I headed into the euros this weekend expecting to see the Ace hole list all over the place.

It was fantastic that it just wasn't a thing here. The Italians brought their A game with a ton of ships and very little fighter screen, good showing from the Germans and the Dutch, imperials seemed to be pretty dominant and ryhmer was THE man for quite a few people (me included)

anyway my point is despite all the worry the variety on offer in Euros was fantastic and I am very happy that Ben, the person who has wrecked me many times locally won, a deserving guy and a great player.

Ps.. if you didn't know the winner is part of the comms noise crew, give google a try and get hold of their blog.

Pps... nice to play you ginkapo.

http://commsnoise.podomatic.com/

Lots of folks are pretty fed up with Rieekan as is, so this is no surprise (he's boring to play, boring to play against, and hell in a mirror match). We are after all playing a game as well, but you generally can't account for that one guy. Fortunately swiss pairs can take care of him for you.

I took Rieekan to the Euros and was genuinely surprised that there was only maybe one or two others with him.

A ton of Demo lists though (personally I think more OP than our hated zombie!) with some variety. ISD, Demo and 3 flotillas seemed popular.

Was great to see a load of varied lists (except flotilla spam seems to be very prevalent still).

Had some great tactical games against some great opponents.

Love the Armada scene - everyone very friendly and accommodating.

After seeing the Euros I think on the whole it is pretty balanced and player skill is definitely the deciding factor; along with experience in playing your list and against other lists - that said close games (of which all mine were) can be decided on very marginal things - a poor critical dice roll, putting a token on the wrong ship with Comms Net, a wrong click on a maneuver tool, leaving a ship on 1 health etc etc

Good to see Ben won it - the Bristol scene and the Comms Net guys are a key reason I'm enjoying the game as much as I am.

Great experience - roll on next year!

Reeikan Aces is not a list you can pick up and play easily, also I would say its not as fun as using big ships. It needs close in formation flying with squads. It maybe it hasnt crossed over hte pond as a meta yet.

1 hour ago, ripper998 said:

Reeikan Aces is not a list you can pick up and play easily, also I would say its not as fun as using big ships. It needs close in formation flying with squads. It maybe it hasnt crossed over hte pond as a meta yet.

I find it difficult to believe that since wave two, no communities in Europe have had a Rieekan Ace Holes style fleet (or fleets) being fielded consistently. It's a pretty obvious combination. I think it would be more productive to consider why few of the high-performing players in the European championship considered it to be the best approach for their purposes despite the fact that many of them apparently felt comfortable running mutliple flotillas and heavier squadrons and that Rieekan Ace Holes won Worlds.

40 minutes ago, Snipafist said:

I find it difficult to believe that since wave two, no communities in Europe have had a Rieekan Ace Holes style fleet (or fleets) being fielded consistently. It's a pretty obvious combination. I think it would be more productive to consider why few of the high-performing players in the European championship considered it to be the best approach for their purposes despite the fact that many of them apparently felt comfortable running mutliple flotillas and heavier squadrons and that Rieekan Ace Holes won Worlds.

Because maybe they prefer to run imperial? Or maybe they don't have experience with the facets of that list and the style of play.

21 minutes ago, ripper998 said:

Or maybe they don't have experience with the facets of that list and the style of play.

Every single Armada player in Europe doesn't have experience with Rieekan Aces, an archetype so straightforward that it occurs to nearly everyone who sees Rieekan's card? And they don't understand how to use lots of squadrons with flotilla support with Rieekan despite the fact that easily half of those top 8 fleets did exactly that with the exception of the "with Rieekan" part?

I grant that you can't just throw a Rieekan Ace Holes fleet at someone and say "go win a tournament with this" but mastering how to Ace Holes is not as difficult as some of the more difficult elements of Armada and good players can teach themselves to do it pretty well without a lot of trouble. The fact remains that most of the European players did not choose to bring that specific commander with that archetype and I'm utterly unconvinced by theories that this was done because of some kind of lack of experience. Good players try a lot of different kinds of upgrades and fleet builds; people have been talking about Ace Holes fleets (increasingly) since wave two and they've won several events. Serious European Armada players aren't going to look at that and just shrug.

Yeah. Data is data. Players are players. Good players who do research will exist. Why Rieekan was so underrepresented requires thought. There are always qualifications.

Rieekan aces is not the hardest list to learn, but it is also not the most simplistic to learn. (Although I'm gonna argue that it is very easy to learn to copy! Pretty textbook situations for everything except the most skilled of mirrors. Ie. also, the list has no reliable counter except variations of itself. )

32 minutes ago, Blail Blerg said:

Yeah. Data is data. Players are players. Good players who do research will exist. Why Rieekan was so underrepresented requires thought. There are always qualifications.

Keep in mind that there is always "fun to play" factor as well as personal preferences that may be involved in a fleet selection.

It is possible here that the aberration is Rieekan's prevalence at Worlds.

Perhaps some crazy bit of group think led to a larger than expected percentage of players showing up with similar fleets.

38 minutes ago, Blail Blerg said:

Also, the list has no reliable counter except variations of itself.

I keep disagreeing with this statement, but i don't want to get into a fight about it in this thread. I will say that at Adepticon the Sunday winner faced it and went 8-3 against it, so it's not invulnerable.

Just now, shmitty said:

It is possible here that the aberration is Rieekan's prevalence at Worlds.

Perhaps some crazy bit of group think led to a larger than expected percentage of players showing up with similar fleets.

Didn't all of Team Canada decide to show up with the same list and practiced it for a year or so?

4 minutes ago, geek19 said:

I keep disagreeing with this statement, but i don't want to get into a fight about it in this thread. I will say that at Adepticon the Sunday winner faced it and went 8-3 against it, so it's not invulnerable.

I didn't say that. Your eagerness to utterly defend your position is holding you.

6 minutes ago, shmitty said:

It is possible here that the aberration is Rieekan's prevalence at Worlds.

Perhaps some crazy bit of group think led to a larger than expected percentage of players showing up with similar fleets.

Reminder, they didn't "show up" in higher percentage. They WON with higher percentage. Note the difference. They aren't statistically winning equal to their take percentage.

Just now, Blail Blerg said:

Reminder, they didn't "show up" in higher percentage. They WON with higher percentage. Note the difference. They aren't statistically winning equal to their take percentage.

We don't know the percent of entrants. We only know the percent of top 8. We have anecdotal evidence that Rieekan was everywhere at Worlds, but was that 30%? 50% 75%? If we don't know that, we can't say if Rieekan was overperforming.

1 minute ago, Baltanok said:

We don't know the percent of entrants. We only know the percent of top 8. We have anecdotal evidence that Rieekan was everywhere at Worlds, but was that 30%? 50% 75%? If we don't know that, we can't say if Rieekan was overperforming.

Didn't we get a report that the percentage of known Rieekans was not in line with their overperformance? I remember someone making an initial statement of sorts in worlds stats.

Also, again as I am repeating over and over again, just saying Rieekan is taking without argument that RIEEKAN is the problem or coinciding factor. Differentiating between Rieekan led MSU and Rieekan led squadrons with 5 activations Yavaris is important.

2 minutes ago, Baltanok said:

We don't know the percent of entrants. We only know the percent of top 8. We have anecdotal evidence that Rieekan was everywhere at Worlds, but was that 30%? 50% 75%? If we don't know that, we can't say if Rieekan was overperforming.

And I should have been more clear that I was talking about that anecdotal account. Rieekan dominated that Top 8, but also anecdotally was far more prevalent than we might have been led to expect based on past tournament data.

Rieekan Aceholes is very good.

Just wanted to look at this from the other direction. Possibly rather than the outlier being that Aceholes weren't popular or overly successful at the Euro tourney, maybe Worlds and Rieekans abundance/dominance was the outlier.

25 minutes ago, Blail Blerg said:

I didn't say that. Your eagerness to utterly defend your position is holding you.

You didn't say literally what he quoted you as saying? He's disagreeing with the fact that you think it has no reliable counter but itself. He provided anecdotal data. You're nitpicking about the word "reliable." At the very least, you could explain why you feel that way and what you mean by "reliable" rather than coming back with some patronizing nonsense.

was there any Sato love in the euros?

Here is a picture of all admirals that were played.

54 minutes ago, Snipafist said:

You didn't say literally what he quoted you as saying? He's disagreeing with the fact that you think it has no reliable counter but itself. He provided anecdotal data. You're nitpicking about the word "reliable." At the very least, you could explain why you feel that way and what you mean by "reliable" rather than coming back with some patronizing nonsense.

What he said and what I've said have nothing to do with each other logically.

Also, I have. So much that you and everyone else are SICK of it. And yet can't for the life of the whole internet come up with a Utah/Worlds counter.

4 minutes ago, Tokra said:

Here is a picture of all admirals that were played.

Thanks! And if I'm not mistaken, that also tells up how many ships were in each fleet (Schiffe=ship) What does Staffeln mean?

.

Yes. It is as well for ships and squadrons.