1 minute ago, Warlord Zepnick said:

But you can shift damage using Biggs to a squadron ace with escort at 0 HP?

But it can't get passed RS damage FROM Biggs into it, to be clear.

1 minute ago, Warlord Zepnick said:

But you can shift damage using Biggs to a squadron ace with escort at 0 HP?

Yes, but not damage caused by RS or Mithel, as that damage doesn't happen as part of an attack.

Just now, Warlord Zepnick said:

Maybe I missed that. How can it absorb damage from being shot at normally? I thought once you're at zero, you can't take anymore damage.

You can't record any more damage.

But you can still take it.

Its what makes Zombie Escorts so annoying as it is.

Its just the way the rules are...

Basically, the only other way to look at it - means squadrons can never be destroyed, because they can never be on 0 hull. They don't have a 0 hull.

So you record damage on teh tick-down until they are "destroyed" - at which point, you would normally remove them from the Table - but Rieekan keeps them there... So if they are escort, you HAVE to keep shooting at them, which means they HAVE to be able to keep taking damage - otehrwise, you're removing the Escort Rule... Which you are not doing.

2 minutes ago, geek19 said:

If it's an ace under Rieekan that's alive until the end of turn, it can both get passed damage from Biggs AND take Ruthless strategists damage

Thanks.

On 2017-05-24 at 4:50 PM, Thraug said:

True, but Ruthless Strategists on a Rieekan zombie Ace is brutally powerful if pulled off, more so if its multiple attacks. Ive done it several times and opponents pretty much give up.

With the key word IF you pull it off.

First of all it is ONLY one damage transferred per attack and ONLY if you can get perfect positioning which is very difficult in reality. Against the Empire you can easily have to deal with buckets of dice from each Tie such as 5-6 (plus swarm) blue dice per attack and you will run out of Escorts in no time except that one ace which are only being reached by someone that already fired on someone else. You will obviously use any Tie close to that Ace to shoot at another escort first before the ace is dead. by the time that Ace is dead and start its zombie soaking ALL other escorts are dead and most Tie will no be in reach of that Ace and start chewing onto other none Escorts.

Also you are paying at least about 40p for something that MIGHT work and you might also find it difficult to utilize the other Aces abilities effectively in the process. Also Squadrons are very often overkilled by some amount anyway so in practice you might not have lost that many attacks at all. It might also be very diffcult to protect Biggs from being attacked as well, this is not as easy as one might think.

I find that bunching up too many fighters in one Swarm is bad and can often lead to embarrassing defeats by a clever opponent.

These theories only work well in theory rarely in practice unless you don't pay attention...