We largely saw CR90s played competitively as either 51pt TRCs or as CR-Bs with ET (RBD). How do the options feel for this ship at this point? Is CR-A TRC still really worth it, fun? Or it is kinda just normal now? I'm trying to build a 200pt fleet that looks fun to build up as a CC type campaign fleet

Still fun if you are using ackbar!

Are ackbar cr90s that fun? I find that 3 red dice is kinda eh.

I'm really considering trying Torpedo Hammerheads with ET and Ackbar though lol. Close range add 4 dice. x however many hammer heads you can fit in a sock.

Yeah its fun.

50 minutes ago, Blail Blerg said:

I'm really considering trying Torpedo Hammerheads with ET and Ackbar though lol.

I didnt know HHs could take Engine Techs?

Just now, Irokenics said:

Yeah its fun.

I didnt know HHs could take Engine Techs?

External Racks

TR90s are still good for sustained damage output. You tend to roll 4 red dice from two arcs (CF) and that usually results in 1-2 blanks. So you really only lose a lot with the nerf if you original rolls are true crap for both shots.

They are outdone in burst damage by hammerheads and I think that will hurt their ubiquitousness.

My impression has been that TRCs are now a solid 7 point choice instead of an opportunity cost tax on all other turbolasers for evade ships.

TRC90s are still good. Their double-arcing damage has gone down by 1 or 2 points but they're still good. There's a bit more room for other red dice light ship options in the Rebel fleet now compared to the "omg wut?" TRC90 of pre-nerf times.

SW7 CR90Bs remain awesome in the right fleets.

Agreed with Snipafist. They are good.

I find that their stock was already diminishing a bit prior to the nerf for reasons that had nothing to do with TRCs. But the TRC nerf on the whole has pretty much zero bearing on whether I'd take a TRC90 in a list.

Seeing it in action, it was a good nerf. The TRC90 is still a very good ship with excellent consistent damage. They're just not as much of a no-brainer as they were before. Overall I'm loving the changes this post-nerf meta is bringing us.

Ditto.

I like the CR-90 A more than the B if you want to up a CR-90 survivability take Mon Mothma if you want damage boost Take Leia I like what she does to the TRC-90 you can TRC on your front arch shot and use the Leia con fire out the side gives you very consistent damage DTT may also be worth considering.

SW90Bs are the best, and need to be in more fleets.

1 hour ago, BiggsIRL said:

SW90Bs are the best, and need to be in more fleets.

I agree with this completely.

they are awesome with Akbar, they are probably the best choice for a lifeboat now and they are great at flotilla hunting

3 hours ago, BiggsIRL said:

SW90Bs are the best, and need to be in more fleets.

Guess who has one in his SC fleet today?

why are they that interesting?

I plan on using TRC90s still. They fill out any list very nicely for 51 points. And Jaina's Light makes the best MSU flagship. Sadly, I think the Scout HH will never see play because the difference is 3 points for both naked ships. 3 points for better defense tokens, double arc long range, and a better nav chart.

Not sure if the Torp HH will replace the staple TRC90. Double Evade is just really really good.

5 hours ago, Undeadguy said:

I plan on using TRC90s still. They fill out any list very nicely for 51 points. And Jaina's Light makes the best MSU flagship. Sadly, I think the Scout HH will never see play because the difference is 3 points for both naked ships. 3 points for better defense tokens, double arc long range, and a better nav chart.

Not sure if the Torp HH will replace the staple TRC90. Double Evade is just really really good.

Just to mention, its not just the double evade, but double evades usable at long range PLUs that redirect. Raiders have 2 evades and brace, but pop. Nebs have 2 brace and 1 evade, also not that durable. (Until you constantly miss. Man so many times I've seen Nebs limp away from something they shouldn't from random crap dice. Like an ISD front arc with rerolls. )

TRCs basically went from the card that auto-delivers four damage from two attacks to an insurance card against dud rolls. If your first shot is good, you can make your second shot awesome with TRCs. The reason it's still such an auto-inclue is because CR-90s are the cheaper of the two ships with two evade tokens that have turbolasers.

SW-7s on the Bs are awesome (I presume you asked this Blail) because those blue dice suddenly turn into auto-damage. Engine Tech CR-90B with SW-7s just fly in from the flank and declare the damage they are doing. You roll only to see how much accuracy you have to lock tokens.

I'm ok with squadrons now, (Not intentionally lol), but I'm honestly not that experienced as a MSU player. Anyone want to talk about the fun of it?

@Norsehound, what do you like to do with these CrBs with sw7 and ET? What does the board look like?

As with all things it depends on setup. The SW-90(?) is a pressure piece. When it gets into range, it's generating 3 damage out of the front arc, which eats up the side shields of a VSD. The reason TRCs are better is because you can do this as soon as you enter firing range. The CR-90B has to risk getting into medium where it's evades aren't as effective...

But the trick is to have so many targets your opponent wants to shoot at that the CR-90B is just there to do low-priority damage. And if you approach in an arc that the opponent doesn't have a strong response for (like a VSD side/rear), you can hang out there for a while still doing damage.

So I could deploy it first, where it's mobility with Engine Techs means I can move it to where I want it to, to circle back in on a target that's getting harassed by the rest of my list and just add damage to it gradually.

I could deploy it last to act as a watered down xerox copy of an MC30 with a bit longer range, doing constant pressure while my opponent is focused more on something like my Yavaris or my Liberty, or the real Admonition.

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The best way to use MSU lists it to get as many attacks on as few targets as possible to win. MSUs buy you not just activations, but multiples of a card you like. Running multiple CR-90As with TRCs means for each CR-90, you're guranteed at least 2 damage on a target. Not only that, but each CR-90 is an opportunity to burn through defense tokens. After a VSD defends from a large battery it's likely going to have a redirect exhausted and maybe the brace. If you fire again on it, the VSD has to exhaust more tokens.

And what if your CR-90s have intel officers on them with their TRCs? Your first shot exhausts a redirect, and your second with an intel officer designates the green redirect, forcing the damage to stick or the red redirect to be discarded.

This is why things like fighters and MSUs are so good at winning: I'll attack that ISD with my 3-4 small ships of varying configurations so by the end of the round, it'll either be missing some of its defense tokens, or I've pushed some damage through. The ISD will fire back, but because I have so many ships that are fast/long-ranged/whatever, they won't die from the ISD's bluster. I'll just attack again with so many thousands of cuts until the ISD is dead, because it cannot stop so much damage from so many attacks.

This is the sole reason why Yavaris is so deadly with B-Wings: because that's six attacks with a maximum of 3 damage. Too much damage spread over too few attacks. It's easier for an ISD to eat one barrage from a Liberty than it is to deal with a horde of angry fighters it can't immediately erase.

To highlight how good one card, multipled is I'll highlight my ARQ battery list. I've got three ships pumping 3+1+1 (Concentrate fire, slaved turrets) into a target with dice control (Vader) and an intel officer. I can do anywhere up to 10 damage with Intel officer support from one ship. Then I repeat that with my other two.

Clonisher's massed Raiders (And comparable MC-30 swarms) work because they're designed to pump a target full of APT hits. It doesn't matter what else it does, the APTs are bound to make something break and it's still hull damage that bypasses shields.

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Sorry if that's stuff you already know; I like being long-winded when I explain Armada things. Besides, someone may learn something.

Long winded tends to be extremely useful when help is asked for @Norsehound. Much appreciated.

Though, I think the original Clonisher runs Expanded Launchers, to the surprise of us all. I haven't really mastered the range control needed for lots of small ships yet.

Yeah, I tried some arqs with Vader and Slaved. Was a lot of fun.

Scout HH: Really good point on the price difference. I think there might be a role in that you probably don't want to TRC on the Scout. I haven't seen naked CR90As outside of about three places: Sato, a post wave-6 lifeboater that just ran out of points for TRC, and a relatively newish player. So with a different upgrade suite and flight pattern, you've really got something else entirely going on with the Scout. What you don't do is just include one Scout HH in your list. Since HH run best in pairs, it tends to do better as a trailer after the Torpedo HH, where the red dice (and possibly blue flak) keep it relevant before it rams and probably triggers boarding engineers.

TRC still pumps your damage, it isn't merely dud roll insurance. What it used to do was pretty much guarantee 6 damage on a double arc red range shot (CFing your second arc). For a double arc at blue range, you're looking at a touch over 7 on average. The damage could swing up or down a little if you managed two blanks or two hit/hits, but it was pretty reliable in the 6-7 damage per activation since you corrected two bad rolls. At the present, you're still likely to have one roll come up with two points of damage, but you'll also probably have a blank (or optionally an accuracy) that you're looking to fix on one of the four dice that your rolled. So what the TRC change does is drop about a point off your expected average damage, and increase variance a bit. If you roll poorly on both rolls, you can end up with just the two minimum damage that the TRC corrects for you. If you roll well on both rolls, you improve your damage by 1 by flipping to a hit/crit. Finally, there's also tougher decisions on changing to a crit for optimization against enemy defense tokens, and a much higher likely that you just just end up with an even total of damage that gets braced. So, there's a subtle effect on overall damage based on how it interacts with defense tokens. Still, for double evade units, I'd rather have TRC than DTT.

Playing SW-7 Bs: This is one that I've got a lot of experience with, because the first regional winning list that I played ran two of them. What you want is a kind of rhythm to your activations. So what I've found is that you can activate your red range ships and flotillas on turn-1 with fairly inconsequential activations. This sets up your SW-7B Corvettes to go last, after you've seen more of where the opponent has moved their fleet. If you're first player, then last/first comes into play, but since you only need to set up medium range, you're much less exposed. You can also fly into red range where an opponent must move up into your blue range. So you're trading their really bad red range shot for getting your blue range shot. That's something that works for both first and second player.

The slow trickle of damage is also useful against nearly every unit in the game. No one exactly wants to brace a three damage shot. Admonition doesn't want to cancel a one damage shot, and if you can wear out its shields, then the redirects become pointless very fast. and a blue range reroll into an acc is still damage due to SW-7. An acc on each roll of a double arc drops a flotilla. An acc on each roll against a Corvette or Raider puts two damage through to hull, and an ET double-ram kills.

Clonisher: The Gladiator ran Expanded Launchers, which was not suprising at the time. But the Raiders were all running APTs. Following Clon's original list, people starting dropping APTs and then OE to increase the bid. The key that made it a real MSU was that Demolisher wasn't the only tool. The Raiders themselves were extremely vicious.

4 hours ago, Vergilius said:

Scout HH: Really good point on the price difference. I think there might be a role in that you probably don't want to TRC on the Scout. I haven't seen naked CR90As outside of about three places: Sato, a post wave-6 lifeboater that just ran out of points for TRC, and a relatively newish player. So with a different upgrade suite and flight pattern, you've really got something else entirely going on with the Scout. What you don't do is just include one Scout HH in your list. Since HH run best in pairs, it tends to do better as a trailer after the Torpedo HH, where the red dice (and possibly blue flak) keep it relevant before it rams and probably triggers boarding engineers.

I think you might see them run as a cheap FC carrier. I've also thought about running 1 with RS since that blue AA is nice. That also can take a title, which would work well with TFA or TFO.

5 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

I'm ok with squadrons now, (Not intentionally lol), but I'm honestly not that experienced as a MSU player. Anyone want to talk about the fun of it?

MSU wins big and loses small. The standard TRC90 swarm with YT-2400 is nearly impossible to table. And whatever points you score on it are tiny. 51 or 16, yippy. Plus it is hard to get damage to stick with all those Evades. And TRC means they are dishing out 10 damage a turn. Cracken is probably the best commander for the TRC90 swarm since that's 2 dice your opponent loses (Cracken and Evade). Mothma is another good choice.

I prefer the Imp MSU. 2 Glads, 2 Goz, 1 Arq, 1 Raider. Or drop the Arq for some squads. Same idea as the Rebel swarm, but it just hits harder. The most expensive ship is Demo at 85 points (Glad I, APT, OE, Demo). Insidious is at 78. The Arq or Raider is flagship. Goz push squads and deal out tokens. This is hard to deal with since your opponent has to focus on a ship, likely the Glads first. By deploying them beyond range 5, you can focus your opponent onto one of them while the other sweeps behind.

I've recently expanded on this idea by dropping the Arq and a Goz for a Vic II, which is now the focal point for the fleet. That's not really an MSU anymore. I actually don't know what I'd call a Vic II, 2 Glads, a Goz and a Raider with Valen/Ciena.

1 hour ago, Undeadguy said:

I've recently expanded on this idea by dropping the Arq and a Goz for a Vic II, which is now the focal point for the fleet. That's not really an MSU anymore. I actually don't know what I'd call a Vic II, 2 Glads, a Goz and a Raider with Valen/Ciena.

I'd call it a VMSU haha.