3 minutes ago, BiggsIRL said:

GLORIOUS RED DICE QUASAR FIRE IN WAVE 6.

Plus Kallus!

3 minutes ago, BiggsIRL said:

GLORIOUS RED DICE QUASAR FIRE IN WAVE 6.

I predict developing flotilla moves (and/or obstacle placement) to shield squadrons from a single die quasar.

I always come back to these... "possible upgrade ideas"


weapons team

Committed anti-squadron gunners

While attacking, if the defender is a ship, subtract a die from your pool. If the defender is a squadron add one die of any color already in the pool.

7 points.

Seems like a good balance, shots against squads get better with a similar negative effect against ships, and improves quad laser turrets, in conjunction with kallus, it could be an effective anti squadron system at a fairly low cost.

2 minutes ago, BiggsIRL said:

GLORIOUS RED DICE QUASAR FIRE IN WAVE 6.

Red dices are a start but won't settle the problem by themself

3 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

I always come back to these... "possible upgrade ideas"


weapons team

Committed anti-squadron gunners

While attacking, if the defender is a ship, subtract a die from your pool. If the defender is a squadron add one die of any color already in the pool.

7 points.

Seems like a good balance, shots against squads get better with a similar negative effect against ships, and improves quad laser turrets, in conjunction with kallus, it could be an effective anti squadron system at a fairly low cost.

7 points + losing 1 dice against a ship? I don't think I'd pay that price for some extra AA

I know it hurt's everyone to think that Crits could be a hit on squadron but only because we start the game with this in mind.

I think we can think outside of the box for this one.

2 minutes ago, DOMSWAT911 said:

I know it hurt's everyone to think that Crits could be a hit on squadron but only because we start the game with this in mind.

I think we can think outside of the box for this one.

That would make PDR useless. Since it rerolls crits against squads at close range. Or is it range 1?

1 minute ago, Undeadguy said:

That would make PDR useless. Since it rerolls crits against squads at close range. Or is it range 1?

Close-range, at least.

2 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:

That would make PDR useless. Since it rerolls crits against squads at close range. Or is it range 1?

I think this change won't make it more useless.

1 minute ago, Visovics said:

7 points + losing 1 dice against a ship? I don't think I'd pay that price for some extra AA

a raider that gets 3 black standard against every squadron it shoots, and can have counter 2 (essentially) as well as kallus to add yet another die when shooting ace squads?

Heckin' worth it... not to mention slapping this on my ISD II giving it 3 blue? plus Kallus, plus Quad laser again...

could be fun...

16 minutes ago, pt106 said:

I predict developing flotilla moves (and/or obstacle placement) to shield squadrons from a single die quasar.

Forcing flotillas into combat! How terrible

Just now, Ginkapo said:

Forcing flotillas into combat! How terrible

At long range

And, I'm just sitting here recalling the first few times I played the old PC game, Star Wars: Rebellion. Unless you has specific anti squadron ships (and even then it was iffy), a fleet of ISDs without fighters got wrecked by a strong showing of enemy fighters. The fighters are built into Star Wars for a reason. It would be Star Trek, Battle Fleet Gothic or some other science fiction I am forgetting or haven't encountered.

If Lucas had intended fighters to take only a small part in Star Wars, we would have seen a rebel fleet waiting for the Death Star at Yavin.

As for the game, I do see some devastating combinations that seem, on the surface, to be must haves to win. This is not how I play games. I want to win with my own strategy, not something someone won worlds with. Probably why I don't play the tournament scene. If I ever did though, I'd roll in with a, "To hell with your meta and fear my mighty fleet that I threw against the wall and assembled out of the parts that landed within a circle I painted on the floor!" attitude.

I think that's what a lot of people are missing. The desire to win is overpowering their desire to just play the best **** game they possibly can and may the best list win.

Nerfing or changing the game mechanics is a slippery slope.

Yeah, Armpits and aceholes, I know but, there it is.

1 hour ago, Undeadguy said:

Is it so hard to ask the people you play with to not run max squads?

Hard to ask? No.

Expect compliance? Fat chance.

45 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:

That would make PDR useless. Since it rerolls crits against squads at close range. Or is it range 1?

There is a precedent in Imperial Assault for this. Several command cards have been essentially binned by rule changes as they are written.

Edit: FFG has gone back and errated those cards. Mostly.

2 hours ago, draco193 said:

There is a precedent in Imperial Assault for this. Several command cards have been essentially binned by rule changes as they are written.

Edit: FFG has gone back and errated those cards. Mostly.

So give at PDR the range limit of the dice colour. At least we could have something there!

We had a voting thread a few months ago of suggestions for brand-new titles. Anyone up for a voting thread of suggestions for anti-squadron upgrades?

Offensive Retrofit - Something something something shoot at squadrons and move them up to distance 1 to a location within the firing arc.

Officer - Something something something reroll 1 die when attacking a squadron within distance 1 of a friendly squadron.

Unless the next Wave features some heavy anti-squadron outfitting for capital ships, I expect to squadrons to continue to dominate.

You have 134 points, or over 25 percent of your total fleet, to dedicate towards squadrons.

There is literally zero downside to filling up these 134 points, especially as rebels.

With Sloane, now Imperials have a reason to bring 134 points of fighters on a regular basis.

While I do think that the current anti-squadron upgrades are a bit underpowered, I do think they get a bad rap relative to their actual abilities. Some of this we can tease out by comparing them to a baseline. For example, I play a lot of A-wings as squadron defense. I figure you get 3.5 points of damage for the first couple, then 5 for the second couple. That would put you at about .38 points of damage per point spent on them. Sure, this isn't the hard and fast rule, since we can bring force multipliers like Toryn into the mix, and some opposing squadron make-ups can kill A-wings much faster or much slower, but since all things won't ever be equal and we need some kind of baseline, I don't think this is a bad starting point. It is also a good comparison point since people like me who tend to like light squadron forces that stop the opponent rather than directly bomb are generally looking at squadron defense first, which is what someone who is looking to use anti-squadron upgrades off of ship is looking from them.

Point Defense Reroute: I agree that this upgrade is extremely disappointing, but let's be amusing here. Basically, you'd probably only want to take it on something like an Assault Frigate-A which has 2 blue dice, thereby maximizing your chances of getting more damage. As someone did the math earlier, you go from averaging 1 point of damage to averaging 1.25 points of damage. The key here is that is PER SHOT. What we need to note in anti-squadron fire is that you're taking multiple shots. If you can fire at 4 squadrons from the arc, then you've actually done 1 point of extra damage. For a 5 point upgrade, you're now at .2 per point of upgrade spent. When you've fired at your 8th squadron, you're now at .4 per point of upgrade spent. Anything beyond that is just absolutely gravy. Of course, setting up those shots is not exactly easy. There's also one other major problem that is true of all squadron upgrades, and one that partly explains why this upgrade isn't taken seriously or much at all.

Quad Laser Turrets: You do a bit more damage than PDR, but the difference here is you have to be attacked to get it to trigger, and in my experience, you'd rather not be attacked. You're doing .5 points of anti-squadron damage per shot, which means the damage that you do can add up considerably.

Toryn: Might as well talk about her now, maybe one of the best upgrades in the game right now, and quite possibly undercosted. She's generally enough to boost everything basically. Basically a .25 damage boost per die roll (though that's ballpark and not exact). She basically supercedes PDR, and boosts QLT and any anti-squadron you bring. We might throw Agent Kallus into the mix of this conversation as well, especially if Rebels want to take Rieekan Aces, where that die boost does add some pretty significant extra damage, but not quite obviously so because it can be braced down to a normal damage shot. But just for kicks, let's note that you need about 6 toryn boosted shots to get the same cost benefit of our single defense A-wing. And we all know you can end up boosting far more than 6 shots in a game, which is partly what makes Toryn such an easy upgrade to take.

Cluster Bombs: A lot of people seem to want to see a lot more out of this upgrade. But let's think about it. It is unbracable, unscatterable. It will then average 3 damage for the roll. At 5 points, that's .6 for the 5 points that you spent on it. The big mark against it seems to be more that it occupies that critical defensive retrofits. But even this thought is almost knee-jerk. We almost knee-jerk to ECM because we've all had that experience of the really big red/blue die roll where ECM saved a huge damage shot. But all defensive retrofits have a certain meta consideration to them. If you're seeing lots of red/blue large die pools, ECM is great. If you're seeing mass squadrons, then that brace hardly seems to do anything. Look at how many high level lists simply didn't take ECM at all?

So if mathematically speaking, these upgrades seem to be on par or even better than the other kinds of upgrades that one can take, why aren't they taken as much? I'd propose that there is one legitimate strategical consideration, and one knee-jerk consideration.

The strategic consideration is that your damage from anti-squadron shots is spread out. Because a unit in this game continues to have its full attack value (barring some ship critical effects) as it suffers damage, the key point is to completely remove a unit from the map. A large squadron mass that is evenly at 2/3rd of its health is still at 100% of its original attack value. So upgrades like PDR and QLT simply don't help you finish off the squadrons that you need. CB partly gets around this by allowing you to do straight up damage to one key enemy squadron, but it also doesn't quite have enough damage capacity to finish off that squadron. And this takes us to the knee-jerk consideration: it doesn't matter how many of these kinds of upgrades that you can pile up, you absolutely must take at least a token force of your own squadrons that can swoop in and finish off the enemy squads. And that's the key to making these upgrades work. At this point, I think Toryn basically obsoletes PDR. Points get tight, even if it does make some kind of measurable boost to the list. QLT works a bit better against Intel/Bomber lists that may want to ignore your squads and go directly for your ships, but again, you've got to have the squads in place that can either damage the enemy first or finish them after the QLT works. And finally, in a meta where bombers are prevalent, especially aces, CB has to start looking better. In particular, its got to look better on ships that might otherwise have a blank defensive retrofit. Luke, for example, almost always has to leave a Gallant Haven bubble to go after an MC30. After CB fires, he's two squadron attacks away from dying.

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.

I know what I've proposed flies in the face of at least what some in the forum have proposed, but I am looking to move the conservation forward rather than recycle the same old arguments we've always seen.

TL:DR Summary: Yes, I'm with the forum in thinking we need some boosts to anti-squadron upgrades. I politely add that at least some of the current upgrades are reasonable for their costs. One strategical reason they aren't taken is they do damage in small spread-out bursts. To use them effectively requires your own anti-squadron force.

22 minutes ago, Vergilius said:

While I do think that the current anti-squadron upgrades are a bit underpowered, I do think they get a bad rap relative to their actual abilities. Some of this we can tease out by comparing them to a baseline. For example, I play a lot of A-wings as squadron defense. I figure you get 3.5 points of damage for the first couple, then 5 for the second couple. That would put you at about .38 points of damage per point spent on them. Sure, this isn't the hard and fast rule, since we can bring force multipliers like Toryn into the mix, and some opposing squadron make-ups can kill A-wings much faster or much slower, but since all things won't ever be equal and we need some kind of baseline, I don't think this is a bad starting point. It is also a good comparison point since people like me who tend to like light squadron forces that stop the opponent rather than directly bomb are generally looking at squadron defense first, which is what someone who is looking to use anti-squadron upgrades off of ship is looking from them.

Point Defense Reroute: I agree that this upgrade is extremely disappointing, but let's be amusing here. Basically, you'd probably only want to take it on something like an Assault Frigate-A which has 2 blue dice, thereby maximizing your chances of getting more damage. As someone did the math earlier, you go from averaging 1 point of damage to averaging 1.25 points of damage. The key here is that is PER SHOT. What we need to note in anti-squadron fire is that you're taking multiple shots. If you can fire at 4 squadrons from the arc, then you've actually done 1 point of extra damage. For a 5 point upgrade, you're now at .2 per point of upgrade spent. When you've fired at your 8th squadron, you're now at .4 per point of upgrade spent. Anything beyond that is just absolutely gravy. Of course, setting up those shots is not exactly easy. There's also one other major problem that is true of all squadron upgrades, and one that partly explains why this upgrade isn't taken seriously or much at all.

Quad Laser Turrets: You do a bit more damage than PDR, but the difference here is you have to be attacked to get it to trigger, and in my experience, you'd rather not be attacked. You're doing .5 points of anti-squadron damage per shot, which means the damage that you do can add up considerably.

Toryn: Might as well talk about her now, maybe one of the best upgrades in the game right now, and quite possibly undercosted. She's generally enough to boost everything basically. Basically a .25 damage boost per die roll (though that's ballpark and not exact). She basically supercedes PDR, and boosts QLT and any anti-squadron you bring. We might throw Agent Kallus into the mix of this conversation as well, especially if Rebels want to take Rieekan Aces, where that die boost does add some pretty significant extra damage, but not quite obviously so because it can be braced down to a normal damage shot. But just for kicks, let's note that you need about 6 toryn boosted shots to get the same cost benefit of our single defense A-wing. And we all know you can end up boosting far more than 6 shots in a game, which is partly what makes Toryn such an easy upgrade to take.

Cluster Bombs: A lot of people seem to want to see a lot more out of this upgrade. But let's think about it. It is unbracable, unscatterable. It will then average 3 damage for the roll. At 5 points, that's .6 for the 5 points that you spent on it. The big mark against it seems to be more that it occupies that critical defensive retrofits. But even this thought is almost knee-jerk. We almost knee-jerk to ECM because we've all had that experience of the really big red/blue die roll where ECM saved a huge damage shot. But all defensive retrofits have a certain meta consideration to them. If you're seeing lots of red/blue large die pools, ECM is great. If you're seeing mass squadrons, then that brace hardly seems to do anything. Look at how many high level lists simply didn't take ECM at all?

So if mathematically speaking, these upgrades seem to be on par or even better than the other kinds of upgrades that one can take, why aren't they taken as much? I'd propose that there is one legitimate strategical consideration, and one knee-jerk consideration.

The strategic consideration is that your damage from anti-squadron shots is spread out. Because a unit in this game continues to have its full attack value (barring some ship critical effects) as it suffers damage, the key point is to completely remove a unit from the map. A large squadron mass that is evenly at 2/3rd of its health is still at 100% of its original attack value. So upgrades like PDR and QLT simply don't help you finish off the squadrons that you need. CB partly gets around this by allowing you to do straight up damage to one key enemy squadron, but it also doesn't quite have enough damage capacity to finish off that squadron. And this takes us to the knee-jerk consideration: it doesn't matter how many of these kinds of upgrades that you can pile up, you absolutely must take at least a token force of your own squadrons that can swoop in and finish off the enemy squads. And that's the key to making these upgrades work. At this point, I think Toryn basically obsoletes PDR. Points get tight, even if it does make some kind of measurable boost to the list. QLT works a bit better against Intel/Bomber lists that may want to ignore your squads and go directly for your ships, but again, you've got to have the squads in place that can either damage the enemy first or finish them after the QLT works. And finally, in a meta where bombers are prevalent, especially aces, CB has to start looking better. In particular, its got to look better on ships that might otherwise have a blank defensive retrofit. Luke, for example, almost always has to leave a Gallant Haven bubble to go after an MC30. After CB fires, he's two squadron attacks away from dying.

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.

I know what I've proposed flies in the face of at least what some in the forum have proposed, but I am looking to move the conservation forward rather than recycle the same old arguments we've always seen.

TL:DR Summary: Yes, I'm with the forum in thinking we need some boosts to anti-squadron upgrades. I politely add that at least some of the current upgrades are reasonable for their costs. One strategical reason they aren't taken is they do damage in small spread-out bursts. To use them effectively requires your own anti-squadron force.

How dare you provide both a reasonable response and a request that we all start trying things out! This is the complaints forum, the trying new ideas forum is over THERE!

In lieu of just continuing to post sarcasm, I do agree with you. I think the issue with a lot of the not trying PDR and QLT is they gotta be close range and range 1, respectively. Effectively useless against Rhymer balls, sadly. Personally, I wonder about an ISD-I with Kallus, the Avenger title, PDR, and QLT. You want to Rieekan Aces? Ok, bring it at me! Add in Ruthless strategists if you want, even, and pair it with YV666s or something.

The problem with this idea is that I'm one of the 20 percent of the forums who only plays Rebels, haha.

16 minutes ago, geek19 said:

How dare you provide both a reasonable response and a request that we all start trying things out! This is the complaints forum, the trying new ideas forum is over THERE!

In lieu of just continuing to post sarcasm, I do agree with you. I think the issue with a lot of the not trying PDR and QLT is they gotta be close range and range 1, respectively. Effectively useless against Rhymer balls, sadly. Personally, I wonder about an ISD-I with Kallus, the Avenger title, PDR, and QLT. You want to Rieekan Aces? Ok, bring it at me! Add in Ruthless strategists if you want, even, and pair it with YV666s or something.

The problem with this idea is that I'm one of the 20 percent of the forums who only plays Rebels, haha.

Ha! Thanks.

Rhymer is a pickle to upgrades like PDR and QLT, and when he was huge in wave-2, that's probably why I steered away from those kinds of upgrades. Still, if you've got 6 squads and an AF-II-A as a core to your list that are attempting to drive into that pile of squads, you're looking to use those upgrades to push you over the top. What you're really attempting to do is trade effectively. That's the way a GH or Biggs upgrade works, by reducing or spreading around damage. Here, the opposite principle is at work, by increasing the potential damage output and therefore win the squad game with a lot more squads left on the table.

So take my Madine list with Tycho/Shara/2xA-wings/Toryn. Now put that squadron mix into a Sato list with an AF2-A.

27 minutes ago, geek19 said:

Personally, I wonder about an ISD-I with Kallus, the Avenger title, PDR, and QLT.

Tried it before. PDR is useless, everything else is solid. QLT's were especially nice against slow-damaging squadrons (YT2400 in particular).

7 minutes ago, pt106 said:

Tried it before. PDR is useless, everything else is solid. QLT's were especially nice against slow-damaging squadrons (YT2400 in particular).

Theoretically, all you actually need in that blob of upgrades is Kallus and QLT (the Avenger helps but isn't super needed). Which can fit on EITHER ISD profile, and you can add Vader/Leading Shots/etc to taste (and Ruthless Strategists or Gunnery Team as needed). So it's like what, a solid 8 points that can get work done there? Bring like 4 TIEs or whatever, throw them into the breach and follow them in with the ISD.... it MIGHT work? Again, i don't Imperial.

That is another part of the problem. Excellent cards like Toryn are Rebel only - while it's primarily Rieekan aces that is giving everyone fits.

I'm not very good at this game yet. But it's getting a bit one-note having my Imps get sunk by GH/Biggs Ball over and over.

I'd love to find a solution that doesn't require me to bring a large pile of squadrons myself. Not something that is a total shut-down for enemy squadrons, but something that makes the games feel closely fought (and therefore fun) again.

11 hours ago, Vergilius said:

Quad Laser Turrets: You do a bit more damage than PDR, but the difference here is you have to be attacked to get it to trigger, and in my experience, you'd rather not be attacked. You're doing .5 points of anti-squadron damage per shot, which means the damage that you do can add up considerably.

TL:DR Summary: Yes, I'm with the forum in thinking we need some boosts to anti-squadron upgrades. I politely add that at least some of the current upgrades are reasonable for their costs. One strategical reason they aren't taken is they do damage in small spread-out bursts. To use them effectively requires your own anti-squadron force.

QLT is much more effective against single die bombers than double-die bombers. The ratio of antiship/Antisquad damage for a Y-wing is 2:1, but 3.5:1 for B-wings. Repair commands are also highly useful when facing bombers. It won't keep you alive forever, but it does let you survive longer. QLT, Yularen & Engineer commands makes an ISD/Interdictor very hard to kill with an equal weight of Y-wings + GR75's, assuming no synergies, but does a lot less against B-wings.

Leading shots and PDR make 2-die AA fire very reliable (only 9/128 probability of whiffing from ISD2, 3/128 chance of whiffing on MC80-command, ISD1, Interdictor-C, or Raider 2 in close range)