1 hour ago, Megatronrex said:

What you want is the most OP game breaking squad in the game

Why would it be OP? It would be a one time effect obviously and triggered with a crit. Its a 6 hull plataform you can kill it easy with a propper alpha strike. You can pin it down, avoid it to shoot your ships, or mannuver your ships out of his way...sounds familiar?. You see, when we start escalating on the "this thing is not OP, is just that the people is not comming up with the propper counters for it" we can go anywhere. I don't see this Y-wing OP, why do you?

This thread and this community is "allowing" the ABT nonsense into Armada by gifting it with a dicussion about possible counters. When it is actually a gamebraker.

You say Y-wing Ion torpedos is op? I say it has tons of counters. Sadly for me develpers tend to favour the majorities here, we saw that already with Rieekan. That poor guy did not even have his own counters thread. Well he did, but it was in fact an undercover cry-post, not an actual counters thread.

9 minutes ago, xerpo said:

Why would it be OP? It would be a one time effect obviously and triggered with a crit. Its a 6 hull plataform you can kill it easy with a propper alpha strike. You can pin it down, avoid it to shoot your ships, or mannuver your ships out of his way...sounds familiar?. You see, when we start escalating on the "this thing is not OP, is just that the people is not comming up with the propper counters for it" we can go anywhere. I don't see this Y-wing OP, why do you?

This thread and this community is "allowing" the ABT nonsense into Armada by gifting it with a dicussion about possible counters. When it is actually a gamebraker.

You say Y-wing Ion torpedos is op? I say it has tons of counters. Sadly for me develpers tend to favour the majorities here, we saw that already with Rieekan. That poor guy did not even have his own counters thread. Well he did, but it was in fact an undercover cry-post, not an actual counters thread.

It would most definitely be OP. What you want is the ability to "drop every shield on crit, slow speed to zero, and discard all dials and command tokens" for 15-16 points. That Y-Wing squadron would be THE most powerful piece in the game. Throw in Jan and some X-Wings then you're not killing it with an alpha strike, you're not pinning it down, and you can't avoid it shooting ships. H*** load it up on a big ship with RBDs and Flight Commander and it's d*** near unstoppable. The b****** child that is ABT already exists and that means discussing possible counters because it is a powerful part of the game now and all of us will have to deal with it eventually like it or not. I remember plenty of people complaining about and asking how to deal with Rieekan and his aceholes not just "undercover cry-posts". I do agree with you that BTA is nasty as h*** and I certainly don't have a guaranteed counter to it. I don't think it's anywhere near as OP as your magic Y-Wing partly due to the massively higher cost. I'm probably starting to come off as an a****** here and I really don't mean to be I just think you're being unrealistic in what you expect FFG to give us.

52 minutes ago, Megatronrex said:

It would most definitely be OP. What you want is the ability to "drop every shield on crit, slow speed to zero, and discard all dials and command tokens" for 15-16 points. That Y-Wing squadron would be THE most powerful piece in the game. Throw in Jan and some X-Wings then you're not killing it with an alpha strike, you're not pinning it down, and you can't avoid it shooting ships. H*** load it up on a big ship with RBDs and Flight Commander and it's d*** near unstoppable. The b****** child that is ABT already exists and that means discussing possible counters because it is a powerful part of the game now and all of us will have to deal with it eventually like it or not. I remember plenty of people complaining about and asking how to deal with Rieekan and his aceholes not just "undercover cry-posts". I do agree with you that BTA is nasty as h*** and I certainly don't have a guaranteed counter to it. I don't think it's anywhere near as OP as your magic Y-Wing partly due to the massively higher cost. I'm probably starting to come off as an a****** here and I really don't mean to be I just think you're being unrealistic in what you expect FFG to give us.

I will give you that, I know the Y-wing idea is way over the top, just wanted to make a point on how absurd things can get little by little, wave after wave, if we allow them. ABT would have been a total NONO back in wave 3, 4 cant remember now, when ISD came out. Maybe we will see some absurd things like I'm describing in future waves, because we allow FFG to treat us like 6 year old kids. No offense to the 6 year old kids around the world, but I'm sure most of them will be terribly bored playing such a deep game like armada.

This is supposed to be a strategy game, more than X-wing at least, all comparisons I hear favours armada, even from X-wing players. Do we really need/want a strategy based in "go forward, push this button, kill that thing?" I'm not saying ABT is killing the game, I'm saying the playstyle behind ABT is opening the door to a more straight forward, dice focused game. And I personally dont want that. I love armada and the richness of actual strategies it provides.

8 minutes ago, xerpo said:

This is supposed to be a strategy game, more than X-wing at least, all comparisons I hear favours armada, even from X-wing players. Do we really need/want a strategy based in "go forward, push this button, kill that thing?" I'm not saying ABT is killing the game, I'm saying the playstyle behind ABT is opening the door to a more straight forward, dice focused game. And I personally dont want that. I love armada and the richness of actual strategies it provides.

So much this. No need to play anything else when you can auto kill nearly every other ship.

However, the strategy I have outlined in building fleets to beat ABT is extremely deep and extremely technical. It is satisfying to deny your opponent a good BT shot.

So the player with ABT is the standard "point your ISD and win" player, while the player who counters ABT is on the verge of total catastrophe with every single move, hoping they don't make a mistake.

Ok

Summit button. Sorry.

Let's bring some question/thoughts.

How BTAvenger did during the last tournaments?

How BTAvenger did during the last matches you played?

@xerpo I know you won the last game against a BTAvenger so maybe you want to elaborate your definition of op.

23 minutes ago, xerpo said:

ABT would have been a total NONO back in wave 3, 4 cant remember now, when ISD came out.

Lol, you weren't playing in Wave 2 during the Clonisher heyday, were you?

Another one:

Is it BTAvenger so straight forward tactic?

I mean, almost every ship I consider alone (actually every ships but who knows) is quite straight forward or I am not understanding what you say. The thing is build the fleet and BTAvenger forces several choices you must do:

1. You want the initiative.

2. You want activations.

Without those two to avoid Avenger is almost humdrum.

So you have points committed and you will have to deal with the weaker points.

And you have to add some kind of dice control.

And at the end, BTAvenger is a combo whose purpose and only achievement is "to choose and kill one ship" in his most op concept. If you go with 1 ISD/MC80 and 6 flotillas you will suffer pain of course but any fleet that didn't depend on 1 ship to win will be able to deal with it. BTAvenger punish the lack of a plan B and only if your plan A is one ship and if it gets its shot (I am able to avoid frontal arcs with my glads as I wish and I am not the most skillful player here).

1 hour ago, xerpo said:

I will give you that, I know the Y-wing idea is way over the top, just wanted to make a point on how absurd things can get little by little, wave after wave, if we allow them. ABT would have been a total NONO back in wave 3, 4 cant remember now, when ISD came out. Maybe we will see some absurd things like I'm describing in future waves, because we allow FFG to treat us like 6 year old kids. No offense to the 6 year old kids around the world, but I'm sure most of them will be terribly bored playing such a deep game like armada.

This is supposed to be a strategy game, more than X-wing at least, all comparisons I hear favours armada, even from X-wing players. Do we really need/want a strategy based in "go forward, push this button, kill that thing?" I'm not saying ABT is killing the game, I'm saying the playstyle behind ABT is opening the door to a more straight forward, dice focused game. And I personally dont want that. I love armada and the richness of actual strategies it provides.

My argument was solely against the Super Mega Y-Wing Supreme. I agree with you that allowing OP upgrades and expansions is detrimental to the future of the game but I'm not ready to start raising any alarms about power creep yet. So far I've been happy with the way FFG has handled using future additions to the game to fix existing problems. Next wave, Imperials are getting an excellent counter to BTA with Vader and we don't know what kind of weapons you d*** rebel traitors will get with Radish and the Profanity. Your second paragraph is as true as anything I've ever read and as some one who recently started playing X-Wing I can't dispute any of it. It's certainly easier to find games of X-Wing than it is Armada around here but ten wins in a row in X-Wing is not as satisfying as one hard fought Armada loss. Hopefully FFG will treat us better than 6 year olds (I don't expect much more than that I am a grown man playing with toys after all) and try to balance out things going forward.

15 hours ago, ovinomanc3r said:

Ok

Summit button. Sorry.

Let's bring some question/thoughts.

How BTAvenger did during the last tournaments?

How BTAvenger did during the last matches you played?

@xerpo I know you won the last game against a BTAvenger so maybe you want to elaborate your definition of op.

At the UK Nationals I faced BT avenger on 3 occasions always as second player. I had Rieekan, MC80c, Yavaris, 2 GR75 and 8 squadrons.

Game 2 v JerJerod, ISD2 (thinking about it this one may not have been BT Avenger), Demolisher, 2 Gozanti, about 6 squadrons. He Slicer Tooled Yavaris but I coms net over a token to it so only one bomber double tapped but the ISD was almost dead. Then he called off the attack run using a Moff-JJ left turn and to my astonishment it survived the game. I lost 6 squadrons eventually. 6-5 to me after I got a rear shot (superior positions), cleared up squadrons and that blasted Slicer Tool flotilla.

Game 3 v @SmurfWedge with Motti, ISD2, ISD1-BT-Avenger, 2 Gozanti, 2 fighters. This was unnerving with 14 hull per ship and I think he had RBDs too so you have to crack the ISDs in one turn. I got about 3-4 shield damage on it with a turn one squadron command + Tallon. Turn 2 the double tap of 2 B-Wings + Gold squadron started to pile on the damage. It took most of the other squads and firing from my two combat ships to kill it. Unluckily for him the ISD2 narrowly failed to kill Yavaris through the brace token and so had to endure the same thing on turn 3 while Rieekan kept the Zombie Yavaris alive. More bombers and long range shooting from my MC80 took it down around turn 5. His counter(1) on both ISDs helped kill quite a few bombers and it would have been more if his blue dice had been remotely average and he hadn't forgotten about Agent Kallus for a whole turn.

In Game 5 I faced Screed, BT-Avenger, Demolisher, Gozanti, 2 Decimator, Jendon, Steele, Zertek, Dengar. Again I just arranged for the bombers to meet the Avenger and double tap away. This time Avenger was at medium range form my big ship anyway so there was less urgency to crack it in one turn and his fighters could move around with Dengar and prevent FCTs moving the B-Wings into double tap situations using Yavaris' flight commander. Without Motti and with Demolisher a little further away we could concentrate on the big guy with ships and squadrons and it did evaporate in one turn. Demolisher then went for vengeance to kill Yavaris but it went Zombie and killed the GSD on the next activation (I stab at thee!). I failed to hunt down the Gozanti but 120 points from contested outpost ensured a 10-1.

With Yavaris, plus double tapping three twin dice bombers, you can pop a BT Avenger if you need to. You need to plan reasonably well on how to achieve it and make sure enemy squadrons can't interfere on the crucial turn. Out deploying with lots of squadrons helps you see which way Avenger is going to come and so it becomes predictable. It could slow down but then it becomes just an ISD that forgot to take Gunnery Teams. Also any damage you can do to the Avenger prior to the crucial turn is worth its weight in gold. A few long range pot shots from Red dice, some A-wings or X-wings landing a few extra shield hits etc. Yes he will redirect them and brace the luckiest red dice shot but this means he can't redirect to that shield next turn. Every little helps and it could be the difference between destruction or Avenger being alive for first activation and then you loose a ship.

Rieekan gives you a safety net to either kill the ISD after it has walloped your big ship or more entertainingly block it with suicide run flotillas who will go Zombie just to give you more time to soften it up. This can also work with smaller ships like a SW7 CR90B or Hammerhead with Ext Racks. You loose more points but they can often do 5 damage and maybe 2 (or 3 with ETs) rams before they are removed at the end of the turn.

4 hours ago, Mad Cat said:

At the UK Nationals I faced BT avenger on 3 occasions always as second player. I had Rieekan, MC80c, Yavaris, 2 GR75 and 8 squadrons.

Game 2 v JerJerod, ISD2 (thinking about it this one may not have been BT Avenger), Demolisher, 2 Gozanti, about 6 squadrons. He Slicer Tooled Yavaris but I coms net over a token to it so only one bomber double tapped but the ISD was almost dead. Then he called off the attack run using a Moff-JJ left turn and to my astonishment it survived the game. I lost 6 squadrons eventually. 6-5 to me after I got a rear shot (superior positions), cleared up squadrons and that blasted Slicer Tool flotilla.

Game 3 v @SmurfWedge with Motti, ISD2, ISD1-BT-Avenger, 2 Gozanti, 2 fighters. This was unnerving with 14 hull per ship and I think he had RBDs too so you have to crack the ISDs in one turn. I got about 3-4 shield damage on it with a turn one squadron command + Tallon. Turn 2 the double tap of 2 B-Wings + Gold squadron started to pile on the damage. It took most of the other squads and firing from my two combat ships to kill it. Unluckily for him the ISD2 narrowly failed to kill Yavaris through the brace token and so had to endure the same thing on turn 3 while Rieekan kept the Zombie Yavaris alive. More bombers and long range shooting from my MC80 took it down around turn 5. His counter(1) on both ISDs helped kill quite a few bombers and it would have been more if his blue dice had been remotely average and he hadn't forgotten about Agent Kallus for a whole turn.

In Game 5 I faced Screed, BT-Avenger, Demolisher, Gozanti, 2 Decimator, Jendon, Steele, Zertek, Dengar. Again I just arranged for the bombers to meet the Avenger and double tap away. This time Avenger was at medium range form my big ship anyway so there was less urgency to crack it in one turn and his fighters could move around with Dengar and prevent FCTs moving the B-Wings into double tap situations using Yavaris' flight commander. Without Motti and with Demolisher a little further away we could concentrate on the big guy with ships and squadrons and it did evaporate in one turn. Demolisher then went for vengeance to kill Yavaris but it went Zombie and killed the GSD on the next activation (I stab at thee!). I failed to hunt down the Gozanti but 120 points from contested outpost ensured a 10-1.

With Yavaris, plus double tapping three twin dice bombers, you can pop a BT Avenger if you need to. You need to plan reasonably well on how to achieve it and make sure enemy squadrons can't interfere on the crucial turn. Out deploying with lots of squadrons helps you see which way Avenger is going to come and so it becomes predictable. It could slow down but then it becomes just an ISD that forgot to take Gunnery Teams. Also any damage you can do to the Avenger prior to the crucial turn is worth its weight in gold. A few long range pot shots from Red dice, some A-wings or X-wings landing a few extra shield hits etc. Yes he will redirect them and brace the luckiest red dice shot but this means he can't redirect to that shield next turn. Every little helps and it could be the difference between destruction or Avenger being alive for first activation and then you loose a ship.

Rieekan gives you a safety net to either kill the ISD after it has walloped your big ship or more entertainingly block it with suicide run flotillas who will go Zombie just to give you more time to soften it up. This can also work with smaller ships like a SW7 CR90B or Hammerhead with Ext Racks. You loose more points but they can often do 5 damage and maybe 2 (or 3 with ETs) rams before they are removed at the end of the turn.

Yeah you absolutely punished me in that game mate.....and Yavaris surviving that extra turn really hurt.

In hindsight I should have been less aggressive with the ISD1 and chipped at the squadrons a little bit from a distance first......but I took the gamble.

I think your write up above is a fair reflection of the game and you flew your list brilliantly and stuck to your gameplan. Thanks for being a great opponent. Aside from the battering I really enjoyed our game.

When you were considering switching targets from the injured Avenger to the ISDII flagship, I was kinda hoping you would as it would have allowed me the Avenger double arc hit on the MC80 and possibly allowing me to repair.....but you didn't fall for it. Haha. Great job.

On 19/09/2017 at 0:51 PM, dominosfleet said:

Ugh threads like this kill me. "I can't beat this, it's clearly OP".

It's an ISD, kill it the same way you kill every other ISD(with fire) and move on. I love this game and the community, please don't become like the 40k or WMH communities by becoming disheartened anytime you run into a list that seems difficult for you to deconstruct.

I'm not sure where this hostility came from.

Fact is, I've never actually faced a Avenger with Boarding troopers. I don't get to play often, but like theory-mongering.

If I did want to beat one, I'm sure I'd run my favourite list of Madine CR90s with engine techs. If I end in range 1, I that's on me. Plus I'd probably be dead anyway.

Also not sure what style of threads you'd want the forum's to be filled with. This was intended as a discussion around which upgrades, play style and/or deployment strategy can potentially sure up your anti-Avenger defences, particularly for lists that appear to be vulnerable against it. I suggested a few upgrades which may often be overlooked wondering if they have a new purpose. I personally like reading about other people's ideas to counter a problem, and I thank people for their input.

4 hours ago, Divad said:

If I did want to beat one, I'm sure I'd run my favourite list of Madine CR90s with engine techs. If I end in range 1, I that's on me. Plus I'd probably be dead anyway.

That's a legitimately solid idea for dealing with ABT. I know if I saw a horde of ramvettes across the table from me I'd be wishing I could swap my Boarding Troopers for Gunnery Teams.

Just to throw my two cents into the conversation. I see the bt avenger combo as a kinda anti tank option. Basically I see it as a punishment for having a super Tanky ship with most of your points in it. Not that super Tanky ships are a bad thing. Just that its a hard counter, that is very situational. As pointed out earlier, msu make BTA hard to justify. Also it's not an instant win against tanks either, good manuvering will make this combo not work so well. Just my thoughts. I would hate to see a hard defense counter to this. I think it will start a power creep that will be hard to stop.

6 hours ago, Noosh said:

Just to throw my two cents into the conversation. I see the bt avenger combo as a kinda anti tank option. Basically I see it as a punishment for having a super Tanky ship with most of your points in it. Not that super Tanky ships are a bad thing. Just that its a hard counter, that is very situational. As pointed out earlier, msu make BTA hard to justify. Also it's not an instant win against tanks either, good manuvering will make this combo not work so well. Just my thoughts. I would hate to see a hard defense counter to this. I think it will start a power creep that will be hard to stop.

I was running a HH swarm against a BT Avenger one time.

I had pretty much avoided his front arc with my HHs, we were on turn 6, and I had Bright Hope in his ISD's side arc.

We both got quite the kick out of it when he BTAed Bright Hope for the kill.

On ‎19‎/‎09‎/‎2017 at 0:35 PM, Irokenics said:

Hello all,

I took an 8 ship list centred around the AvengerBT to Nationals.

I had a 26 pt bid, Vader, Hondo and all the other trimmings you'd expect on an ISD1.

4/4 of my rounds I was easily countered.

The most noticeable counter that i felt the most pain from was going up a Motti ISD2, with blast doors and an interdictor near by with Targetting Scramblers. Before the encounter i managed to chip away at some shields and put 3 hull dmg on. End of the turn i manoeuvred AvengerBT into a double arc. Beginning of the turn my opponent used blast doors to heal the 3 dmg, Start of my turn i boarded the ISD2 and proceeded to do 18 dmg over two attacks after modifications. This was promptly scrambled down to 11.

And it was all downhill from there sadly.

Hey Irokenics!

To be fair, this was a pretty lucky escape for me. I had the exact things I needed to counter you - the chance to RBD away the 3 damage you put on, and adequate shields that I was able to move the rest of your supporting fire away from the target hullzone. My target scramblers were truly disgusting - like you said turning red hit/hit and 3 black hit crits down to 1? damage! By contrast, against Dans Demolisher in the last Games Cube tourney I used interdictor in I think Target Scramblers didn't save me a single hit/crit in 5 attacks. Even then, I still would have been dead except for Motti hull. After that you were stuck in double arc of my interdictor with Marek-Jendon doing their thing whilst Motti flew away to save his miserable hide! So I definitely acknowledge my good fortune in that one!

I fluked a meta call going into Nats that there would be plenty of Avenger BT and demo which is why I took the Interdictor, but it would have left me at a big disadvantage against many other lists, especially Scott the overall winners double Ackbar MC80s.

--->>> Back on topic --->>

BT avenger I think needs a good prospect of last-first to really count. Otherwise its just a somewhat limited ISD - its only short ranged and doesn't have gunnery teams. This means lists built around it need to push for lots of activations and a bid. This means they have weaker squadron loadouts and more restricted objective play. That's why I think we see it stomping some games but not being able to consistently win enough to place highly.

But it is definitely something to add to the list of "Things you have to have a plan for" when you write a list because if you aren't ready for it it will smash you hard.

In particular, I think lists that rely on mid range ships as their main anchor point (Assault frigate, VSD, MC30, pelta, quasar etc) are very vulnerable to it.