Despite all of the great ideas that have been contributed to kit ships out to deal with squads the following flaws still exist.

A. The cost analysis that you are doing on Kallus, QLT, PDR, cluster bombs, flight controllers, etc does not take into account the opportunity cost of taking them. In most tournament situations, you are better off taking upgrades that are more general purpose.

B. Most antisquad upgrades, exempting cluster bombs, require that the ship have several activations in order to reap the full benefit of the upgrade. Fighter lists of 134 points run about (Imperial 8-12?)(Rebel 10-20?) of anti ship damage per round. This means that unless the intel allowing this is eliminated, ships are not going to be around very long.

C. The typical solution to A and B is to use ships that can use superior speed and maneuverability (through nav commands, meaning you can't rely on squads) to get a winning advantage. This approach is HIGHLY dependent upon some bombers missing shots and the non squad fleet not missing shots. I believe someone named Ard has an excellent testimonial to this approach someplace.

D. Are rebel squad builds unbeatable?, no. Are they some of the most consistent fleets to not lose by a bunch of points?, probably. I'm not trying to jump on any NERF X and Y trains. Merely trying to point out that there is a cold hard math to upgrade selection. In Armada fleet construction, its not practical to throw in 60 points of tech in upgrades(Kallus, QLT, et al) or squads(IG, Ewings, et al) on the off chance that you get to use it.

Also, as a random note. Watching elimination matches to analyze how a fleet performs is not representative at all. I realize that since that was the only round streamed, its what we have to work with. In elimination matches the game of Armada changes victory conditions. You are no longer looking to score lots of points, you are looking to score one more point(1st player) or tie(2nd player). This leads to a play style that is nothing like what swiss is played as.

7 minutes ago, AdmiralYor said:

Despite all of the great ideas that have been contributed to kit ships out to deal with squads the following flaws still exist.

A. The cost analysis that you are doing on Kallus, QLT, PDR, cluster bombs, flight controllers, etc does not take into account the opportunity cost of taking them. In most tournament situations, you are better off taking upgrades that are more general purpose.

B. Most antisquad upgrades, exempting cluster bombs, require that the ship have several activations in order to reap the full benefit of the upgrade. Fighter lists of 134 points run about (Imperial 8-12?)(Rebel 10-20?) of anti ship damage per round. This means that unless the intel allowing this is eliminated, ships are not going to be around very long.

C. The typical solution to A and B is to use ships that can use superior speed and maneuverability (through nav commands, meaning you can't rely on squads) to get a winning advantage. This approach is HIGHLY dependent upon some bombers missing shots and the non squad fleet not missing shots. I believe someone named Ard has an excellent testimonial to this approach someplace.

D. Are rebel squad builds unbeatable?, no. Are they some of the most consistent fleets to not lose by a bunch of points?, probably. I'm not trying to jump on any NERF X and Y trains. Merely trying to point out that there is a cold hard math to upgrade selection. In Armada fleet construction, its not practical to throw in 60 points of tech in upgrades(Kallus, QLT, et al) or squads(IG, Ewings, et al) on the off chance that you get to use it.

A good analysis. I would only point out that the in C the alternative approach is to rely on the high hull value and to tank at least one round of bombing.

5 hours ago, Democratus said:

That is another part of the problem. Excellent cards like Toryn are Rebel only

I wont disagree on specifics, however to put it in context:

Is there a difference between Howl + Chiranuea and Toryn + Hwk290?

4 minutes ago, Ginkapo said:

I wont disagree on specifics, however to put it in context:

Is there a difference between Howl + Chiranuea and Toryn + Hwk290?

Howl doesn't affect ships.

17 minutes ago, pt106 said:

Howl doesn't affect ships.

The Hwk doesn't have scatter.

3 hours ago, AdmiralYor said:

Despite all of the great ideas that have been contributed to kit ships out to deal with squads the following flaws still exist.

A. The cost analysis that you are doing on Kallus, QLT, PDR, cluster bombs, flight controllers, etc does not take into account the opportunity cost of taking them. In most tournament situations, you are better off taking upgrades that are more general purpose.

B. Most antisquad upgrades, exempting cluster bombs, require that the ship have several activations in order to reap the full benefit of the upgrade. Fighter lists of 134 points run about (Imperial 8-12?)(Rebel 10-20?) of anti ship damage per round. This means that unless the intel allowing this is eliminated, ships are not going to be around very long.

C. The typical solution to A and B is to use ships that can use superior speed and maneuverability (through nav commands, meaning you can't rely on squads) to get a winning advantage. This approach is HIGHLY dependent upon some bombers missing shots and the non squad fleet not missing shots. I believe someone named Ard has an excellent testimonial to this approach someplace.

D. Are rebel squad builds unbeatable?, no. Are they some of the most consistent fleets to not lose by a bunch of points?, probably. I'm not trying to jump on any NERF X and Y trains. Merely trying to point out that there is a cold hard math to upgrade selection. In Armada fleet construction, its not practical to throw in 60 points of tech in upgrades(Kallus, QLT, et al) or squads(IG, Ewings, et al) on the off chance that you get to use it.

Re: A: Although I agree with the general sentiment that you're generally better off taking upgrades that are general purpose, the statement is so broad and general as to hardly be useful in a practical setting. One of the keys to the game is figuring out how you're going to handle some pretty specific situations that are bound to come up over the course of the tournament. So it is less a question of whether you could throw QLT/PDR/CB or the others into a random list and moderately improve it and more about whether you could build specifically to take advantage of them as part of your answer to the whole question. Part of the context here is that in almost every fleet match-up, some of the points that you've allotted are at best inefficient and impractical. That's just part and parcel of how fleets match-up with each other. Ideally, you want as few of those as possible in as many match-ups as possible. NOw, the opportunity cost is fair to analyze, but I see plenty of unused Offensive Retrofits, and in an environement where Defensive Retrofits are either regularly unfilled or starting to run unfilled, an upgrade like CB suddenly looks intriguing, especially if squadrons are everywhere in your meta.

Re: B: Excellent point, which means you have to look actively to trigger a multiple-activation sequence if you're going to go this route.

Re: C: Ard's list doesn't try to invest in the squadron game or win it at all. a Kallus/QLT/PDR/CB approach is actively trying to win the squadron game, and likely by some kind of margin. One of the key points of my post earlier was that you don't take these squadron upgrades in the hope that you can just go squadronless and they'll be enough.

Re: D: I think the conclusion of 60 points of upgrades is an exaggeration. Every game I play, some upgrade is relatively useful in my list. Maybe I never see a need to Engine Tech an entire game. Maybe my dice are so fine that I don't need to Leading Shots. Maybe I roll accuracies and don't need to H9 them. Maybe...maybe...maybe. If an upgrade like QLT is part of your squadron answer, then that's also part of the game. The real question is whether you've got the right array of tools in your list to handle a lot of the fleets that appear out there. And squadrons can both attack ships and other squadrons, which means that the 55 points of Tycho/Shara/2xA-wings that I run in a lot of lists still have some efficiency in attacking ships. I don't know how many times they've managed to take out a ship in a squadronless battle. So their net benefit is not useful. Now, I've seen Toryn become close to useless against a squadronless list, but just an upgrade of inefficiency.

On 2017-05-18 at 5:32 AM, Vergilius said:

And as someone who has run Tycho/Shara/2-Awings plus a Toryn/Flotilla for quite a long time---I've taken out 120+ points of squads with that on multiple occasions. A handful of builds will mess that anti-squadron force over, but for a moderate point investment, it has served me well. I'd still take that as a base in a lot of other styles of builds that I'd take, and certainly it should be possible to a CB Admonition or CB/QLT Assault Frigate to that and/or a couple of other squads depending upon the build

And I really do think that more should be made of the ship variants that add anti-squadron dice. The AF-A has to start looking better in the current meta. I almost always default to a Glad-II anymore. Although I don't really like the Pelta very much (not my playstyle), there's got to be a couple of good Assault variant builds. The thing is basically a slightly more durable and expensive raider. That Flechettes won't trigger as often or reliably either minds you save yourself the points or you just accept that for 3 points, you still get quite a bit of usage out of them. After all, if Dutch can possibly trigger 3 times a round with Adar/Yavaris, one really big anti-squadron push of 4-6 shots might amount to a couple of shut-downs. That's not bad for 3 points. I'm not sure that guaranteeing a 3 point upgrade is required to make that upgrade good.

The big problem with this is that it again relies on those much too strong revel synergies. Yavaris and Adar turns both anti fighter and anti ship into monsters. imperials cannot do the same.

21 hours ago, Ginkapo said:

I wont disagree on specifics, however to put it in context:

Is there a difference between Howl + Chiranuea and Toryn + Hwk290?

Toryn affects every ship and every squadron in range (1-3).

Howl is only range 1, affects zero ships and doesn't affect Aggressor, Firespray, Lamda, TIE Advanced, TIE Bomber, TIE Defender, TIE PHantom, Decimators, or YV-666.

Yeah...pretty big difference.

4 minutes ago, Democratus said:

Toryn affects every ship and every squadron in range (1-3).

Howl is only range 1, affects zero ships and doesn't affect Aggressor, Firespray, Lamda, TIE Advanced, TIE Bomber, TIE Defender, TIE PHantom, Decimators, or YV-666.

Yeah...pretty big difference.

And Chiraneau is protected by 17 ship hull whilst hwk290 is a 4 hull squadron with no tokens.

There are differences, but to argue that one is significantly stronger than the other is tough.

1 hour ago, Ginkapo said:

And Chiraneau is protected by 17 ship hull whilst hwk290 is a 4 hull squadron with no tokens.

There are differences, but to argue that one is significantly stronger than the other is tough.

Chiraneau also only affects as many squadrons as one ship can activate, only allows a speed 2 move instead of a full move, and doesn't allow bombers to attack ships despite fighters blocking the way.

He's harder to get rid of, but doesn't do nearly as much as that 1 hwk does.

Edit: I originally said Chiraneau only works at activation distance, but if you've spent enough points on Relay squadrons (15-30 depending on size of activating ship) then you can activate through them.

On 5/17/2017 at 1:43 PM, Undeadguy said:

You don't need a squadron deterrent. You need to kill Intel in some fashion. Unless your opponent is running a mixed force of bombers and fighters, you can drop Shara+Tycho or Ciena+Valen into a ball of bombers.

The issue with looking at Worlds and going as hard as you can to nerf squads means you break the balance of the game going forward. Small steps will go a long way in making everyone happy. Natural evolution of the meta is better than cherry picking rules you think will make the game more enjoyable.

It's entirely possible to run 4 Tie/F and win a game against max squads. I know because I've done it multiple times. I honestly think there is too much hive-mind going on in the forums and people start to believe they can't play the game without X, or doing Y is "bad" because how can you counter Z? The hive-mind is what is ruining the game by stirring everyone into a frenzy of Pro-Squad vs Anti-Squad vs Pro-Flotilla vs Anti-Flotilla vs A vs B vs C.

Heres the thing: theres almost nothing in the rebel squadron list that isnt a mixed fighter/bomber in and of itself.

Thats the truely frustrating part of the whole thing. When I fly rebels I feel like Im alot freer in my decisions of what squadrons to bring because pretty much everything can pull double duty and almost nothing is oneshottable by a standard fighter.

As an imperial I have to specialize. Its how our squadrons work, and I understand thats both fluffy and interesting- the problem is when squadrons are the main source of enemy power my only viable option seems to be taking alot of anti-fighter squadrons and no or little bombers of my own. Which changes the game from 'gain fighter supremacy, pound into dirt' to 'dont let the rebel player gain fighter supremacy, run away with survivors'.