As someone who is predominantly a Rieekan player, I can say that there are ways to deal with him. More so than most other commanders, losing Rieekan tends to decimate his fleet. There have been several matches where I would have lost hard had my opponent concentrated on destroying the ship Rieekan is on. Things snowball quickly once Rieekan dies, and suddenly TRC90s and MC30s are no longer guaranteed their return fire. Putting Rieekan on a flotilla can make this difficult, but massed Bombers with Intel could chew through a flotilla pretty fast, as can anything with H9s. Deploy carefully, avoid Superior Positions or Solar Corona, and you should be able to put yourself in a position to kill Rieekan.

He's been my favorite commander since he came out (back before he was considered OP), so I really hope they don't nerf him. I could stomach a small points increase, but I hope his ability stays intact. Next wave(s) might offer some counters too.

Now, a question for the court of public opinion. I can see how running a current Rieekan's Aces list would be frowned upon in a local meta, but he's still my favorite commander (mostly for capital ship play). What if I run him old school, just using pre-CC Aces? Is that still uncouth?

26 minutes ago, SmogLord said:

As someone who is predominantly a Rieekan player, I can say that there are ways to deal with him. More so than most other commanders, losing Rieekan tends to decimate his fleet. There have been several matches where I would have lost hard had my opponent concentrated on destroying the ship Rieekan is on. Things snowball quickly once Rieekan dies, and suddenly TRC90s and MC30s are no longer guaranteed their return fire. Putting Rieekan on a flotilla can make this difficult, but massed Bombers with Intel could chew through a flotilla pretty fast, as can anything with H9s. Deploy carefully, avoid Superior Positions or Solar Corona, and you should be able to put yourself in a position to kill Rieekan.

He's been my favorite commander since he came out (back before he was considered OP), so I really hope they don't nerf him. I could stomach a small points increase, but I hope his ability stays intact. Next wave(s) might offer some counters too.

Now, a question for the court of public opinion. I can see how running a current Rieekan's Aces list would be frowned upon in a local meta, but he's still my favorite commander (mostly for capital ship play). What if I run him old school, just using pre-CC Aces? Is that still uncouth?

At this point, it won't matter what you do. If your opponents are forum-goers and see how Rieeken is OP, you'll hear a ton of complaining. Play what you want. If it's legal, it's playable. Have fun with it.

1 hour ago, SmogLord said:

Now, a question for the court of public opinion. I can see how running a current Rieekan's Aces list would be frowned upon in a local meta, but he's still my favorite commander (mostly for capital ship play). What if I run him old school, just using pre-CC Aces? Is that still uncouth?

Dude, play what you want. So long as you're obeying the rules then you're fine. I'd rather play against a fun opponent running a good fleet than a whining obnoxious person running something with safety foam around the edges.

8 minutes ago, Snipafist said:

Dude, play what you want. So long as you're obeying the rules then you're fine. I'd rather play against a fun opponent running a good fleet than a whining obnoxious person running something with safety foam around the edges.

I need that safety foam for my head so it doesn't get bonked!

"When a friendly ship or friendly unique squadron is destroyed, it remains in the play area and is treated as if it was not destroyed until the end of the Status Phase."

shrug

7 minutes ago, codegnave said:

"When a friendly ship or friendly unique squadron is destroyed, it remains in the play area and is treated as if it was not destroyed until the end of the Status Phase."

shrug

What we see

7 minutes ago, codegnave said:

"When a friendly ship or friendly unique squadron is destroyed, it remains in the play area and is treated as if it was not destroyed until the end of the Status Phase."

shrug

What FFG sees

20 minutes ago, codegnave said:

"When a friendly ship or friendly unique squadron is destroyed, it remains in the play area and is treated as if it was not destroyed until the end of the Status Phase."

What we get

Haven't gotten through all the pages in this post yet, but what about limiting the range of Rieekan's ability to something like range 1-3?

That way he has to be in the thick of things and risk getting killed or can be slowed and put out of place with Tractor Beams or the Interdictor.

1 hour ago, ianediger said:

What we see

What FFG sees

Don't really agree. While there are still complaints about the efficiency of the jumpmaster itself the cards that have been errata'd in x-wing were effective at doing what they needed to. None of them were completely reworked or did something different than they did before, they all targeted the specific issue with them and they all stayed the same cost.

While I understand less about armada than I do xwing I have been lead to believe that the broken element of Rieekan is the number of unique squadrons that exist in the game now. It would be silly of them to remove some of those squads from list building, so the only real answer I can see is to make Rieekan ship only. It is unproductive to assume, without evidence, that designers would consider making him work with normal squads. That would clearly make the problem worse.

1 minute ago, codegnave said:

That would clearly make the problem worse.

That would be the joke.

2 minutes ago, draco193 said:

That would be the joke.

Yea! Sorry if i came across as more dour than i intended! I know its just jokes, but I do feel like people assume the worst of game devs a bit more than is warranted. That tends to polarize the conversation more in my experience. Based on people saying the guy for armada cares for the game(which to me is assumed, why let someone who doesnt care run one of your product lines? seems like a bad idea) and evidence from xwing erratas I would say any major errata for armada would likely be targeted and at least locally effective.

5 minutes ago, codegnave said:

Don't really agree. While there are still complaints about the efficiency of the jumpmaster itself the cards that have been errata'd in x-wing were effective at doing what they needed to. None of them were completely reworked or did something different than they did before, they all targeted the specific issue with them and they all stayed the same cost.

While I understand less about armada than I do xwing I have been lead to believe that the broken element of Rieekan is the number of unique squadrons that exist in the game now. It would be silly of them to remove some of those squads from list building, so the only real answer I can see is to make Rieekan ship only. It is unproductive to assume, without evidence, that designers would consider making him work with normal squads. That would clearly make the problem worse.

That only hits one of the two "boogeyman" lists right now. How do we correct the 8 CR90 w/ Engine tech ramming list with that change?

I'm also trying to reduce the number of card errata. I've played enough games where it ends up being a huge problem when half the cards you own don't work like it says on the card. I would want a distribution of new cards with the changes or do slight edits to the core rules. That's why the flotilla change is so elegant. Being able to just add another core rule because flotillas already have rules attached to them works loads better than recosting and changing wording on cards.

1 minute ago, ricefrisbeetreats said:

That only hits one of the two "boogeyman" lists right now. How do we correct the 8 CR90 w/ Engine tech ramming list with that change?

A proposed change to fix this would be to have Engine Techs be exhausted if you overlap.

Just now, Democratus said:

A proposed change to fix this would be to have Engine Techs be exhausted if you overlap.

Or you just can't overlap with upgrade cards maneuvers...and you get another core rule errata instead of a card re-write.

So I'm hearing from a buddy of mine who went to worlds and plays against Berling a lot tells me that Jeff clinched his top four slot by playing a hard counter to Riekan specifically. So does anyone know what the hell Jeff was flying that day?

1 minute ago, ForceSensitive said:

So I'm hearing from a buddy of mine who went to worlds and plays against Berling a lot tells me that Jeff clinched his top four slot by playing a hard counter to Riekan specifically. So does anyone know what the hell Jeff was flying that day?

There were three Rieekans and one Ackbar. Take your pick.

2 minutes ago, ianediger said:

There were three Rieekans and one Ackbar. Take your pick.

Jeff had the Ackbar list. A gigantic pickle of death, but with multiple VCX to move tokens, so presumably the hard counter was playing objectives that could pile up the points, while picking off some key points with the Death Pickle, which is enormously difficult to kill.

I don't know if I'd call it a hard counter, but its certainly playable.

Only me and one other player locally now. We just agreed not to use Riekaan. Problem solved.

On 5/7/2017 at 8:56 PM, Crabbok said:

I have perfect dials 99% of the time no lie - but most of that is because I generally prefer to make most ships single focussed ships that will do ONE command the entire game. Yavaris will ALWAYS do squadrons, Demolisher will ALWAYS do Nav - and Arquitens will ALWAYS Concentrate fire when I've got Vader boosting them with rerolls. But yeah - some people tend to cheat and it ruins so much for so many....

I don't really WANT to do a video about cheating - but it may become more of an informative thing at some point. "How to play casually, but still ensure your opponent KNOWS you aren't cheating. "

yeah, I doubt he cheats because he's in our regular play group and there's no benefit for him to do that. I'm just salty he always has the correct command at the right time ! (like say an engineering command that prevents a ship death on turn 6 ugh)

1 minute ago, Sybreed said:

yeah, I doubt he cheats because he's in our regular play group and there's no benefit for him to do that. I'm just salty he always has the correct command at the right time ! (like say an engineering command that prevents a ship death on turn 6 ugh)

Oh that is easy to predict! "if this ship makes it to T6 it will need a shield or two..."

In fact, FFG was already concerned about Riekan before the Worlds. They took the nerf bat and gave us this:

If the ship that General Rieekan is equipped to leaves the play area, a ship or squadron already affected by this ability remains in the play area until the end of the Status Phase.

STRIKE!!

Hahaha isn't funny they wrote that just before the worlds?

He works even out of play. He deserves a:

- Command fleets from hyperspace (like a boss).

Don't you think, @CaribbeanNinja?

I mean, I know why they did it but is funny after all.

Personaly i feel some kind of numbness after worlds' results. 6 out of top 8 being variations of a single list archetype makes me skeptical. Not angry. Troubled about the state of the game. It is difficult for me to purchase anything until the situation is cleared regarding ffg's response. For me it is a matter of trust in the company and how careful they are. EDIT: i played many wargames. I never remember a situation like this 6/8 stat. The fact that IA is worse with 15/16 is only making me more doubtful about the company. Ofc everyone makes mistakes; it is how one bounces back. I shall wait and see how they react .

34 minutes ago, Kikaze said:

Personaly i feel some kind of numbness after worlds' results. 6 out of top 8 being variations of a single list archetype makes me skeptical. Not angry. Troubled about the state of the game. It is difficult for me to purchase anything until the situation is cleared regarding ffg's response. For me it is a matter of trust in the company and how careful they are. EDIT: i played many wargames. I never remember a situation like this 6/8 stat. The fact that IA is worse with 15/16 is only making me more doubtful about the company. Ofc everyone makes mistakes; it is how one bounces back. I shall wait and see how they react .

Their design team is usually only a few people. I believe Armada has 1 dedicated designer. Things are going to get missed with all the different permutations in the game. Heck, even Magic the Gathering has dedicated teams of people for all aspects (Design, Development) and things still get messed up in their flagship format, Standard. Things happen.

I think FFG is fortunate to have a relatively positive, intelligent group of people surrounding the game to help boost them up when things go wrong.

4 hours ago, Kikaze said:

Personaly i feel some kind of numbness after worlds' results. 6 out of top 8 being variations of a single list archetype makes me skeptical. Not angry. Troubled about the state of the game. It is difficult for me to purchase anything until the situation is cleared regarding ffg's response. For me it is a matter of trust in the company and how careful they are. EDIT: i played many wargames. I never remember a situation like this 6/8 stat. The fact that IA is worse with 15/16 is only making me more doubtful about the company. Ofc everyone makes mistakes; it is how one bounces back. I shall wait and see how they react .

I wouldn't worry about it. And you shouldn't compare IA to Armada. 2 different teams. 2 different games. What always happens with competitive games is optimization. More so with a large player base. We are able to test more fleets more quickly than FFG ever could. It was inevitable something like this would happen, but I am surprised by how quickly it did.

Think of beta testers for other games. They cannot catch all the bugs before release, so the week or 2 after release is often the most important since the players will try to break the game, or stumble upon issues. Then you get hot fixes and full blown patches. Then more content and the game will stabilize.

I expect the same for Armada. We have an issue now, but FFG will fix it. Then we will break the fix in some way, or a different optimal win strategy will be found. And so the cycle continues until FFG gives up or we do.

Don't let Worlds bum you out. You can still play the game.

24 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:

I wouldn't worry about it. And you shouldn't compare IA to Armada. 2 different teams. 2 different games. What always happens with competitive games is optimization. More so with a large player base. We are able to test more fleets more quickly than FFG ever could. It was inevitable something like this would happen, but I am surprised by how quickly it did.

/snip

if you think about it, we're at wave 5 for Armada.... and wave 5 for XWing was the height of PWT (Fat han, Super Dash, Admiral Chirpy + whisper). If you look at the Meta in XWing, you see much less of that nonsense because they fixed it with other releases (Autothrusters was in wave 6, as was the core rule nerf to large ships[half points] and the nerf to whisper). So, as far as the timing goes for breaking the game... we're right on track.

Both of those releases didn't kill large based ships with PWT... but it let you take more diverse builds.

Now, I don't see anything in wave 6 that particularly says "screw you, rebel Aces"... but maybe the quasar with flight controllers and 6 defenders might have something to say about it...