We don't know how the MC75 is but people is talking about 100+ bid when you may reach 270 easily with one medium and little ship and 6 squadrons. And considering the MC75 around the cheapest big ships you will reach 370 (with profundity) quite easy.

If the MC75 is able to equip RLB is even easier.

Galant Haven + Garel's honour + Profundity + 6+ bwings through RLB looks fun and strong. Add deployment advantage thanks to the new stuff.

The problem could be the activation but

1. It seems it is not all high activation anymore

2. What relevance could activation number has when you are deploying ENGAGED and better positioned.

I won't guess its real power yet but as a tactic it is more real than most of people thinks.

50 minutes ago, geek19 said:

Says you. Maybe the profundity is so good that you don't necessarily need other ships

Oh yeah? is it going to be 200 points base cost?

34 minutes ago, ovinomanc3r said:

We don't know how the MC75 is but people is talking about 100+ bid when you may reach 270 easily with one medium and little ship and 6 squadrons.

Hello my name is people. Im trying my best to fulfill your request with the single medium ship rebel has and the most expensive small ship rebel has. Absurdly buffing them with the most expensive equipment and 2 squadrons, since thats the maximun you can carry through rlb at this point. Numbers are on 210 point, Raddus included.

5 minutes ago, xerpo said:

Hello my name is people. Im trying my best to fulfill your request with the single medium ship rebel has and the most expensive small ship rebel has. Absurdly buffing them with the most expensive equipment and 2 squadrons, since thats the maximun you can carry through rlb at this point. Numbers are on 210 point, Raddus included.

Fleet 1390 (265/400)
===================
Assault Frigate Mk.II B (72 + 62)
+ Raddus (26)
+ Flight Commander (3)
+ Flight Controllers (6)
+ Rapid Launch Bays (6)
+ Electronic Countermeasures (7)
+ XI7 Turbolasers (6)
+ Gallant Haven (8)
Hammerhead Torpedo Corvette (36 + 11)
+ Ordnance Experts (4)
+ External Racks (3)
+ Garel's Honor (4)
6 x B-wing Squadron (14)

If MC75 Profundity allows RLB you can add that ship + 7 + 6 + as many bs as squadron value. And even make the Mark lighter.

The problem won't be the points. The problem will be how to guarantee the HA which necessarily drop the ships to two as long as we don't have a way yet and it would never works as Raddus must be in play. But talking about the Raddus Bomb concept is more than plausible.

46 minutes ago, xerpo said:

Oh yeah? is it going to be 200 points base cost?

No one knows. Build your lists and ships better so that way you can fit in whatever you want to in order to get a 3/4 ship Raddus fleet to work for you. Second place at Gen Con WAS 2 ISDs, you know

39 minutes ago, geek19 said:

Second place at Gen Con WAS 2 ISDs, you know

Suported on 1/3 of squadrons, you dont have enough RLB storage as far as we know to host 134 points of squadrons unless you include really stupid things like only named expensive squadrons to reach that 134 with a non-cost efficient composition.

1 hour ago, ovinomanc3r said:

6 x B-wing Squadron (14)

you cant have 6, just 3 in that example.

Im saying that the debate is not about what silly thing you can actually do or not, is about the thing discussed here is leading to a cathastrophical dead end in competitive environments. Meanwhile in the chimaera thread they are comming up with actual good and competitive ideas over the new cards and Thrawn himself.

40 minutes ago, xerpo said:

Suported on 1/3 of squadrons, you dont have enough RLB storage as far as we know to host 134 points of squadrons unless you include really stupid things like only named expensive squadrons to reach that 134 with a non-cost efficient composition.

you cant have 6, just 3 in that example.

3 inside the Mark. 3 "inside" hyperspace assault objective.

1 hour ago, xerpo said:

Im saying that the debate is not about what silly thing you can actually do or not, is about the thing discussed here is leading to a cathastrophical dead end in competitive environments. Meanwhile in the chimaera thread they are comming up with actual good and competitive ideas over the new cards and Thrawn himself.

People discussed some rules things related with that.

If you ask for a useful use of Raddus I would say just this:

Is hyperspace assault a bad objective?

If you think is not then Raddus is even better cause you can do the dame thing with a big ship.

A distance 1 limitation? It is the same that we have with hyperspace assault and those tokens move more slowly than your ship (being more predictable) and can be moved by strategic.

No first activation of the round? It is the same cause with HA you are second player.

I cannot take the squadron thing limitation too seriously cause seems a corner case to me. And in order to be exploited by the opponent he must keep his squadrons close to his ship so not so bad.

So at the end he is as good or better than the hyperspace assault what was never a bad objective. There are some Raddus builds in the fleet building subforum. I didn't move into them but exist.

In order to see how good could be Raddus we just need to answer how good could be to deploy a ship later in the game?

I think it could be really good. I already said that: I am not sure if 26 is the right cost (we actually don't know if that will be his final cost) but if there is a game changer admiral he is. The impact that a big ships, completely fresh, deploying in a key position could have late in the game is huge.

A cr90 with ET is able to deploy a MC80 that also places 4 squadron at the same time wherever you wish in practice. And you don't have to think on the token-ship range. You are gaining a distance 1 + deployed ship size + deployed ship range.

Yes, he is definitely a "play style dependant" commander. I won't discuss that.

13 hours ago, Admiral Theia said:

Not exactly what they were saying (and I think you know that). They specifically said "engagement opportunity". If you have ships on the board, no matter where you put them, I still have an opportunity to get to you and hurt you. If you're off the table completely then I don't have that opportunity.

This is splitting hairs. Opportunity in theory does not mean opportunity in practice. I've deployed diagonally opposite a VSD fleet, shut my engines off, and taken my 6-5 win to secure a First Place finish at a Store Championship, because the VSD fleet simply wasn't fast enough to get to me in 6 Rounds. And the entire scoring system of the game is set up to encourage non-engagement in bad match-ups (because a 5pt loss > 1pt loss). I've personally played five tournament games of Armada where no dice were rolled. So I don't see how people can claim that the designers explicitly require engagement opportunity. How is someone picking Hyperspace Assault and letting me put my entire Raddus fleet off board any different from someone picking Solar Cornoa and then letting me deploy my entire fleet as far away from them as possible, perhaps even outside of reachable-in-6-Rounds range.

There was a local guy here who used to fly like an 80pt fleet (just a CR90, kitted out to run away) and he'd take Second Player with objectives that didn't present bonus points. Then he'd spend 6 Rounds simply avoiding the opposing fleet and take his 6-5 victory. You want to talk about some salt...

5 hours ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

This is splitting hairs. Opportunity in theory does not mean opportunity in practice. I've deployed diagonally opposite a VSD fleet, shut my engines off, and taken my 6-5 win to secure a First Place finish at a Store Championship, because the VSD fleet simply wasn't fast enough to get to me in 6 Rounds. And the entire scoring system of the game is set up to encourage non-engagement in bad match-ups (because a 5pt loss > 1pt loss). I've personally played five tournament games of Armada where no dice were rolled. So I don't see how people can claim that the designers explicitly require engagement opportunity. How is someone picking Hyperspace Assault and letting me put my entire Raddus fleet off board any different from someone picking Solar Cornoa and then letting me deploy my entire fleet as far away from them as possible, perhaps even outside of reachable-in-6-Rounds range.

There was a local guy here who used to fly like an 80pt fleet (just a CR90, kitted out to run away) and he'd take Second Player with objectives that didn't present bonus points. Then he'd spend 6 Rounds simply avoiding the opposing fleet and take his 6-5 victory. You want to talk about some salt...

That's their mistake in giving you that option, a tactical error for them to even deploy in a way that even ALLOWS you to fully avoid engagement. If you're not deploying anything it's you taking the option completely away from them, whereas the other way they actually are the ones who messed up. See the difference? That's why the term opportunity matters in my first reply, and is not, in fact, splitting hairs.

On 8/31/2017 at 8:18 PM, Admiral Theia said:

That's their mistake in giving you that option, a tactical error for them to even deploy in a way that even ALLOWS you to fully avoid engagement. If you're not deploying anything it's you taking the option completely away from them, whereas the other way they actually are the ones who messed up. See the difference? That's why the term opportunity matters in my first reply, and is not, in fact, splitting hairs.

I don't understand the difference, since they also had the option to not pick Hyperspace Assault? Seems analogous to me, in that your opponent had options in both cases to prevent a total non-engagement. (PS: some fleets, against the single CR90 runaway list, do not have an option to catch and kill the CR90 in 6 Rounds, regardless of how they deploy, namely a quad VSD fleet, for instance).

29 minutes ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

I don't understand the difference, since they also had the option to not pick Hyperspace Assault? Seems analogous to me, in that your opponent had options in both cases to prevent a total non-engagement. (PS: some fleets, against the single CR90 runaway list, do not have an option to catch and kill the CR90 in 6 Rounds, regardless of how they deploy, namely a quad VSD fleet, for instance).

Yes and no. Sure they could NOT pick it, but in the case of the deployment fiasco, they had to either deploy first and turtle up in one corner, which means they've read the "terrain" wrong (the game and the tournament) and let you do it, or they deployed second and deployed too far away to engage when they are the ones who need to engage. Either way it is strictly because of their choices with their fleets, not built into the setup for the game. However, if you bring a fleet that can actually fully avoid deploying then they had no choice. Yes, they picked that objective (i.e. HA), but you still brought it with the specific intent of denying game turns and time to your opponents if you were lucky enough to play it (and maybe it's the best choice of the three, a small loss or win rather than getting trashed by picking one of your other objectives). The difference is not huge, but it is far from negligible too.

I'm amazed this topic has gotten to 12 pages w/out most of the ship/cards being revealed in relation to it.

3 hours ago, dominosfleet said:

I'm amazed this topic has gotten to 12 pages w/out most of the ship/cards being revealed in relation to it.

That is pretty wild.

6 hours ago, dominosfleet said:

I'm amazed this topic has gotten to 12 pages w/out most of the ship/cards being revealed in relation to it.

This is a reflection of the general feeling in the rebel community right now.

If we could just get off the statistically unlikely scenario of somebody looking a Russian Doll Raddus build and going "Yes. I will pick Hyperspace Assault here. This is a good idea." and onto more realistic Raddus build possibilities?

My current theory craft is that you put Raddus on the MC-75, and you have a relatively punchy Liberty MC80 build in reserve. Now all you need is a mailman. To my mind you have two choices here:

1: The Vette.

With Engine Techs is the fastest possible option, but it's not very punchy (comparatively speaking) and it can disintigrate under concentrated fire, although with your speed there's not going to be a lot of stuff that's going to get a chance.

2: The MC30

MUCH more dangerous than the Vette, and the titles give it some good survivability. However it's not as agile and you'll probably overshoot next turn.

So the theory is: The Postman barrels down upon the Flagship, or the biggest meanest ship in his fleet, delivers a locked and loaded Liberty MC80 Star Cruiser at equal speed up it's **** and if nothing else FORCES that ship to be the first activation for the player that turn. Except now there's a very big, very dangerous ship in an awkward angle that's going to dictate his flow of the game.

You could run double Postman builds, but how few Squadrons are you really comfortable with? In theory you could use a Transport as the delivery vector but that means running your Transports INTO fire, which is a bad idea, Scatter defence token or no. It could work if you field 3 or 4 of them with no upgrades though. Sort of like Fireships.

But I think the key salient point is to use Raddus to deliver something unpleasant in a place of maximum discomfort to your opponent, and to do that you need some kind of fast delivery vehicle because the quicker you can get The Package onto the board, the more time it's got to earn it's points back.

As for Profundity? Maybe DON'T use it alongside Raddus? But pop Doddonna's Pride with Engine Techs inside at then deploy it in such a way around turn 3 or 4 when it will block an opponents ship's movement, then you try to Doddona's Pride a Face-Up past the shields, and then Engine Tech double ram them for 3 cards past shields, with potentially another one coming unless they had a Nav command dialled in by luck.

Although obviously, under this tactic you WOULDN'T be transferring the Admiral into the Corvette. But the MC-75 looks pretty tanky, with good shields and the most hull of any rebel ship (I'm also betting on double Braces - 1 Redirect - 1 Contain for it's defence tokens) so if he's not safe there, he isn't going to be safe anywhere.

So MC75, MC80L and MC30 in one fleet. Starting to sound like a lot of points. Add Profundity and another small command 1 ship?

Interesting idea, but not sure how the points add up.

2 minutes ago, Green Knight said:

So MC75, MC80L and MC30 in one fleet. Starting to sound like a lot of points. Add Profundity and another small command 1 ship?

Interesting idea, but not sure how the points add up.

No. DONT add Profundity and another small ship. That is a seperate build idea on how to use profundity.

Basically, you do 75-80L-30 and you should have around 140+ points to spend on upgrades, Transports and Squadrons. I've been using the MC80H Command Cruiser as a standin for listbuilders and there's no way the 75 should cost as much as that ship does. So you have 3 ships, but 2 (so far) on the board to begin with. Maybe toss in Leia in a Comms Transport since that's always a good build and then get a decent 60-70 point Squadron Build to round things off.

Isnt it just.

CRambo90. Cr90B with Engine Techs and Reinforced Blast Doors.

Raddus on something else.

Liberty with gunny teams coming in hit whilst twatting small ships all over the ship to give you activation superiority.

So why do we need the MC75? Looks to me like you have around 210pts for the rest of your fleet including a flagship. The only caveat being that this 210pt fleet needs to be happy on its own for the first two turns.

15 minutes ago, Ginkapo said:

So why do we need the MC75? Looks to me like you have around 210pts for the rest of your fleet including a flagship. The only caveat being that this 210pt fleet needs to be happy on its own for the first two turns.

Really, you don't. You could probably get away with an Assault Frigate Mk2. To be honest it's gonna come down to how expensive it is.

I was thinking along the same lines, maybe something like this:

Faction: Rebel Alliance
Points: 275/400

Commander: Admiral Raddus

MC80 Star Cruiser (96 points)
- Mon Karren ( 8 points)
- Gunnery Team ( 7 points)
- Dual Turbolaser Turrets ( 5 points)
- SW 7 Ion Batteries ( 5 points)
= 121 total ship cost

CR90 Corvette B (39 points)
- Admiral Raddus ( 26 points)
- Engine Techs ( 8 points)
- SW 7 Ion Batteries ( 5 points)
= 78 total ship cost

GR-75 Medium Transports (18 points)
- Quantum Storm ( 1 points)
- Slicer Tools ( 7 points)
= 26 total ship cost

1 Shara Bey ( 17 points)
3 A-Wing Squadrons ( 33 points)

That leaves 125 points for the MC75 (which would be the real flagship) plus upgrades/bid. You could drop Slicers if necessary.

You've got two possible delivery options (if only this was the Empire so you could call them Pizza Delivery Guys ) in case one gets blown up too early. The MC75, provided it's fast/manoeuvrable enough, queues up navs to block the escape route and catch what the Liberty can't. Not sure if this is competitive at all, but it definitely sounds like a whole truckload of fun.

Or you could go with just the Liberty and a bunch of corvettes.

I think if you want to have both Raddus and Profundity, it's probably best to downgrade the Raddus drop to something a bit cheaper than a Liberty. Admo seems like it'd fit the role.

1 hour ago, Mward1984 said:

The Postman

Now we are talking serious. Now that we know that with Raddus you will need to have always something on the table if you want to be competitive we can start talking about strategies.

with 2 ships off the table: Profundity and HH into it.

Single postman:
MC30 as a postman sounds good form me, althought its expensive to give room to the profundity and the HH. Plus squadrons.
Also, having a single postman makes you predictable because your opponent will know with relative accuracy where the rest of your ships are going to land, therefore have their ships properly faced to that single postman. So its a risky way to deliver it. Not to mention if you loose that postman the game is over for you.

Double postman:
This requires at least 4 ships in your composition 2 of them on the table. Ideally for me it would be an MC30 and a transport. You can spread more your squadrons during deployment and make it harder for your opponent to guess a landing zone for Profundity.

Squadrons:
As much as I like the idea of having all your fleet into RLB's waiting in hyperspace it does not seem like an actual strategy to me. So the squadron composition has to be fast enough to follow up the Postman and not to be dependant on the postman command orders. This is bassicaly rogues expensive squadrons such as YT2400 or named squadrons only. You can also make the postman be a Yavarais sorrounded by B's and escorts at slow speed. And use her delivery to cover the angles the enemy is approaching from, sort of a turtle strategy.


In the end, the whole strategy of Raddus lacks exactly what it intends to be. A surprise attack. Due mainly to own Raddus restrictions. The opponent can always react to what you deliver. Increase speed to avoid that ships that just came into play, as you cannot activate them first. My question here. If you lose the postman and the only ship you have in the table is the ship that just arrived with raddus... are you allowed to activate it since it would be the first (and last) activation for you this turn?

11 minutes ago, xerpo said:

Now we are talking serious. Now that we know that with Raddus you will need to have always something on the table if you want to be competitive we can start talking about strategies.

with 2 ships off the table: Profundity and HH into it.

Single postman:
MC30 as a postman sounds good form me, althought its expensive to give room to the profundity and the HH. Plus squadrons.
Also, having a single postman makes you predictable because your opponent will know with relative accuracy where the rest of your ships are going to land, therefore have their ships properly faced to that single postman. So its a risky way to deliver it. Not to mention if you loose that postman the game is over for you.

Double postman:
This requires at least 4 ships in your composition 2 of them on the table. Ideally for me it would be an MC30 and a transport. You can spread more your squadrons during deployment and make it harder for your opponent to guess a landing zone for Profundity.

Squadrons:
As much as I like the idea of having all your fleet into RLB's waiting in hyperspace it does not seem like an actual strategy to me. So the squadron composition has to be fast enough to follow up the Postman and not to be dependant on the postman command orders. This is bassicaly rogues expensive squadrons such as YT2400 or named squadrons only. You can also make the postman be a Yavarais sorrounded by B's and escorts at slow speed. And use her delivery to cover the angles the enemy is approaching from, sort of a turtle strategy.


In the end, the whole strategy of Raddus lacks exactly what it intends to be. A surprise attack. Due mainly to own Raddus restrictions. The opponent can always react to what you deliver. Increase speed to avoid that ships that just came into play, as you cannot activate them first. My question here. If you lose the postman and the only ship you have in the table is the ship that just arrived with raddus... are you allowed to activate it since it would be the first (and last) activation for you this turn?

The rule is not that it cannot be YOUR first activation, just that it cannot be THE first activation.

If you lost a ship that turn, then its cool to activate it, because clearly your enemy activated a ship before you.

The only potential wrinkle is if you lose it to Han Soli doing his shoot first thing... Then I figure there is an actual game breaking argument we have no rules precedent on...

I actually see this being way more viable in a mirror match. The number of Rebels ships with crap FRONT arcs means you can park a mailman MC30 near the conga line and drop a Liberty into the front arc of that Ackbar MC80a.

Of course, it'll be fun to jam Raddus in an MC80c into a position in front of the ISD to hold it in place. Then drop an APT/OE MC30 into a position on the ISD's side to double arc that ISD. MC80A/C can handle the front arc of a non-AvengerBT ISD for a turn or two.

42 minutes ago, Drasnighta said:

The only potential wrinkle is if you lose it to Han Soli doing his shoot first thing... Then I figure there is an actual game breaking argument we have no rules precedent on...

Hardly game-breaking:

1. Before ships activate, P1's Raddus brings the Drop next to the Postman.
2. Before ships activate, P2's Han Solo shoots first and kills the Postman*.
3. P1 activation begins. P1 must choose a ship to activate, but there is only the Drop to choose from.
4. P1 tries to activate the Drop, but cannot (this is absolute), so you don't. P1 activation 1 is over.
5. P2 activates a ship.
6. P1 activation 2 begins. Again P1 can only choose the Drop.
7. P1 activates the Drop, as Raddus' restriction no longer applies.

I can't imagine how any other ruling would fit RAW, except...

*: one could argue that Raddus' restriction doesn't apply at all, because for this situation to ever arise he must have been aboard the Postman, and therefore blown up along with it and no longer in play by step 3!