So I have been lucky enough to play 6 games so far with Admiral Sloane (10 days into Wave VI), using a similar list each time (ISD-2 Avenger, Demo, 2 x Gozantis, TIE swarm). This includes a store championship today, where I was lucky enough to get 1st place. But this was thanks to getting some practice in with Sloane beforehand. Some thoughts for discussion - feel free to disagree!

• Sloane is all about the dog-fighting game. The ability to burn aces and their scatter/braces is terrifying.
• However, this doesn't do much (i.e. anything) against generic fighters - particularly some of the rogues (YT-2400) are really good at countering low hull TIEs.
• Most of the game, the fighters are slugging it out and I never felt the need to peel off a fighter or two to bomb ships for the chance of an accuracy. Winning the fighter game was key, the accuracy is too unreliable for a single pop.
• Once the fighter battle is over though, the TIEs can be really helpful in flipping those tokens or damage for the big hitters to follow-up.
• By that point, I don't think you can afford to take little or no fighters now Sloane is in town. Without a decent Combat Air Patrol near your ships (to benefit from flak cover) will get burned quickly, especially with a big hitter to follow up.

Therefore, I think Sloane is really good - but has some good match-ups (aces - scatter aces in particular, lists with low/no fighter cover) and some bad match-ups (other generics, rogues, flak, lots of small ships). Don't go to a tournament without thinking about a good Sloane counter in your fleet - it's a great ability, but not unbeatable!

I agree with you entirely, think she's great but after a few games with her I find that she's not as bad as I first thought.

One thing to consider thouh is that I've found that scatter aces work beautifully with Sloan too... I'd argue that tie spam actually isn't the best way to go. Marek and Jendon will flip a token more reliably than anything and are super easy to position.

I have tried her a few times and at the moment I'm not too impressed.

First game was Avenger, Quasar, TRC Arquitens, Suppressor, Howlrunner and 6 Tie-F. I won 6-5 but with not enough fighters I got one scatter exhausted on Shara and then nothing for the rest of the game.

The next game was a 9-2 win with the Arquitens replaced by another Gozanti, 3 extra TIE-I and Zertek. I also took Stronghold which was the best 5 points I ever spent. The game went better but I was up against the full 134 squadrons and again I only spent 2 Brace tokens on Jan Orrs (the only ace squadron). In both games Sloane granted me hardly any advantage. Motti or Mof JJ would have been better but I suppose Sloane would have her moments against other lists where I could strike ships with fighters. Having Sloane probably forced my opponent to commit to going for space superiority and leaving my ships clear. With Avenger on the board you can't really ignore 10 Ties with Sloane.

The fact that Sloane force the opponent to deal with her Tie squadrons should not be underestimated as one of her strengths. The fact that you have not used the effect of her abilities does not mean the threat of them positioned you in a tactical advantage to win the game.

My experience with Sloane is that you are not suppose to rely on the Tie to do actual damage or strip tokens, they are a support tool the opponent need to deal with. I do think she is as good as other similar commanders in her price range just requires a bit more tactical thinking to use properly. Not all commanders are equally easy to use, does not mean they are inherently worse when actually used properly.

This has definitely been my experience as well. She wrecks aces but can be blocked against ships

I play Rebels primarily and I have probably gotten in 6 games against Sloan. Two of our regular Imperial players have jumped on her and have put together fairly tough Tie, or Tie/I lists. I'm a long-standing player of A-wings, and Tycho/Shara/2xA-wings has been my staple for a long time. Some variant thereof (I think I dropped Tycho in one or two of the lists) accounts for 5 of those games. I took another game with more generic squads off a powerful activation. Much of the evolution of my own play-style has been in environment where I knew Gallant Haven was around and that therefore you weren't going to be able to trade evenly, let alone win the squadron game. That is to say that nothing in Sloan changes the effective strategy I've been running.

So here are some thoughts in response to the OP based on that experience:

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1. Sloane is all about the dog-fighting game. The ability to burn aces and their scatter/braces is terrifying

Yes to the first sentence. In what I've seen so far, which was a lot of heavy anti-squadron backed with Howlrunner and Flight Controllers typically, Sloan was the least terrifying of that. For example, if a FC/Howled Interceptor throwing 6 dice with a reroll popped 2 accs and 3 damage with a swarm reroll on the crit, then it was still doing that prior to the advent of Sloan. I thought today that FC/HOWL was doing most of the work against my aces, and that they were being killed before her "spend a scatter" effect could really happen. So yes, it was terrifying today, but not because of Sloan. I've also found that because Shara's 3 dice counter with crits counting, she may fall to two Tie Fighters, but she either takes them both out at a fairly even point trade or weakens them so much that AS fire kills them. So my conclusion there is she is still a good buy. I'm starting to have second thoughts on Tycho. He's basically been turned into a generic A-wing in the games I've seen so far. That means he still might be good in certain non-Sloan match-ups, but it might be worth it to play the meta and take a generic A-wing or YT-2400 for the points.

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2. However, this doesn't do much (i.e. anything) against generic fighters - particularly some of the rogues (YT-2400) are really good at countering lo

As a long time player of A-wings, I feel good about entering a Sloan-heavy meta. A-wings trade effectively, and I think you're right about YT-2400, particularly in lists where you mix A-wings and YT2400s and the YTs can finish off Ties damaged by counter rolls.

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3. Most of the game, the fighters are slugging it out and I never felt the need to peel off a fighter or two to bomb ships for the chance of an accuracy. Winning the fighter game was key, the accuracy is too unreliable for a single pop.

Because I run a lot of defensive squadron set-ups, most of the anti-ship killing power in my lists are in my own ships. This may be something with the builds that I've seen so far, but I get annihilated in the squadron game, but still win the game on the basis of the ships. So either what they've got just isn't flown well, or the lists aren't yet getting what Sloan needs to thrive. And the accuracy is more of a bonus. The real benefit of attacking ships is the slow trickle of damage. If it opens up a key arc that your ships can pour throw, the accs are a bonus, and crit reroll against ships is just brutally good. In fact, one list today should have just attacked my ships and let my squads kill themselves on their Dengar/Howl boosted counter rolls. And I think that is certainly a mix to consider. Dengar frees your squads to go whack ships, Sloan boosts that, and then its counter 2 from Ties and Counter 4 on Interceptors if they attack you. That's something for people to consider.

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4. Once the fighter battle is over though, the TIEs can be really helpful in flipping those tokens or damage for the big hitters to follow-up.

I've actually found most of the lists I've played so far had very little real effect on the ship battle after winning the squadron game. Even though they won the squad game, they are still Ties/Tie-I, which means I flaked them to death with my ships. Aces were the one challenging point, but they weren't generating enough volume against my ships for it to make a difference.

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By that point, I don't think you can afford to take little or no fighters now Sloane is in town. Without a decent Combat Air Patrol near your ships (to benefit from flak cover) will get burned quickly, especially with a big hitter to follow

I agree here. The lists that I saw typically go squadronless were Mothma MC30 lists. There, Mothma's reroll on a Tie Bomber's hit crit was very nice. Against a Tie hit, that becomes less efficient. I'm thinking some kind of light screen is minimally required. Even if all you do is be annoying with 4 generic A-wings, they've got to be there because saving your ships by a turn or 2 from a steady stream of Tie attacks can make a huge difference in the score at the end.

For me, I think the fine art of figuring out how to fly a Sloan list and what to put in it so that you win that squadron game, but also have a very effective ship game, is what still needs to be discovered. I'm also confident that at least one really good combination is out there.

Oh, and in the one game that I took a more generic fighter screen, I got wrecked for almost nothing in the squadron game. At this point, you better have a very solid plan for handling the squadron game that Sloan brings or you'll end up on the losing end of things.

Sloane seems to be pretty tough to turn on. Like Sato. The pieces you need in Sloane are easy to kill or cost too much that you don't have enough volume.

13 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

Sloane seems to be pretty tough to turn on. Like Sato. The pieces you need in Sloane are easy to kill or cost too much that you don't have enough volume.

I agree with this. Stronghold on a Quasar and a reasonably tough escort squadron like Zertek will help protect the squishy TIEs. Doing an alpha strike with Interceptors or speed boosted Tie-Fs (Vector & Squall) can also help the squadron battle tip early and therefore tip faster in your favour.

Like Sato you need enough fighters to benefit from the commander but also need to reserve points for a decent number of combat ships to apply enough firepower to targets who have had their braces exhausted or discarded.

At least Sloane is one of the cheaper commanders; Tarkin, Ackbar, Lea and Vader can occupy a decent chunk of your list and you have to play to their strengths while not loosing due to a token fighter force.

5 minutes ago, Mad Cat said:

I agree with this. Stronghold on a Quasar and a reasonably tough escort squadron like Zertek will help protect the squishy TIEs. Doing an alpha strike with Interceptors or speed boosted Tie-Fs (Vector & Squall) can also help the squadron battle tip early and therefore tip faster in your favour.

Like Sato you need enough fighters to benefit from the commander but also need to reserve points for a decent number of combat ships to apply enough firepower to targets who have had their braces exhausted or discarded.

At least Sloane is one of the cheaper commanders; Tarkin, Ackbar, Lea and Vader can occupy a decent chunk of your list and you have to play to their strengths while not loosing due to a token fighter force.

Tarkin is some of the most fun to be had with Armada.

Really. I really like 3 Gladiators with him.

My thought on Sloane is that she makes medium-sized squadron groups viable. Without Sloane, taking a space superiority squadron build is risky since your opponent may bring minimal squadrons. You'd be overinvested in squadrons thar generate little threat to ships. Sloane means you'll have something valuable to do with them once you win the squadron fight. If your opponent brings a max squadron build, Sloane gives you some punch against aces so your mid-sized squadron build might be able to hold off the bomber ball for an extra turn. Perhaps paradoxically, I see her as an admiral that lets you take more ships. She's sort of a meta-bending admiral, I think. I need table time with her.

4 hours ago, RobertK said:

My thought on Sloane is that she makes medium-sized squadron groups viable. Without Sloane, taking a space superiority squadron build is risky since your opponent may bring minimal squadrons. You'd be overinvested in squadrons thar generate little threat to ships. Sloane means you'll have something valuable to do with them once you win the squadron fight. If your opponent brings a max squadron build, Sloane gives you some punch against aces so your mid-sized squadron build might be able to hold off the bomber ball for an extra turn. Perhaps paradoxically, I see her as an admiral that lets you take more ships. She's sort of a meta-bending admiral, I think. I need table time with her.

This is exactly what Sloane actually is, making your air superiority list useful after you establish air superiority (which she has minimal actual impact in, despite the hype surrounding token blasting).

You all seem to be ignoring the option of bringing a Jumpmaster to free up the TIEs at a critical moment. Now granted, my epxperience with Sloane has been contained to CC thus far (we decided we could use the commanders early) but if you have a Jumpmaster lurk way in the back then when you see an opportunity you can have it fly in and you can break off 2, or 3, or 4 fighters to pick at a ship or burn a critical defense token at the best moment. Not to mention a Jumpaster can also use Sloane's ability.

Came up against a Sloane list night - TIE fighters, with Howl, Sontir and Dengar (who's not seen that one before...?). I was flying Shara, Tycho and two YT-2400s. He also had various fighter buffs on his carrier. Now I should say that I lost the game (a bit out of practice at the moment, and flew poorly), but my feeling is that Sloane didn't have as big an impact as I was expecting. With a bit of nifty positioning, I was able to hold up his fighters fairly effectively - don't get me wrong, he killed them all, but it took a while, and all that while he wasn't attacking ships. And even when he turned on the ships, getting those accuracies wasn't reliable - in the end, I think he managed to exhaust and discard one brace on my Liberty, and his TIEs did a few points of damage, but it wasn't a massacre.

So I'd say Sloane's a great commander for her cost, but she's priced about right. I was a bit worried she'd be devastating, but she was more irritating. I don't think I could sensibly field a squadron-less fleet now, but personally I don't mind - Armada always was a game of big and little ships for me.

2 hours ago, Darthain said:

This is exactly what Sloane actually is, making your air superiority list useful after you establish air superiority (which she has minimal actual impact in, despite the hype surrounding token blasting).

Against scatter aces she was especially good - the ability to flip the scatter, and then force a poor choice to take the damage or burn the token for good. And against double brace aces it helps burn through tokens quicker.

In effect, the Riekaan ace bomber ball now has a hard counter - helped by an FAQ to prevent too many Biggs shenanigans!

6 minutes ago, Mundo said:

Against scatter aces she was especially good - the ability to flip the scatter, and then force a poor choice to take the damage or burn the token for good. And against double brace aces it helps burn through tokens quicker.

In effect, the Riekaan ace bomber ball now has a hard counter - helped by an FAQ to prevent too many Biggs shenanigans!

Beside the part that there might be a problem with spending the scatter twice in one attack. But this is still in the rule clarification.
Folling this current (RRG) rule, it is, more or less, a Accuracy+. It deny the use of the token and spend it. At least this is one interpretation of the effect (the same token cannot be spend more than once during an attack).

So (by this rule) it would mean against scatter aces: The token is spend and you recieve the damage. And this means a hard time for scatter aces.

47 minutes ago, Mundo said:

Against scatter aces she was especially good - the ability to flip the scatter, and then force a poor choice to take the damage or burn the token for good. And against double brace aces it helps burn through tokens quicker.

In effect, the Riekaan ace bomber ball now has a hard counter - helped by an FAQ to prevent too many Biggs shenanigans!

They cannot spend the scatter in that situation, a token can only be spent once per attack.

6 hours ago, Darthain said:

They cannot spend the scatter in that situation, a token can only be spent once per attack.

Yes. But then you attack that ace with another of Sloane's squadrons. Now you can possibly discard the scatter token with an accuracy or the opponent can discard the scatter token to avoid going "BOOM!"

46 minutes ago, Frimmel said:

Yes. But then you attack that ace with another of Sloane's squadrons. Now you can possibly discard the scatter token with an accuracy or the opponent can discard the scatter token to avoid going "BOOM!"

Odds are if you catch the scatter twice with accuracy, the scatter aces dies regardless of Sloane is my point.

1 hour ago, Darthain said:

Odds are if you catch the scatter twice with accuracy, the scatter aces dies regardless of Sloane is my point.

I'll echo this. It is exactly what I have found. The only question is whether there are enough dice (FC, Howl) that it takes 2 attacks rather than 3.

The mentality she brings is her greatest strength that I've seen. She is encouraging Imps to bring insanely hard hitting anti-squadron squadron builds for the first time in a long time. She then feels epic. In reality, a Howlrunner, Flight Controllers, Interceptor Swarm was going to curb stomp opposing screens anyway.

Her ability is then a chance at those squads possibly doing something useful against ships once the squad battle is won. I have re-evaluated my ship choices to include good flak boats to help curb her back a bit.

Also worth noting that Maarek is an auto include in every Sloane list. Statistically, you have the best chance of rolling an accuracy with those two blues.

In addition, if Maarek rolls two blue non-crits against a ship, he can set one to a crit, and then reroll it to fish for an accuracy using her ability!

IMO...just kill the carrier...Sloane TIE's are then nothing more than little irritating gnats that you brush away from your fleet...

51 minutes ago, Warlord Zepnick said:

Also worth noting that Maarek is an auto include in every Sloane list. Statistically, you have the best chance of rolling an accuracy with those two blues.

In addition, if Maarek rolls two blue non-crits against a ship, he can set one to a crit, and then reroll it to fish for an accuracy using her ability!

Or, just bring three TIE fighters for the price and get not only a better chance to roll one, but a chance to roll three of them.

Maarek is currently the worst squadron to bring with Sloane that technically still gets a benefit from her. You're paying for baked-in dice modification on top of what you're already paying for Sloane.

21 minutes ago, Ardaedhel said:

Or, just bring three TIE fighters for the price and get not only a better chance to roll one, but a chance to roll three of them.

Maarek is currently the worst squadron to bring with Sloane that technically still gets a benefit from her. You're paying for baked-in dice modification on top of what you're already paying for Sloane.

Ties are one shotted easily. Maarek is not.

Youre paying for speed 5, 6 hull, two braces, and 20 inch biceps.

38 minutes ago, Warlord Zepnick said:

Ties are one shotted easily. Maarek is not.

Youre paying for speed 5, 6 hull, two braces, and 20 inch biceps.

What it takes to 1-shot 3 TIE Fighters will do a number on Maarek, too.

(3 Damage, 3 Times... = 3 Dead TIE fighters... It also equals a Dead Maarek - 3 Damage, braced to 2, x3 = 6 Damage, Dead Maarek.)