So players have had time to proxy Raddus...

By Church14, in Star Wars: Armada

33 minutes ago, Noosh said:

Raddus and profundity are going to make alot of fun.

I personally think that the profundity title will breath some serious life into the hammerhead (not saying it dead or anything) imagine external rack hh being dropped into optimal position. Or a garel's honor smashing into an ISD with no heads up to shoot um down. It's gonna be awesome.

I’m gonna end up asking the local guys if I can try the Profundity title on a home one to test it. Garel’s Honor with OE and ER sounds effective.

Oh I get it now.

Raddus, MC30, MC80 liberty. Huge bid for first player.

Mc30 drops the MC80 out of hyperspace. The MC30 destroys enemy ships with first activation then scarpers. The MC80 then wrecks everything with second activation. Opponent crys.

We're doing a CC here where one of our guys has Raddus on an Admo Lando MC30. It is the absolute DEVIL and I am very glad I am on the Rebel side of things now.

My @Grinoch and I played a game last night between Raddus and Thrawn. I ran a couple of TRC90s, the Garel's Honor, a GR-75 and the Command Defiance (LS, RLB, EA, ECM) with 3 B-wings & HWK RLB'd. So far I am *very* impressed. I still ended up losing due to a couple of suboptimal decisions, but I was able to drop the MC80 + squadrons in right behind his Vics. I pounded the first one to scrap in one activation and killed the second one a couple turns later. I only lost because I plotted three straight Squadron commands but after the first activation, if your opponent brought any squadrons at all (he did) you're probably not shooting at a ship with those B-wings ever again. He was able to swing his Demolisher back around and finish off the MC80 since I had no way to repair it.

I think my next attempt will be a similar fleet, but with a decked-out Liberty as the Raddus'd ship. Raddus fleets are exciting to play - you really feel under the gun to make your drop-in worth it, because for the first two turns of the game you're playing at a HUGE disadvantage and there really isn't much tolerance for error. I didn't drop in the MC80 until turn 3, and when I did all I had left was two CR90s with one hull point remaining each. Also, if you're putting Raddus on a small base, I think that Lando is mandatory on that ship - maybe even RBD. Obviously, if your opponent gets lucky and pops your flagship before you bring in your big gun, you might as well just pick up the rest of your ships then and there.

Edited by JauntyChapeau

I picked up a couple ideas from that game with @JauntyChapeau on how to deal with Raddus. I haven't actually had a chance to try these ideas out so they may not work as well as I hope, but I digress. First, I think it may help to have ships that can go speed 3 and rush the Raddus player. The idea being that you force your opponent to make a sub-optimal drop of their ship. Second, any ship that might want disposable capacitors, take them. While my VSD's were taken out once the ship was dropped in, it took away deployment options. By reducing the number of places Raddus can drop in a ship you are better able to deal with it when it happens. Anyway, that's my two cents after the first game I played against it.

On 10/26/2017 at 2:54 PM, Church14 said:

So, most players that I have met and talk to have some fun proxying the revealed cards to see how they play.

1) Have people found him worth his 26 points?

2) What ships are people dropping in?

3) Has anyone else had the weird experience of two Raddus fleets having a hyperspace Mexican Stand-off?

Well, I got my first 2 matches in with raddus this weekend. The first match ended round 2 when my opponent hit my Mc30 carrying raddus with G8s forcing it to land in blue range of a very angry ISD IIs front arc. Lost raddus and my Mc80L never made it in.

Second match was spread out enough I managed to get the MC80L in, it had a perfect double arc killed a boarding trooper quasar, then brought the interdictor down to 1 HP, unfortunately, the ISD sank the MC80L before I could finish the INT, and the match was a loss.

1.) I think 26 is actually pretty comfortable for what he does.
2.) Mc80L
3.) Not yet.

I think an effective fleet will look like

Mc75 profundity with raddus

HH external racks garieal honor

MC 80 (any flavor) optimized for blasting

Escort fighters

I'm thinking that will yeild some serious pain... Not knowing what mc 75 will cost though could make or break this concept.

Follow up to my earlier post. Rushing does not seem to work with Raddus and going second against him is a major pain in the rear. @JauntyChapeau and I discussed Raddus in the after-action breakdown of our game last night and found that the threat range for a Raddus'd large base is huge. A Rebel transport with Quantum Storm going speed 3 can basically drop that large base wherever the **** it wants on turn 2. I ran an ISD Cymoon and 3 ALC's and on turn 2 he was able to drop a Liberty into the side arc of my ISD and pound away. The ISD had to disengage and was out of the fight for the rest of the game while the ALC's did their best to get away. At present neither of us are sure how to best mitigate the effect. We also discussed that, maybe the reason we haven't seen another Rebel article is that maybe they're tweaking Raddus a little bit? Being able to Hyperspace Assault a large base is insanely good for 26 points.

Didn't think of that maybe their recosting him, or limiting him to medium.

Well if the medium limit is the case I guess we should get ready with some AFMK2 and see how it pans out as a dropship

3 hours ago, Grinoch said:

Follow up to my earlier post. Rushing does not seem to work with Raddus and going second against him is a major pain in the rear. @JauntyChapeau and I discussed Raddus in the after-action breakdown of our game last night and found that the threat range for a Raddus'd large base is huge. A Rebel transport with Quantum Storm going speed 3 can basically drop that large base wherever the **** it wants on turn 2. I ran an ISD Cymoon and 3 ALC's and on turn 2 he was able to drop a Liberty into the side arc of my ISD and pound away. The ISD had to disengage and was out of the fight for the rest of the game while the ALC's did their best to get away. At present neither of us are sure how to best mitigate the effect. We also discussed that, maybe the reason we haven't seen another Rebel article is that maybe they're tweaking Raddus a little bit? Being able to Hyperspace Assault a large base is insanely good for 26 points.

Three counterstrategies I am finding that aren’t foolproof:

1) Severe outactivation and maneuver commands. If they want to bring a large Raddus drop and any other combat ships, they won’t have much for activations. Forcing the. To move everyone and then moving your critical ship last can reduce his ability to drop in a crippling slot.

2) Decent #s of squads. He cant displace squads when deploying (Raddusing?). So keep a small # of cheap squads back and move them into blocking positions.

3) Threaten the flagship. Get your opponent to drop early and in suboptimal location?

Again, none are bulletproof, but any may help. I’ve had an unbroken string of wins with Raddus and those seem to be the weak spots to me. I encountered the squads one when I blocked an ideal deployment with my own squads without thinkng

Edited by Church14
On 10/26/2017 at 2:18 PM, Green Knight said:

Kind of.

If the list had been refined and practiced, then it might become strong.

On the other hand people will learn to compensate for this trick.

So overall I say no.

If the list had been refined and practiced, it may have succeeded in that one particular game, where you deliberately flew "into the trap." I could see it sniping a medium-base ship pretty easily, but it's going to struggle hard against an ISD no matter how well-refined.

16 minutes ago, rasproteus said:

If the list had been refined and practiced, it may have succeeded in that one particular game, where you deliberately flew "into the trap." I could see it sniping a medium-base ship pretty easily, but it's going to struggle hard against an ISD no matter how well-refined.

I'm not sure how it's going to struggle against an ISD. If I drop a MC80L/HM or MC75 in the side arc of the ISD, what kind of good options does it have? Either move straight ahead and keep taking shots in its side/rear, or hook away and essentially disengage from the fight altogether.

21 minutes ago, JauntyChapeau said:

I'm not sure how it's going to struggle against an ISD. If I drop a MC80L/HM or MC75 in the side arc of the ISD, what kind of good options does it have? Either move straight ahead and keep taking shots in its side/rear, or hook away and essentially disengage from the fight altogether.

Sorry, I meant it was going to struggle hard to SNIPE an ISD. If you can get 2-3 turns of firepower into it and avoid dying to the front arc, it'll go down. Just using Raddus to drop an MC80 Command with RLB and alpha strike is the context in which I was making the comments, though. Using Raddus to dodge the front arc is a little different discussion.

2 hours ago, Grinoch said:

Follow up to my earlier post. Rushing does not seem to work with Raddus and going second against him is a major pain in the rear. @JauntyChapeau and I discussed Raddus in the after-action breakdown of our game last night and found that the threat range for a Raddus'd large base is huge. A Rebel transport with Quantum Storm going speed 3 can basically drop that large base wherever the **** it wants on turn 2. I ran an ISD Cymoon and 3 ALC's and on turn 2 he was able to drop a Liberty into the side arc of my ISD and pound away. The ISD had to disengage and was out of the fight for the rest of the game while the ALC's did their best to get away. At present neither of us are sure how to best mitigate the effect. We also discussed that, maybe the reason we haven't seen another Rebel article is that maybe they're tweaking Raddus a little bit? Being able to Hyperspace Assault a large base is insanely good for 26 points.

I completely agree with Grinoch. As he stands now, Raddus seems too strong.

For reference, the fleet I ran last night:

Raddus Test Fleet 2

385/400 (I had initiative, we played Grinoch's Superior Positions)

Objectives - Most Wanted, Hyperspace Assault,

CR90A
*TRC, Advanced Projectors, Lando, Raddus

CR90A
*TRC, Advanced Projectors

GR-75 Transport
*Bright Hope

GR-75 Transport
*Quantum Storm

MC80 Star Cruiser
*Spinals, X1-7, Leading Shots, Skilled First Officer, Gunnery Team

YT-2400 x 3
Lancer x 2

On turn 2, the Quantum Storm was inside close range of Grinoch's Cymoon (after it had activated, of course). I wasn't sure I had gotten it far enough off to the side to get the Liberty out of the front arc, but the latitude that having just a single bit of the ship inside of distance 1 of a ship is utterly impressive. I dropped the Liberty in the side arc and went to town. Grinoch had basically two options: continue forward, engage the rest of my fleet while taking huge hits on the rear, or make a hard starboard, survive, but essentially be out of the fight altogether (I guess he could have murdered the Quantum Storm). He went with option two. This left my Liberty to follow up behind his three ALC, firing at their rear and racking up Superior Positions tokens.

There was no way for Grinoch to stop me from Raddus'ing my ship exactly where I wanted it, since the drop-off happens at the start of the round. Raddus should be 40 points, or only be able to affect small/medium bases.

43 minutes ago, rasproteus said:

Sorry, I meant it was going to struggle hard to SNIPE an ISD. If you can get 2-3 turns of firepower into it and avoid dying to the front arc, it'll go down. Just using Raddus to drop an MC80 Command with RLB and alpha strike is the context in which I was making the comments, though. Using Raddus to dodge the front arc is a little different discussion.

Sorry for my mis-reading. In this case, I agree with you.

6 minutes ago, JauntyChapeau said:

Sorry for my mis-reading. In this case, I agree with you.

You didn't misread - I was doing two or three things at once and failed to express myself clearly.

More to the point, however, even if Raddus were absolutely terrible - and he isn't - he's fun as heck to play.

What about raddus and a HH swarm list ready to drop one of the MC's anyone tried that yet? Maybe TFA 5-6 HH

Edited by Noosh
6 minutes ago, Noosh said:

What about raddus and a HH swarm list ready to drop one of the MC's anyone tried that yet? Maybe TFA 5-6 HH

I haven't, yet. The main problem I have with HHs is they aren't speed 4, but you can have either six naked Torpedo HHs or 5 with light upgrades, so that's a lot of potential drop-off points.