token. Plus dial and you have the same effect as Ozzel. Yes, you are limited to one token for all. But you can always keep the one they had. So you are not messing it up.
And on the other hand, you can gain 6 Tokens each round with 6 ships. It has been 8 tokens with the old list. But 6 is still fine.

And for the Demolisher it is really good, because he can use Concentrate Fire commands with the dial (as long can move around without the extra yaw from the navigate dial), for the extra attack dice. 6 black dice from the demo on a most wanted target were really great, when you could even reroll them with ordance experts. 5 or 6 dice are enough to kill a few ships with one attack.

I even gave them repair tokens on a few matches. For the 3 (token + dial) engineering points that you need to remove a damage card.
Or a concentrate Fire, if a most wanted target is getting to close, or you have to kill one squadron with the black die.

And to be honest, Tarkins days might be over (for me ) when wave 6 is coming out. Sloane looks so great, i guess she is a perfect replacement.

Rumour was those blue rulers may be faqed as illegal and replacements sent

13 hours ago, Tokra said:

And some more statistics:

Admirals, ships and squadron.

If there is any meta now for the euro area, it is activations.

With an average of 5 and 6 if you want a chance for a double tap.

The imperial 7 ship list was really nice. Extreme anti squadron with two raiders, both titels and flechette+ordance experts. And only whisper as squadons.

And a bid of 21 points. So he could make sure to be first player, and the raiders were able to take out the squasrons this way.

He went 5th in the end, missed the cut by a score of 1 (he had a better mov than the 4th).

Yeah that list popped out to me too as being just a really cool bit of list design.

Being back home and having slept long enough, finally, a few stray thoughts on the Euros from my subjective perspective:

- Players were fantastic, happy to met many from the Forums, and many others. Englishmen, Germans, Italians, Hungary, Wales, Northern Ireland, France, Poland...surely more. It was a Euro.

- Judges did a very good job. Everything ran as smoothly as it should. Thx.

- Skill level is very high, of course even more so the higher up you go. I am happy to ended 4/3, bringing me to 21st. A single point more in game 7 would have resulted in a 5/6 instead of a 4/7 and would have meant final rank 15. So 8/3, 7/4, 7/4, 5/6 (lovely game, Garro!), 4/7, 7/4, 4/7.

- Agree with Tokra, dont think games should be reduced, 7 seems fine. But 6 games and a cut of 8, fine with me as well. 5 Swiss is not a good idea, imho.

- Nothing to add on whats have been said already about activations and the cheapest way to get them.

- Again purely personal, relay, in its current form, in combination with flotillas, is too strong. I had to get it out

Will certainly do my best to return to Euros, and great news that they plan to move to other (continental) cities as well.

12 minutes ago, NebulonB said:

A single point more in game 7 would have resulted in a 5/6 instead of a 4/7 and would have meant final rank 15.

- Again purely personal, relay, in its current form, in combination with flotillas, is too strong. I had to get it out

Will certainly do my best to return to Euros, and great news that they plan to move to other (continental) cities as well.

Apologies for that last game we had - my Blue dice were running hot and a 61 point Mov victory was a harsh margin.

Relay is huge, especially for my fleet but I found myself hardly using it sometimes; didn't think I did much at all in our game as I had to keep everything together.

Agree it will be nice to go somewhere abroad for 2019 Euros ?

2 hours ago, Tokra said:

i did not see anything about the range/Distance ruler so far (to many new posts).

But the new EC Range and Distance ruler are already pay to win . They give a clear advantage to the owner.

You broke the secret, you've gone and ruined it for everyone now.

what you can't quite see from this picture is that when you line up each segment of each ruler against a proper one, each segment is individually also the wrong size. It is actually a spectacular bit of engineering to get each and every measurement wrong.

Gutted, because they look awesome and as Gink said, it will probably have to go in the FAQ that ice blue and white ones and are illegal, which is a real shame. I think I'm going to frame mine

3 minutes ago, Dr alex said:

Gutted, because they look awesome and as Gink said, it will probably have to go in the FAQ that ice blue and white ones and are illegal, which is a real shame. I think I'm going to frame mine

It won't happen.

"Due to individual variances" - they're perfectly legal - you just have to be willing to share with your opponent when requested.

1 minute ago, Dr alex said:

You broke the secret, you've gone and ruined it for everyone now.

Gutted, because they look awesome and as Gink said, it will probably have to go in the FAQ that ice blue and white ones and are illegal, which is a real shame. I think I'm going to frame mine

Well, these aren't the only rulers that are wrong. North American rulers also had a problem (a different once) and regional rulers aren't perfect either.

It seems that the best strategy is to agree before the start of the match to use one ruler (doesn't really matter which one) as a golden one and use it for both players whenever the measurement is on the edge.

49 minutes ago, Kendraam said:

Apologies for that last game we had - my Blue dice were running hot and a 61 point Mov victory was a harsh margin.

Relay is huge, especially for my fleet but I found myself hardly using it sometimes; didn't think I did much at all in our game as I had to keep everything together.

Agree it will be nice to go somewhere abroad for 2019 Euros ?

Hi, no, in our game relay didnt play a role, absolutely. The remark was not meant as referring to a specific game, but to my general conviction, and I heard it from other people, as well. To be fair, other players dont think its a huge problem, and thats fair enough.

And the game with you taught me more than many others

BTW, they were looking for your adress for the rulers!! I guess they reached you by now?

39 minutes ago, Drasnighta said:

It won't happen.

"Due to individual variances" - they're perfectly legal - you just have to be willing to share with your opponent when requested.

@Dr alex you will need to leave them at home or we will be fiddling with your measures at the next tournament.... as the rules say we can

1 minute ago, Plagueis said:

@Dr alex you will need to leave them at home or we will be fiddling with your measures at the next tournament.... as the rules say we can

In his defence, you simply request that one Range ruler is used.

He could simply decide to instead, use yours, and just leave his own, new one.

...

Sitting there.

Shining, nay, glistening in the light...

... taunting you.

... haunting you...

... Forever...

1 minute ago, Drasnighta said:

In his defence, you simply request that one Range ruler is used.

He could simply decide to instead, use yourself, and just leave his own, new one.

...

Sitting there.

Shining, nay, glistening in the light...

... taunting you.

... haunting you...

... Forever...

I'm more than happy to let people play with my new sexy card ruler.... mmmmmm card......