Ok so none of you actually hit on the real game changer here. I will share this from what I heard while at a recent tournament where Norm was playing Yik, you might recognize those names from having WON the **** worlds and having placed quite high.

The real game changer is relay. Period.

Right from the horses mouth ok?

You have a pair of squadrons that are very hard to kill, that can be escorted by biggs and allow Yavaris' very powerful ability to have scary threat range AND leverage the transports ability to activate while remaining safe. Reeikan is just a super annoying insurance policy that allows the player to decide if he wants to play defensively or offensively. The amount of flexibility and survivability this combination provides is downright scary.

Yavaris + gallant haven + relay + Reeikan is currently OP. Everyone knows this.

Norm himself is an extremely good, meticulous, intelligent player and he primarily plays imperial but he literally could not find an imperial counter to this OP combo (from what I heard him say) edit: not one that would counter it and work vs other lists.

You want to nerf this combo without changing much all you have to do is make relay only work once per relay provider per turn. All of a sudden the fighter ball loses a tremendous amount of efficiency, the transports either have to come into harms way or become nothing more than activations. And the list becomes less godlike.

Alternately and in the meantime, either play this list (stale, boring meta, thanks) or just bring a pile of snipe and AS and focus the living hell out of the relay squads (with their TON of health :/ )

3 minutes ago, Hastatior said:

Ok so none of you actually hit on the real game changer here. I will share this from what I heard while at a recent tournament where Norm was playing Yik, you might recognize those names from having WON the **** worlds and having placed quite high.

The real game changer is relay. Period.

Right from the horses mouth ok?

You have a pair of squadrons that are very hard to kill, that can be escorted by biggs and allow Yavaris' very powerful ability to have scary threat range AND leverage the transports ability to activate while remaining safe. Reeikan is just a super annoying insurance policy that allows the player to decide if he wants to play defensively or offensively. The amount of flexibility and survivability this combination provides is downright scary.

Yavaris + gallant haven + relay + Reeikan is currently OP. Everyone knows this.

Norm himself is an extremely good, meticulous, intelligent player and he primarily plays imperial but he literally could not find an imperial counter to this OP combo (from what I heard him say) edit: not one that would counter it and work vs other lists.

You want to nerf this combo without changing much all you have to do is make relay only work once per relay provider per turn. All of a sudden the fighter ball loses a tremendous amount of efficiency, the transports either have to come into harms way or become nothing more than activations. And the list becomes less godlike.

Alternately and in the meantime, either play this list (stale, boring meta, thanks) or just bring a pile of snipe and AS and focus the living hell out of the relay squads (with their TON of health :/ )

I agree that relay + flotillas is a big problem, but I didn't think the top table had any relay in it. Also, Imperials get the better end of the relay stick, only having to invest 15 squadron points to relay an entire flotilla's command. Rebels have to burn 30 squadron points to get that.

1 minute ago, Valca said:

I agree that relay + flotillas is a big problem, but I didn't think the top table had any relay in it. Also, Imperials get the better end of the relay stick, only having to invest 15 squadron points to relay an entire flotilla's command. Rebels have to burn 30 squadron points to get that.

From what I could tell, Norm had at least 2 VCXs on the Board. He gave up having Intel for the privilege.

Well I guess Armada is dead guys.

Well technically it's not dead yet, we have Rieekan holding it together until the end of the Status Phase.

2 minutes ago, Hastatior said:

You want to nerf this combo without changing much all you have to do is make relay only work once per relay provider per turn. All of a sudden the fighter ball loses a tremendous amount of efficiency, the transports either have to come into harms way or become nothing more than activations. And the list becomes less godlike.

Relay is definitely good, but I don't know that it's the thing in need of a fix. The simplest fix is to remove the unique squadrons feature of Rieekan OR to make it unique squadrons with defense tokens. The major expansion of uniques through CC with two more uniques per Wave 1 squadron amped up Rieekan's options.

Another possibility would be the addition of upgrades that counter Rieekan's ability. Look at the meta shift after Wave 3/4 and Demolisher that didn't require errata to Demolisher. In other games that have powerful death effects, they have abilities that counter them by causing removal from play. For example, a Turbolaser upgrade that if you do more damage than is required to destroy the target, it is removed from play instead of being dead.

(I'm behind on the whole thread, so I'll admit that I may have missed someone else making the suggestion.)

5 minutes ago, Drasnighta said:

From what I could tell, Norm had at least 2 VCXs on the Board. He gave up having Intel for the privilege.

Well that's embarrassing. Swear I looked at the lists earlier and didn't see that.

Edit: Repasting the image from earlier in the thread. There is indeed a VCX in his list.

So... this achetype of a massive fighter ball, Yavaris, stacked GR75s... is the list mythics was waving at us on the west coast. He brought it to the Utah regionals to show it off, and now here it is at worlds. We've never been able to defeat it with a combination of things we've tried.

To defeat it, you need to have a deeper bid to force it to go first, so you can play with your defensive objectives. Making the list mobile was the way to disrupt it. It doesn't stop a carefully-flown fleet from advancing like a wall of death though.

Unlike Demolisher having to get a successful speed 4 run for its triple tap, the cloud of bombers is death at the end of a fighter command range (long if all of them have boosted comms, or Fighter Coordination Teams and a Flight Commander to allow Yavaris to move up, command two squadrons to move at medium range, and then double tap. It's something a cleverly placed zombie flotilla cannot stop like it can with Demo preventing the run against your capital ship.

Then ships have to eat more attacks with small numbers than they've had to deal with before. You can field more fighters than you can field corvettes, and if fighters are harder to remove, fighters are the way to go. GR75s being the cheapest ship means you can buy one, stick a BCC on it, stack that, and you've improved your bombers, bought an activation, and now have something to block Demolisher from rushing in and nuking a carrier. It's elegant in a way.

I haven't tried flichette raiders as hard as maybe I should have (I'm certain this list has faced it in the region, though), but I always felt Raiders were too fragile to do the job. Using a FLichette raider, you have to be certain that you're dropping the crit you need to stun every fighter in the field to prevent them all from attacking and removing the Raider from the universe. If not, Yavaris is certainly double-tapping whatever B-Wing you didn't stun, then every carrier with a gun will open fire on the Raider to annihilate it, then continue pounding the rest of your ships.

It's a lot to ask for a few Raiders that have to constantly be stunning every fighter in the ball. I have doubts it would succeed. I think if it did, this Rieekan list wouldn't be facing itself, since better players than I would be employing it successfully.

1 minute ago, Valca said:

I agree that relay + flotillas is a big problem, but I didn't think the top table had any relay in it. Also, Imperials get the better end of the relay stick, only having to invest 15 squadron points to relay an entire flotilla's command. Rebels have to burn 30 squadron points to get that.

Pretty sure the TO metta "Galant Hell" has 2 relay squads, unless it changed in the short interim, but I doubt it.

As for relay efficiency, sure, until you realize that rebels have cheaper ways to ACTIVATE those squadrons. Also, 2 meaty relay sources while more expensive, are also nearly impossible to kill when well played.

for comparisons sake, the rebels pay FIVE more points to activate 4 total squadrons via relay. For these 5 points they get TEN more squad hitpoints, an extra squad base, the extra firepower from the squad, the extra survivability of not losing their entire relay from 1 squad getting killed...need I go on??

I played a game the other day where part of my strategy hinged on using a shuttle relay, my opponent was smart enough to send 3 A wings after it and after 1 round of average rolling I no longer had relay, vs the same element in the rebel fleet he wouldn't have even killed half my relay....

Require relay to work only within command range of activating ship.

Ban admirals on flotillas (maybe unless you've only flotillas).

Reevaluate.

Does Rieekan and remaining synergies remain too strong.

If yes, consider additional changes.

2 minutes ago, Green Knight said:

Require relay to work only within command range of activating ship.

Ban admirals on flotillas (maybe unless you've only flotillas).

Reevaluate.

Does Rieekan and remaining synergies remain too strong.

If yes, consider additional changes.

Ugh... just remove Rieekan already xD

Are we not talking about how Sloan and her TIEs are just going to start shooting out the Defense Tokens from under these aces and killing them super fast? Is that not a thing because it doesn't exist yet?

2 minutes ago, Hastatior said:

Pretty sure the TO metta "Galant Hell" has 2 relay squads, unless it changed in the short interim, but I doubt it.

As for relay efficiency, sure, until you realize that rebels have cheaper ways to ACTIVATE those squadrons. Also, 2 meaty relay sources while more expensive, are also nearly impossible to kill when well played.

for comparisons sake, the rebels pay FIVE more points to activate 4 total squadrons via relay. For these 5 points they get TEN more squad hitpoints, an extra squad base, the extra firepower from the squad, the extra survivability of not losing their entire relay from 1 squad getting killed...need I go on??

I played a game the other day where part of my strategy hinged on using a shuttle relay, my opponent was smart enough to send 3 A wings after it and after 1 round of average rolling I no longer had relay, vs the same element in the rebel fleet he wouldn't have even killed half my relay....

That's a good point on quality of the rebel activation from relay. I was mistaken about there not being any relay on the top tables, which undermines the post you're responding to pretty effectively.

Just now, geek19 said:

Are we not talking about how Sloan and her TIEs are just going to start shooting out the Defense Tokens from under these aces and killing them super fast? Is that not a thing because it doesn't exist yet?

I'm already working on a list to do just that. The potential problem I see happening is those aces will die but still get to fire back. I can't get around Biggs moving damage or Jan bracing it. Howl+Dengar+Swarm might be the best way to "counter" Rieekan. I get my normal attack and then a counter with at least 2 dice. Basically overwhelm with a ton of attack dice and Acc all the tokens to mitigate their usefulness.

3 minutes ago, geek19 said:

Are we not talking about how Sloan and her TIEs are just going to start shooting out the Defense Tokens from under these aces and killing them super fast? Is that not a thing because it doesn't exist yet?

Which the zombie aces will fire back and destroy the Sloane TIEs.

5 minutes ago, Norsehound said:

I haven't tried flichette raiders as hard as maybe I should have (I'm certain this list has faced it in the region, though), but I always felt Raiders were too fragile to do the job. Using a FLichette raider, you have to be certain that you're dropping the crit you need to stun every fighter in the field to prevent them all from attacking and removing the Raider from the universe. If not, Yavaris is certainly double-tapping whatever B-Wing you didn't stun, then every carrier with a gun will open fire on the Raider to annihilate it, then continue pounding the rest of your ships.

It's a lot to ask for a few Raiders that have to constantly be stunning every fighter in the ball. I have doubts it would succeed. I think if it did, this Rieekan list wouldn't be facing itself, since better players than I would be employing it successfully.

I don't think it's a "stun everything" plan, as I know @Snipafist's Raiders just come in, blow apart what they can, and then run away with them. You can't be bombed if you're speed 3-4 away from the fighter cloud. The Raider acts like a baby demolisher ONLY in that it last and firsts you. With 6 activations, it's doable.

1 minute ago, ianediger said:

Which the zombie aces will fire back and destroy the Sloane TIEs.

Yeah, and? You trade 8 TIE points for the points of an Ace. That's a great trade IMO.

27 minutes ago, Hastatior said:

Ok so none of you actually hit on the real game changer here. I will share this from what I heard while at a recent tournament where Norm was playing Yik, you might recognize those names from having WON the **** worlds and having placed quite high.

The real game changer is relay. Period.

Right from the horses mouth ok?

You have a pair of squadrons that are very hard to kill, that can be escorted by biggs and allow Yavaris' very powerful ability to have scary threat range AND leverage the transports ability to activate while remaining safe. Reeikan is just a super annoying insurance policy that allows the player to decide if he wants to play defensively or offensively. The amount of flexibility and survivability this combination provides is downright scary.

Yavaris + gallant haven + relay + Reeikan is currently OP. Everyone knows this.

Norm himself is an extremely good, meticulous, intelligent player and he primarily plays imperial but he literally could not find an imperial counter to this OP combo (from what I heard him say) edit: not one that would counter it and work vs other lists.

You want to nerf this combo without changing much all you have to do is make relay only work once per relay provider per turn. All of a sudden the fighter ball loses a tremendous amount of efficiency, the transports either have to come into harms way or become nothing more than activations. And the list becomes less godlike.

Alternately and in the meantime, either play this list (stale, boring meta, thanks) or just bring a pile of snipe and AS and focus the living hell out of the relay squads (with their TON of health :/ )

So I'm not gonna argue agaisnt looking at relay, because thats also on the short list of things my own group thinks might need tuning.

However, I do question hitting an ability that the Imperials do better then the rebels in order to balance a rebel squadron archtype.

I'm telling you, make relay only work 1 time per turn and problem solved.

It's a fairly game-breaking ability as it is, part of the inherent limitation of squadrons was supposed to be the fact that you had to keep something in medium range to make the most use of them. The original game design *recognized* how powerful they could be. Think about having to have enough ships in medium range to activate the squads and spending a dial which is an extremely finite resource in the pre-flotilla world. Think about how powerful rogue was for a while (with all its high cost and limitations) in fact the high cost of rogue is proof positive of this. Then we got Boosted coms which also has a cost to simply allow you the rest of the ruler and now relay comes along with flotillas and all of those costs mean much much less.

With even 1 VCX and assuming 4 activations you can activate at least 4 squadrons from anywhere on the board where those activations would have come at a strategic and points cost in the past (naturally this is crap efficiency, add a second VCX and efficiency/flexibility = through the roof).

Reeikan isn't the problem and he shouldn't be nerfed, he is just part of the problem and it has to be looked at from the point of view of synergies and how nerfing him affects the game as a whole, not just 1 archetype.

8 minutes ago, ianediger said:

Which the zombie aces will fire back and destroy the Sloane TIEs.

But only half of them, since they outnumber them 3:1, and they only get one shot (Two with Yavaris) at Three Ties.

11 minutes ago, Drasnighta said:

But only half of them, since they outnumber them 3:1, and they only get one shot (Two with Yavaris) at Three Ties.

Possibly three with Adar tallon out there. If you hate TIEs, offer up wedge to take all those shots (With Jan Ors behind him to draw all of that out, at least) then he gets activated with Adar and Yavaris to easily wipe out three TIEs with 6 dice per shot, and maybe a Toryn re-roll on top of that.

And counter doesn't matter because wedge is already dead. Guess how I know all that?

3 minutes ago, Madaghmire said:

So I'm not gonna argue agaisnt looking at relay, because thats also on the short list of things my own group thinks might need tuning.

However, I do question hitting an ability that the Imperials do better then the rebels in order to balance a rebel squadron archtype.

Again I would argue against the idea that imps do it "better" than the rebels. See my analysis above, its a 5 point difference for a ton more flexibility and resilience. If anything, making relay a 1nc per turn thing hurts the rebels waaaaay more as the single relay VCX is literally designed from the ground up to scale way up in value the more activations you have and rebels currently have the cheapest activations in the game.

I had a guy in the CC campaign use a corvette swarm with a VCX, any corvette not in combat range threw squads and using the VCX relay those stupid corvettes activated his squadrons like if he had a carrier right in the mix rather than a bunch of corvettes on a long-arc flank run. Crazy!

Guys, we don't need to nerf anything if we all play Rieekan. Rieekan aces is the only counter to Rieekan aces. And if you want to do better, you take a 4th flotilla. Don't worry, the game is healthy. The meta will be fine. Everything is fine. Once every single idea you have dies, Rieekan will raise you back and you'll understand.

Join us, we have a 100% win rate.

4 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:

Guys, we don't need to nerf anything if we all play Rieekan. Rieekan aces is the only counter to Rieekan aces. And if you want to do better, you take a 4th flotilla. Don't worry, the game is healthy. The meta will be fine. Everything is fine. Once every single idea you have dies, Rieekan will raise you back and you'll understand.

Join us, we have a 100% win rate.

don't worry, FFG will release a new OP counter to Rieekan aces, and that will be the new 100% win meta fleet.

1 minute ago, Sybreed said:

don't worry, FFG will release a new OP counter to Rieekan aces, and that will be the new 100% win meta fleet.

Exactly! FFG will take care of us. We will get something to deal with Rieekan.

Just now, Undeadguy said:

Exactly! FFG will take care of us. We will get something to deal with Rieekan.

Erratas are bad, power creep is better!

23 minutes ago, Hastatior said:

Again I would argue against the idea that imps do it "better" than the rebels. See my analysis above, its a 5 point difference for a ton more flexibility and resilience. If anything, making relay a 1nc per turn thing hurts the rebels waaaaay more as the single relay VCX is literally designed from the ground up to scale way up in value the more activations you have and rebels currently have the cheapest activations in the game.

I had a guy in the CC campaign use a corvette swarm with a VCX, any corvette not in combat range threw squads and using the VCX relay those stupid corvettes activated his squadrons like if he had a carrier right in the mix rather than a bunch of corvettes on a long-arc flank run. Crazy!

I think the Lambda does relay better then the VCX. You have a point regarding the cheaper rebel activations, although the Imps can spend more of their squadron allotment elsewhere.

That said, I am again, not arguing agaisnt hitting relay, because I've more or less come to the conclusion it could stand a bit of a hit. But not as a way to balance rebel squadrons. I think that hit should be something that effects only the rebels.