19 minutes ago, GiledPallaeon said:

Exactly, which leaves you with ship-based firepower, which is not necessarily and more than probably not at all a better option. I'm sure I'll figure out how to fight the little buggers, but I'm not looking forward to the bloody noses between here and there.

Fair, but not everyone is going to be running Mothma. Some of them might be Dodonna (so many black crits.....) or Rieekan (ram all the things!)!

4 minutes ago, geek19 said:

Fair, but not everyone is going to be running Mothma. Some of them might be Dodonna (so many black crits.....) or Rieekan (ram all the things!)!

Was that supposed to make me feel better, because it didn't. It really didn't. You also forgot that they work with Cracken (goodbye effective long range potshots), Sato (more Ordnance gunboats), and Madine (to make the already decent for ramming nav chart obscene). Of the only three Rebel commanders that don't actively synergize with them, two don't really care, but can still make use of them (Garm and Leia), and could probably find a use for on or two herding targets into good firing arcs (Ackbar). Is there anything these ships can't do, besides die?

1 minute ago, GiledPallaeon said:

Was that supposed to make me feel better, because it didn't. It really didn't. You also forgot that they work with Cracken (goodbye effective long range potshots), Sato (more Ordnance gunboats), and Madine (to make the already decent for ramming nav chart obscene). Of the only three Rebel commanders that don't actively synergize with them, two don't really care, but can still make use of them (Garm and Leia), and could probably find a use for on or two herding targets into good firing arcs (Ackbar). Is there anything these ships can't do, besides die?

It made ME feel better haha! I mentioned those two as they have the easiest synergy in my mind. I have..... issues with Cracken. He CAN use them, yes. I'll let someone else who isn't me learn how to best use him, as my playstyle (winding up closer than i should be) generally ends up with better luck with Mothma than Cracken for a similar effect. Sato is... well, i posted the article today. He is a commander, yes. And launching long range APT crits is hilarious. Just.... problematic in such small doses in my opinion.

Madine if i can build a list, yessssssss. DAT NAV CHART THO.

Ackbar, i'd almost rather use other ships. I will steal the external racks for my mc30 though, that's for sure!

And Leia actually synergizes a lot better with them than you'd think! Engineering fake 3 lets them heal a damage point, concentrate fire gives them both an add and another reroll (if you wanted TFOrgana for more rerolls), and the Nav chart going from 1 to 3 with an extra click where its needed is mighty nice. Pair them with Redemption to turn them into Engineering 4 for a full 2 shields or a Shields to Max Pelta for somehow a third one! (I wouldnt necessarily do both, though). The more I look at Leia, the more I see her as a fun MSU style commander.

Wait, I was supposed to make you feel better! Uhhhhh, they have piddly dice damage by themselves and every turbolaser upgrade they put on them is just more points you can kill? Kind of?

1 minute ago, geek19 said:

It made ME feel better haha! I mentioned those two as they have the easiest synergy in my mind. I have..... issues with Cracken. He CAN use them, yes. I'll let someone else who isn't me learn how to best use him, as my playstyle (winding up closer than i should be) generally ends up with better luck with Mothma than Cracken for a similar effect. Sato is... well, i posted the article today. He is a commander, yes. And launching long range APT crits is hilarious. Just.... problematic in such small doses in my opinion.

Madine if i can build a list, yessssssss. DAT NAV CHART THO.

Ackbar, i'd almost rather use other ships. I will steal the external racks for my mc30 though, that's for sure!

And Leia actually synergizes a lot better with them than you'd think! Engineering fake 3 lets them heal a damage point, concentrate fire gives them both an add and another reroll (if you wanted TFOrgana for more rerolls), and the Nav chart going from 1 to 3 with an extra click where its needed is mighty nice. Pair them with Redemption to turn them into Engineering 4 for a full 2 shields or a Shields to Max Pelta for somehow a third one! (I wouldnt necessarily do both, though). The more I look at Leia, the more I see her as a fun MSU style commander.

Wait, I was supposed to make you feel better! Uhhhhh, they have piddly dice damage by themselves and every turbolaser upgrade they put on them is just more points you can kill? Kind of?

Is there a turbo upgrade these things want? Might we have the long-sought Slaved Turrets carrier?

Potentially but @Snipafist and i were talking about this earlier and our initial thought is nah. It's got one real arc and technically a side arc that while you CAN invest heavily in it (Spinals or Slaved or one use TRCs or even DTTs) that it's adding on so much cost to a ship that doesn't want to live. Way I see it: if you're running one with Garels, it's the Torp one because aw yiss black dice. If you're running a pack of them, they have a title (so you're already at either CR90 level or 2 points below it). Would you rather have a CR90 with worse defense tokens and shield with one more HP and slaved turrets that's traveling with friends, or would you rather just take a real TRCR90?

I'm happy to be proven wrong by whoever and their use of them (i DON'T know everything about a ship that still technically doesn't exist yet?), but these things seem like Raiders for the Rebellion (albeit with less good flak). Less upgrades means more ships means better job doing their job. My initial wolfpack right now has 2 Torps and 1 Scout following with the boarding engineers (the scouts presumably get the good damage in first, but depending on if i can get enough damage on the ship with my initial approach.....)

And to actually make you feel better, i expect a lot of Rebel players, myself included, to end up screwing up their use of these things repeatedly very early on. I know i'm gonna end up in an asteroid field at some point with these because of my terrible navigation, haha.

Not even sure a swarm of these things will be that great. Normal fleets should be fine.

I guess they could run with a yt2400 swarm and lancers.

Four Hammerheads with three TRC90's and two flotillers, with Leia? 9 activations!

Part of me thinks if this becomes a thing, I'm going to need to break out the Interdictor tow truck list I was screwing about with for fun last year. I kind of like the idea of stacking G8 with multiple Phylons and Konstantine to bring these little gits to a stop, or at least slow them the heck down.

4 hours ago, GiledPallaeon said:

Demolisher can do that. Relentless or Interdictor or Hand of Justice will all have a much harder time. I hear what you're saying, and they're definitely going to need work to be tactically deceiving with their course given the maneuver chart. I just will default to overestimating them until I've destroyed them at medium range with a single ISD shot consistently.

I agree, I think they are going to be potentially nasty against large base ships. Especially with first player, a task force of four has the damage mitigation to allow it to survive a nasty arc with three damage mitigation a contain and a need to accuracy divert or contain, I would take the odds of surviving. This means a first player could have two close in an ISD front arc ( with two out the way) fire and move one, leave one to take the front hit and block the ISDs movement then fire and move ( or ram ). That's a lot of hurt on an ISD for one crippled or killed 42 point ship.

A shields to max pelta maybe nice also I guess.

External racks would add a little bit of punch. Could be a struggle to pull a accuracy, consistently at least. Sensor team would reduce damage to much.

I was going to make a crack about my normal bomber wing being able to wipe a hammerhead in a turn, but then I was thinking about task force Antilles. A 4 ship HH task force can deflect 3 damage from incoming shots. Blowing the redirect means you then need to put up 12 damage (5 hull, 4 shields, 3 transferred) from bombers to kill one from the front. That is actually up in the range of only dedicated bombing wings wiping out one in the first turn squads can hit ships.

A standard (well, at least my standard) 102 point Rebel bomber wing puts 7+ damage average before Norra. At a full 134, it puts up closer to 10 average before Norra. A dedicated Rebel bombing wing sees more like 12. This is all without BCC, Toryn.

Rhymer, a jumpmaster, and 11 TIE bombers is 12.5 damage. 15.75 with BCC. Though the evade now gets added to mess with Hit-Crit results.

The "bombers can wreck 'em" is less a thing than I had thought. Especially if they have a half-awake squad screen to buy a turn

11 hours ago, D503 said:

The optimal swarmy hammerhead build is the torpedo hammerhead with external racks and boarding engineers. As they will have to charge at you in numbers, this makes their movement predictable. I think that simply having a reasonably decent bomber swarm handy should suffice, especially if Rhymer is involved.

Yes and no. I think they can be outfitted well as flak platforms if you want. Definetely best rebel option for flechettes. But also because you will need to push a minimum of 7 damage through you wont be able to wipe more than one per turn. Antilles greatly increases survivabilty v bombers.

Still effective, but not as much as one would think at first blush, imo.

1 hour ago, Church14 said:

I was going to make a crack about my normal bomber wing being able to wipe a hammerhead in a turn, but then I was thinking about task force Antilles. A 4 ship HH task force can deflect 3 damage from incoming shots. Blowing the redirect means you then need to put up 12 damage (5 hull, 4 shields, 3 transferred) from bombers to kill one from the front. That is actually up in the range of only dedicated bombing wings wiping out one in the first turn squads can hit ships.

A standard (well, at least my standard) 102 point Rebel bomber wing puts 7+ damage average before Norra. At a full 134, it puts up closer to 10 average before Norra. A dedicated Rebel bombing wing sees more like 12. This is all without BCC, Toryn.

Rhymer, a jumpmaster, and 11 TIE bombers is 12.5 damage. 15.75 with BCC. Though the evade now gets added to mess with Hit-Crit results.

The "bombers can wreck 'em" is less a thing than I had thought. Especially if they have a half-awake squad screen to buy a turn

And don't forget it's a pissant little 42 point ship ( that lays down nasty hurt if you leave it), hardly the most efficient use of your 134 point bomber extravaganza, especially if your carrier is get whacked by the rest of the list.

What about Sloane TIE fighters/interceptors with Rhymer to just get those tokens gone (or plink for a single damage) to pave the way for long range ship attacks? TFA removes damage but does nothing against those tokens being spent. Of course, TFA still makes it tougher to kill and a StM will help it out the following turn...

im gonna be running scouts with slaved turrets and veteran gunners, front load all the dice to the front and chase people, beauty with the veteran gunners is i can use it before i add any other dice in or after the slaved dice to try and build a good base of damage before i add the concentrate dice and rerolls to the mix, should be able to reliably push out 3-5 damage a shot, more likely if i use the task force organa titles on a pair of them for that follow up shot

10 hours ago, TerrorScream said:

im gonna be running scouts with slaved turrets and veteran gunners, front load all the dice to the front and chase people, beauty with the veteran gunners is i can use it before i add any other dice in or after the slaved dice to try and build a good base of damage before i add the concentrate dice and rerolls to the mix, should be able to reliably push out 3-5 damage a shot, more likely if i use the task force organa titles on a pair of them for that follow up shot

Get Sato in there too. 3 black dice with rerolls from task force and VG.

7 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:

Get Sato in there too. 3 black dice with rerolls from task force and VG.

At that point why not Ordnance Experts instead?

6 minutes ago, Snipafist said:

At that point why not Ordnance Experts instead?

That's probably the better choice since it's cheaper and you get a choice on the reroll. OE for black die, TFO for red dice.

Just now, Undeadguy said:

That's probably the better choice since it's cheaper and you get a choice on the reroll. OE for black die, TFO for red dice.

My main issue with Ordnance Experts is without Sato or External Racks or the like, your Torp Hammerheads won't be rolling a lot of black dice at once and Ordnance Experts might be inferior to Task Force Organa in those instances (as TFO can let you reroll a blank red as well, for example). OE is definitely swell for flakking, though, so if you were planning on using Torp Hammerheads as flak platforms, then Ordnance Experts are still definitely superior. In short, I feel like it really depends on your intended use and what commander and upgrades you're using.

20 minutes ago, Snipafist said:

My main issue with Ordnance Experts is without Sato or External Racks or the like, your Torp Hammerheads won't be rolling a lot of black dice at once and Ordnance Experts might be inferior to Task Force Organa in those instances (as TFO can let you reroll a blank red as well, for example). OE is definitely swell for flakking, though, so if you were planning on using Torp Hammerheads as flak platforms, then Ordnance Experts are still definitely superior. In short, I feel like it really depends on your intended use and what commander and upgrades you're using.

I've come to the same conclusion. I find myself stacking upgrades on these cheap ships just to realize they won't last very long or their burst in damage isn't enough to justify all the upgrades. I think OE would be good on 1 of the HH, which would be the first one to attack, allowing you to spend its TFO on the next HH for the reroll. And then you have a cascade effect.

OE would also be a good choice for Opening Salvo or Most Wanted on the Torp HH. Sato and Cracken/MM would also be good because of the offensive/defensive boost to the ships allowing them to deal more damage.

Disposable capacitor Spinal VSD2s will be HH snipers for sure.

On another note, I'm thinking an honest to goodness HH reikaan or mothma swarm might be the answer we are looking for VS the annoying worlds list. You can cram a lot of these buggers into a list and basically charge them at carriers, threatening all of them at once. It will take some mastery and practice but could be a workable all-comers list that is also a hard counter to Aceholes

20 minutes ago, Hastatior said:

Disposable capacitor Spinal VSD2s will be HH snipers for sure.

On another note, I'm thinking an honest to goodness HH reikaan or mothma swarm might be the answer we are looking for VS the annoying worlds list. You can cram a lot of these buggers into a list and basically charge them at carriers, threatening all of them at once. It will take some mastery and practice but could be a workable all-comers list that is also a hard counter to Aceholes

I'm not sure if it will be a straight counter to Rieekan aces, but it could be effective. Rieekan HH would allow you to save your titles until you really need them, since they will stay on the board. FT will be great for Rebels to have.

If a Rieekan HH swarm would be the counter to Rieekan aces, then that list could define the meta. Instead of threads on beating Rieekan aces, it becomes Rieekan HH. So the problem isn't fixed, but rather shifted to a new fleet.

It is also possible a HH swarm beats carrier fleets, but GT ISD beats HHs because they are bunched together for the synergy. And then carrier fleets beats the GT ISD. But then we are playing rock paper scissors which is not what I want Armada to be.

Hard to tell what the actual impact of wave 6 will be.

2 hours ago, Undeadguy said:

I'm not sure if it will be a straight counter to Rieekan aces, but it could be effective. Rieekan HH would allow you to save your titles until you really need them, since they will stay on the board. FT will be great for Rebels to have.

If a Rieekan HH swarm would be the counter to Rieekan aces, then that list could define the meta. Instead of threads on beating Rieekan aces, it becomes Rieekan HH. So the problem isn't fixed, but rather shifted to a new fleet.

It is also possible a HH swarm beats carrier fleets, but GT ISD beats HHs because they are bunched together for the synergy. And then carrier fleets beats the GT ISD. But then we are playing rock paper scissors which is not what I want Armada to be.

Hard to tell what the actual impact of wave 6 will be.

Fair enough but rock paper scissors > blobby, boring Aceholes or bloby boring Aceholes. I did a store champs the other day and one of the only reasons the guy who brought aceholes didn't win the whole thing is that he faced me in the second round and I deliberately took second to deny him his guaranteed points objectives and deliberately used 2/3 of my fleet sacrificially to threaten while the other third ran away. My whole goal was to deny him MOV for bringing that list. I had no way to win anyway so I wanted to make sure he got the least possible points from me. (he ended second and I ended 4th).

From what I have heard from him the only thing that threatens the Aceholes is basically a very aggressive ISD tank list with delay squadrons. If the ISD charges in at speed 3 and manages to pick off a transport and either Gallant Haven or Yavaris while delay squadrons hold off the bombers for at least 2 turns you can "win" maybe 6-5 or 7-4

For my wave 6 mega-battle (900 point fleet/upgrades with 300 point fighter wings) i'm thinking of running 2 scouts with a torp, all with TF Organa. Slaved turrets and boarding engineers on the scouts and OE and external racks on the torp variant. We'll see if they punch above their weight class