Once a blue moon I try and generate some discussion on something of a strategic bend. I like discussions because you get to see a wide variety of insights/problems.

Recently Rieekan aces and mass Sloane/Rhymer aces have been less popular, although, as we can see from US Nationals, still very effective. They aren't however the premier choice of efficiency and ease anymore however. This opens up the meta to a higher level of diversity, letting a lot of ship-heavy builds come out to play, as we've seen with the BTAvengers MSU and the Ackbar MC80s with squadron counts. There's also a few variants that have these large ships and medium sized/multirole squadron complement.

In heavy squadron builds, at least one Strategic squadron is generally considered a smart choice. We can also discuss the merits here of whether 2 or 3 Strat squads are worth it. At 3 you begin to have the "activate from anywhere" effect of Relay also kick in, though at a hefty cost of 45 points.

In heavy squadron builds, when should you consider 1, 2, and 3 Strategic squads?

How much do you plan to heavily depend on Strategic? Has it worked?

Light screen builds are also now viable, since its mostly banking on not meeting a Rieekan 5 ship 3 transport BBC Yavaris from **** build. 51-70points. I will also input from my experience that under 50 points, no matter what, tends to fare extremely poorly vs any build with 100+ squadrons. Yes, I've heard of people saying its worth it, but from my experience, a good player will simply down both Shara and Tycho or whatever you have within one turn, good dice rolls permitting. However, we now see an advent of medium squadron builds (yet another boon for diversity), instead of just light or 134 mass. These are like the BTAvenger and Ackbar lists with a squadron component as a second damage source. A light 50 ish squadron screen will do okay against something of that sort. You'll also find you can now use that light screen to hamper their strategic squadrons.

I prefer 70 ish for a light screen though. Its my trauma kicking in, but I do tend to like taking some black dice non-bombers, or Tie Defenders, Shara and Tycho + others, for a robust screen with some utility. I love also, at 70 points, taking one strategic squad! One Lambda! Sometimes two lambdas! The Valen Ciena + 2 Lambdas is really a thing of beauty. I love this little group. Adding 2 tie Ints or fighters rounds it out to a nice medium sized screen that deals very well with squadrons, but also let's you play Strategic in the case your opponent doesn't really take squadrons. Strategic squads also can force a heavy squad build to split its focus to downing your Strategic squads as opposed to alpha striking your ships. Also, I find that at 6/8 hp, the Strategic squads are just perfect for staying alive, and delaying, damage soaking to extend the life of my screen to 2-3 turns instead of 1.
They also generally make the game so much more fun! This is squadron play that has a secondary objective.

What do you all think? Is Valen Ciena 2 Lambdas good for a screen? Since only 2 squads can tie up bombers? How about Shara Tycho 2 VCX? Should you always add 2 tie fighters? 2 Awings? Have people gotten use out of adding 2 Zs?

Imo, Strategic is a wonderful game design that truly makes the squadron game more interesting at all levels, light and heavy. It makes it something more than a pure damage race, which is what the old style of squadrons used to be.

In light screen vs light screen, Strategic use really increases the fun of the game.

By the way, Valen is awesome. He negates counter if he has a buddy.

Agreed, Strategic has added a lot to the depth of the game, and has made objective play and second player extremely viable. We now see many strong lists fully comfortable with being second player.

Personally I think VCX's are better Strategic squadrons than Lambdas, simply because 8hp is great. They make a great tank while your ship based AA pecks away at the enemy squadrons. Add Toryn Farr for even more efficacy. That doesn't take into account the Relay factor, as its usefulness is contextual.

I would say that a light or light-med squadron element (including strategic) is viable as long as you have a plan on how to deal with heavy squads/bombers, whether it's ship based AA, speed, or kill everything first.

25 minutes ago, Maturin said:

Agreed, Strategic has added a lot to the depth of the game, and has made objective play and second player extremely viable. We now see many strong lists fully comfortable with being second player.

Personally I think VCX's are better Strategic squadrons than Lambdas, simply because 8hp is great. They make a great tank while your ship based AA pecks away at the enemy squadrons. Add Toryn Farr for even more efficacy. That doesn't take into account the Relay factor, as its usefulness is contextual.

I would say that a light or light-med squadron element (including strategic) is viable as long as you have a plan on how to deal with heavy squads/bombers, whether it's ship based AA, speed, or kill everything first.

How do you tend to plan to use your flak vs mass squadrons? Do you want to talk about deployment and movement?

How often do you find that speed or kill everything first works? I find that things are still usually quite resilient. A good squadron player will get his kicks in before things go down.

I tend to find that creating more control points (like objective tokens) and encouraging spreading forces causes more fun gameplay. The reduction of pure efficiency (which is what I complained about for squadrons) allows for these alternate play styles and decisions to be made and still affect the winning/losing of the game.

What other avenues of squadron play do you think FFG should pursue that are not based around killing things as fast as possible? (To this, even intel is in a sense, just an efficiency measure: let's you bomb with impuny. As opposed to strategic, which creates a whole other level of considerations for the squadron game.)

I run a rather odd Ackbar MC80A/MC80A/Transport build with just Tycho and Shara. Ive found there isn't a lot short of AvengerBT that worries me in a ship to ship fight. Even Yavaris builds (with an exception) don't worry me as Yavaris usually has to come within range of my guns to keep activating (and then dies). 2-3 VCxs allow it to stay safe and have the HP to live through flak.

The one type of build that screws it is 2nd player designed fleets that use strategic to just dominate objectives. It's not a good start when my opening is "I have first and My best option was starting 75 points down due to Intel Sweel and strategic."

So I'm now looking at shaving a few points to jam even a single VCX with Shara/Tycho to have a chance at defending against some objectives.

On a second note:

If I played more Imps, I would start my squad screens with a Lambda. Relay 2 and strategic is phenomenal.

I'm stuck on an Imperial squadron screen at 71 points.

Dengar, Howl, Cienna, Soontir... I call it the wambo jambo

I use a quasar to push them. FCs and boosted coms....

At total of 21 blue dice per alpha, all scatter aces, soontir and cienna have counter 4 everyone has swarm.

It's strictly DPS, but it's cleared the table in a few games I've played

13 minutes ago, Blail Blerg said:

What other avenues of squadron play do you think FFG should pursue that are not based around killing things as fast as possible? (To this, even intel is in a sense, just an efficiency measure: let's you bomb with impuny. As opposed to strategic, which creates a whole other level of considerations for the squadron game.)

I would like a screening squadron. Something like a keyword that says if LOS (dot to dot) goes through my squad base, it is obstructed

13 minutes ago, Blail Blerg said:

How do you tend to plan to use your flak vs mass squadrons? Do you want to talk about deployment and movement?

How often do you find that speed or kill everything first works? I find that things are still usually quite resilient. A good squadron player will get his kicks in before things go down.

Neither works super well vs a heavy bomber build, which is why I prefer 2-4 squadrons to engage while the flak does its work. Ideally you lure the squadrons in, engage them, and fire with as many flak dice as possible. A kill box is ideal but difficult to set up.

The main plan against squadron heavy builds is to run away! The Fire Lanes and Sensor Net missions allow a fleet with multiple strategic squads to run away with the points, especially if equipped with FCT's for free movement and token shenanigans. I've wondered about using up to 4 Strategic squads to really emphasize those mission points - really only viable with VCX's I feel as Lambdas are too fragile.

Now the Imperial counter that I expect to eventually see more often as a reaction is Squall + 2 Lambdas, which can steal away two clustered Fire Lane tokens as first player.

I think a mission where Strategic squadrons have to "scan" a ship at range 1 to gain its objective token (each ship starts with one) would be fun, representing crucial Intel of some sort. Destroyed ships and squadrons lose their objective tokens. Each token in your possession at end of game is worth X points. Could see some interesting maneuvering as a result.

19 minutes ago, Church14 said:

I would like a screening squadron. Something like a keyword that says if LOS (dot to dot) goes through my squad base, it is obstructed

Oh, huh, that's kind of interesting.

Ok, I have a lot to say on the topic, but I shall share some of it.

First off, a key assumption to my position.

"One of the best ways to deal with scatter aces is consistent 1 dmg attacks".

Now I agree that you can overload scatter aces with high numbers of dice and fish for the accuracies, however, without heavily investing in flight controllers and a thus a large number of squads, I am yet to see a way of doing this efficiently. (Sloane excepted)

So what do I mean by consistent 1 dmg attacks. Against scatter aces and to a large extent, all aces, its actually exceptionally irrelevant how much dmg you do above the threshold of 1 dmg. 1 dmg forces the scatter, it is unaffected by the brace, and eats away at the aces defence. 1 dmg, from multiple sources that can be focused.

So with this in mind, I introduce the Rebel Strategic Enabler:

Toryn Farr. Squads and ships within distance 3 may reroll a single blue dice when they attack.

What Toryn is turn salvos with low number of dice into having a high chance of finding the single damage required. This works for flak, Ywings, Hwks, Bwings, Counter 2 AND ....... VCX. Under Toryn blue non bomber dice are suddenly a viable entity, and low antisquadron dice are capable of reliably hitting that crucial 1 dmg.

So what do we pair Toryn VCX's with? Well we want to be able to focus our fire, so we want multiple blue flak, and also the ability to reposition our squads, so hwks. Hwks are beautiful with Toryn, 2 blue anti squad, 2 blue counter and 1 blue anti ship. All three are boosted far above their price tags. Now on top of this you can add Awings if you should desire greater range, they also have counter 2, or Ywings if you want greater hull, which combines with Ruthless Strategist well. The high hull strategic VCX package has a natural home in this group.

Many say to take VCX with Awing aces, and my issue is that in this scenario you are not over utilising the VCX, and are wasting points to a certain extent.

And now we turn our eyes to the Imperial Strategic Enabler:

Valen Rudor.

Now this follows a different logic to the above. Lambda;s have high hull but are generally unable to bring it to bear. Alongside Rudor, enemies are forced to attack the Lambda's, mitigating their heavy. This gives them enourmous staying power in the fight, and means they are an effective screen for holding up the enemy.

The imperials have some wonderful methods of killing squads with ship flak, Instigator, Impetus, Kallus etc. The issue they have is that generally these cards come alongside one of the most fragile units, so they need shielding. If you can get the hull values of the lambdas working for you to create a screen that will last a few turns, you buy the time for the other weapons in the Imperial arsenal to go to work.

I didnt mean to kill the thread

34 minutes ago, Ginkapo said:

I didnt mean to kill the thread

Didn't mean to maybe, but still did. Like a dragon that didn't intend to set the village ablaze, but hick-upped and burned it down anyway.

When it comes to Imperials and Strategic I have one problem:

1 strategic is good, but 2 is much superior.

So far so good.

Enter Jendon.

I'll be hard pressed not to include Jendon. At +5 pts he's just too good to pass over, despite his lack of Strategic.

I could do Jendon +1 Lambda, but that's 35 pts, and only 1 strategic. Kind of meh. It's ok insurance I guess, and better as 1st player, but not good enough IMO. Taking Jendon + 2 Lambas is just silly. That's 50 pts in support and enablers.

So that usually means just Jendon. And no strategic.

11 minutes ago, Green Knight said:

Didn't mean to maybe, but still did. Like a dragon that didn't intend to set the village ablaze, but hick-upped and burned it down anyway.

When it comes to Imperials and Strategic I have one problem:

1 strategic is good, but 2 if much superior.

So far so good.

Enter Jendon.

I'll be hard pressed not to include Jendon. At +5 pts he's just too good to pass over, despite his lack of Strategic.

I could do Jendon +1 Lambda, but that's 35 pts, and only 1 strategic. Kind of meh. It's ok insurance I guess, and better as 1st player, but not good enough IMO. Taking Jendon + 2 Lambas is just silly. That's 50 pts in support and enablers.

So that usually means just Jendon. And no strategic.

Shortly:

When we want strategic we want VCXs.

When we want relay we want Lambdas.

When we want both we end with any

That's the imperial dilemma.

But I have to try 2 lambdas + Rudor + 3rd Lambda/Ciena. Is there some tips @Ginkapo?

5 minutes ago, ovinomanc3r said:

But I have to try 2 lambdas + Rudor + 3rd Lambda/Ciena. Is there some tips @Ginkapo?

Talk to the Cactus

@thecactusman17

2 minutes ago, ovinomanc3r said:

Shortly:

When we want strategic we want VCXs.

When we want relay we want Lambdas.

When we want both we end with any

That's the imperial dilemma.

But I have to try 2 lambdas + Rudor + 3rd Lambda/Ciena. Is there some tips @Ginkapo?

The tip is good objectives that reward you for early use of Lambdas, so when you run into a squad heavy enemy they'll do their strategic work before burning/becoming engaged and unable to move.

Blue is easy: Intel Sweep or Salvage Run. Secure those tokens and screen. Sensor Net maybe not as much.

Yellow is more tricky, but some early Fire Lanes shifts can be useful. Capture the VIP too, but it's only 50 pts, so seems a waste. I kind of like the Ion Cannons too.

You can write an own article for each of these. Strategic, squadrons (light, medium, heavy screen), Relay, Anti squadron, Anti ship, Ship Squadron counter, ....

But lets do the easierst first.
Strategic. When it came out i wrote something about it. I thought that it will be used all the time, because it is so good (i was right about good, but not about it being used all the time, aka this good ). The reason for this is: the strategic alone is not enough and there is one hole in the missions (the red one).
If you have a fleet with 2+ Strategic (and support squadrons...), you will be first player or play your red mission. No one will give you the blue (Sensor Net) or yellow (Fire Lanes) mission if he is by clear mind, when you have 2 or even 3 strategic squadrons AND a few squadrons to protect them.
If the squadrons are only 3 VCX and maybe Tycho and Shara it could be possible to pick the blue or yellow mission. Becauce, if the opponent has enough squadrons to take down the strategic squadrons fast enough, he can negate the bonus from it.
The second problem: what if the opponent has as well strategic squadrons. It can really fast end in a squadron fight, and who ever comes out as winner of this, gains the victory tokens in the end. If you have two and your opponent has suddenly 3 strategic squadrons, your whole tactic becomes invalid and goes down.

This means that your whole tactic can be negated by the opponents fleet. This is why you should never set everything on strategic as the main tactic. It is not 100% reliable.

For rebels it is way more common to have 2 strategic squadrons flying around. This is because of the relay 1 from the VCX. You want relay 2 for the transports and this is why rebel lists have 2+ strategic way more often than imperial lists.
Its not the blue dice or the 8 hull that are the reasons for it (they are a nice bonus). It is most of the time the relay, that the rebels want. Everything else is a bonus. In these cases you can pick the missions for the strategic, because they were a bonus and not your main tactic.

For the imperial it is different. Mainly for the same reason @Green Knight wrote already. For 5 points more you get Jendon. With two Brace tokens and an extremly good effect. But you lose the strategic on the way but keep the Relay (thats the biggest difference to Hera, she lost both...). And you want the relay (normally), so he is perfect for it.
I always thought how Jendon would be when he would have strategic instead of relay 2. Would he be better or worse ?
And because you only need relay 2, you don't really need need a shuttle when you already have Jendon. Jendon and shuttle would be better, no question about this. But it cost squadron points. And the shuttle does not deal as much damage as a normal squadron does. You trade damage (and maybe hull) for strategic. And this is a hard call. Especially for the imperials.

Currently i am using a list with Relay (Jendon) but not with strategic. I just cannot find the points for it. So i give up the bonus i "might" get from strategic. Most likely because i would never get the bonus at all. If i am second player, the opponent will pick the red mission when i have a strategic squadron. Without the shuttle i give them at least the chance to pick something else, and i can pick missions that fit my fleet way better, instead of picking missions just for the strategic. But even with this i end in the red mission 90% of the time. So why should i waste the 15 points in a shuttle, when i already playing a non strategic mission 90% of the time? It would be a waste of points.

And this is exacly what you need to check with the strategic. How much does it help you for real.
The Vallen + 3 Shuttle squad list is nice. But in the long run you will never use the strategic or get owned in the squadron fight and the strategic might backfire. We are not talking about being able to win, we are talking about a constant good win and making use of it. How many lists are there that hurt this setup.
Basically bad matchups are:

• all MSU Lists, because they can pick Most Wanted and it does not hurt them this much. The Shuttles have no (strategic) use in this case.
• all heavy squadron lists, because they own in the squadron fight and counter the bonus of the victory tokens in the end.
• all listst that want to go second on their own and have the bid for it (ok, rather rare). But again on these. The Shuttles have no (strategic) use.
• All lists that have strategic on their own.

So, Strategic is a nice concept. But we need a new set of missions, with a red once that can use it, if we want to see Strategic lists.
They are good, depending on the local Meta and the other lists. But they are not reliable enough to make a big impact on the lists.

Around here Imperials ALWAYS run the gesalt entity known as Marek-Jendon. Never one of these, they always show up like some unholy deformity. The supporting squadrons vary, but essentially the whole point is to allow Marek to sit on your most important ship and plink it for 4 damage per turn. Valen is pretty mandatory, hiding behind Jendon, but Marek is the critical one. Marek-Jendon, Valen and Saber is a cheap but pretty efficient baseline squad kit.

9 minutes ago, Ophion said:

Around here Imperials ALWAYS run the gesalt entity known as Marek-Jendon. Never one of these, they always show up like some unholy deformity. The supporting squadrons vary, but essentially the whole point is to allow Marek to sit on your most important ship and plink it for 4 damage per turn. Valen is pretty mandatory, hiding behind Jendon, but Marek is the critical one. Marek-Jendon, Valen and Saber is a cheap but pretty efficient baseline squad kit.

I call them:

Maarekdon (sounds like the unholy rampaging dinosaur it is)

Just now, Green Knight said:

I call them:

Maarekdon (sounds like the unholy rampaging dinosaur it is)

As a fun aside, with Sloane they **** you even more:

Maarek gets to always set a crit, and with Slaone you get to reroll crits vs ships.

So with Maarekdon you always have 3x2 chances of scoring an accuracy.

6 minutes ago, Green Knight said:

I call them:

Maarekdon (sounds like the unholy rampaging dinosaur it is)

No. They are called Jen-Le .

Maarekdon is to long.

@Tokra: targeting beacons exists if you want a Strategic Objective for red. Also, depending on the rest of your list, you can always play Ackbar Adv Gunnery too.

Next part: Relay.

This is (imo) the most overpowered feature for a long time. Being able to activate squadrons from any distance is just insane strong.
At first i thought that the relay squadron has to be in range of the activating ship (and this would have been way better). But The way it is right now, it is total op.

The sad part is, that the Shuttle is such a great synergy with the Flotilla. You can activate two squadrons, the shuttle has relay 2. Perfect. This is only topped by Jendon, who has the relay and give a bonus. And he is rather cheap.
Rebels have the bad luck on this. Only Relay 1 on the VCX and Hera is pure crap (in Armada; sorry for her, but true).
So Rebels need two VCX for 30 points to get the same bonus as imperals get with only 15 points and 1 shuttle.
And a Yavaris, who want to abuse the relay at full power, will even need 3 VCX. And this is rather stupid, because to many points were blasted into the relay.

From what i would say is one shuttle (or relay 2) more than enough for most cases.
A Carrier (ISD or Quasar) would use Boosted Comms to stay in range of the ships. I would not use 3 Shuttles to activate 6 squadrons via relay. It is just to expensive.

This means the whole "abuse" of the relay comes from the great squadron activation ships called Flotilla (yea i know, and from the unlimited range).

I really hope that they "fix" the relay with the range. And this is from someone who loves Jendon with his relay. And is abusing it at its best.

2 minutes ago, geek19 said:

@Tokra: targeting beacons exists if you want a Strategic Objective for red. Also, depending on the rest of your list, you can always play Ackbar Adv Gunnery too.

Great idea. So you are playing the red mission in 100% instead of 90% of the fights .
Sorry, but targeting beacon is a bad joke compared to Most Wanted, Advanced Gunnery or Station Assault (last two for special lists).
I cannot think of any list where targeting beacon could give you something that the other missions does not give you in a better way. It just lack the bonus points that you need.

Yes, targeting beacon is the only mission that has objective tokens that you can move with strategic. But it is still a bad choice. Especially because two of the tokens are basically out of the game, because player 1 is placing them. It would cost you 3-4 turns to get them into a good position. So you have only two tokens that you can use. Distance 1-3 is quite good. And with strategic abuseable. But all this for a reroll of two dice? And no bonus points?

19 minutes ago, Tokra said:

Great idea. So you are playing the red mission in 100% instead of 90% of the fights .
Sorry, but targeting beacon is a bad joke compared to Most Wanted, Advanced Gunnery or Station Assault (last two for special lists).
I cannot think of any list where targeting beacon could give you something that the other missions does not give you in a better way. It just lack the bonus points that you need.

Yes, targeting beacon is the only mission that has objective tokens that you can move with strategic. But it is still a bad choice. Especially because two of the tokens are basically out of the game, because player 1 is placing them. It would cost you 3-4 turns to get them into a good position. So you have only two tokens that you can use. Distance 1-3 is quite good. And with strategic abuseable. But all this for a reroll of two dice? And no bonus points?

I'm not denying its not easy to use, but handwavey Sato argument. Follow-up: what about my Advanced Gunnery argument? Are you really going to give Ackbar Adv Gun on his HMC80?

I don't necessarily think we NEED a great Red strategic objective, as it's so powerful in yellow and blue that you need an out (re: red) for your opponent to be able to play the game instead of it just being an automatic loss.

12 minutes ago, geek19 said:

I'm not denying its not easy to use, but handwavey Sato argument. Follow-up: what about my Advanced Gunnery argument? Are you really going to give Ackbar Adv Gun on his HMC80?

I don't necessarily think we NEED a great Red strategic objective, as it's so powerful in yellow and blue that you need an out (re: red) for your opponent to be able to play the game instead of it just being an automatic loss.

This thread is about squadrons and not about missions (dont want to hijack Blail Blerg thread.

But it depend. Adv. Gunnery does not mean that player 1 cannot attack the same ship two times with the same hull zone. @Aresius can easy use your Adv. Gunnery against you and go in for a double front attack from the MC80 liberty on the HMC80 and just kill it. And this is the problem on this mission. It is NOT Gunnery team.

But (to come back to the main thread) Adv. Gunnery is a good choice when you are doing Flak. A double attack with an double anti squadron ship on all squadrons in one arc is really great. Top it with Toryn or Kallus and you can take down enemy squadrons really fast.