For example large ships hanging around an Interdictor.

Get a ship to come out and isolate it?

Use objectives?

All of the Above, Plus, "Bomb the Ever-living Crap out of it."

You're going to need to be more specific. Do you mean something like my dreadnought list, that will win the objective and turtle in the corner? A double Home One list with Ackbar that will rake the board? Generally speaking those lists are vulnerable to high numbers of activations, having their objectives taken away, and being jumped by one of the anti-castles, Demolisher BT Avenger, and Norra Wexley.

1 minute ago, Drasnighta said:

All of the Above, Plus, "Bomb the Ever-living Crap out of it."

Dras is correct, they usually sacrifice their CAP to get truly powerful ships, so a dedicated bomber wing, Rebel or Imperial, should be able to punch through. To a lesser extent than I think many believe, an Imperial aces list with Sloane will do well at stripping the tokens battleships rely on, you just need something that follow the fighters for an actual kill.

With Interdictor tank builds (meaning they brought projection experts out to play), you're almost always better off going after the Interdictor. If you go after anything else, then you are effectively dealing with two ships worth of repairs on a single ship.

1 minute ago, Truthiness said:

With Interdictor tank builds (meaning they brought projection experts out to play), you're almost always better off going after the Interdictor. If you go after anything else, then you are effectively dealing with two ships worth of repairs on a single ship.

This, Interdictors are very fragile, high hull and engineering notwithstanding. Either don't fight it at the close range that Targeting Scramblers needs, or hit it more than once with close range barrages to force it to burn TS to little avail.

I can confirm the above. My 3-Interdoctor castle build is ruined by long and medium range mass attacks and has a difficult time with bombers as well.

It is also terrible at being 1st player. So if you outbid a castle list take 2nd player and force it to move or lose.

Against an Interdictor build you give them 1st player and play keep away. Either you go 6 rounds with minimal shooting and you win on points or they go after you and risk the 'Dictor falling behind because it's so slow.

Edit: You can make it even worse for them by bringing Strategic objectives and bury them points wise - forcing their hand to come after you and kill something even more.

You need something better than 'give them first player and run'. That doesn't really give you a good MOV, does it?

3 minutes ago, Green Knight said:

You need something better than 'give them first player and run'. That doesn't really give you a good MOV, does it?

Deploy your largest ship first bang in the middle of the table.

Its a taunt, they wont be able to resist.

From my experience, the most generic advice I can give against heavier more defensive fleets is to focus on the flanks. Typically a big heavy fleet wants you to come at it fleet-to-fleet in a head-on joust that you will inevitably lose because your ships aren't monstrous hull beasts. If you're able to out-deploy and/or outmaneuver the enemy fleet, you can usually concentrate your force against one of the heavier ships on the flank while the other heavier ships struggle to line up their best arcs. Once that ship is destroyed, you need to decide if you've got the board state to move on to the next target further in or if it's time to bug out.

I found the quasar particularly weak against long range attacks as it has no evade so I like to take some long range hitters. It's simple and effective.

1 hour ago, Ginkapo said:

Deploy your largest ship first bang in the middle of the table.

Its a taunt, they wont be able to resist.

This. It's less about running and more about changing the narrative of the match. He's showing up expecting to fortress, you're telling him, "no, come at me bro." He can come after you and mess up his carefully orchestrated formation or he can lose. Yeah, it's a technical loss, but people rarely think through that far and immediately drop their plans even when it puts their fleet at a disadvantage.

3 hours ago, Green Knight said:

You need something better than 'give them first player and run'. That doesn't really give you a good MOV, does it?

90% of the games we play are win/loss (like in CC). So a MOV of 1 is enough to take home the trophy.

One other point against a castle list that does not want to come out and play probably won't have a high bid go second and force them to play your missions. If they don't you win as second player.

On 5 August 2017 at 3:41 AM, Ginkapo said:

Deploy your largest ship first bang in the middle of the table.

Its a taunt, they wont be able to resist.

Don't normally say this but 100% agree- if my opponent builds a tanky build drop the 'biggest' threat in the middle of the table and aim to be highly manouverable with it. If I deploy my mc80H1 in the middle of the board, round 1 it's going at speed one with a manouver dial to react to however the enemy has placed

Mythic's Rieekan aces also counts as a fortress build with massive fighters centered around Yavaris and some activation padding. I've learned (From mythics) the best way to beat it is to out-bid it, force it to go second and make it move across the board. Good fortress builds aren't fast and can't move their 'fortress' fast enough across the board for them to beat you at it.

So take a bigger bid, go second, and pack your second objectives with ways to punish ships or camp objectives to force them to move to you. And if your bid is deep enough and there's something like Demolisher on the table, you have the choice to go first when playing against it.

Yea i second the go second and force the objective game.

Also depending on how they deploy i see either Imperials Turtle in a corner like a snake ready to strike, or a i see rebels try and conga line to keep the fortress mobile.

against the rebel (or any) conga line, get in front of it, ram it. Worst case you just split the fortress and force your opponent to unpack unexpectedly. Best case, the conga/speed lines up perfectly, and they start ramming themselves while you open up on them.

The imperial one... go around. If you see them turtle on a corner, deploy in a way you can get into the distance 5 area on the flanks of the table and come up on their sides/behind them. I tried the imperial turtle formation and savvy opponents got behind me and pushed my poo in.

Even if there is a dictor token there for speed0, deploy in it and que up 2 navigates to get into position.

squadrons also help against imperials as they typically turtle with bigger ships that don't afford many squadrons.

There are a few options that I think about when I think of "Fortress" lists, but the one that probably is the most infamous is the 3+2 Rieekan Aces list. It can/would take second player and sit still in a corner, feeding itself with token objectives or other "come and stop me" objectives.

There are two ways to beat these lists.

The first way is to take second player, and force them to play your own "come at me" objective. If they can't, you'll win. An objective like Sensor Net might make them incapable of getting across the board or moving tokens fast enough to catch up, and they'll be drawn out of position.

The second is to find a way to cleanly alpha-strike the portion of the fleet responsible for keeping the fleet acting without moving. For example, swooping in to maximum lethality range and deleting their most important carrier or defensive measure ship. Now that they cannot hide a commander on a back line carrier, this is much easier to do. If you can destroy whichever part of the enemy fleet is currently causing the fortress effect, the rest of it will have to break apart in order to escape with minimal damage. This will allow you to chase down fleeing ships and squadrons to trade back even with any ships or squads you may have lost.

This specific situation is what things like triple tap Demo, MC30T, and BTvenger are for. Identify the keystone ship that makes the fortress work, kill it dead, and go from there.

Poop in their car.

Inside job!

Use your own fortress list.