I guess with the forum changes... my callsign got changed from IceQube to Q-Days of Wonder-g... oh well.

Comparing to Rieekan's ability, you think Tagge should have let unique squadrons recover defense tokens too? Or you think it'd be too good?

i think Tagge is ok and underrated. for his points, compared to:

konstantine is much more limited and defnitely for other playstyles.

Screed is not that good without crit effects. he is used so much ONLY because Imperials were all about "crit effects w/ black dice and Overload Pulse or rhymer".

same for Motti. "crit effects or Rhymer", and Motti is the best carrier admiral, making your carriers tough.

realy, Ozzel is the best comparison.

the problem is that you need to have a force that can seiriously force the tempo.

make a jump forward turn 1, force the opponent to fight turns 2 and 4. basicaly, he creates a "powerspike" for your fleet at turns 2 and 4. current imperial fleets have few ships that can take advantage of him. but i think an ECM ship and Arquittens spam with TRCs can, because you get to force the tempo and have ways to control your usage of tokens.

I've found Tagge pretty good with a GSD fleet as the Gladiators tend to burn through their defence tokens on the way into black range.

His main problem is to use him properly you become predictable, and if your opponent decides he is just going to drive a bit slower to delay you a turn, suddenly he is useless.

If you can get around that with fast ships, and enough deployments to know where the enemy is, you'll be singing.

Then, you just need to make sure you can actually use that token you just got back.

At the moment, the best fit fleet is probably an ISD and several Arqs, and between Vader and JJR, its hard to justify. If you have a Tua Interdictor ot VSD in the mix, suddenly Motti looms better.

A new, smaller, speed 3 or higher ship with an ECM slot will do him good.

He seems to work best against fast heavy-hitters like Assault Frigates, Liberties and Salvation, the ones most likely to throw the biggest and hardest punches in one go. Less so against the nickel-and-dime attack pattern of fighters and TRC90s. You can feel safe dropping your Brace if you need to. I think he's good for flotillas too, getting that Scatter back is quite a bonus for a support ship/activation dummy. Doesn't mean you're free to make foolhardy decisions though

Edit: He would be useful if your opponent likes to drive Intel Officers

Tagge and Konstantine are the hot garbage keeping the Empire back from wrecking the Rebel scum all of the time.

Seriously though, I do think his ability (and worse with Konstantine) hasn't been optimized in many fleets yet. PT was running a Tagge DeMSU that worked for him but I could NEVER get the timing of attack right. (I tried DESPERATELY to get Kon to work but it never seemed right.)

I am sure we will see more in the future that will bring them both to a more prominent role. For now, they are fun to play (and could work in CC) but competitively bring your other admirals to the Empire Party. Tagge is currently out.

(It kills me to say this but the Rebels currently have a lot more potential with ALL of their commanders.)

EDIT: Oh and to answer your question Q: ANY improvement in Tagge would be welcome. Even if it was an Ace recovering a token. I don't even think that would be over powerful because of his biggest drawback - the round timing of his effect.

ISD. Triple gozant. Rhymerball.

Good luck killing anything

CaribbeanNinja has it right, the timing is pretty rough. Turn three token-back means to make maximum use of his ability you need to force a pretty heavy engagement by turn two. Fleet Ambush could be a good strategic use of Tagge, force some early exchanges with partial elements of the enemy fleet. Minimise your risks and maximise your defenses. I've had a game where I was buying heavy fire from an 'ambushed' Assault Frigate on turn one, I was using Screed at the time and I was comfortable spending my tokens because the AF was alone and oriented for a hasty retreat after the sucker-punch - but Tagge could have been very nice there.

Tagge might be nice for soaking up Opening Salvo dice while the enemy still has to weather the payback. I cant see much Tagge could specialise in with the Nav objectives though.

The Rebel Alliance is too well equipped, they're more dangerous than you realise...

He's definitely better now that the Arquitens is out. With TRCs on those, you can at least have a good chance of getting use from his ability on your own terms. The problem is, as has been pointed to above, his effect is dependent upon not only the tempo of the game (which both you and your opponent have a say in) but also what ships get attacked, how frequently, and if accuracy is involved to shut down you double-spending a defense token. Electronic Countermeasures help Tagge with that last concern but it's still a lot of variables and it's not very reliable against better opponents.

I was hoping I'd really like him now in wave 5 after disliking him in waves 3+4* but while my estimation of him has gone up, I've gone from "deep dislike" to "unimpressed."

*For example, I was not very impressed with Ozzel in wave 2, but I've grown quite fond of him as of wave 4 despite him being as clumsy as he is stupid.

So true about Ozzel, Snip. I was also despising him and have grown to really appreciate his ability. I so hope this will be true of Tagge in the future.

I've never found a use for Tagge that goes beyond gimmicky fleets like Needa/TRC on an ISD. Tagge provides this weird mixture of offensive and defensive power to your fleet, but I find he only really helps the single ship that gets focused on. I'd rather take Motti or Screed so I have 100% offensive or 100% defensive capabilities, that I get to utilize when I want to.

Same goes for Konstantine. He isn't very useful when my opponent will already be running lots of nav commands. I'm basically taking a commander that my opponent can dictate how he gets used. I do like to speed ships up though so they over shoot a target or end up ramming their own ships. I once launched an MC30 off the table by bumping it to speed 4. But I need reliability, not random spikes of good fortune.

yeah, I think Konstantine got a break with navigational hazards. I mean, pushing an mc80 into an asteroid field you just threw in its path would be satisfying, but still seems gimicky. I have re-looked at a dictor/ISD2 shuttle fleet with the idea of just messing with the board state constantly, but don't see enough punch to do more than annoy my opponent.

On that same note, I think Ozzel gains more power with the addition of the token based objectives, so MSU fleets seem even more viable (man, like we needed THAT...;-)

Tagge though....I can't see any interactions with the wave 5/CC stuff that would make me say " I want to play that in a tournament"......but because of his lack-luster ability I haven't really looked at him at all to be honest. But back to Q-dog's (or whatever you are calling yourself now, which BTW is hilarious that that happened....:-) question, adding the aces to the ability would make him more useful to me, but not enough to use him at all, sadly.

If only Tagge had been a discard effect once/battle... that would have made him a whole lot more useful, IMO.

I agree- turn restrictions and greater access to speed control across the board for both rebs and imps means it's pretty easy to dodge his ability with a nav dial on turn 2/3.

I'm working on a Tagge fleet to try in a CC campaign. I think you want to stack his ability with others that keep ships going. You need to make the ships take a long time to di to maximize his ability.

I haven't played Sato yet, but with his ability to throw black dice from range, are Sato ships engaging sooner? If so, then Tagge could be a good counter to Sato builds...

I had a Wave4 Tagge DeMSU fleet that I was ready to take to the regionals, however all my regionals ended up being wave 5.

My take on Tagge: he is definitely a tricky commander and should be used with uberagressive fleets that can dictate tempo of the game. I think that ships that benefit form him the most are the ships that don't have redundant defence tokens (i.e. GSD, Gozanti, Interdictor) so even if one of the tokens is accuracied the second one can be used and discarded.

In my calculations I discovered that Tagge is better than Motti in protecting Demolisher from bomber attacks rounds 2/3 (as extra use of redirect prevents more criticals from reaching the hull) and that was my rationale to use him in GSD/GSD/GSD/RDR/Gz/Gz fleet.

Tagge is great for CC because he gives your scarred ships their discarded defense token back. I enjoy him in regular play as well if I'm running a list that is fairly neutral on admiral choice.

Oh is that how it works in CC? That's kinda nice.
But competitively, Tagge is crap: he needs support in using up your def tokens.

Also Constantine??? Utter crap.
My assessment of him went down from: This is pretty useless to "That was so horrific I want to burn that card."
Although, I kinda do wanna try again....

Tagge's timing is what does him in for me. I don't think any of the time-dependent admirals work because it limits their flexibility too much. One wrong move and you've lost a defense token for two turns when you need it really badly, because you get attacked the turn after you need it.

I think Konstantine would have more of a use in something like a two VSD carrier list trying to control target speeds to prevent flanking, or to suspend targets for bombers to pummel at medium range. In the very least an aggressive two ISD list can make some ships fling away and suspend others.

13 hours ago, Snipafist said:

He's definitely better now that the Arquitens is out. With TRCs on those, you can at least have a good chance of getting use from his ability on your own terms. The problem is, as has been pointed to above, his effect is dependent upon not only the tempo of the game (which both you and your opponent have a say in) but also what ships get attacked, how frequently, and if accuracy is involved to shut down you double-spending a defense token. Electronic Countermeasures help Tagge with that last concern but it's still a lot of variables and it's not very reliable against better opponents.

I was hoping I'd really like him now in wave 5 after disliking him in waves 3+4* but while my estimation of him has gone up, I've gone from "deep dislike" to "unimpressed."

*For example, I was not very impressed with Ozzel in wave 2, but I've grown quite fond of him as of wave 4 despite him being as clumsy as he is stupid.

I liked this until I read the last bit about Ozzel and I took my like back.

Ozzel is my homeboy, and I'll always have his back

13 hours ago, CaribbeanNinja said:

So true about Ozzel, Snip. I was also despising him and have grown to really appreciate his ability. I so hope this will be true of Tagge in the future.

How could you ever hate Ozzel? That tempo/engagement control? That unpredictability? That mustache?

I hear Ozzel chokes a lot.

10 hours ago, MandalorianMoose said:

How could you ever hate Ozzel? That tempo/engagement control? That unpredictability? That mustache?

In wave 2 I was not a fan because his favored ships (Raiders, Gladiators) were the same suite of ships favored by Screed, only Screed did more for them in that meta (with the crit upgrades). Nowadays Screed is wasted on Gozantis but Ozzel is quite happy packing some of those along and so now it is less of a direct comparison and Ozzel gets to shine.