Ok, finally had some time to look through the post Adra. Thanks again for the analysis and feedback.

Much of what you suggest I've independently concluded, but haven't had the ability to test against Drew. I referenced the Supercarrier ISD already, it comes with Stele, Valen, Cienna, Mithel, Vader, Dengar, a JM5k, and Zetrick. Both TIE Advanced pilots tank damage, Mithel waves his magic ability in there, both Jumpmasters are two sources of intel. Activate 6 has me leading with Cienna to respond to any counter, and finish with Vader punching whatever it is I've managed to harm. I have thought about juggling possibilities to include Rhymer and Jendon for some more threat power.

But this list was me throwing up my hands and saying, "Fine, maximize anti-squadron potential to just rush and destroy the fighter barrier." Taking all aces means everyone has defense tokens, and Fighter 6 with flight controllers was trying to maximize that alpha strike. There's not a lot of anti-capital potential in this list though, just the ISD-I and whatever battery values are present in the fighters, making me think it's not a great all-comers list. Yet, this is what I feel I need to field to face Drew's list.

Still, he's the only player I can get to commit to a game where I'm at in the SF Bay area. There are players up north in Oakland and a lot of players in the south part that meet around Mountain View or Santa Clara, and I'm stuck in between with a long drive to either place. I'd love to try making my 5x VT decimator drop list work, because it seems like a lot of fun, and I'd like to try making the VSD-ISD-TIE FIghter list work for kicks as well. But with Drew's rebel speedbump list, these list types aren't competitive because I must go all-squadrons.

And my hangup with this list is the thought that, to beat it, must I go all AA and reduce my all comers competitiveness? Because Drew, as we see in the tournament, can handle all kinds of opponents. The list set up to beat his can't, I don't think. It's formed my opinion that rebel squadrons are the strongest element in the game right now because of their flexibility and resistance to easy removal.

Some callouts to your comments Adra,

Quote

If he's stripping more than 1, maybe 2 extra shields on one ship with Norra crits, either you're doing it wrong, or he is. Don't redirect the first attack that crits. Sure, it drops your shields in that zone. On subsequent attacks, either he 1) attacks the same zone, at which point you redirect to adjacent shields and don't take the extra shield damage anymore, or 2) attacks the adjacent hull zones, allowing you to bring the fourth hull zone's shields into play, which would otherwise not have been available. Either way, you win.

This thought did occur to me, but then you have to choose between blowing most of your defense tokens or tanking critical hits on the hull. Yavaris could follow up dealing crits, and if he's activating 6 B-Wings the contain is going to be long gone as you're taking more damage.

Quote

Don't take rogues to do an activated squadron's work. VT's, like all rogues, are super points-inefficient, especially for squadron-hunting. If you're carrying them to activate anyway, take either Interceptor/Howlrunner or an Aceball (I like Howlrunner/Valen/Soontir/Mauler/Dengar/Black).

When I've had the chance to activate and use VTs, in spite of them carrying Rogue, I've utterly destroyed things with them. THey're a powerful squadron that, if activated early during the fighter phase, can wreck a bunch of things. I haven't been afraid to ignore their Rogue keyword and just use them. I feel Rogue in this case is good if you end up losing the ship that was commanding them to allow them to still fight things, or if the carrier must flip over to another command.

I did one test pitting activation-powered TIE Defenders against the rogue-only VTs, and it was no contest for the TIE Defenders. Activating the VTs on the other hand cleaned house. It's one of those cases where it just works for me *shrug*

26 minutes ago, Norsehound said:

I didn't really give that serious consideration because of how likely I'd expect slicer tools to die quickly. *shrug*

minister Tau ECM slicer tools and suppressor for extra value that is a 40ish point flotilla but won't die easy.

7 minutes ago, xero989 said:

Two upgrades minister Tau ECM slicer tools and suppressor for extra value that is a 40ish point flotilla but won't die easy.

Well, even with ECM a group of B-Wings attacking will blow away the scatter. If you're hit with almost guaranteed 3 damage with a critical, ignoring it could result in a dead flotilla, and Norra fueling the B-Wing can kill it (-1 shield because of Norra crit, 3 hull damage). So even if you slice away Yavaris, a GR-75 activating two B-Wings will either blow both brace tokens or probably destroy the flotilla. If not a GR-75, the Pelta can do it with fighter 3 and direct Norra or the third B-Wing to go after the first two do.

I don't think there's anything Tua could add to save the ship. It's not about protecting the scatter token, it's about giving the ship more health or stopping those attacks from happening. Motti can let the ship have one more health to suck away another B-Wing into attacking it to kill it, but that's not much to go on. Tua could give the ship RBDs to discard those damage cards, but that's motti and Tua committed to helping a GZ.

2 minutes ago, Norsehound said:

About the only thing it would do is exhaust Drew's B-Wings from attacking anything else.

That's the point. Slicer Tools don't live, so don't put points on them. You're trading 25-30 points to shut down Yavaris and all those double-taps you've been talking about suddenly go away for a whole round. And he's pretty well forced to focus on the ST early, because if he doesn't it's going to do the same thing again next turn, and the next turn.

You use it against this list like a real-world airstrike package would use high-powered jamming--it's not a permanent solution in itself, but it stiff-arms the defenders just long enough for the dudes carrying the permanent solutions to get them delivered.

Hmm... like throwing Raiders into the mix I don't like the idea of designing units in a list that I'd deliberately intend to kill. I'd rather lead with a ton of fighters to start killing things for a positive return than start the game with a negative. Perhaps something like Quad Laser Turrets or Tua with a Cluster Bomb could make it worth it, knowing that I'd be actively hurting units when my GZ was removed, at least.

I say this realizing that the GZ option is probably a way to make a more meta diverse list and still beat Mythics, however. And probably saying, "I don't feel like that option because I'm throwing away points" will probably be countered with, "Do you want to win, or not?"

I would like to consider other fighter mix options that offer a little more variety in capital ship attacks. Massed TIE Defenders was another squadron option I never got around to testing, and if Rhymer is in there it could be a good alternative to the aces ball.

19 minutes ago, Norsehound said:

This thought did occur to me, but then you have to choose between blowing most of your defense tokens or tanking critical hits on the hull.

How so? You're saving your redirects for later shots. A B-wing can't accuracy both redirects on an ISD. Against something smaller, sure, he might fish up accs... but if he's spending his BCC rerolls on that, he's not spending them on fishing up crits. And by the time you've burned one, you've used it to redirect all or most of the damage from two shots onto the adjacent shield facings anyway. And by the time those are burned up, you're taking the same crits to the hull that you would have anyway, except now you've bought yourself more time by not losing a whole extra shield from every single shot.

23 minutes ago, Norsehound said:

Yavaris could follow up dealing crits, and if he's activating 6 B-Wings the contain is going to be long gone as you're taking more damage.

So you take a crit. It sucks, but a ship with a crit is better than a dead ship, which is what you're helping him get if you're letting him tack on +1 damage every single shot he takes at you. You're the one that keeps bringing up this 6 extra points of damage from Norra (actually only 4-5 of those shots will roll crits, statistically speaking)--if it's that big a deal, mitigate it by not presenting him that option.

3 minutes ago, Norsehound said:

Hmm... like throwing Raiders into the mix I don't like the idea of designing units in a list that I'd deliberately intend to kill. I'd rather lead with a ton of fighters to start killing things for a positive return than start the game with a negative. Perhaps something like Quad Laser Turrets or Tua with a Cluster Bomb could make it worth it, knowing that I'd be actively hurting units when my GZ was removed, at least.

I say this realizing that the GZ option is probably a way to make a more meta diverse list and still beat Mythics, however. And probably saying, "I don't feel like that option because I'm throwing away points" will probably be countered with, "Do you want to win, or not?"

I would like to consider other fighter mix options that offer a little more variety in capital ship attacks. Massed TIE Defenders was another squadron option I never got around to testing, and if Rhymer is in there it could be a good alternative to the aces ball.

I mean, take it with a grain of salt because I'm obviously a primarily Rebel player, but I've been toying with lots of Imperial squadron builds recently because I love the fine-tuned customization of anti-ship:anti-squadron ratio I can get with Imps versus being mandated to pay for anti-ship versatility on my interceptor A-wings or the tax my B-wings pay for those 3 blues that I hope to never use.

I love the idea of the massed Defenders. And by "love" I mean "am terrified by because I'll probably never buy enough Imp Squads II to field".

You're right about my response to the Gozanti thing. Sometimes you have to be willing to make sacrifices to break into the fortress. It's like fishing: you give the fish something worthless in exchange for ruthlessly tabling it with Star Destroyers.

It's not just a raw points comparison here either. Consider that you're paying 30 points (Gz with ST), and what you're getting in exchange:

You're neutering that double-tap, for one round and forcing the squadrons to focus at least two shots on that Gozanti. That's 6 B-wing shots that are not hitting your ISD anymore on that round, which means he is almost guaranteed not to take down the ISD in that turn. This buys you the one round you should need to stuff Demo or whatever into Yavaris' side arc and pop the two BCC GR-75's with your GT ISD. So, yeah, you're trading 30 points to do it, but you're getting the ~60 points for Yavaris, the ~60 more for the two BCC GR75's, and oh by the way completely neutering the effectiveness of those bombers that he brought an entire 133-point fighter wing to deliver. So you're directly reaping ~120 points, and degrading another ~130 points by ~50% or so, all for a 30-point investment. Sounds pretty worth it to me.

But that's certainly not the only way to win it, so if it's not your preference, I'm not here to tell you you're wrong. Just that it's an option that might be worth trying out.

21 hours ago, Ardaedhel said:

If he's stripping more than 1, maybe 2 extra shields on one ship with Norra crits, either you're doing it wrong, or he is. Don't redirect the first attack that crits. Sure, it drops your shields in that zone. On subsequent attacks, either he 1) attacks the same zone, at which point you redirect to adjacent shields and don't take the extra shield damage anymore, or 2) attacks the adjacent hull zones, allowing you to bring the fourth hull zone's shields into play, which would otherwise not have been available. Either way, you win.

Maybe I'm reading Norra wrong or there's some rules trickery I'm not aware of, but even if you redirect the damage, won't a crit still land an extra hit on the shields in the defending zone?

So the B Wing attacking the front of your ship rolls up a single crit, you can either take two hits on the front, or one on the front and one on the side?

1 minute ago, Chucknuckle said:

Maybe I'm reading Norra wrong or there's some rules trickery I'm not aware of, but even if you redirect the damage, won't a crit still land an extra hit on the shields in the defending zone?

So the B Wing attacking the front of your ship rolls up a single crit, you can either take two hits on the front, or one on the front and one on the side?

I think what Ard is getting at is if you see a Norra pile-up coming at a specific hull zone, the sooner you let those shields drop to zero, the better. From that point on, you can redirect the damage to other hull zones, but her crit won't affect them as they're not the defending hull zone.

13 minutes ago, Chucknuckle said:

Maybe I'm reading Norra wrong or there's some rules trickery I'm not aware of, but even if you redirect the damage, won't a crit still land an extra hit on the shields in the defending zone?

So the B Wing attacking the front of your ship rolls up a single crit, you can either take two hits on the front, or one on the front and one on the side?

Right, that's why I said not to redirect the first attack. You want to let the shields on the first-attacked zone drop completely before you start redirecting*, so that he is forced to either 1) refocus his attack on your adjacent hull zone, saving you redirects and bringing the shields on your fourth hull zone into play, or 2) forego the Norra crit effect, because there are no more shields in the defending zone.

*Assuming the squadron damage is your primary threat. The reasoning here would change if you're facing a large XI7 ship attack in that hull zone, for example.

Ok, cool. I was going to say, the only way I can see to prevent her ability working is to not HAVE any shields!

11 minutes ago, Chucknuckle said:

Ok, cool. I was going to say, the only way I can see to prevent her ability working is to not HAVE any shields!

And you would be 100% correct! Norra puts you in this kind of weird situation where the thing you normally want versus bombers is the thing you would really not like to have near her, anyways. It's basically like if a serial killer was hunting down people wearing pants - you can keep yourself safe by walking around without pants but... I mean that's just kind of awkward, really.

14 hours ago, Norsehound said:

And my hangup with this list is the thought that, to beat it, must I go all AA and reduce my all comers competitiveness?

Just want to point out that you already don't have "all comers" competitiveness... as the list you are having so much trouble with is one of the "comers"

IMO, it is ok to have a weakness in a list as no list can do everything.

My main list is ISDII, a couple of smaller ships and an Aces Alpha strike. It has served me well. It has its weaknesses. I am cool with that.

17 hours ago, Gottmituns205 said:

Yup. Outright shut my list down and destroyed it in detail.

OK, then basically what I can say is that his overall takeaway was that you were just ill prepared for the Imperial rush tactic, not that your list or play was poor.

If you would have considered that he would have done such a direct assault, would you have differed in your deployment; in your maneuvering? It apparently may have made a difference. Sometimes, no matter how good a list or how hard you prepare you just get caught off guard by a tactic and it leads to this kind of result.

Anyway, for what it's worth, he is also looking into making a Sato list of his own to try, so apparently it wasn't a bad list you had.

1 hour ago, SirDave said:

Just want to point out that you already don't have "all comers" competitiveness... as the list you are having so much trouble with is one of the "comers"

IMO, it is ok to have a weakness in a list as no list can do everything.

My main list is ISDII, a couple of smaller ships and an Aces Alpha strike. It has served me well. It has its weaknesses. I am cool with that.

I agree with this. You simply cannot build a list that can counter everything. You're better off building a specialized list and hope for good match ups than trying to take a single tool for each possible scenario. This is further reinforced with objective play. You should build a list that works well with the objectives you select, and select objectives that allow you to score more points than your opponent, and this can be done a number of ways, from out deploying to flank and kill ships, to grabbing VPs on the run.

I think the lists that do the worst are ones that have no plan except "be good against everything".

On 8/2/2017 at 5:41 AM, Vergilius said:

I've done pretty well with a squadron light build. 2 A-wings, Shara, and Tycho is the latest iteration. With Torryn and AS flak from your flotillas (or other ships as situation permits), there's enough.

I think more of it comes down to how you view the squadron game. Are you trying to compete in it and win a lot of points? Is it one of your main damage dealers against ships?

I know I'm looking at point denial, in that even if I get a bad squadron match-up, I can usually bag an ace squad or two, which means that if I lose all my squads, I'm only a few points behind.

I tend to find that some light or medium squads when combined with solid play from your ships is enough. Squads have to support your ships, and your ships have to support your squads. When they work together, its a thing of beauty.

This is what is called Combined Armed Tactics in other circles

The game in question lacked obstacles as well which favored the rush tactic, also I deployed poorly and in the center, he had me on five activations, and frankly how he played I should have gone second to try and delay my moving as much as possible to bring him in.

I NEVER fought a rush list like that, most imps slow roll speed 1 I'm the corner and give me free reign to move in on them.

Ah right, of course.

People often say that games are lost in deloyment.

They are wrong.

The game was already lost from obstacle placement. They define the game so well.

4 hours ago, Undeadguy said:

I agree with this. You simply cannot build a list that can counter everything. You're better off building a specialized list and hope for good match ups than trying to take a single tool for each possible scenario. This is further reinforced with objective play. You should build a list that works well with the objectives you select, and select objectives that allow you to score more points than your opponent, and this can be done a number of ways, from out deploying to flank and kill ships, to grabbing VPs on the run.

I think the lists that do the worst are ones that have no plan except "be good against everything".

This really doesn't make much sense cuz the bomber fleet is literally good against a strong 80 to 90% of the field. Only against dedicated AA does it have a hard time. This list is good against pretty much anything. It's a bomber list. Squadrons do good damage to everything.

3 minutes ago, Blail Blerg said:

This really doesn't make much sense cuz the bomber fleet is literally good against a strong 80 to 90% of the field. Only against dedicated AA does it have a hard time. This list is good against pretty much anything. It's a bomber list. Squadrons do good damage to everything.

Maybe in your area it is a strong list. But the Utah meta does not reflect on the entire community. If Mythic wins Worlds, Gen Con and Nova, I'd be inclined to agree with you. And if we see the same fleet or variations of it, again, I'd agree with you. Mythic has a strong list, but I don't think it is as good as you make it out to be. How does it play against MC30s? TRC90s? Rhymerball? DeMSU? Ackbar?

More importantly, what have you thrown against it? It seems like you strictly play Imperial, so I have a feeling that is all you have tried with. I'm pretty sure a Rieekan aces can tear through that fleet.

The more I think of it the more I feel that the problem isn't the fleet per se, but its the fact that there is no way to approach a win without trading ships or squadrons. Currently most fleets have a hard weakness of some sort when if that "thing" happens the fleet crumbles. Once a fleet crumbles thats where you get those big wins needed to carry a tournament, and the goal is to win tournaments. My fleet has weaknesses, but on average even vs those weaknesses it still performs well enough that it's not going to give up more than a 100 point mov (excluding dice saying lol nope).

Above said, is it a pain in the ass to face and severely punishing to any mistakes? In my eyes this fleet will punish an opponent's mistake harder than anything else out there. If it gets rushed and a ship ends up just out of range, or enough threats didn't cross in time thats game. If you fly a squadron ball a bit sub-optimally it will take that tiny flaw and magnify it until the whole thing crumbles around you. I don't think there is a person on this forum that can't spot a weakness in addition to the ones I've mentioned already, but to capitalize on those weaknesses (yes I'm biased, it IS my fleet after all) it requires exceptional play.

Perhaps that is the root of the problem. Not that the fleet itself is unbeatable, but that it doesn't allow for a player to recover from their mistakes as the retaliation hits to hard and to fast. At Utah in round 2 the game went from even to full on over and done when my opponents yavaris ended a hair out of activation range of two b-wings. Once that happened everything just fell apart for him as what he wanted to happen one activation later, but my counter-play didn't give him that activation.

6 minutes ago, mythics said:

At Utah in round 2 the game went from even to full on over and done when my opponents yavaris ended a hair out of activation range of two b-wings. Once that happened everything just fell apart for him as what he wanted to happen one activation later, but my counter-play didn't give him that activation.

An example of the kind of tactical play I'm looking for when I say you're probably winning at the tactical level, not the strategic.

Your opponent made a mistake. You not only did not make a mistake of your own, but you punished him for his. Good on you. That is good play that is not dependent on the list as such, but on a player being skilled with his list. This is what I believe is happening if Norse and Blail are repeatedly unable to beat you with lists that other players are able to use to defeat opponents with similar lists, and why simply saying "this list is OP" doesn't tell the whole story without an associated batrep.

48 minutes ago, Blail Blerg said:

Only against dedicated AA and Slicer Tools and massed MC30s and an Imperial squadron alpha strike and CR90B rammers and a bunch of other stuff does it have a hard time.

FTFY

I was just going to say about the same as Ard.

Mythics makes the key point that some lists are more forgivable about mistakes. I'd say I'm finding that the entire game can be punishing for mistakes. For example, I lost quite a few games (by my standards) getting my wave 4 regional list in line. I did learn quite a bit about playing it well through those losses and always felt like there was a fighting chance with it. I've also found that as an 80% Rebel player, I couldn't play at nearly the level with the Imperials, again, largely because of lack of practice with most of the units. I then too found that simply playing a squadron heavy list didn't mean that it became a cure-all for my problems. If anything, having a lot more squadron keywords and unit interactions left many more decisions in which one could make a mistake.

And as some of the other top players have posted previously in other threads, when you hit a certain skill threshold, it is hard to get much more headway than an 8-3 against them, and 6-5/7-4 results start becoming increasingly common. So I think the comment that it is hard to pick up more than a 100 point MOV might be fair against a lot of top players, but they are also going to bring lists with the tactical skill level to fly them that makes getting more than 100 MOV in return also difficult. For that matter, I won a tournament recently with 20 tournament points precisely because we had 4 top 4 regional finishers show up and we all beat each other up.

A final point. I've noticed in most local environments is that players tend to have specific skill levels such that so long as the stronger players are not intentionally trying to outfit their list, it really doesn't matter what they bring, the game results tend to be about the same. Tactical vision and player skill matter. Its really starting to look like Mythics is just a really good player and he could probably design a number of competent lists that would yield similar results, he just happens to like this list, and if you're going to get good at a list to play it to a top 4 or better finish at regionals, you're going to need to play it a bunch.

Mythics, clearly you are a good player so this needs saying.

You say there is a stale meta of full frontal assaults. Quite frankly that type of play is missing finesse. Its like cracking codes via brute force, sure it works, however there are far better ways.

Taking pumped up Bwings into this meta is just finding a hammer bigger than theirs and quite frankly thats pathetic. Its highly effective, yet judging by all your posts you are capable of so much more.

Grab Ackbar, mc30s. Enhanced armaments and sensor teams. Fly with style, attacking from multiple angles. Tear the lists apart with skilled flying. Show them new ways of playing!

Engine teching madine mc80s

Cracken corvettes

Sooo many options.

You can bring variety to the meta. Please do so! Grabbing a bigger hammer than your opponent is effective, its just plain dull.

Do it for yourself, do it for Utah, most of all, do it for the yellow spaceship fraternity.