I was watching some tournaments and noticed that the Brobots really were no where. Could someone explain why, with the 0 point title card, 3 red , and 3 green they seem solid.

Thanks for the time.

You're not the only one wondering. Some good discussion on the subject here

and here

Brobots have been in perpetual decline since the end of 2015, they just can't handle the power creep over the last 18 months.

Their thing was high efficiency and reasonable mobility. Attanni lists do both better and have more ships.

Personally, I would but it down to better options in the Scum faction atm.

The case can be argued that the Contract Scout, Fang Fighter and Shadow caster are the 3 best ships, with best dials for their class

I wish to try something like this:

Aggressor: •IG-88B (50)
Autothrusters (2)
IG-2000 (0)
Fearlessness (1)
Fire-Control System (2)
Arc Caster (2)
Heavy Laser Cannon (7)

Aggressor: •IG-88C (50)
Autothrusters (2)
IG-2000 (0)
Fearlessness (1)
Fire-Control System (2)
Arc Caster (2)
Heavy Laser Cannon (7)

I flew Brobots for a bit a few months ago. They're still fairly solid, just less powerful than other options, and they require you to fly well in order to shine (or they die). There's other lists that let you do more mistakes and still win.

I think they are better in single now. They still good candidates for Mindlink. And maybe Minefield+Scavenger..?

We need a new good cannon ship to pair with IG-B and Crew.

I ran them a lot last year. Scouts didn't bother me too much. Bots had PS over the scouts and, with practice, you can out maneuver them. So long as I didn't muck up the initial engagement and eat a lot of torpedoes I had a solid game against them. 2-1 vs jumpmaster lists in tournaments with Brobots.

What killed them for me was x/7 Defenders. Tough as nails and the white k-turn made it very tough to outmaneuver them. Two defenders + ace/palp/or just another defender was really tough for me to deal with as brobots. Post-nerf it may be a different story, since you could use the injured bot to block and prevent x/7.

Another card against Brobots is Kylo Ren. I haven't seen many lists make the cut with Kylo, but I have seen two or three lists with him at each tournament I've been to(admittedly not very many, 3 in four months.) If you get paired against a RAC/Kylo in swiss with any 2 ship list you are in for a tough match.

In general though, there are a lot more accurate red dice being thrown and brobots only have 4h/4s. 3 Agility is nice until you roll blanks. To play brobots now, you have to be really good with your maneuvers and knowing when to engage/disengage. That takes a lot of practice time that most people don't have and precludes you playing with all the other stuff.

Why play with balanced ships when there's overpowered ships?

That's essentially why. It's still a very good list, but the faction has Mindlink Fangs, Shadowcasters, and Jumpmasters that are just better.

I still like brobots with Advanced Sensors and Push the Limit, combined with IG-88C.

But yeah, they're just not keeping up with the powercreep in the game. There's also a lot of combos that are really powerful now with ships that get both droids and crew. I'm pretty sure that's why FFG was so careful to have no ships with both droid and crew slots for so many years.

5 hours ago, Admiral Deathrain said:

Their thing was high efficiency and reasonable mobility. Attanni lists do both better and have more ships.

Why not both?

IG B and C/D with Title, Mindlink, FCS, TB, Rigged Cargo, AT

Inaldra, Light Title, Mindlink

100 points

22 minutes ago, piznit said:

Why not both?

IG B and C/D with Title, Mindlink, FCS, TB, Rigged Cargo, AT

Inaldra, Light Title, Mindlink

100 points

Is that really better than Dengar/Fenn? Very unlikely. The lack of green turns or turrets means that you actually have to work on making Attanni work, unlike the popular Attanni lists.

35 minutes ago, piznit said:

Why not both?

IG B and C/D with Title, Mindlink, FCS, TB, Rigged Cargo, AT

Inaldra, Light Title, Mindlink

100 points

That's an interesting idea.

My take on that would be:

Iggy-C: Mindlink, Adv Sensors, AT, Rigged Cargo

Iggy-D: Mindlnk, Adv Sensors, AT, Rigged Cargo

Inaldra: Mindlink, Light title

It doesn't have a lot of punch but it is tough to nail down where the bots will be and they will have solid defenses.

49 minutes ago, Admiral Deathrain said:

Is that really better than Dengar/Fenn? Very unlikely. The lack of green turns or turrets means that you actually have to work on making Attanni work, unlike the popular Attanni lists.

Im sure it isn't, as no one is raving and ranting to nerf that list. But he asked about BroBots so I threw it out there!

Its something you could show up and play, and surely no one is gonna complain or secretly wish you dead for playing yet another Dengar/Fenn

I run an aggressor in several of my competitive lists and do quite well with it. They are still solid ships but there's a few things in the meta right now that keep them from being the dominating force they once were:

a) When stress control came back a bit to counter attanni, stress really hurts aggressors. If you can't sloop/K it's very hard to keep arcs consistently. On the most recent Mynock podcast they discussed a game where Ezra in an attack shuttle was basically able to solo two stressed IG88's in an end game... that's unfortunately not too surprising.

b) They are extremely powerful vs. 2-3 dice attacks due to high agility + autothrusters. But they have relatively lower health than other ships of their point cost, so the 5-6+ dice attacks and auto-damage in the meta recently hurt them. Ex. against bombs they are really no better than a b-wing but >twice the cost.

c) While at the time they were quite versatile in terms of upgrades, they don't compare to jumpmasters and lancers due to the lack of crew/missile/torpedo slots and having autothrusters stapled to them. Thus for the most part they are what they when they came out with almost none of the cards that came out in waves past theirs that are applicable to them. Jumps/lancers can make use of the myriad of crew and ordinance options that scum has gotten in the interim.

As I said though, they are definitely still good ships, but they have some weak matchups. Thus I've found that running a single bot + something that covers a number of those weaknesses (asajj is my usual go-to) works better these days than brobots, even if you're technically forgoing the benefit of the title. I also typically try and add an ion cannon (even as a second cannon) to give k-wings a bad day and prevent those matchups being auto-loss

Overall I think aggressors are in a good place balance-wise. Still solid if you know how to fly them but not particularly overpowered in most matchups. We see fewer in competitive play than I think their base power level actually implies, but the meta at any point in X-wing isn't a perfect reflection of the power levels of the ships. I also imagine folks got a bit bored with them when they were the new thing and just haven't bothered to come back yet.

I'd like to see Aggressors get a second Systems slot. Right now, having to pick between Advanced Sensors (the right choice) and FCS (a really, really good second) has basically crippled them compared to similarly-costed ships.

(And, yeah ... this is power-creep.)

Well, part of it is definitely power creep. Was a time three greens and focus was pretty nifty on a big ship. But there's also the meta. Brobots came out in a meta dominated by B-wings and generics. Predator/HLC or Crackshot/HLC/FCS really cut through them. Brobots kept going for a while until palp aces came out and palp aces crushed brobots. Two PS6 ships with arcs just doesn't work against arc dodgers, at least not if they got real close. Palp just put the boot in. These days the action efficiency of brobots struggles against things like expertise/k4 dengar and dengar can also arc dodge. Fenn will go toe-to-toe with a brobot in arc and tear you up. Brobots can actually handle some of the other builds but hyper powerful arc dodgers are a real problem.

48 minutes ago, The Inquisitor said:

hyper powerful arc dodgers are a real problem.

Dengar and Fenn Rau.

The problem with the game right now is Fenn Rau (easily 1 point undercoated), the Scout (easily 3 points undercosted), and maybe the Shadowcaster could be 1-2 point more.

If it weren't for these, the game would be fine.

(No opinion on sabine, no one has run it against me yet)

I think Sabine is a real problem for reasonably fragile arc dodgers like aces but Sabine doesn't really wreck brobots that badly as they have some shields. Conner nets can wreck your day though.

8 hours ago, Tbetts94 said:

Why play with balanced ships when there's overpowered ships?

That's essentially why. It's still a very good list, but the faction has Mindlink Fangs, Shadowcasters, and Jumpmasters that are just better.

They were kinda already in a decline before the JM5k came out let alone the Shadowcaster/Fang. They can still do good against some list but have enough bad match ups to make them not that great of a option in a tournament setting. Low PS and low health(for the cost) combined with an ever increasing amount of ace hate and alpha damage has kinda screwed them with power creep.

1 hour ago, The Inquisitor said:

Brobots kept going for a while until palp aces came out and palp aces crushed brobots. Two PS6 ships with arcs just doesn't work against arc dodgers, at least not if they got real close.

Palp Aces crushed non-AdvS Brobots, maybe. I never had a problem with Palp Aces with Brobots, personally, but I settled on AdvS Brobots a long time ago. It wasn't until Palp Defenders that things got bad.

I too ran AdvSensor Brobots pretty much exclusively and I agree they're the better sort simply because they give you more options, but palp aces put a nail in their coffin for sure. Defenders put the boot in, yes, but Brobots were struggling well before that. But the decline for Brobots wasn't a sudden fall from grace, there was a slow buildup of hard-to-beat lists. I think the meta now is more Brobot favourable than it was at the peak of palp aces/x7.

Never liked brobots much, but i did notice thst x7s basically had a better version of their statline for far cheaper. Also small base and white k

Ig88b hlc is also far less effective v the beefier ships that replaced palp aces esp when comparedto scouts

I agree with that. As I've said many times, Brobots are the epitome of the illustration of power-creep. They were top of the power curve on release, and now they're meh. Still fun, but only outlier-competitive.