I changed the topic title. I never intended to give the impression that I think Armada is broken or in need of major overhaul, just some massaging. I've seen some awesome suggestions here, and even the criticisms and posts that feel that tweaks aren't needed yet have been civil, insightful, and respectful!

Round of applause for the community so far!

18 hours ago, TallGiraffe said:

Honestly, I think BCC is fine as it is because your spending alot of points to make it work and position etc. We don't really see BCC too much around here in pairs. And we are a very competitive group pushing tournament play, doing well with what we have etc. It seems like a local issue to me cause squadrons still put out alot of damage with just one BCC.

The issue with BCC isn't BCC itself, but the stacking effect. Two BCCs is a little less than the cost of another flotilla to radically increase the chances of critical effects and all but guarantee criticals especially when more than one die is rolled against ships.

In regards to the greater issues, I see two major elements of the Rieekan/Yav/Squads build that are in need of adjustment. One is specific to this build, another is a more general issue that cropped up throughout Worlds in nearly all fleets.

When we look at the Worlds-winning archetype, we can see that the primary means by which it defeats opponents is by out-lasting them at an alarming rate, leaving ships and squadrons in position to be effectively impervious to enemy disruption. And this occurs almost entirely due to Rieekan's effect on the squadrons. Rieekan can place key squadrons, especially with the Escort ability, in place to halt or disrupt the entire enemy squadron screen, and prevent it from meaningfully engaging the rest of the fleet. Because of the way this fleet engages, it is made effectively impossible to effectively engage this screen without another Rieekan Aces list without losing the engagement.

Simply put, the defining element of the Rieekan/Yav/Squads combo that makes it so powerful is Rieekan himself, and the only way to tone down this list meaningfully is to change how Rieekan works. And that means an Errata, sadly. Which means that the card text needs to change in a way that Rieekan is still performing his intended purpose (allow a last-gasp action from a ship or squadron) but constrains it in a way that Rieekan can be disrupted.

My suggestion is to change Rieekan to read:
"When a friendly ship or friendly unique squadron is destroyed, it discards all upgrades and defensive tokens and ignores all squadron card text except for the Heavy special rule. It remains in the play area and is treated as if it was not destroyed until the end of the Status Phase."

I see this as preserving the general spirit of General Rieekan, while also opening up his play style a bit to encourage more conservative, defensive play. First, it disrupts some of the more disturbing Rieekan combos we've seen such as immortal escorts and ramming fleets. Second, It lets players who have fleets that are dependent on alpha strikes have some immediate impact and positive outcomes when destroying enemy ships and squadrons. Third, Rieekan still functions, but his activations are now potentially less effective. This encourages Rieekan to trade ships and squadrons on his ability only as a last-ditch effort. Rieekan now trades ships and squadrons to save the fleet instead of trading sips and squadrons to win the game.

The second issue right now is the omnipresence of Flotillas. I firmly believe that of the issues presented to us today, Flotillas are the issue that can be most readily fixed by the introduction of new ships and upgrades. That said, the far greater issue is the visual appearance to new and interested players of ships that seem to actively avoid all engagement. If I made changes to Flotillas, it would be to punish flotillas that try to leave the battle into "empty space" by putting them at some form of defensive disadvantage (for example, flotillas cannot use defensive tokens unless they are within Distance 5 of another friendly ship). I also would change the Flotilla rules slightly to say that they cannot be flagships. I believe that just changing Flotillas to not being flagships would all but eliminate them from some lists, and greatly decrease the need to have them fly away from the battle.

12 hours ago, Madaghmire said:

God I love it when Baltanok posts.

There is little doubt that @Baltanok's Excel-fu is stronger than mine. I know that I am very thankful to have his help with the tournament data sheets.

53 minutes ago, shmitty said:

There is little doubt that @Baltanok's Excel-fu is stronger than mine. I know that I am very thankful to have his help with the tournament data sheets.

Happy to help.

Flotillias have been OP way before Armada. Here you see one taking on an Imperial Star Destroyer and winning.

I also hear there's footage of a single X-Wing taking down an entire space station. It's absurd.

11 hours ago, thecactusman17 said:

The issue with BCC isn't BCC itself, but the stacking effect. Two BCCs is a little less than the cost of another flotilla to radically increase the chances of critical effects and all but guarantee criticals especially when more than one die is rolled against ships.

Two BCCs aren't radically better than one. Here's the stats on rolling a single bomber black die with BCCs. One BCC takes your crit chance from 25% -> 43.8%, if you're crit fishing. The second BCC takes you from 43.8% -> 57.9%. A good increase, but not radically greater than the increase from the first BCC. It's also not all but guaranteed to proc crits. 58% is much closer to a coin toss than it is to a guarantee.

9 hours ago, thecactusman17 said:

I also hear there's footage of a single X-Wing taking down an entire space station. It's absurd.

I saw a video of one basically wiping out a planet based superweapon. No lie.

18 minutes ago, Madaghmire said:

I saw a video of one basically wiping out a planet based superweapon. No lie.

Fake news. You can clearly see the CGI. Wake up, nerf-herd! The Bothans are lying to you.

I would like to test capping squad damage at 2, and a imp admiral that let's you add two side of your choice of color to front arc shots as long as you only shot out front arc.

51 minutes ago, ForceSensitive said:

I would like to test capping squad damage at 2

.....why? All this sounds like is that you want to nerf B wings.

10 minutes ago, geek19 said:

.....why? All this sounds like is that you want to nerf B wings.

And Phantoms before Sloane gets a chance to work with them.

Nobody ever remembers the Scurrg!

3 minutes ago, Snipafist said:

Nobody ever remembers the Scurrg!

Not true.

I do.

Scurrgs took me down at regionals.

22 minutes ago, Snipafist said:

Nobody ever remembers the Scurrg!

Which is strange, considering i used to run them often. Oh Nym, you were the DEVIL back in the day.

On 5/13/2017 at 9:18 PM, Vetnor said:

I would like to add that I'm playing a lot of Armada and no one in our group is playing these "meta" fleets, we're still having fun and we're still winning with what would be consisdered "losing" fleets.

So IMHO all this fuss is with highly competitive fleets an doesn't impact on my games so I'm not all that fussed........yet

Same here, but it's still an issue for people that do play in competitive metas or attend tournaments. It may not be our problems, but it's still enough of a problem to require some kind of response from FFG.

Anyway, limiting the number of flotillas in a fleet and/or making them not count as ships on the table seem like solid approaches. A friend suggested they could go so far as to limit you to flotillas based on the largest ship in your fleet--small ships only get one flotilla, if you have a medium you get two, and if you have a large ship you can have three flotillas. His logic was that the more you invest in one big beast of a ship the more you need cheap activations to make your list functional. I also suggested changing Reeikan to ignore any abilities on squadrons and unique upgrades on ships. That makes unique Escorts less frustrating because they're just an attack with four dice, not an unkillable bullet sponge. Also limits a few of the stronger ships that his lists like. Doesn't do anything to ramming lists, though. Maybe a zombie ship can't resolve commands or command-dependant upgrades like Engine Techs. That would solve the ramming list issue, and probably wouldn't weaken Reeikan too much? I don't know for sure, I've never played with or against a ramming list.

I would throw my hat in the ring for BCC not stacking. I understand that it might not increase your crit chance by a ton but it does increase it. And I don't feel like.. thematically.. 2 bomber control teams can do more than one. Is one of the teams bad at targeting so the other team says "ok guys. good try.. we've got this now"? With Toryn Farr and other buffs there are already plenty of re-rolls and the hunting can get a little ridiculous.

1 hour ago, geek19 said:

Which is strange, considering i used to run them often. Oh Nym, you were the DEVIL back in the day.

Grit...so underappreciated.

18 hours ago, thecactusman17 said:

Rieekan can place key squadrons, especially with the Escort ability

Could just snipe

Just now, Ginkapo said:

Could just snipe

I could just snipe with my one snipe squadron, but I'm looking at both factions and only two squadrons in the game have snipe: E-Wings and Sabre Squad. Snipe isn't a viable option for many players.

Suggesting anyone depend on abilities only available to one faction is literally not helping. Especially when that one faction is the one that is being discussed as having the issue. You may as well say "bring your own Rieekan Ace build, it's a proven counter."

15 minutes ago, Green Knight said:

Grit...so underappreciated.

I meant more dat Blue Crit effect. I think I ran him once with Toryn Farr (in that I haven't used him in the last few waves for some reason) and it's so satisfying stripping brace tokens away from ISDs and GSDs that wanted them.

I mean, satisfying for ME. That's what I was concerned about when playing.

13 minutes ago, thecactusman17 said:

I could just snipe with my one snipe squadron, but I'm looking at both factions and only two squadrons in the game have snipe: E-Wings and Sabre Squad. Snipe isn't a viable option for many players.

I agree. Snipe is only viable with imps

4 E wings and 4 A wings is my generic fighter screen option and it works brilliantly, at least for me snipe is the only option.

the A wings jump ahead and tie up enemy squadrons while the Ewings are in reserve sniping until eventually the A wings get killed, then they step in to stop the surviving enemy squadrons from bombing my ships.

i like to include at least one snipe and one relay squadron in all my fighter wings though

6 hours ago, Snipafist said:

Nobody ever remembers the Scurrg!

They're coming to X-wing finally.

Scratch what I previously said. Was playing in Squad builder and it hit me like a ton of bricks... Errata Superior Positions to not trigger on squad damage or to trigger less often on squad damage. It's not the squads, the admiral, or the ships that's causing the freaking problem. It's the OBJECTIVE that's the auto-include that I never realized before. You take that away from them and suddenly they are back to one semi bad objective that could be a better option for it's opponent to take against them. Without that Rock solid array of objectives to hide behind they're going to have to adapt to the fewer guaranteed points, and therefore lesser guaranteed tournament standing when they win.

This really reins in the Riekan fleet and rebel bombers in general.