3 hours ago, BiggsIRL said:

To triple post here: Top 4 at Worlds is Top 4 at Worlds. Unless one of those 4 players is in your meta, go out and beat your meta at your own store. We can complain more when Nationals roll around.

Biggs I HAVE THE RIGHT TO COMPLAIN. I mean I got Ard AND Brickhaus in my town.....

3 hours ago, BiggsIRL said:

Editing post

Also doesn't help Brickhaus doesn't really play anything else. (that I know of with the exception of a CC, but then ard comes in with his MC30 mothma build)

12 minutes ago, TallGiraffe said:

Biggs I HAVE THE RIGHT TO COMPLAIN. I mean I got Ard AND Brickhaus in my town.....

Ooh that while time I gave u a game was their home town too?! Haha cool!

15 minutes ago, Irokenics said:

Ooh that while time I gave u a game was their home town too?! Haha cool!

wat?

4 hours ago, Green Knight said:

Rieekan wasn't op before.

He may be now.

What's changed?

Flotillas. More unique squadrons.

I think there is a point here.. I see the flotillas as the real problem.. 3 Flotillas in each of the winning lists.. the need for 5 activations effectively puts the large ships at a huge disadvantage.. Personally i Would like to see more MC80s on the table instead of all those squadrons and flotillas - It slows the game down and drags it into long squadron slugging matches.

regarding flotillas: after some thought, i believe a true problem with flotillas is not the activations they give-activation game was always present in armada, and flotillas statisticaly only helped lists with 1 big ship achieve reasonable activations.

the problem is that they are so cheap because they SUPPOSEDLY do not do damage in their activation. wehereas in fact, they DO very real damage, by activating squadrons. i'm starting to think that, if they are not "fleet support bots"(indeed, so many ppl buy flotillas without even taking fleet support mods), but actual mini-carriers carrying real threat, they should be priced as such.

i still believe the problem can be fixed without errata. it is minor imho.

Imperials with Saber Squadron, Mithel and/or YG88 (nobody uses him) should be able to one-shot intel, especialy if aided by Raiders . Rebels have Snipe and powerful multiple 2-dice rerollable sprays.

I'd love to see more tournament reports, because I honestly can't understand how properly played rhymer fleets would consistently lose to Riekan/Yavaris/Gallant Haven. What possible reason have the imperials got for allowing themselves to be caught in place for a yavaris shot? Why are the Imps ever able to be caught in the haven bubble?

19 minutes ago, GilmoreDK said:

the need for 5 activations effectively

MYTH

5 minutes ago, Ophion said:

I'd love to see more tournament reports, because I honestly can't understand how properly played rhymer fleets would consistently lose to Riekan/Yavaris/Gallant Haven. What possible reason have the imperials got for allowing themselves to be caught in place for a yavaris shot? Why are the Imps ever able to be caught in the haven bubble?

easy:

Rebels charge the Imperial carriers, ingoring enemy squads.

Imperials shoot the rebel carriers, ignoring the rebel biggsball.

then b-wings, escorts being bombers, and norra wexley's buff win the damage race.

theres more to it ofcourse, but you get the gist. rhymerball has more threat range vs ships, but rebels win in pure damage.

6 minutes ago, Kikaze said:

Imperials with Saber Squadron, Mithel and/or YG88 (nobody uses him) should be able to one-shot intel, especialy if aided by Raiders . Rebels have Snipe and powerful multiple 2-dice rerollable sprays.

I used to use IG-88 til I rolled nothing but crits and accuracies with blues for 2 tournaments.

2 minutes ago, TallGiraffe said:

I used to use IG-88 til I rolled nothing but crits and accuracies with blues for 2 tournaments.

well, thats not statistic, and you probably havent used a combination of all these three. 1 autodamage on enemy intel AND ig88 AND saber squadron. possibly WITH raider. i'm saying, solutions are there. maybe they're not enough, but how many people actualy build lists saying "ok, most powerful lists are squadron based, so priority #1, antisquadron"?

Just now, Kikaze said:

well, thats not statistic, and you probably havent used a combination of all these three. 1 autodamage on enemy intel AND ig88 AND saber squadron. possibly WITH raider.

I have. The brobot just fails and rolls 0 damage even with a Jendon ability thrown in.

Having been out of the loop for some time, I'm not really sure I get all these complaints. I mean, I too think the game shifted a bit too much towards squadron play, but this has been true for at least 6 months now. Why are you guys complaining now?

Also, some time ago I theorycrafted and played a couple games with lists very similar to those under the scope now and, while good and kinda fun, they felt nowhere near unstoppable, as I'm reading now, the reason being 1) the clunkiness of rebel bombers, that are forced to move as a blob with the slower bwings dictating the pace 2) being the all rounders they are, I found rebel bombers at a disadvantage over a dedicated imperial AS wing 3) the small numbers (actually fitting 8 squadrons is a challange) 4) the dependance on the survivability of the blob centre, ie the gallant/pelta providing the activations.

What has changed now, and how do these Worlds top 4 guys overcome those problems?

6 hours ago, Green Knight said:

Rieekan wasn't op before.

He may be now.

What's changed?

Flotillas. More unique squadrons.

Not just that.

Flotillas. Multiple unique low cost squadrons. Higher activation counts. Additional squadron movements. Large numbers of squadron dice rerolls. Unique defensive abilities to ensure certain ships and squadrons played through two full turns of combat where they would normally only last one.

and to cap it all off nearly all of these abilities uniquely affected Rebel ships and squadrons.

6 hours ago, Green Knight said:

Rieekan wasn't op before.

He may be now.

What's changed?

Flotillas. More unique squadrons.

I'm with GK on this. Rieekan "got gud" because of flotillas and CC squads. You can take 3 flotillas with BCC AND Yavaris AND Pelta/GH. And since you only spent 70-78 points on flotillas, you can load up on the more expensive unique squads. It's hard to say it was only flotillas or only squads that got us here. To me, it looks like Rieekan snowballed into this. Flots came in wave 3/4 and CC added more squads. It was inevitable.

With Hammerheads coming out, we may see another version of a ramming list with Rieekan at the helm. It sounds like there were a handful of ramming lists at worlds too.

I think Rieekan needs a nerf rather than the squads. I love what squads are and what they do for the game. I'd rather see diverse max squad fleets than the same concept of Rieekan aces with everyone's personal touch.

I love how the people who are saying calm down and not nerf reeikan are rebel players LOL

5 hours ago, Kikaze said:

imho the problem is the biggs/rieekan/bomberfleet combo.

1. Biggs: a powerful squadron tool, raises the survivability of your squads dramaticaly.

2. Rieekan:Rieekan turns a Biggsball into nigh unstoppable; you must find a way to SEPERATE them. then you can beat them. just spread out, threaten to attack ships, force them to spread. done

3. Bomberfleet: thats all fine and well when Biggsball is there as fighter cover. but what happens if you have biggs and 2 unique pilots protecting norra wexley and massed bombers? You can't separate them. they KNOW they win any damage race vs ships. they have no reason not to stick together, if you wanna spread out and hurt their ships, np, they'll stick together, attack your ships and outdamage you.

by adding 1, 2 and 3 together, we are now in this conundrum.

You don't need biggs. Except perhaps against a similar list.

Wedge just stops enemy squadron wings in their tracks. So does Biggs or Luke. It's an immortal escort and essentially prevents all squadron damage not dealt by ships.

You're saying separate the squadrons out, but the game doesn't offer a viable way to do that. Yes, you can use Relay. But your squads will still have to come from a centralized point that can be defended against.

Bluntly, the solution is clear: deny Rieekan to squadrons. This allows enemy squadrons to actually threaten the Ace ball so that a fighter screen is a viable strategy. Rebels still have tons of Escort and Snipe options to threaten enemy squads and protect valuable bombers.

Just now, ripper998 said:

I love how the people who are saying calm down and not nerf reeikan are rebel players LOL

I'm not actually. Proud brainwashed imperial admiral here. And I'm not even saying calm down, just trying to get the point. Aaaaand... I still don't get it. Yes, sinergies. Yes, flottilas. Yes, CC. When did this all become an OMG UNSTOPPABLE problem? How did the top players handled the - pretty evident TBH - problems I outlined earlier?

3 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:

I'm with GK on this. Rieekan "got gud" because of flotillas and CC squads. You can take 3 flotillas with BCC AND Yavaris AND Pelta/GH. And since you only spent 70-78 points on flotillas, you can load up on the more expensive unique squads. It's hard to say it was only flotillas or only squads that got us here. To me, it looks like Rieekan snowballed into this. Flots came in wave 3/4 and CC added more squads. It was inevitable.

With Hammerheads coming out, we may see another version of a ramming list with Rieekan at the helm. It sounds like there were a handful of ramming lists at worlds too.

I think Rieekan needs a nerf rather than the squads. I love what squads are and what they do for the game. I'd rather see diverse max squad fleets than the same concept of Rieekan aces with everyone's personal touch.

Flotillas aren't unique to Rieekan. If it was just Flotillas, we would have seen other viable Flotilla builds in the top eight.

It was nearly all Rieekan. And an Ackbar ace squadron build. And something else.

It was Rieekan, BCC, escort Aces, and a combination of Yavaris+Flight Commander+FCT with another ship to alleviate any weaknesses of the squadrons.

16 minutes ago, thecactusman17 said:

Bluntly, the solution is clear: deny Rieekan to squadrons.

Personally, I think this is too big of a nerf.

6 minutes ago, thecactusman17 said:

Flotillas aren't unique to Rieekan. If it was just Flotillas, we would have seen other viable Flotilla builds in the top eight.

It was nearly all Rieekan. And an Ackbar ace squadron build. And something else.

It was Rieekan, BCC, escort Aces, and a combination of Yavaris+Flight Commander+FCT with another ship to alleviate any weaknesses of the squadrons.

I'm saying it's the combination of everything. Flots allow you to get rerolls AND are cheap enough to let you take whatever aces you want AND you can still get 5 activations. FCT allows you to scoot B-Wings forward. Biggs+Jan+GH is nearly impossible to bust in an alpha strike. And Yavaris is just Yavaris.

Blaming Rieekan is incredibly short sighted. If Rieekan is so crazy OP, why doesn't he work with EVERY fleet? It's the Rieekan aces archetype that is powerful and it's why it 5/8 top 8. The fleet is excellently designed to the point where we have our first major net list World champ win.

I agree mostly. I've long said the ubiquitous nature of squadrons is due to the need for padded activations via flotillas. As long as you have flotillas on the board, it's more efficient to have them pushing squadrons too. the Rieeken Aces build is more of a perfect storm than just Rieeken, that's for **** sure, but I still feel like Rieeken has only grown in power in the last few waves, so if people felt he was worth 30 points in wave 2... What's he worth now?

26 minutes ago, miedomeda said:

I'm not actually. Proud brainwashed imperial admiral here. And I'm not even saying calm down, just trying to get the point. Aaaaand... I still don't get it. Yes, sinergies. Yes, flottilas. Yes, CC. When did this all become an OMG UNSTOPPABLE problem? How did the top players handled the - pretty evident TBH - problems I outlined earlier?

It didnt. People forgot how to run anything else out of fear of losing. Their own fears, born out of nothing but hysteria.

2 minutes ago, WuFame said:

Personally, I think this is too big of a nerf.

It's not.

Rebels have multiple upgrades to protect their squadrons. While Imperials have offensive synergy, Rebels have defensive synergy.

When combined with Rieekan, this makes it impossible to remove Rieekan squadron aces without a combination of excellent die rolls, perfect positioning, and poor upgrade selection by the opponent. This issue is most obvious when it comes to Rieekan Aces with Escort such as Wedge, Biggs, or Luke.

The natural and reasonable solution for taking on squadrons is to kill the carrier. But Rieekan aces have a zombie carrier. The solution should then be to field sufficient squadrons to cause irrevocable harm to the squadron contingent, but that can only happen if you can kill the squadrons. Especially for Imperials, who have specialized squadrons not designed to take return fire.

The ability to immediately kill Rieekan squadrons would enable a valid counter-strategy to players while encouraging Rieekan players to have a more sophisticated anti-squadron strategy than "field unique Escort squadrons." And before you mention Intel or Snipe, take a look at how Imperial squadron lists fared in Worlds. This Rebel list archetype showed up at nearly every Regional tournament since the launch of Wave 5, yet inexplicably nobody found a general counter viable enough to run at worlds almost 6 months later.

Just now, Undeadguy said:

I'm saying it's the combination of everything. Flots allow you to get rerolls AND are cheap enough to let you take whatever aces you want AND you can still get 5 activations. FCT allows you to scoot B-Wings forward. Biggs+Jan+GH is nearly impossible to bust in an alpha strike. And Yavaris is just Yavaris.

Blaming Rieekan is incredibly short sighted. If Rieekan is so crazy OP, why doesn't he work with EVERY fleet? It's the Rieekan aces archetype that is powerful and it's why it 5/8 top 8. The fleet is excellently designed to the point where we have our first major net list World champ win.

All of those squadrons can be fielded effectively without Rieekan, but they aren't because Rieekan makes them vastly superior. The defensive buffs to ensure an additional full round of combat are the primary issue issue. The idea for Rieekan is that to get that second round of survival you should be paying through the nose in opportunity cost. Rieekan doesn't pay that cost in the same way other ships or squadrons do, because he doesn't pay it until after it has been charged. He's paying on credit while other players pay up front. This is a drastic difference in how Rieekan players should approach the squadron meta.

2 hours ago, GilmoreDK said:

I think there is a point here.. I see the flotillas as the real problem.. 3 Flotillas in each of the winning lists.. the need for 5 activations effectively puts the large ships at a huge disadvantage.. Personally i Would like to see more MC80s on the table instead of all those squadrons and flotillas - It slows the game down and drags it into long squadron slugging matches.

And from a gameplay standpoint... activating flotillas is far from exciting...