Starting it off with a bit of a personal project for me: a lengthy article on the oft-misunderstood Raider Corvette .

I know John's plugging away at the large squadron coverage article and working intermittently on a Dodonna article as well.

Up next for me later this week is likely an Ozzel article to cap off the wave 2 Imperial options.

Great job.

My new personal favorite fun thing is the Raider 1, Expanded Launchers, Sensor Team.

Oh and I really love the speed 4 manoeuvre with JJR. You likely just need to use it once per game, but boy does it get you wherever you want to be.

Thank you so much for this superb article! The Raider finally getting the love it deserves (IMO).

While I totally agree with you about Ordnance Experts, lately (on a tip from @pt106 ) have tried them naked. They are just amazing for what they do for 44 points.

My all time favorite Raider build so far is the Screed APT OE Raider1. So many people would be amazed at what a Concentrate Fire command could do when the little bugger was double arced!

2 hours ago, TheCallum said:

Great job.

My new personal favorite fun thing is the Raider 1, Expanded Launchers, Sensor Team.

Oh and I really love the speed 4 manoeuvre with JJR. You likely just need to use it once per game, but boy does it get you wherever you want to be.

Thanks!

I like the idea of Expanded Launchers + Sensor Team (oof, the points, but still!). Do you find it's more useful against non-flotilla targets than the Screed APTs+Sensor Team build? I'm concerned about losing the Ordnance Experts and if the payoff is worth it against heavier ships. it's intriguing, though...

Oh, and I loves me some speed 3-4 maneuvers with Jerjerrod. I agree you don't normally use him more than once, maybe twice, per game, but it's straight money.

1 hour ago, CaribbeanNinja said:

Thank you so much for this superb article! The Raider finally getting the love it deserves (IMO).

While I totally agree with you about Ordnance Experts, lately (on a tip from @pt106 ) have tried them naked. They are just amazing for what they do for 44 points.

My all time favorite Raider build so far is the Screed APT OE Raider1. So many people would be amazed at what a Concentrate Fire command could do when the little bugger was double arced!

You're most welcome! One of the main reasons to start the blog was so John and I could get the arguments we're making all the time down in one spot, and I was arguing about Raiders it felt like constantly.

I have tried Raiders naked with Vader and even then I kept coming back to the Ordnance Experts if only for the help with flak. You can kind of work around it with Screed or Vader but those black dice rerolls are really helpful for just a small investment. I know @pt106 knows his sh*t, it just hasn't worked out well for me in the past.

And yeah, Screed with APTs or ACMs on Raiders get some serious work done against ships. People underestimate Raiders to their peril, especially with Vader or Screed there to buff the damage.

30 minutes ago, Snipafist said:

I have tried Raiders naked with Vader and even then I kept coming back to the Ordnance Experts if only for the help with flak. You can kind of work around it with Screed or Vader but those black dice rerolls are really helpful for just a small investment. I know @pt106 knows his sh*t, it just hasn't worked out well for me in the past.

Well.. I do like ordnance experts on my Raiders, my problem is that I usually don't have points for them (As in I should better annd Ordnance Experts to that ISD or put some squadrons on a table). The other reason I'm trying to keep Raiders as cheap as possible is that I prefer to lose them every game (as the attack spent on killing raider is the attack that doesn't go into that ISD and often is a deciding factor in that 100+ point ship surviving at the end of the game). Another factor is that i usually run Motti with Raiders and it does help a lot as Raider is now much harder to kill with 1 strong attack.

4 hours ago, Snipafist said:

Starting it off with a bit of a personal project for me: a lengthy article on the oft-misunderstood Raider Corvette .

I know John's plugging away at the large squadron coverage article and working intermittently on a Dodonna article as well.

Up next for me later this week is likely an Ozzel article to cap off the wave 2 Imperial options.

Cant wait to see what you write about Ozz as he's my all time number one pick and I never fly without him.

43 minutes ago, Snipafist said:

I like the idea of Expanded Launchers + Sensor Team (oof, the points, but still!). Do you find it's more useful against non-flotilla targets than the Screed APTs+Sensor Team build? I'm concerned about losing the Ordnance Experts and if the payoff is worth it against heavier ships. it's intriguing, though...

The 5 blacks (with CF) are fairly reliable. With the two blues, you're looking at 5 damage on a bad roll, with an accuracy too. I just find that pretty appealing for a flotilla hunter. CR90s, Arquitens, and other Raiders are just quite often dead with a ram.

The main bonus is simply not needing Screed. If you have Screed, the much cheaper APTs is the way to go.

Why not simply Jonus? He's good for accuracy fishing.

19 minutes ago, Green Knight said:

Why not simply Jonus? He's good for accuracy fishing.

FC/RLB Raider as Jonus delivery system?

Great post!!! I've never been good with raiders, but given this post I'm kinda stoked to get some more flight time with them... That skill where you line up your ship to have other ships walk into your ship's black range is one of the hardest skills to learn in Armada... Especially as player 2... that's probably why people have such a hard time with the raider...

Bringing me to another point about your post, correct me if I'm wrong, but did you mention that raiding may be easier as first player???

Thanks again! Keep em coming!

Great post and a fantastic blog! The Raider is one of my favorite ships in Armada so I'm happy to see it getting some love.

3 hours ago, Plagueis said:

Cant wait to see what you write about Ozz as he's my all time number one pick and I never fly without him.

I came around to Ozzel a few months ago. I wasn't impressed with him in wave two - he wanted to run mostly Raiders and Gladiators and so did Screed but I felt that Screed helped more at the time. With waves 3 through 5, you can add Gozantis and to a lesser extent Arquitens to the general mix of Imperial light ships and Ozzel will happily run all of them for a much more versatile fleet while Screed kind of groans and complains about these kids with their new-fangled flotilla and red dice nonsense. "Back in my days Imperials were all black dice and critical effects! I was a big deal back in waves one and two and the Empire has gone to hell ever since they let in these flotilla weirdos and Rebel-looking red dice side arc ships!"

2 hours ago, SkyCake said:

Great post!!! I've never been good with raiders, but given this post I'm kinda stoked to get some more flight time with them... That skill where you line up your ship to have other ships walk into your ship's black range is one of the hardest skills to learn in Armada... Especially as player 2... that's probably why people have such a hard time with the raider...

Bringing me to another point about your post, correct me if I'm wrong, but did you mention that raiding may be easier as first player???

Thanks again! Keep em coming!

Thanks! I'm glad to hear you liked it and I made you excited to give them another try!

I did mention that Raiders can be used in more ideal situations as first player but I didn't focus on it too much. Ideally you can last+first them but there's often a lot of ships hoping to do that (with Gladiators being the ships most demanding about this usually). I typically use my Raiders as inbetween activations or late activations but only sometimes as first activations (as they're often accompanying larger ships and/or Gladiators who want that for themselves), so I wanted to focus more on the "catching" element of Raider use as I find it overall more applicable to most fleets than last+first.

1 hour ago, Yipe said:

Great post and a fantastic blog! The Raider is one of my favorite ships in Armada so I'm happy to see it getting some love.

All the Raider friends are coming out of the woodwork on this one! Where have you guys been? I've felt so alone for so long, hahaha .

5 minutes ago, Snipafist said:

All the Raider friends are coming out of the woodwork on this one! Where have you guys been? I've felt so alone for so long, hahaha .

Get a hug!

The very first time I played Armada (at 300 points), I took 3 Raiders. Maybe the Raider is seeing more use among those who, such as myself, don't frequent these boards? In my CC campaign, 2 of our players included a Raider as part of their starting fleet. I think it's a fun little ship, and anything that can go Speed 4 has a use on the battle, err, spacefield?

1 hour ago, Snipafist said:

All the Raider friends are coming out of the woodwork on this one! Where have you guys been? I've felt so alone for so long, hahaha .

I have always been here I just realized that it all my different builds since Wave2 a most common variable is a Raider and not an ISD. As for using Raider as player 2, as long as you have activation advantage, it's maneuverability makes it a great ship for forking, i.e. presenting another significant threat to force the opponent into a hard decision of which ship to activate first.

Awesome, awesome article (same as always)! I just bought my first raider yesterday so this was particularly timely. Put it on the table today and had it flying around at top speed for most of the match, but it did end up landing the killing blow on my opponent's Yavaris!

6 hours ago, Snipafist said:

I came around to Ozzel a few months ago. I wasn't impressed with him in wave two - he wanted to run mostly Raiders and Gladiators and so did Screed but I felt that Screed helped more at the time. With waves 3 through 5, you can add Gozantis and to a lesser extent Arquitens to the general mix of Imperial light ships and Ozzel will happily run all of them for a much more versatile fleet while Screed kind of groans and complains about these kids with their new-fangled flotilla and red dice nonsense. "Back in my days Imperials were all black dice and critical effects! I was a big deal back in waves one and two and the Empire has gone to hell ever since they let in these flotilla weirdos and Rebel-looking red dice side arc ships!"

What always did it for me was the power he gave to the GSD. Who needs Screed to effect a single dice when you can reroll your blacks anyway with OE as you tend to hit a crit anyway. But spamming nav you have a ship with ET that can go between speed 1 and 3+1 at the drop of a hat. People see the speed 1 start and think there safe next second you jump to full speed and your side arching them and to make it worse you then drop to speed 1 to stay for another shot...

16 hours ago, Snipafist said:

Starting it off with a bit of a personal project for me: a lengthy article on the oft-misunderstood Raider Corvette .

I know John's plugging away at the large squadron coverage article and working intermittently on a Dodonna article as well.

Up next for me later this week is likely an Ozzel article to cap off the wave 2 Imperial options.

Regarding the point in your blog about the raider II being a less efficient cr90b, I don't think the issue lies in battery complement. Consider if both cr90b and raider II can double arc a target with a CF dial. the cr90b fires 6 blues while the raider II fires 5 blues, but it also has 2 blacks which have an expectation of 1 damage each. So it amounts to 6 confirmed damage vs 7 damage (but 5 confirmed, and max potential 9). so a raider II is doing 1 more damage in terms of firepower. cr90bs are going to be ramming their targets anyways so close/med range is not really the main issue. I think the thing that a raider II misses out on is the support team slot so no ET for them to get another damage to the hull, but that might encourage one to play them as hit and run instead of cruise missiles? So then a raider IIs aim is to strike and scream to save those points than to blow the target and itself up.

6 hours ago, Plagueis said:

What always did it for me was the power he gave to the GSD. Who needs Screed to effect a single dice when you can reroll your blacks anyway with OE as you tend to hit a crit anyway. But spamming nav you have a ship with ET that can go between speed 1 and 3+1 at the drop of a hat. People see the speed 1 start and think there safe next second you jump to full speed and your side arching them and to make it worse you then drop to speed 1 to stay for another shot...

You tend to get a crit with Ordnance Experts but not always, particularly in the front arc. With Screed you're nearly guaranteed critting twice with a double-arc and the reliability that brings is very powerful. It also adds some considerable muscle to Raiders with APTs or ACMS where normally those aren't very reliable upgrades.

I agree that Ozzel is quite effective with Engine Techs Gladiators though. A speed 1 Gladiator can become a speed 3 with Engine Techs from a single nav dial. It makes pouncing very easy and encourages tighter turning as well.

4 hours ago, Muelmuel said:

Regarding the point in your blog about the raider II being a less efficient cr90b, I don't think the issue lies in battery complement. Consider if both cr90b and raider II can double arc a target with a CF dial. the cr90b fires 6 blues while the raider II fires 5 blues, but it also has 2 blacks which have an expectation of 1 damage each. So it amounts to 6 confirmed damage vs 7 damage (but 5 confirmed, and max potential 9). so a raider II is doing 1 more damage in terms of firepower. cr90bs are going to be ramming their targets anyways so close/med range is not really the main issue. I think the thing that a raider II misses out on is the support team slot so no ET for them to get another damage to the hull, but that might encourage one to play them as hit and run instead of cruise missiles? So then a raider IIs aim is to strike and scream to save those points than to blow the target and itself up.

The problem is the CR90B is superior at medium range and the Raider-II requires being at short range to compete, at which point you should have used a Raider-I anyways and benefited from Ordnance Experts. The Raider-II's dice are also not as well-distributed for double-arcing at medium range with SW7s - 3 dice from the front and 1 from the side either becomes 2+3 dice (probably the better option) or 4+1 dice and it's preferable to set it up like the CR90B where concentrate fire brings it to 3+3, making defense token spending less effective.

The points cost difference is also substantial - the CR90B with SW7s is 44 points compared to the Raider-II with SW7s, which is 53. The Raider has better flak but that's not 9 points worth of value to me.

As I said in the article, I think the Raider-II has potential with some future upgrade, just like the CR90s became more useful with TRCs and SW7s. We're just waiting on that upgrade is all.

Who wanted to read almost 8000 words on using copious amounts of squadrons? Because have I got an article for you!

http://cannotgetyourshipout.blogspot.com/2017/03/squadrons-encyclopedia-4-large-fighter.html?m=1

23 hours ago, Snipafist said:

You tend to get a crit with Ordnance Experts but not always, particularly in the front arc. With Screed you're nearly guaranteed critting twice with a double-arc and the reliability that brings is very powerful. It also adds some considerable muscle to Raiders with APTs or ACMS where normally those aren't very reliable upgrades.

I agree that Ozzel is quite effective with Engine Techs Gladiators though. A speed 1 Gladiator can become a speed 3 with Engine Techs from a single nav dial. It makes pouncing very easy and encourages tighter turning as well.

The problem is the CR90B is superior at medium range and the Raider-II requires being at short range to compete, at which point you should have used a Raider-I anyways and benefited from Ordnance Experts. The Raider-II's dice are also not as well-distributed for double-arcing at medium range with SW7s - 3 dice from the front and 1 from the side either becomes 2+3 dice (probably the better option) or 4+1 dice and it's preferable to set it up like the CR90B where concentrate fire brings it to 3+3, making defense token spending less effective.

The points cost difference is also substantial - the CR90B with SW7s is 44 points compared to the Raider-II with SW7s, which is 53. The Raider has better flak but that's not 9 points worth of value to me.

As I said in the article, I think the Raider-II has potential with some future upgrade, just like the CR90s became more useful with TRCs and SW7s. We're just waiting on that upgrade is all.

The only niche build I can think of has Impetuous, Kallus, RS. This as platform has a much greater reach than a raider 1. Expensive though.

Ran it in a local tourney, and together with my squads it created havoc. Fun, but not worth it, I think.

5 hours ago, geek19 said:

Who wanted to read almost 8000 words on using copious amounts of squadrons? Because have I got an article for you!

http://cannotgetyourshipout.blogspot.com/2017/03/squadrons-encyclopedia-4-large-fighter.html?m=1

You and I need to take at least a short break from these stupid long articles I think, haha.

That's why I'm working on Ozzel right now and that should be it from me this week. Likely publishing tomorrow, I think.

Yeah I plan on powering through a lot of ships soon. Ships and an occasional commander. Luckily the rest of the squadron combat articles are shorter! Or I hope they are...

Who's ready for a nice not-stupid-long article about Admiral Ozzel ?

Awww snap who has a custom made header now?

Edit: Seriously, though, thanks to the missus for her help on this one.