25 minutes ago, Ginkapo said:

There are some great strategic yelloe objectives.

There are some great strategic blue objectives.

There is a rubbish strategic red ibjective. And this makes sense. You either need to build another facet to your fleet or take targeting scramblers.

How many times have you built fleets that have two strong ibjectives and struggle with the third? Its an intentional design decision.

Yeah, but in this option there are much better options flat-out.

Nobody would currently take Minefields without at least one Strategic squadron. Nobody would take Fighter Ambush or Superior Positions without a decent fighter wing.

It's hard to argue that there's even a marginal argument for taking Targeting Beacons when half the beacons are irrelevant.

Which red objective is better for a multiple strategic unit fleet?

15 minutes ago, Ginkapo said:

Which red objective is better for a multiple strategic unit fleet?

The one that best complements the ship composition of the fleet. Opening Salvo is a good start for a fleet with multiple armed pocket carriers, for example. Precision strike might also work when those multiple strategic squads are two Lambdas with 5 Defenders and Advanced backing them up. Or Advanced Gunnery on Demolisher with squadron backup.

On the rebel side, I can imagine TRC90s for Opening Salvo, or a GR75 being picked out for Most Wanted, or or or or....

Yeah, this objective just isn't a great fit as-is. Too bad. I think Red objectives had the most room to grow.

Ok, so lets dispell a misconception here.

"Setup Area". You cannot hide the tokens in the very corners of the board, this is not the set up area. The tokens must be beyond distance 3 of the short edges. So you must place them in an area of the table in which you could conceivably fly. By placing these tokens you are signalling to your opponent where you intend to fly. It is reverse contested outpost, in which the 1st players intentions are declared rather than 2nd players.

Does that have a benefit? YES!

Does this mean that the tokens will be in range of strategic? YES!

Does this make it a fantastic objective? NO!

@Cactusman. You somewhat proved my point there, you need to build other things into your fleet beyond strategic in order to utilise the red objectives. There is no auto win for someone using 30+pts of strategic. If there was we would be having arguments about whether you could fly without strategic and bidding for second player!

7 minutes ago, Ginkapo said:

Ok, so lets dispell a misconception here.

"Setup Area". You cannot hide the tokens in the very corners of the board, this is not the set up area. The tokens must be beyond distance 3 of the short edges. So you must place them in an area of the table in which you could conceivably fly. By placing these tokens you are signalling to your opponent where you intend to fly. It is reverse contested outpost, in which the 1st players intentions are declared rather than 2nd players.

Does that have a benefit? YES!

Does this mean that the tokens will be in range of strategic? YES!

Does this make it a fantastic objective? NO!

@Cactusman. You somewhat proved my point there, you need to build other things into your fleet beyond strategic in order to utilise the red objectives. There is no auto win for someone using 30+pts of strategic. If there was we would be having arguments about whether you could fly without strategic and bidding for second player!

We agree that without Strategic, it's a crappy objective.

My argument is that even with strategic, it's a crappy objective. In fact, with strategic it's an even worse objective by its very nature. There is zero reason to ever include it as second player. You are 100% banking on the first player having absolutely no strategic squadrons in their fleet which will instantly mitigate your token placement, and even then you are hobbled by only having essentially half the listed objective tokens. You're right, as first player you can't naturally place them in the literal corner of the board. But you can relegate them to a section of the board you will never fly through during a period when 2nd player is also in range to attack.

This leaves you with, at best, a very narrow slice of the board to reroll a grand total of two dice per attack in. Other Assault objectives give second player a greater bonus over the opponent and are easier to utilize even without careful ultra-specialization.

I don't want to point fingers, because I've met some great people whom this statement this could be seen as accusing. But frankly, this objective was never properly tested. Or it was, and FFG ignored the basic counter-arguments against its inclusion.

27 minutes ago, thecactusman17 said:

But you can relegate them to a section of the board you will never fly through during a period when 2nd player is also in range to attack.

Thats the point. You declare your intentions prior to deployment! Sure its not Solar Corona or Superior Positions, it still has some benefit.

1-2 of a Beacon is a pretty large area, and if dice hate you as much as they hate me, it isn't a bad objective at all. Rerolls are fantastic, and the arch nemesis of stats.

1 hour ago, Ginkapo said:

Ok, so lets dispell a misconception here.

"Setup Area". You cannot hide the tokens in the very corners of the board, this is not the set up area. The tokens must be beyond distance 3 of the short edges. So you must place them in an area of the table in which you could conceivably fly. By placing these tokens you are signalling to your opponent where you intend to fly. It is reverse contested outpost, in which the 1st players intentions are declared rather than 2nd players.

Does that have a benefit? YES!

Does this mean that the tokens will be in range of strategic? YES!

Does this make it a fantastic objective? NO!

@Cactusman. You somewhat proved my point there, you need to build other things into your fleet beyond strategic in order to utilise the red objectives. There is no auto win for someone using 30+pts of strategic. If there was we would be having arguments about whether you could fly without strategic and bidding for second player!

Gink, let's be real here, if the tokens are in the corner of the setup area (that's what I meant btw when I said corner of the map), you would need to spend at least 3 to 4 turns bunny hopping the objective between 2 strategic squadrons to put them to the other side of the setup area. At this point, it's not really worth it.

I love this objective. Here is one version of my Sato fleet that I use it in.

Points: 400/400

Commander: Commander Sato

Assault Objective: Targeting Beacons
Defense Objective: Fire Lanes
Navigation Objective: Salvage Run

Assault Frigate Mark II B (72 points)
- Paragon ( 5 points)
- Skilled First Officer ( 1 points)
- Ordnance Experts ( 4 points)
= 82 total ship cost

Assault Frigate Mark II B (72 points)
- Skilled First Officer ( 1 points)
- Ordnance Experts ( 4 points)
= 77 total ship cost

CR90 Corvette A (44 points)
= 44 total ship cost

CR90 Corvette A (44 points)
= 44 total ship cost

[ flagship ] GR-75 Medium Transports (18 points)
- Commander Sato ( 32 points)
= 50 total ship cost

GR-75 Medium Transports (18 points)
= 18 total ship cost

1 Tycho Celchu ( 16 points)
1 Shara Bey ( 17 points)
2 A-Wing Squadrons ( 22 points)
2 VCX-100 Freighters ( 30 points)

Double rerolls on the AF are great. Rerolls on the Sato90s are great. I don't have an issue keeping the tokens where I need them because A-wings are fast, and the VCXs try to remain unengaged so they can use Strategic and get in position to Relay. If they do fight, they are doing it obstructed or as the final kill.

To actually use this objective, you should set them up on your half of the map. Why? So you have control over them. Why would you place them in front of your opponent? Are you going to deploy going max speed to get the best use out of it?

You drop them on your side so your Stragetic can carry them along. I like to have 2 fighter balls going, hence the mirroring, and tie one up at a time, or bring them in from difference angles. This way, you can see where your opponent is going, and throw a VCX out there with it's token in tow. Has anyone actually measured how far these tokens can reach? If you maximize Strategic by measuring the smallest sliver of the token, and moving it so the smallest sliver of the token is still AT range 1, the token can effectively cover an area LARGER than range 5. And since I play Sato, and in general, you should focus fire 1 ship, I just painted my target with 2 layers. Sato's 2 black dice, and 2 rerolls. Match made in heaven. Or you can lead frog the token even farther with 2 Stragetics. Your choice.

Honestly, I really only need 1 token ever. And that token is going at the largest ship my opponent has. Likely an ISD or MC80, which are so large and slow, that token can probably get 2-3 turns of power out of it before the ship moves out of range. And since I am playing Sato, you can bet my squads are going to be all over that ship , engaging my opponents Strategic. Sure, Intel, whatever. Just kill it.

This objective is good. It is the only red that provides no benefit to the 1st player. No additional dice, no points, no nothing. I get all the benefit, and I know how to utilize it. I could put Adv Gunnery in this list, but why would I risk giving that to an ISD or MC80? My ships are fragile as it is, no need to really try to kill them.

If you run Satovation, you probably want this objective. Nothing like rerolling into 3 damage crits. But that said, you need to build your list with the objectives in mind. If you take this because you didn't know what else to take, well, you should probably rethink your fleet. Taking this objective without Strategic is insane, because if your opponent has it, it means you are fighting an uphill battle because your objective is doing nothing, and they have initiative. In fact, this goes for all token based objectives. FFG kinda messed up with how powerful Strategic is, and I don't leave home without them. Too valuable in my own lists, and I can screw my opponent over with their objectives.

14 hours ago, CaribbeanNinja said:

I think the big advantage is the two that you place. I am not crazy about the objective, but can see it being very good for castling in the corner. Yes, the two your opponent placed are probably out of the way, but the ones you place should support your deployment and give you plenty of rerolls.

Then why not just fix the description to let you place only 2 tokens. Its ridiculous, its seems like they tried to make it work somehow and then they changed their mind.

34 minutes ago, xerpo said:

Then why not just fix the description to let you place only 2 tokens. Its ridiculous, its seems like they tried to make it work somehow and then they changed their mind.

Yeah, this one really sounds to me like it originally gave P1 a one-die reroll; then play-testing showed that to be too small an advantage for P2, so they dropped the P1 reroll at the last minute but forgot to drop the two irrelevant P1-placed tokens.

it's a bit disappointing that with all the delays we've had and the lack of articles, we're getting a... well.... not very optimized product.

50 minutes ago, Sybreed said:

it's a bit disappointing that with all the delays we've had and the lack of articles, we're getting a... well.... not very optimized product.

Once we get an FAQ, it will be balanced once again.

I have to assume this objective will receive errata soon. Look:

And I agree with Dras, the CC rules are extremely lacking for a FFG product. It has more holes than Lorraine swiss cheese. They should be ashamed.

6 hours ago, Ginkapo said:

Thats the point. You declare your intentions prior to deployment! Sure its not Solar Corona or Superior Positions, it still has some benefit.

No, you really don't. If "I won't be flying within distance two of one dot on my own board edge" is that big a telegraph, then there is some master class mind reading going on with those other two tokens. Because those two first player tokens can be placed on top of each other. Remember, they don't have to avoid flying through them, they just have to avoid getting shot at while near them.

So basically, in this scenario, there are only 3 actual tokens and one is placed to be irrelevant. This doesn't exactly scream "good idea."

I won't say who ran this, but I ran into a fleet who covered the red objective gap with Close Range Intel with Home One and H9's on everything. Home One, couple of H9 shrimps, couple of VCX's with Close Range Intel, Fire Lanes, and Sensor Nets. It was brilliant!

This fleet can win without ever engaging purely off objective tokens, unless you take Close Range Intel, where it forces engagement, but they can score between 30-60 points a round. It's pretty much a fleet you have to give first player advantage to, or bum rush and hope for the table before they rack up a huge pile of objective tokens.

Agree that this looks like an objective that received a last minute change. There's simply no sense in the way it currently plays out with first player placing two tokens into a corner. Bad design. Either remove that first player action, or it's supposed to be second player who places them all. If it was second player who places them all, how would it compare to planetary ion cannon in terms of strength?

I have not played this objective yet simply because no one includes it - surprise surprise - but I have played planetary ion cannon and that objective was really good, single handedly resulting in the demise of an mc80 Liberty even though the tokens were only 'use once' effects.

I'm tempted to assume second player should place all 4.