16 hours ago, xerpo said:

An Imp player would love to see how you fly 20 juicy fleet points in a 5 hull 2 speed dude.

Really?

I was doing this wave II.

Adar into position. Yavaris tap.

Its ridiculously simple. The hard choice is whether you can get Luke alongside him for a douuble tap or not.

Norse. We dont acknowledge Demo as game breaking. We also have defeated a lot of defensive rebel squadron fleets on vassal. We established its your meta, stop formation flying

17 hours ago, geek19 said:

Pelta, AFFM, FCT. Suddenly he's speed effectively better than 4. Adar Tallon him with the Pelta, use Yavaris, and bam, 3 shots from distance 5 away starting (just need to be 1 away when shooting!).

And again, you are creating a whole fleet expensive combo around a single dude. Part of the victory is analyzing the enemy fleet to spot the weak point. You build your fleet around a combo where your big punch depends on a 5 hull guy. Lets say you can actually make the 4 movement speed for Keyan, not 5, you bring also intel to avoid the screen, keep summing up, and he actually manages to hit the full shields ship as you're alpha striking the ship. Keyan skill useless and Adar Tallon useless because in the next activation his screen will tare your poor keyan apart unless you put in some escort. If you do, keep investing up in the combo.

Its an usual mistake to see things out of context and realize later that, in practice, is not that impressive.

1 hour ago, xerpo said:

And again, you are creating a whole fleet expensive combo around a single dude. Part of the victory is analyzing the enemy fleet to spot the weak point. You build your fleet around a combo where your big punch depends on a 5 hull guy. Lets say you can actually make the 4 movement speed for Keyan, not 5, you bring also intel to avoid the screen, keep summing up, and he actually manages to hit the full shields ship as you're alpha striking the ship. Keyan skill useless and Adar Tallon useless because in the next activation his screen will tare your poor keyan apart unless you put in some escort. If you do, keep investing up in the combo.

Its an usual mistake to see things out of context and realize later that, in practice, is not that impressive.

That's a silly extrapolation...taken out of context.

Of course he's using the rest of his points to augment bombing and ensure sufficient anti-squadron.

18 minutes ago, Green Knight said:

That's a silly extrapolation...taken out of context.

Of course he's using the rest of his points to augment bombing and ensure sufficient anti-squadron.

Oh, no, he was right, I was planning on spending all of those points just to bring Keyan. The rest of my list was GR75s so I could delay activating keyan until I wanted to. /Sarcasm.

I'm not denying Rebel bombers are good, mind you. But I'll agree with @Snipafist and @Ginkapo about not formation flying. This list you say is unbeatable has 1 escort and 1 source of Intel. Turn those off and the b wings are stuck in position. Heck, turn off the Intel with saber squadron and IG88 combined with actually flanking his squadrons. At this point, there's been multiple threads about this. People have tried helping you, and vague statements about how this list is amazing and you can't beat it don't help.

Start a new thread, call it, "how do I beat the squadron blob" and post some ACTUAL PICTURES of you and your list vs his list. If you're not attacking the important parts of his list that make it run, that's really more on you than anything. If you're not bringing fighter squadrons to fire on his bombers or trying to get the jump on his squadrons before they can hit you.... You know his list, you know his bid, run a DeMSU swarm and use raider flak to hit him. Flechettes exist.

As I said in my squadron article, if he spends 134 points on squadrons, they're going to kill something. If I spend 134 points on an ISD, I kill things with it and no one points out how broken ISDs are. Is it a good list? Yes, and he's a good player. But if everyday you go into work and someone bonks you in the head with a bat, wear a flipping helmet!

50 minutes ago, Green Knight said:

That's a silly extrapolation...taken out of context.

Of course he's using the rest of his points to augment bombing and ensure sufficient anti-squadron.

Oh really? Ive been playing rebel since Core and I can say that if you bring a heavy bomber consistent list you can't bring a decent anti-squadron, and viceversa. It just wont fit, and the result will be a "something" that is not good enough at bombing and not good enough at screening. So I always bet for one or the other putting the balance into my ships to carry the "other game". IE: Ackbar + heavy screening squadrons. In the other hand, Dodona with GH and heavy antisquadron ships.

I dont take anything out of context. I just highlight that saying: hey, keyan can output XXXXXX damage in one activation!, without thinking in all the things you have to carry and the fleet points you have to invest to make that work is the true silly thing here.

Combos run up high exponentially and then you realize that you have been working on a single guy from the root of it just to make that circumstantial event happen, maybe, once in all the six turns.

4 minutes ago, xerpo said:

Oh really? Ive been playing rebel since Core and I can say that if you bring a heavy bomber consistent list you can't bring a decent anti-squadron, and viceversa. It just wont fit, and the result will be a "something" that is not good enough at bombing and not good enough at screening. So I always bet for one or the other putting the balance into my ships to carry the "other game". IE: Ackbar + heavy screening squadrons. In the other hand, Dodona with GH and heavy antisquadron ships.

I have ALSO been playing rebels since core, and I can pretty easily fit in fighters and bombers into a list, especially with Rebels and all the overlap they have. B wings double up as fighters if needed, and X wings become decent bombers late game. What do you normally put in your list that's not working as a fighter or a bomber depending on circumstances?

7 hours ago, Norsehound said:

I also dream of a day when the forums can acknowledge defensive Rebel fighter builds are as much of a legitimate game-breaking threat as Rhymer and Demolisher. As long as players continue to deny this with the likes of, "Just throw a Raider / a few unfocused squadrons at it", my PTSD is going to continue reciting the strongest list in this game I've encountered that can only be beaten in a tournament setting by not engaging it.

Alas, until then, I have to point out powerful combinations where I see it. Because that's the apex of the game from my seat, and the thing to beat in the current life of the meta.

The problem is people keep pointing out what you can do to adjust to it (bid for second so he can't be so passive, bring more of a fighter presence, destroy the single Escort, use a fleet like @Ardaedhel's 4MC30s, etc.) and the responses we keep getting are "basically ran the same list as usual, ran it head-first into the woodchipper again," "ran my TIEs unsupported into double-tapping fighters with Yavaris again and they died again," and "sure I could make significant changes to my fleet to adapt to my local meta, but I didn't." I'm a long way from convinced it's something inherently busted about squadrons and far more convinced it's something about you.

Probably that I only get in one armada game every two weeks and so haven't had the chance to try your suggestions on the table?

But you're right, I should drop the issue. I'll just wait for it to start showing up at more tournaments before revisiting the topic. Heck, I might be flying a copy of it.

7 minutes ago, Norsehound said:

But you're right, I should drop the issue.

Fwiw, I'd still love to see a bat rep with pictures to see what's happening that he keeps clobbering you guys, if you can get a chance...

Next time we're f2f, I can ask drew to set up that list and actually run my latest fighter counter against it. We're coming up on our off weekend but we might be able to meet earlier to try it.

14 minutes ago, Norsehound said:

Next time we're f2f, I can ask drew to set up that list and actually run my latest fighter counter against it...

What's your latest list? If you're taking like 134 points of Interceptors that's not a good list. Or plan, for that matter.

"I threw wave after wave of my own men at them until the killbots reached their preset kill limit and shut down."

The last attempt was max aces of some kind under a 6-squadon activation ISD with flight controllers and some Gozantis. The idea is to just charge, mulch into the fighters to start killing everything and give nearly everyone defense tokens. It was the best way I could gurantee removing that ball so I could crunch the relatively fragile capital ships behind it. Besides, clearing those fighters in their entirety gives me full fighter points, and I can let a dinky little transport escape to save only 18. *shrug*

That's not talking about Norra though, the topic should get back to that.

I think the issue is there is not the same type of synergy with imp fighters as their is with rebels. Nora, Adar, yavaris, GH, Jan all work so well with a fighter/bomber blob.

I agree. I think it's one of the rebels' strong, key advantages tbh. The Rebels can devote a large number of points to fighters and use them to win the scenario with, since they're good at killing fighters and threatening capital ships equally. It's why I keep quoting this Yavaris list... the fighter mix in it, I think, is strong enough to take on many comers and has whenever I hear it's come to the table.

For the amount of points a list invests in fighters, the Rebels get a lot more out of their craft than the Empire does. To cover both bomber and space-superiority roles, Empire basically has to buy their fighters twice. When the rebels spend 55 points on 5 A-Wings, they have some decent space superiroity craft with a black battery, making them at least a decent threat against capital ships once the fighters have been cleared. By contast, once the five TIE Interceptors have cleared all enemy fighters, they're a points liability and have to run from even the single blue dice shots from finishing them off.

While the Empire does have access to multi-role craft (at last with wave 5), individually they are more expensive than their rebel compeditors, and still don't reach the same multi-role capacity. Comparing TIE Defenders to X-Wings for instance... while TIE/Ds get the speed and the AA hitting power, their battery isn't as great as an X-Wing's. Switching blue to black also hurts their chances against enemy aces as well. That three point upgrade means when an X-Wing kills a TIE/D, it's a three point trade-up. Firesprays are another example, going up four points over a B-Wing for some minor tweaks and the obligation to activate them effectively.

In the end I'm still just surprised I don't see more lists like Mythics', because rebel fighters are pretty potent on paper and from experience of flying against them many times. It's not just because mythics is clobbering me so many times with that list, it's because I also understand how powerful his fighter mix is, and how contorted an Imperial response has to be against it. If I go hard AA fighters to assure Mythics loses the beatstick to kill my capital ships, I'm throwing away points against opponents who don't have the fighter concentration he does, and are in fact a liability against single blue dice if I bring them into the fight.

*Shrug*