my 2 cents on squadrons. I think they're fine. They're fun to use, but very boring to watch (I always skip the squadron portion of WWPDSteven's videos). They also require less strategic thinking and are still are not as fun to maneuver as ships, hence why I find it funny how much of a focus they are in the actual wave, but I can live with that. The different options they give are interesting, still­.

The biggest issue with the game right now is, in my opinion, the "pay to pass your turn" flotillas. Squadrons are not a problem.

I've stopped using bombers and take nothing but fighters with squadron commands to support them all. Usually comes in at around 100 pnts worth of squadrons and has performed fairly well thus far.

Even without bomber fighters can still plink out reasonable damage. Example; first Worlds with the 8 A-wings slaughtering Glads....

Yup, agreed. With the addition of lambdas, boosted comms is no longer req. for your carrier, freeing up points to go elsewhere in the fleet....or at least "lowering" the cost of the lambda.

Two games ago i took out an ISD before he could finish my Home One. He ended up winning because he had 2 random TIE fighterrs that happen to only be fighting a VCX (Heavy ftl) and had a shot on the home one. They both had to hit, and i had no shields to redirect to so if they both hit i lost. They both hit. He won by ~10pts ...grumblegrumble...

Bomber isnt necessary. But it sure helps.

And 2 of the arguably worse fighter squadrons in the game to boot. Thats rough but a good story about staying in the fight lol.

I've stopped using bombers and take nothing but fighters with squadron commands to support them all. Usually comes in at around 100 pnts worth of squadrons and has performed fairly well thus far.

Even without bomber fighters can still plink out reasonable damage. Example; first Worlds with the 8 A-wings slaughtering Glads....

Yup, agreed. With the addition of lambdas, boosted comms is no longer req. for your carrier, freeing up points to go elsewhere in the fleet....or at least "lowering" the cost of the lambda.

The key there is that A-Wings use a black die for anti-ship. A non-bomber black die is does just as much raw damage as a bomber red die, like the X-Wing has. If you're using fighters with a single blue anti-ship, you're not contributing much to ship damage.

. I'm curious now if these are the type of articles people want?

I'm also interested in this question. I'd be happy to address various topics in the game.

I've stopped using bombers and take nothing but fighters with squadron commands to support them all. Usually comes in at around 100 pnts worth of squadrons and has performed fairly well thus far.

Even without bomber fighters can still plink out reasonable damage. Example; first Worlds with the 8 A-wings slaughtering Glads....

Yup, agreed. With the addition of lambdas, boosted comms is no longer req. for your carrier, freeing up points to go elsewhere in the fleet....or at least "lowering" the cost of the lambda.

The key there is that A-Wings use a black die for anti-ship. A non-bomber black die is does just as much raw damage as a bomber red die, like the X-Wing has. If you're using fighters with a single blue anti-ship, you're not contributing much to ship damage.

The reverse logic here is that if you take a strong enough fighter wing to reduce their bomber wing to scrap, up to 1/3 of their list has been neutralized. That said, though, watching Vassal the last few days it seems like bomber wings are becoming a thing of the past. Most games I've watched have featured token fighter screens or anti-squadron focused squadrons.

A while ago, Ginkapo posted a strategy topic about deployment. It's was a really interesting read and I've not had a chance to go back and properly absorbed it (that may be one of the links he's posted above).

More threads like that would be really helpful.

I'd write my own, but unless you want to know about "How to master mediocre performance and bottom half placing in tournaments".

Thoughts on fighters:

In my mind there are two potent paradigms around fighters in armada.

Integration:

This paradigms focus on using fighters as an integral part of how the fleet is going to beat its opponent. The focus of this paradigm includes developing and understanding how to use a bomber wing and heavy carrier. It will likely have supporting squadrons to protect the bombers, but it's focus is going to be on the application of bomber and ship fire power against specific targets. Imperial and rebel versions of this paradigm may vary slightly due to the more defensive ( slow/heavy) nature of rebel bombers. It's likely that a proponent of this paradigm will use missions focused on his bomber/carrier force ( think modern carrier battle group)

Separation:

You could almost call this paradigm "the fighter hater paradigm" but it's not, it's just a different tactical mind set. The purest form of this being a CR90 swarm, clonisher or high activation double ISD list. The focus of wining in this paradigm is all around the ships (sort of WW1), with the tactic being to separate away the ship and fighter combats into separate battles. So throwing a few awings at a bomber ball, using instigator and a few ties to engage a big fighter ball. But all the time you focus is on separation of the fighter battle from the battleships so they can go to work.

This paradigm generally focus on a "just enough" to separate the fight principle, say around the 40-60 points of intercepter type fighters ( A wing, tie fighters et al ) with maybe a dual purpose escort ship or two ( raider, neb B). But there are two extremes of this paradigm.

1) attack the bomber ball to win tactic in which a high end anti fighter list is developed to win the separated fighter battle and win by scoring of fighters and hopping a slightly more focused set of battle ships can take the carriers.

2) fighters what fighters, this most extreme tactic ( or faith in luck) simply removes fighters and focus on battle ships to kill the carriers quick. If it has any hope at all it needs very fast ships to work.

I've always been a proponent of separation, I love to separate the fight. So I rarely use bombers beyond a bit of harisment ( hand full of sprays). But my last competitive list had two ties with insigator and it worked

A while ago, Ginkapo posted a strategy topic about deployment. It's was a really interesting read and I've not had a chance to go back and properly absorbed it (that may be one of the links he's posted above).

More threads like that would be really helpful.

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/232159-ackbars-mc30-star-destroyers-and-tycho’s-circus/?p=2452451

It goes ignored, but I have a whole slew of articles on Boardgamegeek. They usually focus on reviews of specific ships, so listbuilding and tactical discussions are found there on a ship-by-ship basis. I do have an article about a few list archetypes, but I don't think it's a particularly strong article because of how few f2f matches I have.

To the subject of fighters though... there's a difference between being skilled vs having the best tools. Long ago in X-Wing I said it would be more impressive had Paul Heaver won one of his World championships by not taking the meta-strong big ship lists that were strong in the day, and I was admonished for it. Of course a good player takes the best tools, that's how they win!

So I feel that good Armada players who neglects to give enough scrutinize to dealing with Fighters is going to lose. Because Fighters in relation to capital ships are harder to deal with/destroy and do just as much (if not more) than capital ships do. I need only look at my many attempts to field fighter-less Imperial capital ships with loaded AA defenses against my regular opponent who loves Rebel bomber balls. Only heeding Vader, "Destroying them ship to ship", seems to be the answer. But that's a matter of, "If you can't beat them, join them". I feel like the side with the stronger fighter game is more likely to win, even if that means a smaller force of TIE Interceptors gets the jump on a much larger Rebel fighter ball and manages to knock out fighters before that Rebel reprisal.

At worst, it feels like fighters don't have a lot to worry about from capital ships when they attack. People like to mention Raiders with Flichette Torps... maybe it's because I haven't faced it yet, or because I've tried AA attacks out of flimsy Raiders, but this doesn't feel like a solution when matched against a strong bomber ball. Typical Bombers (and Rebel fighters as a whole) tank the damage and make the Raider pay for it with its life. If it isn't the fighters doing the damage by moving in after the Raider activates, it's the carriers, which now Rebels have a boon with out of Sato changing reds (from Yavaris, most certainly) to black.

Quad Laser Turrets rolling a single blue is not reliable enough to be a threat to fighters. Point Defense Reroute only works on the defensive, and in my experience by the time you're engaging those fighters at close range, you're also in range of the enemy ships and would rather use those arcs to try killing capital ships and winning the game that way.

I would feel better if the game had some upgrades to give fighters pause when attacking a capital ship. Cluster Bombs is the only card to do this, though it's not taken because it is a 5 point discard for the effect that is swingy (Black die would have been better), one-shot, and competes with other better and resuable cards. Still, the spirit of having a fighter-threatening upgrade card would be a nice way to give power back to capital ships so it doesn't feel so one-sided in a few games... though I realize some are going to disagree with me and point out fighters are prominent in all fleet engagements, etx.

For a note on perspective, I've been running solo practice matches all week to hone a list. Many of them include ISDs. I'm a little startled how quickly these things are dying- quicker than even VSDs- to massed VT attacks followed by the front battery of a VSD, to Rebel bombers with Nora constantly eroding shields. It could just be my playstyle, and I've been able to stave off ISD death by aggressively activating fighters (TIEs with Flight controllers) to deal with the bombers.

But between this, and almost never hitting anything out of my single blue AA dice from a VSD, suggests to me capital ships need tools to deal with fighters better other than fighters of their own. I came to the game to upgrade and outfit gun Star Destroyers, not have a super zoomed out version of X-Wing epic.

It goes ignored, but I have a whole slew of articles on Boardgamegeek. They usually focus on reviews of specific ships, so listbuilding and tactical discussions are found there on a ship-by-ship basis. I do have an article about a few list archetypes, but I don't think it's a particularly strong article because of how few f2f matches I have.

To the subject of fighters though... there's a difference between being skilled vs having the best tools. Long ago in X-Wing I said it would be more impressive had Paul Heaver won one of his World championships by not taking the meta-strong big ship lists that were strong in the day, and I was admonished for it. Of course a good player takes the best tools, that's how they win!

So I feel that good Armada players who neglects to give enough scrutinize to dealing with Fighters is going to lose. Because Fighters in relation to capital ships are harder to deal with/destroy and do just as much (if not more) than capital ships do. I need only look at my many attempts to field fighter-less Imperial capital ships with loaded AA defenses against my regular opponent who loves Rebel bomber balls. Only heeding Vader, "Destroying them ship to ship", seems to be the answer. But that's a matter of, "If you can't beat them, join them". I feel like the side with the stronger fighter game is more likely to win, even if that means a smaller force of TIE Interceptors gets the jump on a much larger Rebel fighter ball and manages to knock out fighters before that Rebel reprisal.

At worst, it feels like fighters don't have a lot to worry about from capital ships when they attack. People like to mention Raiders with Flichette Torps... maybe it's because I haven't faced it yet, or because I've tried AA attacks out of flimsy Raiders, but this doesn't feel like a solution when matched against a strong bomber ball. Typical Bombers (and Rebel fighters as a whole) tank the damage and make the Raider pay for it with its life. If it isn't the fighters doing the damage by moving in after the Raider activates, it's the carriers, which now Rebels have a boon with out of Sato changing reds (from Yavaris, most certainly) to black.

Quad Laser Turrets rolling a single blue is not reliable enough to be a threat to fighters. Point Defense Reroute only works on the defensive, and in my experience by the time you're engaging those fighters at close range, you're also in range of the enemy ships and would rather use those arcs to try killing capital ships and winning the game that way.

I would feel better if the game had some upgrades to give fighters pause when attacking a capital ship. Cluster Bombs is the only card to do this, though it's not taken because it is a 5 point discard for the effect that is swingy (Black die would have been better), one-shot, and competes with other better and resuable cards. Still, the spirit of having a fighter-threatening upgrade card would be a nice way to give power back to capital ships so it doesn't feel so one-sided in a few games... though I realize some are going to disagree with me and point out fighters are prominent in all fleet engagements, etx.

For a note on perspective, I've been running solo practice matches all week to hone a list. Many of them include ISDs. I'm a little startled how quickly these things are dying- quicker than even VSDs- to massed VT attacks followed by the front battery of a VSD, to Rebel bombers with Nora constantly eroding shields. It could just be my playstyle, and I've been able to stave off ISD death by aggressively activating fighters (TIEs with Flight controllers) to deal with the bombers.

But between this, and almost never hitting anything out of my single blue AA dice from a VSD, suggests to me capital ships need tools to deal with fighters better other than fighters of their own. I came to the game to upgrade and outfit gun Star Destroyers, not have a super zoomed out version of X-Wing epic.

Flechette torpedoes are part of the answer, but I agree we need perhaps just one more card to help deal with squadrons.

If we had, say, a Ion Cannon upgrade that made Blue crit count as dmg on fighters (for the low low cost of 3 points), we would have very different conversations!

For F-Torps to work you MUST have the activation, and to make them reliable you need ordnance experts. At this point in the game, only the Assault Pelta and the Raider-I have black die for AA and a torpedo armament. F-torps kicking also removes the die from the pool, so realistically only the Raider-I has the chance of stunning and doing damage to a target ship.

But if it misses in stunning everyone in that B-Wing cloud, the B-Wings will respond. Most B-Wings I fly against have one or two BCCs stacked, and these things can do 3 damage with crit. Then the carrier activates...

So it can help some, but it's not a very good example of how capital ships can respond to fighters because it is so niche. Saying F-Torps is an answer to fighter defenses means you're yoking your chances on Raiders to handle your fighters for you. That's 49 points of anti-fighter investment. You get an additional activation out of it, but if something goes wrong you just handed those points to your opponent with nothing to show for it. Clon showed us that Raiders can be dangerous with APTs and massed activation, but it works only because you go in not expecting the Raiders to stick around for long.

That Ion would be an example of something that could work. I don't know if 3 points is the answer, but that would give a number of ships more potent AA ratings. Off the top of my head; CR-90Bs, RDR-IIs, VSD-IIs, both ISD denominations (especially IIs), would now have amplified AA ratings. In fact against ISDs it might be so potent that Fighters are encouraged to seek obstacles to get that obstruction bonus and hide from effective AA. I'm not sure if that would be the ideal solution, but an interesting one.

Though one thing to keep in mind with all of this is how perilous 3-hull TIEs have it. And maybe that's why we haven't seen a lot of excitement in the AA field after all, because 3-point hull TIEs would be even more screwed than they are now.

Long time lurker, first time poster. Just wanted to drop in to say I love you guys and everything you contribute to the community. I could name names, but most of the guys I come here to read posts from have dropped their 2 cents and I don't want to leave anyone out.

I haven't read every post, so this may be a repeat of what's already been said.

One of the few squadron tactics that I have used, with varying degrees of success based on my poor navigation skills, is to create a range barrier with my squadrons.

When I watched world's, I was surprised that JC sent in his AF2 right next to all those y wings.

If he was going to do that, then imo, he should have tried to take advantage of his fighters and the limited space that was part of that scrum of y wings, flotillas and the enemy AF2.

So what's the range barrier? It's an attempt to place squadrons at such a distance from your ship that an enemy squadron can not fit between your squadron and the ship, nor can the enemy squadron fly far enough to land within distance 1 of your ship to shoot at it by landing where the barrier isn't located. Circumstances vary and it may not prevent all squadron attacks on your ship, but if you can prevent 2-4 of them due to lack of space for the enemy that round, then it's done it's job. This works best with slower enemy fighters and at times will only help for 1 round. It goes without saying that you'll need to judge where the enemy can potentially land due to the squadron's speed and you'll need enough squadrons to create a viable 'barrier', but this tactic can be helpful, especially in tightly packed areas like what we saw in world's.

Just recorded a new video tonight and may record another tomorrow. Yay for snow days.

Link?

Just recorded a new video tonight and may record another tomorrow. Yay for snow days.

Link?

http://concentratefire.blogspot.com/search/label/Video

thanks!