i was able to outfly a brobot pair at the wave 10 opening terny using my triple aces list

I could see RAC-Kylo + Ace as a problem for the Bros but RAC has to hit them first. The Aggressor is fast enough to get behind a Decimator and get autothrusters to help on Defense every round.

The Bossk-Party Bus was a pain to deal with, but with the Zuckuss nerf it won't be as bad.

I used to run Terminators (CS, FCS, HLC, GS, AT, title) and I tried fitting in Tractor Beams. If I wanted to run them now I would still try TBs but I would want to try Fearlessness and VI to see how those compare to CS.

I flew them for a few months last year, what I learned is that if I practice enough, they had the tools to beat anything. They aren't easy to run by any stretch, but you will get out of them what you put in. For every game I've ever lost with them I can look at specific things that I could have done differently to win. Except that one time where the x/7 Defender couldn't seem to roll less than two evades the whole game.

4 hours ago, skotothalamos said:

There's no other bot for the one bot to be bros with, so it's more like BoBot.

Bobs takes IG88 crew...

k-wing advanced slam bombers with sabine

I feel like bombers shouldn't be too much of a problem if you can range control. You should also be able to down a bomber before it gets to drop anything.

Insert brobots where the diamond was.....

I think new Brobots will love Expertise.

Aces weren't a problem: you lived with PS6 so is an innate characteristic of the brobots. Is up to you find the way to premade your maneuvers.

Bombs may be a problem, but not the serious one imho.

Stress WAS the major weakness of Brobots. But with Expertise+FCS...it may be kinda better. I tried a list with double Expertise+FLC, HLC+Mangler and...it works! They hit as a truck. There's just one bad thing: you miss glitterstim. And glitterstim is what do you need against double taps.

So that will be a meta thing=if you're going to face any hard TLT meta, you NEED glitterstim (maybe just Attanni will workk. Otherwise, Expertise is your savior.

That's my thought.

Oh, and IG-B+Moralo is another good list. Even without Zuckuss, just swap it with Operation Specialist. Dengar, Bossk crew and Operation Specialist. It works pretty well with both the gunner effects.

With some experimentation I found the rac/gunner /kylo matchup to be absolutely brutal.

Switching in determination changed the matchup to probably about even. Granted I am not experienced using bots yet so it's possible I need to get gooder.

THAT said, I still am having fun trying to figure out the silly droids.

8 hours ago, Cerve said:

I think new Brobots will love Expertise.

Aces weren't a problem: you lived with PS6 so is an innate characteristic of the brobots. Is up to you find the way to premade your maneuvers.

Bombs may be a problem, but not the serious one imho.

Stress WAS the major weakness of Brobots. But with Expertise+FCS...it may be kinda better. I tried a list with double Expertise+FLC, HLC+Mangler and...it works! They hit as a truck. There's just one bad thing: you miss glitterstim. And glitterstim is what do you need against double taps.

So that will be a meta thing=if you're going to face any hard TLT meta, you NEED glitterstim (maybe just Attanni will workk. Otherwise, Expertise is your savior.

That's my thought.

Oh, and IG-B+Moralo is another good list. Even without Zuckuss, just swap it with Operation Specialist. Dengar, Bossk crew and Operation Specialist. It works pretty well with both the gunner effects.

Given how much they need to sloop and k turn and how EXPENSIVE they are, I really don't think spending 4 points on an EPT that's turned off when you do a red move is really sensible.

I don't massively rate Moralo 88, personally. An IGGy B without a C to back him up is a touch too fragile, and Moralo is really difficult to outfly and too prone to just... hitting with his initial attack... against too many lists. I tried it a few times and failed miserably.

2 hours ago, thespaceinvader said:

Given how much they need to sloop and k turn and how EXPENSIVE they are, I really don't think spending 4 points on an EPT that's turned off when you do a red move is really sensible.

I don't massively rate Moralo 88, personally. An IGGy B without a C to back him up is a touch too fragile, and Moralo is really difficult to outfly and too prone to just... hitting with his initial attack... against too many lists. I tried it a few times and failed miserably.

Use the IG to cover the blank spots of Moralo.

Oh ****, Expertise doesn't work if stressed. Meh, I forgot that!

15 hours ago, Burius1981 said:

I could see RAC-Kylo + Ace as a problem for the Bros but RAC has to hit them first. The Aggressor is fast enough to get behind a Decimator and get autothrusters to help on Defense every round.

Actually, no it's not fast enough. One of the weaknesses of IGs is that while they're speedy ships with their boost, the speed of their initial maneuver is never more than 3, unless you can K-turn. It's quite common to face a situation against a higher-PS large base ship where 3 straight/bank is too short to get past it, 1 straight/bank takes you too far not to bump and other maneuvers are either blocked by obstacles or simply make no sense. This often results in a forced bump, lack of actions and RAC landing right behind the IG in R1 with TL on it. You don't get to shoot and all you have for defence is AT vs 4 dice, which is woefully inadequate unless you're lucky with your dice.

Usually the best case scenario is being able to S-loop somewhere (and you need to do it a LOT vs PWTs) but if you face a good player who knows what options IGs have, he can usually see that it's the only good maneuver you can execute and position himself in such a way that he can boost past your arc and shoot at your stressed ship at R1. Even if you manage to stop that from happening, you get 1 round of shooting while stressed and again you're in a tough spot where to go the next round to clear stress and not get hit from behind with a R1 attack yet again.

It's not that you can't get those shots against PWTs and kill them eventually - you can. It's just that it takes too much time to get into positons for those shots and you lose the exchange of fire. Enemy ships go down, but IGs end up going down even faster because they get fewer shots overall.

Not to mention that against RAC in particular, you get HotCoP Gunnered, and that's a recipe for getting damage stacking up very quickly.

15 hours ago, mad mandolorian said:

i was able to outfly a brobot pair at the wave 10 opening terny using my triple aces list

This. If I'm running three aces, especially Inquisitor and 2 pals, bro bots feel like they're flying up hill.

6 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

Not to mention that against RAC in particular, you get HotCoP Gunnered, and that's a recipe for getting damage stacking up very quickly.

Actually I'm somewhat relieved if HoTCoP Gunner is what he brings. At least I can just take evade rather than focus and possibly use Glitterstim as well. With 8 HP, autothrusters and evade, Brobots have a fairly decent control of how much damage they receive and they can kinda afford to lose 1 HP per round without going down too quickly.

What's REALLY killing me is Palp RAC. Yes, even after the Palp nerf. RAC doesn't use Palp on defence anyway, so he just boosts his attack. It's just one attack, but it almost always achieves full accuracy and includes 1 or 2 crits. Especially at range 1 this is scary, even if you can use autothrusters and evade. If you cannot use either and your dice fail you, this can get brutal very fast. You don't want to know what a Palp RAC and Vader can do to a shieldless IG at range 1/2...

I already do I've done it

2 hours ago, Lightrock said:

Usually the best case scenario is being able to S-loop somewhere (and you need to do it a LOT vs PWTs) but if you face a good player who knows what options IGs have, he can usually see that it's the only good maneuver you can execute and position himself in such a way that he can boost past your arc and shoot at your stressed ship at R1. Even if you manage to stop that from happening, you get 1 round of shooting while stressed and again you're in a tough spot where to go the next round to clear stress and not get hit from behind with a R1 attack yet again.

This is one of the reasons Advanced Sensors is the superior build. With the ability to pre-Boost in three directions, your number of possible ending spots goes from three to 12.

25 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

This is one of the reasons Advanced Sensors is the superior build. With the ability to pre-Boost in three directions, your number of possible ending spots goes from three to 12.

My thoughts exactly. I used to fly AdvSensor Brobots in the past. Unfortunately using them means no FCS and only a single HLC. In today's meta this means your firepower is fairly mediocre, which is a strange thing to say about Brobots. I've tried to adapt to today's level of firepower by putting Expertise and FCS on them, to maximize offensive potential. Alas, I just go outmaneuvered and the utility of expertise was reduced considerably by having to S-loop or K-turn frequently. Now, if only I could somehow cram AdvSensors AND Expertise in the list, it might be worthwile, but I don't see how I could find the points for that.

23 minutes ago, Lightrock said:

My thoughts exactly. I used to fly AdvSensor Brobots in the past. Unfortunately using them means no FCS and only a single HLC .

My current build is Wired + AdvS + HLC + InertialD + AutoT + IG-2000. (On B and C, of course.) I've had tremendous success with it on VASSAL and in small local tournaments, but as go your red dice, so goes this list. If you roll significantly above the expected 25% blanks -- at Regionals last weekend, I rolled 45% blanks in three of my five games -- you simply can't push enough damage. (In one game I hit a non-regen ARC-170 with five modified HLC shots ... for 7 total damage.)

So then people say, well, you need the FCS. But then if I have FCS, my mobility is constrained, so I get fewer shots and get shot at more often.

This is why Brobots' power has fallen off relative to the meta: the best build is still more subject to randomness than the hyper-action-economy lists are. Normally, with good flying, you can afford to wait for the dice, but if you fall into the second standard deviation (or worse) for the entire game, you probably lose. At Regionals I took the risk that wouldn't happen more than once in six games, and I paid for it.

16 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

My current build is Wired + AdvS + HLC + InertialD + AutoT + IG-2000. (On B and C, of course.) I've had tremendous success with it on VASSAL and in small local tournaments, but as go your red dice, so goes this list. If you roll significantly above the expected 25% blanks -- at Regionals last weekend, I rolled 45% blanks in three of my five games -- you simply can't push enough damage. (In one game I hit a non-regen ARC-170 with five modified HLC shots ... for 7 total damage.)

So then people say, well, you need the FCS. But then if I have FCS, my mobility is constrained, so I get fewer shots and get shot at more often.

This is why Brobots' power has fallen off relative to the meta: the best build is still more subject to randomness than the hyper-action-economy lists are. Normally, with good flying, you can afford to wait for the dice, but if you fall into the second standard deviation (or worse) for the entire game, you probably lose. At Regionals I took the risk that wouldn't happen more than once in six games, and I paid for it.

I guess that where AdvS miss, skill goes in.

I tried it, but my opponent doesn't care about my unpredictability if I will not bring enough firepower in game. That's why FCS is better in my opinion.
Be unpredictable can be a player skill matter. I tried to fly Brobots in different ways (conservative, looking for R3 shoots) and it works pretty well. Actually, I don't miss the AdvS.


BUT!.......I'm thinking about some new bombs-setting with brobots, more than HLC. Scavenger Crane open up this. In this scenario, I will prefer AdvS over FCS. I need to test

23 hours ago, Jeff Wilder said:

My current build is Wired + AdvS + HLC + InertialD + AutoT + IG-2000. (On B and C, of course.)

I have to admit this list really appeals to me when it comes to positioning options but as you said, it's very luck based. Probably too much for my liking. Whenever I enter a tournament, the plan is to win the entire thing. Luck-based lists are acceptable in Swiss but making the cut is actually the easy part. After that you still have to win 4-5 games against very good players and losing any of those games due to luck is not acceptable anymore. Of course luck will always play a part, no matter your build, but not doing everything you can to minimize it as a factor is no way to win a large tournament.

I'm tempted to try flying asymmetric AdvS brobots (B with Predator and Mangler, C with Expertise and HLC). I hope this would allow enough dice modifications across multiple shots to push the damage through while still retaining good maneuverability and defense. I'm tempted because now that Paratanni is gone and defenders no longer get free evades after bumping, mindlinked u-boats are on the rise again in my area (yay, jumpmasters are still underpriced, who would have thought?) and it so happens that AdvS brobots were pretty good counter to them last summer and I'd expect they can deal with this new, slightly weaker version as well.

On 3/17/2017 at 10:37 AM, Jeff Wilder said:

If you roll significantly above the expected 25% blanks -- at Regionals last weekend, I rolled 45% blanks in three of my five games -- you simply can't push enough damage. (In one game I hit a non-regen ARC-170 with five modified HLC shots ... for 7 total damage.)

I feel your pain. In my 7 vassal league games I'm rolling like 1 in 3 blanks on my reds. A lot of blanks on rerolls as well.

Some lowlights include a game where I had 3 modified shots (10 combined dice i think) on a tokenless manaroo that did a combined 3 damage I think. Then last night I shot 16 dice from 5 attacks (4 of them modified) for only 6 damage against a ghost. He did use evade token on 3 of the attacks but still.

Yet somehow I'm 5-2 after all that. Though my MOV is kinda bad.

You guys think the Regen not is worth messing around with? If the goal is to stay range 3...Maybe the boost evade isn't that handy.

1 hour ago, Lightrock said:

I have to admit this list really appeals to me when it comes to positioning options but as you said, it's very luck based. Probably too much for my liking. Whenever I enter a tournament, the plan is to win the entire thing. Luck-based lists are acceptable in Swiss but making the cut is actually the easy part. After that you still have to win 4-5 games against very good players and losing any of those games due to luck is not acceptable anymore.

Two things:

(1) That analysis is exactly why I settled on this list. I don't play into the cut (because I won't use a Bye, and I'd rather give the chance to players that will), so I was willing to accept one game at two SDs on the wrong end of the curve. Three was too much.

(2) You do realize that as player skill approaches even, games are decided more by luck, not less, right? Simply ask yourself which game you'd rather have bad luck in, in terms of still managing to win the game: a first-round game against a random opponent, or a 5-0 match-up? This goes beyond dice, BTW, to list match-up, and to increasingly frequent games decided by correctly guessing true 50/50 "is he turning right or less," possibly multiple times.

7 hours ago, Jeff Wilder said:

Two things:

(1) That analysis is exactly why I settled on this list. I don't play into the cut (because I won't use a Bye, and I'd rather give the chance to players that will), so I was willing to accept one game at two SDs on the wrong end of the curve. Three was too much.

(2) You do realize that as player skill approaches even, games are decided more by luck, not less, right? Simply ask yourself which game you'd rather have bad luck in, in terms of still managing to win the game: a first-round game against a random opponent, or a 5-0 match-up? This goes beyond dice, BTW, to list match-up, and to increasingly frequent games decided by correctly guessing true 50/50 "is he turning right or less," possibly multiple times.

I'm not sure you understood what I meant. Obviously if players' respective skill levels are uneven, the player with higher skill can often mitigate bad luck, while if he has good luck, he will probably crush his opponent completely. Either way, luck is of secondary importance in such a situation. Meanwhile if players' skill levels are more or less even, luck becomes more important.

What I meant is that players' skill aside, some lists are more prone than others to losing because the player using them doesn't roll well. Your list is exactly one of them. With only one action per turn (except for boost+evade that is) and relatively weak and situational re-rolls (Wired) you couldn't really do much if you rolled poorly. Let's say rolls bad enough to lose you the game happen on average once in 5 games. In Swiss it's not that huge of a problem. You're gonna lose one game and you'll still make the cut. If it happens early on, your further matches will be against easier opponents to boot. Once you make the cut however, you're in a sudden death territory. If you have to play 5 games in elimination and in just one of those games you roll poorly enough to lose, you just don't win the tournament. If it happens early on, you won't even get very far.

Put it simply, I'd rather play a list that I know is unlikely to suffer very much from bad rolls, because if I lose I know that it's because I played worse than my opponent and not because it was this one game where dice failed me and I had no tools to compensate.

I fly the brothers often and lately... and I'm taking notes.