1 hour ago, Vespid1311 said:

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of Intimidation on Strikers.

Me too. A lot.

1 hour ago, Vespid1311 said:

T ime is an issue for me at the moment, but a bit later on I want to discuss Obstacle theory and starting positioning. I feel that there is a large discussion to be had there.

I am looking forward to it. I'll try to take pictures tomorrow at my Store Championship and we can discuss as a community what I did well and where I could improve.

I survived the tournament! I'll give a quick summary for now, and then do a deep dive when I have a little more time. I brought

2x Planetary Sentinel
4x Black Sq. Scout
198 points

I ended the day with 3 wins, 2 losses, 1087 MOV, landing me 11th place out of 32. That's what I'm used to with strikers. I really don't think this squad does as well in extended, but I could be wrong.

I'm not sure how many new things I learned today, but a lot of old lessons were definitely reinforced. For example:

• Don't be too quick to engage a block of ships at range 1 if they are 2 ships deep because your K-turn and S-loops won't let you move past them
• For goodness sake, get all guns on target - any target - on the opening engagement (why is this so hard?)
• Keep the obstacles loose, you are not as good at maneuvering through obstacles as you think you are

But I also learned a couple things

• Sometimes it's more effective to start together, and then spread out on for the engagement, rather than to start spread out and converge
• It can be really helpful to pair your ships when you have this many. It helps them navigate the field better, but it also makes a wider effective arc that is more difficult for aces to dodge

I hope to post some pictures and discuss my matches round-by-round Sunday or Monday night.

I had a 60 person tournament last weekend where I took a bunch of Ruthless Blacks to fairly good success. It was a 2 day mix of Extended and Hyper.

Day 1: Extended tournament. Cut makes it to day 2. My list was simply 5 Ruthless Blacks with Hull.

Round 1: Fenn/Boba (upgrades made it non-hyper) - Loss. Went after Fenn first but when he tacks on LW he can sponge a lot of shots. Boba should have been target #1. By the time Fenn died I had lost critical mass.

Round 2: Thane/Luke/Han (Hyper Legal)- Win. Ruthless was instrumental to kill Thane and Luke in a single turn each.

Round 3: Poe/2 x PS4 T70s (Hyper Legal) - Win. This Poe sported an autoblaster and outmanouver for nasty shenanigans. The other T70s had Adv. Proton Torps which he was never able to get off. Blocks and kill boxes were the name of the game.

Round 4: RAC/3xInquisitors (Non-Hyper) - Win. Burned down RAC but nearly got flayed by the V1s. Blocks and Ruthless were clutch on the Inquisitors.

Round 5: 4 Fearless Skull Fangs (Hyper legal) - Loss. Great initial engagement for me but meh dice. He screamed in the next round and I had nowhere to go. It's a hard match when every Fang is almost Fenn to you!

Came in 23rd I think. Missed the cut on MOV. Felt good for an Extended meta. 2 big lessons. First, I haven't figured out how to handle turn 2 of engagement with Fangs. The match feels so dependent on decisively winning the damage race for the first R2-3 volley. Second, even strikers with Hull can potentially bleed MOV more easily that I expected. Just something to keep in mind. Based on that I made a tweak to my list for the next day's Hyper side event.

Day 2 : Hyper. 4 Rounds but I had to jet after 2. To help with potential Fangs I dropped a Black to a Planetary with Hull and Seismics.

Round 1: Thane/Luke/Lando - Win. Same guy as the day before actually. Great player and Lando led to some more challenging decision making. In the end he underappreciated how fast a striker can get into range if you're being aggressive. 200-20.

Round 2: Lumi/Wolffe/2xBravo - Win. Bravos had passive and plasmas which had me a touch nervous. Didn't realize what Wolffe can do with Veteran Turret Gunner either. That was a nasty surprise! Wolffe went down first. A Bravo was PS killed, and then it was a mop up from there.

My main takeaway from the day was that this list has legs and it's all due to Hull Upgrade. That is exactly what the strikers needed! I like dropping to a PS1 for blocking options and I really didn't miss that additional shot at PS3. Seismic also seems to add a layer of complexity for the opponent to think about. The biggest thing was that this list was so FUN to fly! It also felt solid vs the Hyper lists I faced. This list will probably see a lot of time on the table this year.

The Store Championship was at Gritty Goblin Games with 32 people in attendance. The store was packed to capacity with X-wing players, which is always a fun time. As I said before, I brought

4x Black Sq. Scouts
2x Planetary Sentinels
198 points

I brought the 3 smallest Force Awakens core set rocks.

ROUND 1

Kylo Ren TIE/vn
3x Zeta Sq. Survivor TIE/sf
Epsilon Sq. Cadet TIE/fo
197

I was up against a guy in my group, which is never a great way to start a tournament because you know one of you is walking away with a loss. This match up was interesting in that there was not a single upgrade on either side of the table.

Here's how round 2 looked, but let's look at the obstacles

I opted to put the last rock up in his corner, rather than my right corner in order to open up my approach. I had a Planetary Sentinel on each side of the board. We moved up fairly aggressively, but his ships were expertly protected by the long gas cloud, and I traded a Planetary Sentinel for the TIE/fo. But worse than that was the fact that I had very few options for maneuvering because I couldn't be sure how far his TIE/sfs would move. If I had maintained more distance, I would have been better off - not only would I have the advantage in the range 3 exchange with 3-dice attacks, but I also would have had wider arcs to keep Kylo Ren honest, and have more options for maneuvering in round 2.

The game was basically lost at this point. A couple lucky defense rolls kept it close, and time was called when it was 150 to 124 points for my first loss of the day.

ROUND 2

Jake Farrell
Arvel Crynyd (Intimidation)
3x Green Sq. Pilot
Phoenix Sq. Pilot
198

6 A-wings. I guess I was asking for it by bringing 6 strikers. Setup:

I had the Scouts in one corner and the Sentinels in the middle. I opened the sentinels with Aileron bank out, then 1-turn in for several of my matches, and I think it really gives them some good options. Here, I applied what I learned last game about shooting for that range 3 engage. I also decided that rather than keep my bock together, I could split my Scouts into 2 pairs.

The image above is the planning phase of round 3. As you can see, there are only 5 A-wings. I managed to destroy Arvel and plink a couple shields off some other A-wings without taking a single damage. Range 3 engage for the win! My opponent's defense dice were awful. And not just for the first round. They kept being awful the entire time.

The following round my Sentinels performed Aileron right, S-loop right, landing right in front of the A-wings.
Left pair of Scouts did Aileron left, S-loop left.
Bottom Scouts did Aileron right, 1-turn let to shoot the A-wings blocked by the Sentinels.

I really liked being focused with my arcs to concentrate on a single target, but I had options for spreading out without getting in my own way. This was probably one of my best games of the day.

And above is a picture when at the end of the round after time was called. 4 surviving strikers vs. 2 A-wings for a 180-117 win.

ROUND 3

Boba Fett (Slave I, Seismic Charges, Novice Technician)
Fenn Rau (Fearless)
Laetin A'shera (Ion Cannon)
200

I knew Boba was going to be tough with so many ships on the board to give him rerolls. I didn't expect him to come in so fast, so my Scouts were caught quite far out of the way, as seen in this image below of the end of Engagement round 2.

I had even done the bank-out, turn-in move with my sentinels to buy time, but I didn't buy enough time. And I'll give you two guesses what Boba does in the System Phase here. Yep. Seismic Charges. Fortunately, my opponent did not expect me to move my Sentinel 1-straight, 1-straight to bump into Fenn Rau, so he successfully blocked Boba Fett, ensuring that he took a damage from the bomb along with a whopping 4 of my strikers. Talk about 3 points well spent.

We managed to take Boba Fett out in short order, but Fenn Rau was a tough nut to crack. A lucky 2 damage early on gave me the hope that we could finish the job, and it wasn't like Laetin was an appealing target with those evade tokens. Alas, Fenn took no more damage.

He ended up finishing off all of my strikers for my second loss of the day 129-200.

ROUND 4

Kylo Ren TIE/vn
"Scorch"
2x Zeta Sq. Survivor TIE/sf (Special Forces Gunner)
193

For this match I set up my strikers in 3 pairs, with the Sentinels in the middle. I was shocked when my opponent allowed us to set up a wide open space on half of the mat. I started chomping at the bit to take out a TIE/sf at i2 before it got to fire.

(Sorry for the awkward photo). This was round 2, the start of engagement. His poor TIE/sf's were surrounded. I wasn't quite able to delete one before it could fire, but by the end of the round one was gone, and the other was missing 2 shields. My conservative 1-straight, 1-straight in round 1 caused my opponent to get skittish with Kylo Ren, so he fortunately had no shots the opening round of engagement. The left 3 strikers in the above picture are my favorite. The Planetary Sentinels had dialed in mirror bank-out, 1-turn-in maneuvers, while my left scouts each did 1-straight aileron and then 2-bank and 3-bank respectively to land in a neat little line.

I have no more pictures, but we finished off the TIE/sf, then turned our attention on Kylo, who took some damage. Then as he ran, we went after Scorch with some blocks and focus fire. But I have to say, ignoring Scorch for that long let him really put some work in. After Scorch was destroyed, and Kylo was at 2 hull, my opponent was going to call it, but I pointed out that most of my 4 remaining strikers were damaged, so we played it out. He got another striker, and took one to half health, but we eventually got Kylo for a 200-115 win.

ROUND 3

Laetin A'shera (Snap Shot, Ion Cannon)
Kad Solus (Fearless)
2x Skull Sq. Pilot (Fearless)
200

Uh oh. Three i4's does not look good. Once again, I started a little far out, and he came in very fast to get some potshots before I could bring my whole force to bear. Getting that opening right is tough!

My Scouts went up the left side, around the gas clouds, and then in from his side of the board between little rock and the talon gas cloud. At that point, Kad Solus was at range 2 of most of my strikers and was deleted in 2 shots. At that point, I thought I had this game. Boy, did I underestimate Concordia Faceoff. It was so hard to stick damage because Ailerons put us in range 1 almost the whole time. And Laetin was being a jerk with Snap Shot and getting a free evade when it missed, or occasionally landing a crit.

We fought tooth and nail to stay in this game. I finally destroyed his last fighter with only 2 half-health strikers left for a very close 200-164 win.

CONCLUSION
That brought my to a 3-2 record and 11th place out of 32. As a side note, I had the second lowest SOS in the tournament, so that may say something about the power level of 6 strikers, because I still had to fight like crazy to win some of these matches (and put up a heck of a fight in the ones I lost).

But overall I just had so much fun! Ailerons are still my favorite part of the game, and it's amazing seeing 6 of these ships on the board. While I was thinking about what to write up, I had a thought about how to approach obstacles on the first round, in addition to turn 0. I'll probably write up my thoughts/observations sometime in the next week, but this report will have to do for now. Hope you enjoyed it!

P.S. The art print for top 16 is my favorite! Absolutely gorgeous. I'm going to frame it and hang it in my toy/game room when I have a house. It sure makes me want to play First Order though...

Thanks for the great writeup @Parakitor .

I had the same experience as you when playing the Strikers. Its a ton of fun but I struggle against lots of lists out there.

The challanges are:

1) Finding a strong list, what is difficult considering so many optins we have

2) Striker Swarms are super hard to fly so you need a lot of practice with it

3) And still then I just don't think that I can be really competetive with it. Going 3-2 or 4-2 is the best I can think of...or maybe I underestimate Strikers and their possibilities

On ‎2‎/‎2‎/‎2020 at 4:02 AM, Parakitor said:

• Don't be too quick to engage a block of ships at range 1 if they are 2 ships deep because your K-turn and S-loops won't let you move past them
• For goodness sake, get all guns on target - any target - on the opening engagement (why is this so hard?)
• Keep the obstacles loose, you are not as good at maneuvering through obstacles as you think you are

The massive minimum speed of the TIE/sk is why I'm forever noting "don't go too fast" as a lesson, and why I strongly encourage engaging from range 2, not range 1, if you can avoid it. You've got the firepower to engage effectively at range 2, whilst not being at range 1 reduces the odds of the one-shot initiative kills that will really bite into your combat power before you can use it.

On ‎2‎/‎2‎/‎2020 at 4:02 AM, Parakitor said:

• Sometimes it's more effective to start together, and then spread out on for the engagement, rather than to start spread out and converge
• It can be really helpful to pair your ships when you have this many. It helps them navigate the field better, but it also makes a wider effective arc that is more difficult for aces to dodge

Definitely.

@Vespid1311 and I both use an 'arrowhead' in a corner, set up like this:

The big advantage is that if you decide to do so, you can get everyone pointed in the same direction in close proximity in a single turn. 6 TIE/sk bring the option of eighteen-rounds-rapid - more red dice than an 8-ship TIE swarm, and in bigger blocks too - so sometimes you just want to point everyone in the same direction and joust....

@Parakitor and @Test Pilot - well done to both of you! I'm sadly unable to make it to the UK systems open due to boring stuff that falls under the general heading of 'adulting' but a friend of mine is planning to borrow my Strikers to field. I'm not sure exactly what squad layout he'll end up using*- will be comparing notes with him tonight. I'll ask him to get plenty of pictures.

Part of me is hoping to see a board with 12 Strikers on it on a stream, just to hear the commentators' brains spontaneously haemorrhage as they try to come up with suggestions about where stuff is going to go....

* 5 with Ruthless and Hull Upgrade and 4 with 2 I1 Blockers now both having demonstrated some potential..... 5 I1s with Duchess I'm less convinced by because Duchess doesn't get her 'toys' - no Fifth Brother, no Predator or Afterburners, and heavy swarms don't really work with the concept of 'endgame piece' because if you've reduced the game to a 1v1 against a more elite opponent, you've probably lost....

Nice write up Parakitor

Some quick thoughts/opinions:
ROUND ONE
Kylo in general is a tough match up if he can get around you. Therefore, in my matches against Kylo (and, in general, with Ace + Mini Swarm) I try to bully him out of the way. Yeah, he can try to tank them.... but, if he does....
In order to do that, I generally try to make a line up an edge in the direction he is coming from (if he sets up opposite corner, generally my board edge). He probably can't flank you and, when you have to turn in you are pointing at the rest of whatever is coming in. If Kylo dances away, you still have shots on other targets. If it is mooks, you might initiative kill.... and that makes a huge difference. Of course, easier said than done if they set up the ace with the generics....
ROUND TWO
Yeah, that's nice. That sort of movement is cool. A little luck here and there helps, of course, but being able to get all shots on a target is great.
ROUND THREE
I always bank on Boba charging. He is such a wrecking ball and relatively survivable.... Nice work on that block though. Always nice to catch an opponent with a block they don't see coming.
ROUND FOUR
I like what you did here. Nice Kill Box and even better making Kylo twitchy. That is how it should be: Scare the Ace into making a mistake.
ROUND FIVE
I find the Fangs so interesting to fight with/against. R1 is such a huge deal. However, if you can spread your Strikers, you have a much greater chance of any of them being at R2. Keeping them clumped makes it more difficult for the Fangs to approach, but easier if they get to R1. Wiping any Fang in one turn is huge (especially if it is a special one, like Kad).

On 2/2/2020 at 3:02 PM, Parakitor said:

I'm not sure how many new things I learned today, but a lot of old lessons were definitely reinforced. For example:

• Don't be too quick to engage a block of ships at range 1 if they are 2 ships deep because your K-turn and S-loops won't let you move past them
• For goodness sake, get all guns on target - any target - on the opening engagement (why is this so hard?)
• Keep the obstacles loose, you are not as good at maneuvering through obstacles as you think you are

But I also learned a couple things

• Sometimes it's more effective to start together, and then spread out on for the engagement, rather than to start spread out and converge
• It can be really helpful to pair your ships when you have this many. It helps them navigate the field better, but it also makes a wider effective arc that is more difficult for aces to dodge

Quoting for Emphasis

Also:

On 2/2/2020 at 3:02 PM, Parakitor said:

For goodness sake, get all guns on target - any target - on the opening engagement (why is this so hard?)

Because Strikers simultaneously move faster and slower than you think they do.
FASTER - You need to move twice, so you have more opportunity to undercalculate where you end up and have multiple rooms for error. Small Errors Add Quickly. Also, obstacles/other ships make it really hard to wind through tight spaces.
SLOWER - You notice this A Lot when you try to flank with them and/or your opponent rushes you. Yeah, they have a built in pre-boost. They also don't move very far after that if you want modifiers.
My solution: Either start closer together (either as a clump or no further than half the board away) or Positioning before combat/as a blocker. Curve Aileron one way, 3 Bank the other, Barrel Roll as required (starting on an angle helps). Then, and only then, are you faster than your opponent expects. An opponent who rushes you will generally catch you out if you are trying to do a long-range flank with Strikers (if no Afterburners).

So...had a really good fun evening last night. The aforementioned friend is definitely taking my TIE striker swarm this weekend to the System Open, and wanted a demo game to help get his head around them - he's used to using "Duchess", but that's as an ace with her ability, Fifth Brother and so on, and a Heavy Swarm is comparatively new territory.

We ended up settling on the 5 Black Squadron Scouts/Hull Upgrade/Ruthless - it's as close as you can get to the old Scarif Defender/Lightweight Frame, which always did me well in 1st edition.

He had two games - one, a bit of a demo game against me using the Bughouse Swarm, and then against a third friend who's taking A-wings as her squad.

The game with the Nantex is here:

The game with the A-wings was pretty good fun to watch, and reinforces that Black Squadron Scouts are probably the right call. The initial engagement can basically be summed up as:

TIE Striker: "I have bigger guns than you, better dice modification than you, and shoot first. And we're at range 1."

A-wing: "Eep." [Explodes]

Which SO is this? If it's Ft Worth then there will be 2 striker swarms at least!

UK, I'm afraid.

Well at least we can see how the list stands in two major tournaments

A couple of quick bat-reps.

Decided to mix it up this week, we had another person running the Ruthless Hulls... so I wanted to see what the Intimidation does for me.

2x Intimidation Hull Scouts
2x Ruthless Hull Scouts
Ruthless Scout.
199.

Using the previously mentioned opening:
^ ^ >
7 >

With Ruthless Hull, Initiative Hull and Ruthless ship in this order:

^ ^
RH IH IH>
R7 RH>

Also, it's meme day... so we cracked open some of the scenarios from the recent packs. Therefore, take the following with an unhealthy dose of salt.

5x Proton Torp Cartel Scyks.
Scenario with 5 obstacles and a Fused ElectroProton bomb that we could buff/depleted of fuse tokens.

Yes. Memes.
Speaking of, apologies about the lack of images/text only description, Today I Learned that you Absolutely Can do an Aileron to the board edge with either IH ship and 1 Hard back in to the board. Furthermore, you can follow that up with the neighbouring RH doing a Straight Aileron followed by a 2 Soft Curve in. It is Very Close, but it fits. Not sure if it is useful, because your 2 Curve does not allow a Barrel Roll to the Board edge and that is Super Tight (less than a millimetre at most between nubs and bases)... but for the lulz.... unless maybe your next move is different? I don't know.
Bomb was on my end of the board, and I made sure that bomb did not last long. I put myself in a terrible position, got ionised with zero consequence as my opponent was way too far away to capitalise on it.
Obviously, not exactly a shining test because of my mobility advantage here. Made another few Ruthless mistakes (R3 shots, turning 2 to 3 and being evaded). Personal goal was to try to get Intimidate to work.
So how did the Intimidators go? I got exactly one Intimidation all game on the final turn. But.... That allowed me to wipe two Scyks in one turn at a point where he was already in a bad spot (almost no way back in it short of lucking out on defense dice... which they didn't).
Also, down to 2 obstacles run into - one caused by a poor judgement of Aileron/Manoeuvre (clipped a rock by a millimetre) and one caused by a superb blocking opportunity from a Scyk that I completely missed seeing, forcing my now-only logical Aileron to stop early (clipped a debris, was super lucky to not have taken a second round through debris).
I feel sorry for this Scyk player: He matched up against the other Striker player next up. Although that Striker player is still learning them (this is the player from last time who took the 5 Striker/2 TIE variation, now all Ruthless Hulls), he Utterly Demolished the Scyks in 2-3 Shooting Rounds. The Scyk player likes the Scyks, has them painted up in each of the different named Scyk paint schemes (they are Beautiful), but they are woeful with Ordnance.
In other news, that Ruthless Striker player also took down Four T70s (Nien and Black Squadrons). A little uncertain as to the specific circumstances, but I think the gist was that there was difficult positioning after the initial engagement and the T70s could not engage effectively because of space jam and/or disengages. Potential demonstrated?

Second Game:

Ashoka, Plo Koon, Obi Wan. Each with Foresight, Calibrated Lasers, R2 Astromech.
Scenario whereby you must place 3 Asteroids and 3 Gas Clouds. Gas Clouds must be touching Asteroids, Asteroids must be R3+ from each other, Attacking with a Critical damage Hit through a Gas Cloud will cause the Gas Cloud to explode.

Right. This, I feel, is the first genuine test for the Strikers from a list/player perspective. This opponent is a Good pilot, and he can do Aces pretty good... but he has not had a lot of experience with piloting Jedi (is primarily an Imperial player). Foresight has me worried.... it can trigger off Ailerons. That could be absolutely Brutal.
However, due to the nature of the scenario and me placing the first Asteroid, there is A Lot of open space in the middle of this board.... which I used to my advantage by keeping the whole squadron relatively close together and being able to sweep through together through the open field.
I was mostly pleased with my flying.
My opponent put the three ships in an orientation that meant, after initial long range pot shots (which netted me some damage on both Obi and Plo), they could all turn in or all escape from the pirhanas.
I nearly got an Intimidation block on Obi Wan with a long range Aileron Straight/3 Curve.... I should have Rolled to guarantee a block as Obi Wan was in a position where his realistic moves were 1/2 Hard in or 5 Straight Bug Out.... Blocked the Hard 2, but the barrel roll would have caught the Hard 1. However, I had 3 of the 4 other Strikers pointing in the same direction, and that is important, because Ruthless is a thing. A few substandard defense rolls later, and I have wiped a Jedi without half points on any of my ships.
Then the Striker Sloop Bloom happens again: Aileron Sloop to reset the Strikers whilst Ashoka chases a straggler and Plo Koon is far far away. After clearing stress and watching Ashoka clear a rock, the Strikers then sweep in on a cautious Plo. Fortunately, an Intimidator blocked the 2 Straight and 2 shots later there is no more Plo.
Managed to wipe the final Jedi for the loss of 2 Strikers.
This time, I got the Ruthless calculations right, and my opponent's defense did not turn up.
Running some numbers, the shots to wipe Obi Wan were in the 20% vicinity.

Again, not much can really be taken from that due to dice rolls.... but positionally I did most things right. I spread when I needed to to maintain threats, I kept them together to make sure that I have enough punch to break a Jedi's Force Pool if they roll Focus and/or Deeply Punish them if the dice fail (such as in this game).

Looking back at Intimidation , I triggered it twice.
In one game, I managed to genuinely block an ace. In the other, I Aileroned in to guarantee the Intimidation against a target that had already moved.
In both cases, I wiped the (weak) target.
In both cases, they were my only Intimidation in the game.
Was it worth it ? Maybe. It is an interesting area to explore. I want to do more exploring here, I feel that this might be at least as good as the full Ruthless squadron.

Because I did not do the numbers before....:
Assume that a ship that is not blocked gets Focus, Ruthless is not active in either scenario (choosing not to), and that all of my ships Focus and are at R2 (i.e. this is a sort Average Shots at R2 vs Worst Case Scenario for the Intimidators, because normally I would be looking at Ruthless and I would probably also have at least one R1 shot there). Also assume that I am moving first and a blocked/Intimidated ship will not have Focus.

Vs Agility 1
Intimidate + three R2 Focus shots nets 6.75 hits.
No Intimidate/Block, Four R2 Focus shots 6.85 hits.
Slight edge to No Intimidate

Vs Agility 2
Intimidate + three R2 Focus nets 5.64 hits
Four R2 Focus nets 5.14 hits
Moderate edge to Intimidate

Vs Agility 3
Intimidate + three R2 Focus nets 4.94 hits
Four R2 Focus nets 3.73 hits
Strong Edge to Intimidate

Vs Agility 3 with 2 Force
Intimidate + three R2 Focus shots nets 3.40 hits
Four R2 Focus nets 2.68 hits
Strong Edge to Intimidate

Wow . That is some Serious Edge to Intimidation . Those calculations neglect Ruthless (add 1-3 damage each time). That Neglects my Fifth Striker (benefits Intimidation more). That ignores any R1s you probably also have with your Strikers (again, a benefit to Intimidate) rather than a conservative move at R2-3.
So... how strong do you think your blocking game is? Do you think you can train yourself to be a good blocker? If so, consider Intimidation on Strikers. Numerically, this looks Solid . Even if you don't block, you likely have another R1 attack and/or Pinata Ruthless Target.

I have a few new insights/opinions from tonight's efforts:
- Open Board Layout For The Win. I ALWAYS choose debris with Strikers, and I generally try keep a moderate density to my obstacle fields (more on that later, when I write my obstacle opinion piece... the TLDR version is that I like it when my opponents are channeling themselves). I rarely have a situation when I have an open field.... and that second game showed me just how Good it is to have an open field with Strikers. If you are taking Seismic Charge Strikers, I kind of want to recommend just bombing the field early on to open it up. Not sure if it is a good idea... but WOW, open field allows some Beautiful long range Ailerons/3 Speed manoeuvres. For more information on Bombing a field to open it up, have a look at the excellent XWing Debrief article on Punisher with Trajectory Seismics and 7 Academy TIEs from Las Vegas Open ( https://xwingdebrief.wordpress.com/2020/02/03/where-were-going-we-dont-need-obstacles-an-lvo-adventure-part-2/ ).
- If you end up with 42+ points left in an Imperial list, maybe consider an I3 Striker with Hull and Intimidate (or 43 gets you Vagabond at I2). Difficult for the opponent to to Block/Easy-ish to block with in some circumstances.
- Hull Upgrade is now stapled to my Strikers. There is Zero Doubt in my mind that it is absolutely worth it in a Striker Swarm, regardless of the rest of your loadout.
- I did not necessarily miss the Ruthless on 2 of my Strikers. This is good, because it means that I know I can live without it. That also means that 3 Ruthless Strikers might be a sort of Critical Mass. I know when I lose a Ruthless Striker with only 3 of them to begin with that I feel a bit sadder in my output, but the Intimidators help mitigate that by telling the opponent to use less defense anyway. No need to spend as many Ruthless damage cards that way... I like the change. I am going to keep testing.
- I am not convinced on Calibrated Laser Jedi.... maybe it was because of the broad spread of mobile Strikers that spooked my opponent, but they never really wanted to engage in a concentrated manner. Maybe my opinion will change if I get in to that scenario again but the opponent goes aggressive.
- From the other tables tonight, Boba Fett is a Monster. If I wasn't playing Strikers, I would be playing Boba.

@Vespid1311 Thanks for sharing your experience. Last night I gave Ruthless a try (Decimator, 2 elite TIE fighters and Pure Sabacc) and I saw its value. I'll probably give that 2x Ruthless 2x Intimidation squad a try.

I also got to try Vagabond last night, who was a lot of fun. It was an extended match, so I equipped Vagabond with Proximity Mines and Skilled Bombardier. I just missed IG-88A when I aileroned left and used a 2-straight to drop the mine in its path, but the 2-turn cleared by a mm, sad face.

But then the droid was following the striker, and bumped into the back, so it ate a 3-damage mine next round.

I think Vagabond will probably make it into some of my striker squads. He's a decent option for clearing the obstacles in a single round with double Seismic Charges.

Sounds good. Vagabond with skilled bombardier does sound cool - it's just a shame most ordnance is non-hyperspace. Though a double-payload proton bomb strike should ruin anyone's day...

Well, apparently he got a top 32 place - making the cut 5-1, and winning his first game before eventually losing in round 2. Will try and get details from him later this week.

Quick update from the Ft Worth system open. Landed 3-3 with the 5 strikers. I heard there was another 5 striker list boasting bombs that made it on stream. Not sure how it did. My list was 4 Blacks with Hull and Ruthless and 1 Planetary with Hull and Seismics. In hindsight I don't know if the PS1 is the way to go vs another Black, but here is what I played.

Tempest/Zertik/Maarek/Vader all kitted with FCS - Loss. This was close. To no surprise the crits played a huge factor. 5 Blacks would have been better in this match. In the end he pulled through with a tempest that clung to his last health and would not die. He went on as the top imperial player and made top 8 so I can't be too upset at that!

Quad Jumps - Win. Nom with Dengar and a lot of Contraband Cybernetics and Ion Cannons. This was decisive. Killed Nom, got blocks with the PS1, and chewed through.

Greer/Talli/Zizi/Poe - Win. We had a potshot at R3 to plink a damage or two to each of us then the PS1 bank-banked in for blocks faster than he expected. His list just imploded from there. Ruthless paid off here to comfortably kill off Poe

3 Zetas with Concussion and Passive/Kylo - Win. This one was a shocker. My first time against FO and I didn't realize those Zetas could passive - rotate - missile out the back. I was really struggling until he got greedy and overlapped a corner of one of his SFs over the board. This was a win that should not have been. 5 Blacks for pure jousting is probably the better match here.

Luke/Thane/Lando - Loss. I played it a couple weekends ago and crushed it, but this match was a combination of a much better player and dice that just gave a hard nope. First R3 engagement saw a Black lost for no return damage. After that it was a striker popping every turn. Seismics payed off here to kill Thanke and plink a damage off Luke.

Boba/Emon - 0-200 Loss. I've played and beaten it before with aces but this was BRUTAL for the striker swarm. I spread out thinking that it would help clear away from obstacles but I just ended up jumbling the free space with my own bodies. Rough...

The most important part of the day was still how FUN this was to fly! I deployed pretty evenly across my entire board edge and swung my list around like a door on the opponent. That worked pretty well for the most part but I need to recognize which lists to joust and how to move in a loose block like yall have described. In the corner deployment - what does your first and second round look like? How do you block or blossom from that initial setup?

5 hours ago, Test Pilot said:

Boba/Emon - 0-200 Loss. I've played and beaten it before with aces but this was BRUTAL for the striker swarm. I spread out thinking that it would help clear away from obstacles but I just ended up jumbling the free space with my own bodies. Rough...

Boba generally is a bad matchup for strikers - with only a forward arc and a high minimum speed staying out of range 1 is hard, but clustering in close does annoyingly little damage since he'll have rerolls out the wazoo and - if he really feels threatened - reinforce plus Maul's force charge. You can waste huge amounts of damage trying to kill him, and Slave 1 makes him very reactive to attempted blocks or bombs.

5 hours ago, Test Pilot said:

Quad Jumps - Win. Nom with Dengar and a lot of Contraband Cybernetics and Ion Cannons. This was decisive. Killed Nom, got blocks with the PS1, and chewed through.

Yeah, I can see this one. "We have more guns per ship, more ships and we mostly shoot first" is a good place to be with swarms.

5 hours ago, Test Pilot said:

Tempest/Zertik/Maarek/Vader all kitted with FCS - Loss. This was close. To no surprise the crits played a huge factor. 5 Blacks would have been better in this match. In the end he pulled through with a tempest that clung to his last health and would not die. He went on as the top imperial player and made top 8 so I can't be too upset at that!

Sounds like a really good game. Getting a kill on all three named pilots is not something to be upset about.

5 hours ago, Test Pilot said:

Greer/Talli/Zizi/Poe - Win. We had a potshot at R3 to plink a damage or two to each of us then the PS1 bank-banked in for blocks faster than he expected. His list just imploded from there. Ruthless paid off here to comfortably kill off Poe

Everyone underestimates the TIE/sk's speed in a long swoopy turn. Well done!

5 hours ago, Test Pilot said:

3 Zetas with Concussion and Passive/Kylo - Win. This one was a shocker. My first time against FO and I didn't realize those Zetas could passive - rotate - missile out the back. I was really struggling until he got greedy and overlapped a corner of one of his SFs over the board. This was a win that should not have been. 5 Blacks for pure jousting is probably the better match here.

Yeah...it's a nasty trick (on a par with the striker's 'debris dancing', to be fair) and one that's easy to overlook. Well done anyway; a win is a win.

5 hours ago, Test Pilot said:

Luke/Thane/Lando - Loss. I played it a couple weekends ago and crushed it, but this match was a combination of a much better player and dice that just gave a hard nope. First R3 engagement saw a Black lost for no return damage. After that it was a striker popping every turn. Seismics payed off here to kill Thanke and plink a damage off Luke.

Sometimes the dice just say no. You know you can beat the list. I guess the R3 opening engagement didn't help - you probably lost a fair amount of damage to bonus green dice there - I've always found range 2 the sweet spot for striker swarms; close enough to fire at full effect, far enough back that one-shot-kills are unlikely.

Well played!

I Absolutely Agree that Boba+( anything/any things ) is a Bad Match Up (which is a problem, because he Popular and Good).
If he does not bump/otherwise gets an action, he wipes you straight up, you might break the shields and you don't have anything that you can do about it.
Even at R2 with all ships, with a Focus Boba takes half damage.
Even with an I1 Blocker and everyone else at R2, Boba gets out of that half pointed.
With an I1 blocker and 4 R1 Ruthless, he probably still survives.
...
....but here is a cute statistic:
If you have an Intimidator that connects and 4 Ruthless ships, Boba dies in one turn more than half of the time if all of your shots are on target and at least two of your Ruthless Ships are at Range One, even with Maul backing him up.
This goes to any other Agility 2 Ship (Boba with Mauls just happens to be the hardest-to-kill Agility 2 Ship) that does not get actions. If you get a chance to pick on Nom Lumb/Contracted Scouts, assuming a focus action, still gets wiped if you get your actions.
If you have the 3 Ruthless/2 Intimidator version, it still happens more than a third of the time (if one Intimidation effect occurs) in one turn.
All assuming that your Strikers survive the attacks incoming first, of course....
4 Ruthless (one without hull) and Intimidation with Hull + 3 Points (?Seismic Charge), if you feel confident with one Intimidator (I don't, I like redundancy).

Boba Emon sounds like a nightmare to face, though. Emon is Brutal to Strikers. Not sure how I would approach that....

I had not thought of the Missile/Passive Sensor SF trick. Wow.... that is Scum Levels of Shenanigans.

8 hours ago, Test Pilot said:

Luke/Thane/Lando - Loss. I played it a couple weekends ago and crushed it, but this match was a combination of a much better player and dice that just gave a hard nope. First R3 engagement saw a Black lost for no return damage. After that it was a striker popping every turn.

I'm interested in how you defeated this the first time around. In the past, I have lost Hard to something similar by trying a Range 3 engagement and getting utterly wiped due to attrition (to be fair, it was a Wedge/Dutch Torpedoes version, and I did not have Hull Upgrade on)... and I don't know what to do to improve my chances, except Don't Be At R2 Initially, and Swoop and Block. I think that it is a good list.

I was going to start posting an obstacle article, then my last game opened my eyes to the Open Space Field..... so I need testing with that (smaller obstacles and spread obstacles).
Instead, I am going to post what I have been doing in the past and on why I settled on the Corner Formation as a base formation (of course, if in doubt, spread across your edge and loose cluster obstacles... Strikers are pretty good at making it up on the fly if you know the basics of bringing them together just prior to the engagement)..

I have maybe 40-50 games with a full Striker or Striker/Reaper swarm in 2.0 (about 30 prior to July last year, 5-10 just before the most recent points change and 5-10 since).
I still don't consider myself an expert on them.
It is Hard Work and you need to get repetitions in constantly. Despite my experience with them early last year, I am still shaking rust off. Multi-move ships are Hard. Multi-Move Ships for more than two games in a row is a Brain Draining Experience, even if you have had the practice.
Some of the following may not be correct, or may only be opinion.

I fly Large Debris when flying Strikers for several reasons:
- Gas Clouds are a Huge No when flying a swarm with high dice output. It is too easy for your attacks to be blunted by that auto-evade. The addition of Strain when moving over it also makes for a sad Striker (unless you are doing an Aileron over it followed by Blue... and even then I still don't like it).
- Rocks are good for taking up space. I have tried this and it does work... but makes for a sad Striker should you misjudge an overlap... and you will misjudge an overlap.
- Debris are the least punishing obstacle for a Striker because it is low chance of damage (although Criticals suck for Strikers... Loose Stabiliser is a Killer) and the ability to Blue off an Aileron and still get actions. You can still fire with some effectiveness off a Debris, unlike the other two obstacles.
- Large Obstacles provide more challenge for my opponents and more opportunities that they will herd/commit themselves through specific paths, which makes them more predictable, whilst I may or may not be able to exploit the Striker's odd movement to take advantage of that.

My base obstacle positioning is from a combination of anti-swarm/block formation set up and some things I learned flying Phantoms, Strikers and Star Vipers.

Below is a fairly typical layout for me:

These specific obstacles in those positions are, of course, not necessarily mandatory (the L Debris in bottom right could be in the middle left position, for example) and the positioning is subject to change (bottom right could be bottom left with the Middle Left obstacle higher up), but is a general guide line.

Of these, the only two that matter the most in my mind are the left middle of the image and bottom right.
- Left Middle is useful if the opponent is going down that side slowly or as a block formation as it forces them to turn earlier than they may otherwise want, turn later than they would otherwise want, or risk breaking a formation by altering turning paths. If you fly slow in the opposite corner for the first turn or two (achieved by curved Aileron/opposite direction hard turns +/- Barrel Rolls), the opponent may walk in to that trap.
- Left Middle is useful if I start from that side because it can give me cover if I go up that board edge and the opponent swings through the obstacles to come get me or it gives me the option to set my forces behind it in such a manner that I can go either way around it.
- Bottom Right is positioned far enough in that I can move freely (demonstrated later) but close enough that the other obstacles can not be placed close to the corner it is in.
- Bottom Right is also useful if you have to start spread/on the opposite side because it gives you space to reorganise your swarm. If you are flying against a slower opponent, that is your breathing room OR one of your open Kill Box areas.
- Both Obstacles in combination can also choke the field a little, depending on how the opponent places their obstacles. This means that there are well defined lanes of movement for you to choke up/opponent to move through and clear open space for you to manoeuvre around the outside of whilst setting up your initial run.

The Upper/Mid Right Obstacle could be anywhere. I have placed it here as a block to my opponent trying to do a similar thing to me as Middle Left could do to them. Generally, by this stage of obstacle placement it should be clear where it should go (either to open the field or to keep a certain area of the field open to you by maintaining a nearly-Range-2 gap for you to cluster in to).

I suspect that having an open corner on your side is the most advantageous obstacle placement, regardless of how setting up your Striker Swarm. Therefore, it is critical that you ensure that you have at least one corner to play with.
In my opinion, therefore, it is important that you make at least one open corner. More on this later.

In my experience, one of three things happen when placing obstacles:
- There is a cluster of obstacles in at least one location, Range One or near enough from each other, and a broad spread elsewhere
- Obstacles are spread so that there is an open field in the middle and/or plenty of wide open space to go through
- There is a dense obstacle field, generally in the middle of the board, so that there is a middle obstacle surrounded by most/all other obstacles at Range One or near enough.

If there is a cluster of obstacles in one location, be aware that Aces like ducking in there (choke point!) and things that out-joust you may want to herd you in there. Fortunately, the Range Two requirement of obstacles from the edge does mean that you have some space to play with.
A Dense Obstacle field is a negative and a positive. It is Really Hard to get Strikers to travel through in a coordinated fashion through there, and even Individually it is difficult to plot a meaningful course without Precision Flying and knowing your movement options. This is an experience thing. I am going to start making a training exercise out of it (set a dense field, lay some tokens in/around said field, try to collect them all without leaving R1 of an obstacle, without hitting an obstacle and in the fewest moves possible... sounds like amusement whilst listening to podcasts or for a rainy day). The positive, though, is that any opponent going through such an obstacle field will also generally need to work a way out of there.... and a predictable opponent is a Dead Opponent if caught by a Striker swarm flown well.
I might be coming around to "an Open Field is a Good Field", but I have some doubts - Genuine Swarms Love an open field, and Strikers may not enjoy them having an open field. Open Fields provide Aces, particularly Multi-reposition ones, with ample areas to bug out/come in. However, an Open Field means that it is fairly easy to collapse a Spread Striker Swarm into a small area and/or create Large Arc Coverage to trap the aces into taking more shots than they are comfortable with.

Because I am not sure of this, I'd like opinions and discussion.
I am approaching this from the perspective of using the Corner Block.... but obviously there are more world views.
I have suspicions that the Spread Placements would really like to have all obstacles up their board edge, but a little away from the R2 edge, so as to give space to Form Up with Cover and/or Blast through the Obstacles as necessary.... but I don't know.

Maybe medium sized obstacles, to open the field a little but still provide some form of channeling?

*****

I am going to move on to the Corner Block, and why I think that this is a good, maybe even a Good, Striker Formation.

NOTE
If in doubt about what the opponent is likely to do, such as when you are uncertain if you want to joust something that places after you (or you KNOW you don't want to joust something that places after you), go for a more standard formation or Spread Out.... generally along the middle of your board edge. Strikers, in the early game, should be fast enough (with Barrel Rolls) to reform into a loose formation on one side of the board. Takes a bit of practice, but it is doable.

Also note that these all assume that Striker 5 is perfectly 45 degrees. This works brilliantly on Vassal.... not so much in the real world, where small variations and movement template errors build up over time. Just be aware that this is a thing.

*****

Let's look at some First Turn movement examples for the Corner Block.
I could show you the slow version, where everyone has a 1 Soft or a 1 Straight dialed in... but that is a trivial example. Let's look at the more complex movements.

Given the image above, using the numbering given, lets assume that you are flying against an Ace that is trying to be cute and start on your side of the board, or you believe that you have the stronger jousting power and/or the opponent will shift whatever is on their side of the board away (say.... CLT Jedi, or Kylo).
Check out this move:

So....1 moves forward slightly/greatly further forward than 2 (NOTE 2 CAN NOT Barrel Roll Out from here.... if you start the formation a little more spread, so that 2's midline is greater than R1 from the Board edge, you can Roll Out).
3 and 4 demonstrate one reason why you need that space in the corner if you intend to use this formation by Aileron around and Hard 1/2 back towards the side edge. Both have the option to Roll in either direction, though you are going to have to be careful with 3's Roll ( must move before 4).
If you do not want to bump with 5, you must use a Straight Aileron and then a Curve (and not the other way around). 5 also has the opportunity to Barrel Roll out. A 3 Curve should put Striker 5 loosely in line with Striker 2. 2 Curve should clear, just, but puts 5 in an awkward position if you want to try to do the same move as 2.... don't particularly recommend it.

If anything moves towards you, they had better hope that they actually want to joust 5 Angry Strikers.

From this position, you can then sweep all your Strikers Forward, on Curved Trajectories to keep options open, or Cluster Up in that gap between Debris (WARNING will potentially make your next turn harder if there is an obstacle in the middle of the board) or Reform into a Gunline on that Side Edge (1, 2, 5 all Aileron Forward, Hard Turn 1 into the board.... Barrel Roll as required to Spread).

There is a downside to this:
If the Opponent wants to Fake Joust, particularly like that menace Boba Fett (Rear Arc makes this so much easier) or 5 A Wings, there is a moderate chance that if you rush directly up the board that you will be Arc Dodged if that section of the board is not covered off (if 3 and 4 did not Barrel Roll towards the middle of the board).... and it is Hard to get a proper coverage of Strikers there. If you have something that wants to rush in and block, such as 5 A Wings, Jump Masters or more Strikers, you are equally predictable. There are a few ways around that, such as 2 Aileron towards the Side Edge and Hard Turning in, 3 and 4 can Aileron to the side edge and Hard Turn up the board, but you can still be fairly vulnerable in those positions.

OK, so that is if you want to move up the board.... what if you want to move across, either as a Bug Out or as a "Surprise, you didn't think I was going that Direction with All Of Them"? Again, a 1 Straight Aileron followed by 1 Hard is a trivial version, and not that fast.... so let's have a look at some other options:

Again, we see why you need obstacles that open a corner for you.
Looking solely at Striker 2, you can see the array of options. If Striker 2's midline is R1 or Less from the edge, you can see that you dodge any obstacle that is correctly placed in that corner. If, however, you need to move around down your board edge, you can clearly see that both Striker 1 and 2 will clear an appropriately placed Obstacle with ease (Barrel Roll to your board edge for more space). Striker 2 should be able to successfully clear any such obstacle next turn with a Straight Aileron followed by almost anything.
Again, it is a relatively trivial matter to reform into a potential Gunline or Split up your forces.

Speaking of....
Here is one version of splitting up from the start:

It's a bit messy with all of those templates, but basically Striker 1 is doing its own thing up the side, whilst the rest get Angry on your edge. This give Striker 1 as a sort of Flanker if the opponent rushes up the opposite edge. The others still have their options open, can also threaten the middle of the board or continue going up your edge. No Striker is ever far away from another, and you have lots of overlapping arcs.
You probably don't do this if there is an ace/block that is potentially going to threaten Striker 1. This is more for using if the opponent is on the other side of the board.

Or, how about this one:

Remember the other day when I said that Striker 2 and/or 3 can Aileron to the edge and Hard Turn in without bumping their neighbour?
This is that.
On your edge, you can see that Striker 4 outpaces Striker 3 if it does a Straight Aileron followed by a Soft Turn that is one speed faster than the Hard Turn of Striker 3.
As you can see with Striker 1 and 2 up the side edge, a 3 Curve by Striker 1 will allow it to do a Barrel Roll towards the board edge. This opens a wealth of options for keeping a broader net and to eliminate flanking possibilities by the opponent.
Note, that if you do this together with both sets of Strikers (i.e. they go up their own edges) you have now got two teams of flankers. A pro and a con - the pro being that it is now much harder to predict where you are going to be, the con being that you now have more opportunities/risk to isolate the groups.
Isolated Strikers are Sad Strikers.

But what about Striker 5?
Well... I would normally advocate a 1 Straight move dialed in so that you can figure out what you want later (even more useful if that ship is Duchess).... but here are some alternatives for when you really want to move:

Here, we can see the versatility of Striker 5.
With an obstacle positioned correctly, any of your fast moves will be able to put you in a position that allows you to be flexible on turn 2.
Barrel Roll in either direction for fun.

So what happens if you want to bend a little more?
Here are your Curved Aileron Options:

Obviously, you probably shouldn't try to curve Aileron in the same direction that you are turning or you're gonna have a bad time.... but, keeping in mind the options for the straight aileron, your curved aileron allows you to get around obstacles quite cleanly and to alter which force is your main force. Added bonus of the curve-recurve is that your next Aileron move up an edge will never hit an obstacle.
The Curve-Recurve up the Side edge should put you in a formation with Strikers 1 and 2 if they do a 1 Straight Aileron followed by a 3 Curve. Similarly with Strikers 3 and 4.
When compared to the previous Lone Striker above (where it was Striker 1 that was the lone striker), I prefer this version as this is usually my weakest striker (a non-Hull Upgrade Ruthless when running a Striker or two with Intimidation) or Duchess.

*****

Do I have a favourite movement/opening? Not really, though if I move the Strikers up edges I have a tendency to make the Strikers on the edges move one speed faster than their neighbour on the inside because I feel that it allows for more interesting Net/Gunline/Sweep options a little later on (though has the risk of spreading too far and/or making obstacles more of a factor than they need to be, and can force you in to odd positions).

*****

Hopefully, these visualisations help with showing you what the first turn of the Striker Corner Formation can do for you.

19 hours ago, Vespid1311 said:

If you have an Intimidator that connects and 4 Ruthless ships, Boba dies in one turn more than half of the time if all of your shots are on target and at least two of your Ruthless Ships are at Range One, even with Maul backing him up.

True, but with Slave 1 remember that Boba can 'flip' the direction of a bank or turn, and is just as happy firing with tail guns as forward guns. Blocking him can be hard, and he's likely to have his eye on the Intimidate ships.

5 hours ago, Vespid1311 said:

I was going to start posting an obstacle article

...And it's really good. Thanks!

I agree the corner formation is good, and a generic 3-and-3 rock near the corner you plan to deploy in gives you free space to go whichever way you want.

Putting an obstacle mid-the other side is a nice one, as opponents tend to set up in the far corner, and so limiting their ability to 'turn in' is always nice. The third obstacle....basically you're placing that either last or second-to-last you you need to account for where your opponent has already placed 2, so it's very much make-it-up-on-the-fly; you can't plan what space might be left once four obstacles are down. Put it somewhere as inconvenient as possible for the opponent but your first priority is avoiding too tight a cluster of obstacles because strikers like space .

5 hours ago, Vespid1311 said:

I might be coming around to "an Open Field is a Good Field", but I have some doubts - Genuine Swarms Love an open field, and Strikers may not enjoy them having an open field. Open Fields provide Aces, particularly Multi-reposition ones, with ample areas to bug out/come in. However, an Open Field means that it is fairly easy to collapse a Spread Striker Swarm into a small area and/or create Large Arc Coverage to trap the aces into taking more shots than they are comfortable with.

Agreed. But an 'open field' for a Striker - giving multiple choices of paths - is a lot less of a demanding requirement than an open field that allows, say, a 3x2 block of TIE fighters to fly through it!

5 hours ago, Vespid1311 said:

I have maybe 40-50 games with a full Striker or Striker/Reaper swarm in 2.0 (about 30 prior to July last year, 5-10 just before the most recent points change and 5-10 since).
I still don't consider myself an expert on them.
It is Hard Work and you need to get repetitions in constantly. Despite my experience with them early last year, I am still shaking rust off. Multi-move ships are Hard. Multi-Move Ships for more than two games in a row is a Brain Draining Experience, even if you have had the practice.

Agreed. I am far from expert myself. (and despite this find myself looking at the even more insane to fly Fireball and thinking "I wonder how a swarm would play...") and a lot of my recent games have been with Nantex, as well, which fly completely differently, further leaving my eye off.

I don't get nearly as many games as I'd like but despite everything aesthetically and game-play wise the TIE/sk is my favourite ship in the game.

4-2 in the UK System open for me. I flew 2 Reapers with 2 Strikers.

One loss was due to choosing a 2-straight rather than a 3-straight on the last turn. I was on the verge of greatness...

On 2/11/2020 at 6:43 AM, Vespid1311 said:

I'm interested in how you defeated this the first time around. In the past, I have lost Hard to something similar by trying a Range 3 engagement and getting utterly wiped due to attrition (to be fair, it was a Wedge/Dutch Torpedoes version, and I did not have Hull Upgrade on)... and I don't know what to do to improve my chances, except Don't Be At R2 Initially, and Swoop and Block. I think that it is a good list.

I haven't played a Luke with torpedoes. I imagine that would make the difference. I won by trading pot shots at R3. 5 hull gives you a lot of mileage! The next turn generally is a slugger at R1 after taking the damaged one in for blocking and then Ruthlessing for Luke. It was clean up from there. My opponent at the SOS had his range control nailed though. Definitely a top list with a quality player.

@Magnus Grendel Appreciate the feedback on the matches! I agree - Boba is a real challenge for strikers. Heck, he's a challenge for most Hyper lists!

@Vespid1311 That is an amazingly useful breakdown. In fact, I'm printing that out now so that in 8 months or so when I can finally get out for another tournament I can reference it quickly. That's absolute gold.

16 hours ago, Rossetti1828 said:

4-2 in the UK System open for me. I flew 2 Reapers with 2 Strikers.

One loss was due to choosing a 2-straight rather than a 3-straight on the last turn. I was on the verge of greatness...

Congrats! That's a great record!

As an aside, I think a reaper/striker pilot that could Ailerons at speed-2 would be really interesting. Maybe not as useful as Duchess, but it would really be able to move around the table

7 hours ago, Parakitor said:

Congrats! That's a great record!

As an aside, I think a reaper/striker pilot that could Ailerons at speed-2 would be really interesting. Maybe not as useful as Duchess, but it would really be able to move around the table

Hey, thanks. The Strikers were Black Squadrons with Outmaneuver, and were absolute gold all day. Most people went for the Reapers first.

Speed 2 ailerons would mean being able to aileron past small/medium bases easily, would certainly be interesting, and even more unpredictable perhaps, but probably require even more forward-planning than usual?

Had couple more games with the Hull(2x Intimidation 2xRuthless) + Ruthless group.

One win, one loss, four learning points/questions

WIN - 5 X.

5 XWings seem like a daunting task, until you find out that even at R2 with everything you should wipe out one XWing a turn (which I more-or-less did). Range Control and obstacle management is key here - if they run through the middle of the obstacles, you should be able to move in such a manner that they do not get a lot of/good shots on a single Striker (you otherwise lose a Striker in return, then you are playing a game of dice attrition variance), and your mobility should leave you with enough options to avoid/make the bumps as necessary and to avoid having Sloops/K Turns blocked.

However ....

Ruthless question/theory time
A Situation cropped up whereby I had several ships, one of which was on 2 Hull, within R1 of my intended target.... 5 Strikers alive, 3 capable of taking shots (1 R2, 2 R1) on the intended target, Intimidation active. Safe assumption to make that you will be getting potential Ruthless Triggers on all shots.
QUESTION ONE - Do you:
- Spread the Damage Around to multiple ships, so as to potentially keep your wounded ship alive (forcing the opponent to attack a ship on 1 health at least once, probably with an R3 shot, sparing your other ships shots), given that the attacks incoming to the non-damaged ship would be 2 shots at R2 and 1 at R3, OR
- Load up the Wounded one (it will probably die anyway, may as well keep the other ships on full health to potentially better survive the other attack)?

QUESTION TWO - Assume all ships have a second possible target at R2.
Which order do you take your shots? Assume 1 Defense, Focused 6 Health defender, your R2 ship is the only ship that is not focused:
- R2, R1, R1
- R1, R2, R1
- R1, R1, R2

MY ANSWERS

QUESTION ONE - Ruthless: Spread or Soak?
I chose to partially spread my Ruthless around.... I gave one ship 2 Ruthless Soaks and left the previously damaged one with one hull remaining (accepting that I am probably losing that ship anyway, but thinking that 3 Hull vs Two Shots was enough).
This turned out to be an unbrilliant decision.... I lost two ships that turn due to three focused attacks against unfocused Strikers. Obviously, the long range XWing took a shot at the nearly eliminated Striker and got it. The other two XWings took focused shot on my three-hull Striker and popped it too... I stand a better chance when taking 3 mid-range shots with 5 Hull than I do taking 2 mid-range shots with only 3 Hull. In fact, if I spread Ruthless to 3 ships, that offers me the best potential for survival that turn (from 70% chance of kill with 2 Shots on 3 Hull, to 45% with 3 Shots vs 5 Hull, to less than 40% in the fully spread scenario).
It might pay off to destroy one yourself and reduce the risk of losing two.

QUESTION TWO - What Firing Order against a 1 Agility, Focused 6 Health Ship?
I am a believer in shooting your weakest shots first so as to draw tokens out before your power punches hit... so I went R2-R1-R1.
Turns out that this is wrong.... the Most Wrong.
The Correct Answer is R1-R1-R2.
Reasoning: Without Focus on the R2 ship, even with Ruthless you are unlikely to guarantee 6 damage goes through in 2 Shots against that target.... and that goes more if you shoot with the 3 Dice Ruthless-no-focus first. You are more likely to lose one of your likely 2 hits from that gun, making it nearly impossible for the R1 Focus Ruthless to kill it (you need criticals in your favour).
However, shooting both R1s at the target first, I am rolling 7-8 Hits 85% of the time and I wipe that target about 80% of the time, freeing up a shot to go elsewhere.
Sometimes going against your regular shooting order is beneficial... particularly with Focus Ruthless into a 1 agility ship.

These two decisions were on the same turn.
I went from comfortably ahead to Knife Edge Close. I won with one Striker at Half remaining, instead of a snowballing-victory.
Be Careful out there, Mind Your Decisions.

LOSS - Boba and Koshka, both loaded with Proton Bombs and various shenanigans (failed to pop Koshka, Boba basically unscathed, got wiped in return).
Boba is Hard.
Two sets of Proton Droppers is Hard.
Arguably-Poor Decisions makes life hard.

QUESTION THREE
I was given Player One and decided to Corner Box.
The Setup was remarkably similar to my previous post:

That Mid-Right Obstacle was closer to R2 of the edge and R1 of the corner obstacle though (placed by opponent, to prevent some Swarm flexibility I presume). There is a Centre obstacle, and a second R2-3 obstacle in my opposite corner.
My opponent decides that a Joust favours him. Koshka points up the side edge facing my direction and Boba is lined up to get a good run through the obstacles if necessary or to make turns if required.
What should I do to approach/run away?

Firesprays are good at chasing targets outside of their current Range Bands... so I feel that spending a turn or two to realign horizontally across my board edge might be a mistake (even if they have to run through obstacles to get to me).
However, I also feel that moving towards them full throttle is also a mistake if they want to close fast. They are likely to get a turn of shooting without my full brace against them.

Apart from probably choosing the wrong set up (I think I maybe want to spread in the middle and work it out from there), I chose a slow approach, move towards Koshka as I showed in my previous post:

I still don't know if that is a good decision given the setup (Koshka directly ahead, Boba mid board and closing).
I chose slow to ensure that a 4 Forward/3 Bank + Boost from Koshka and/or Boba was not a good option, but tempting.

I think that I should be moving faster. I want to be blocking, and it is unlikely that I lose a ship on entry.

As it stood, he also chose slow movement, meaning that there was little chance to block Koshka on entry. I got an average round of shooting out of it and Proton Bombs next turn (Koshka's back was partially to me). Meanwhile, that central Right obstacle meant that I would have a hard time if I risked sweeping across it.
Position-wise, it was a disaster.
I did manage to block Koshka next turn by sweeping an Intimidator over the top of Koshka and blocking the 1 Speed moves... but because of the obstacle, the Proton Bomb and looming Boba Threat, I did not get my guns on target and Kohska left without further damage. From there, they proceeded to wipe a Striker a turn and I was unable to finish off Koshka (turns out Hull Upgrade is pretty good there too).

Would be interesting to see a rematch where I choose Aggression/run away to begin with.... but I have doubts about this matchup/similar match ups with this setup.
Looking to test Spread Swarms in a future match against this sort of list.