I only play against a couple of people and one of them has settled on a list that I'm struggling against. He runs Reeikan and a pair of MC30 torpedo frigates with external racks, ordnance experts, H9s and advanced projectors.

He runs them in close formation and puts navigate commands on them every turn. Then he commits a drive-by murder with them and jets away. He usually expects to lose one of them as he's invariably trading it for something more expensive.

I'm not sure what a good counter against this is? They put out a tonne of damage, are quite survivable and can scramble away out of trouble at speed 4.

I play both Rebels and Imperials so interested in what sorts of counter might work for both.

Thanks!

Triple tapped luke;) (activate with adar, then Double tap with yavaris) If youre Lucky, there Will be a crit, if not, finish off with a ram. BCC Transport helps him much.

Xi7 turbolasers in general help hate on mc30s.

XI7 for sure, Also if you know he is going to Nav constantly be prepared to counter it, don't let him park one in your bow so you cannot escape and keep help close by. You could also go with a strong bid and don't let him have first player, MC30's need first player, don't let him have it.

If you can go first, a gladiator with Demolisher, OE, APT, and Engine Techs can duel a generic mc30 pretty well. Since the mc30 only has 4 hull, the APTs hurt bad. Move into range, take your Demolisher shot, hopefully get a hit/crit to proc APT, ram with engine techs. Now the mc30 only has 2 hull left, regardless of shields. Next turn, take two shots, if you get APTs to go off twice then it's dead. If not, ram it. Still not dead? Ram it again with engine techs.

Of course, if he's taking Admonition, Mon Mothma, Lando, or some combination of the three, then this tactic doesn't work nearly so well since he can potentially cancel/reroll your hit/crits. Also, the ramming hurts Demolisher too, but if it kills an mc30 its probably worth it.

As reflected in the other suggestions above (Luke, Xi7 turbolasers), the general rule is to find ways to bypass or punch through the shields quickly. Other ways to do this include ion cannon batteries and Norra Wexley bomber balls (though Admonition and Mon Mothma are also pretty resilient against bombers.)

Another approach may be to use slowing effects like Konstantine, tractor beams, and the like; often, a slow moving mc30 quickly becomes a dead one. This can be hard to make work though, especially against more experienced players.

12 hours ago, Plessiez said:

I only play against a couple of people and one of them has settled on a list that I'm struggling against. He runs Reeikan and a pair of MC30 torpedo frigates with external racks, ordnance experts, H9s and advanced projectors.

He runs them in close formation and puts navigate commands on them every turn. Then he commits a drive-by murder with them and jets away. He usually expects to lose one of them as he's invariably trading it for something more expensive.

I'm not sure what a good counter against this is? They put out a tonne of damage, are quite survivable and can scramble away out of trouble at speed 4.

I play both Rebels and Imperials so interested in what sorts of counter might work for both.

Thanks!

THIS. big time.

9 minutes ago, geek19 said:

Xi7 turbolasers in general help hate on mc30s.

What makes them so survivable at close range is those advanced projectors. XI7s makes them basically useless. Then just find a ship that punches hard enough. I usually take out torp 30s with twin VIC IIs with d-caps, gunnery teams, Qbts, and leading shots. Let's you get a solid wave of damage in at long range before they're a threat. (Though if you go that way you may wanna trade out qbts and use XI7s like Geek said).

Luke, Adar and Yav or X17s. First player helps

Kitted out like that... it's about 200 pts. Ramming corvettes and squadrons!

paging @Ardaedhel

Take a bunch of floatillas with tractor beams, muhahaha.

As people have said.. they hate being bombed by squads. If you can swarm them with squads it helps alot. Also, lists like that love to go first. If you can outbid him and go first, especially with Demo, then those little guys are in trouble. Remember he will be trying to outwait you and try to plan accordingly. I run triple mc30s sometimes and hate squads and Demolisher. If he is going first then you have to threaten 2 at once with a ship that can survive a salvo. Then he has to leave one for you to shoot at and can't fly it off.

It can't be done. Give up and join the dark side.

MC30's and Demolisher are a scourge where I live. Probably 3/4 of the games I play on the table have one or more of them in them. I have tried a lot of different ways to handle them, but honestly now I just ram them or avoid them and kill the other ships. If I am second player I know there is next to no chance that kill an Admonition or Demolisher with ET, so I focus on the other ships and try to block them out of close range of the targets they want to destroy and/or herd them into a position where I can simply ram them into oblivion. Not very thematic Star Wars, but that's all I got.

I find QBTs on VSDs are good. The extra blue that can be used out of front or even the side helps a lot. On a VSD2 add Disposable Capacitors to give them a bloody nose at long range before they can skirt round your front arc. On a VSD1 add external racks to make your flank arc devastating at close range (once).

I have tried Konstantine, Interdictor and several Pylon Q7s in a speed trap list and MC30s can still hit you hard by storing a Nav token and then using Nav Commands, but often you can then punish them and prevent their escapes. It is not 100% reliable but can make the difference between getting revenge or not.

A force of bombers with boosted-comms carrier can reach out (especially with the old Rhymer - though he still isn't useless) and thin out the shields on an MC30 before they launch an attack run. This can result in them calling off an attack run on a large target if they see 4-5 shield damage already on their most useful arcs such as front+port side. With only 4 hull and XI7s on the ship they hope to kill they may go elsewhere. It isn't as though tooled up MC30s are cheap and disposable. Lots of rogue bombers can be fun too especially if the MC30s like to do the last/first activation ploy to get in and out and double arc an opponent. Mc30s can move after the enemy ships but the firesprays or lancers will still get to out activate them and then chase them down as they limp away.

Oh yes and Sloane makes Admonition nervous.

It is a risk even using one of the green redirects when a Sloane TIE could then get an accuracy and discard it - eating into the stock of tokens that admonition relies on for survival.

Here's what I hate seeing, as a fellow MC30 Torp afficianado:

-squadron heavy. Keep your squadrons back/deep. When he does his inevitable "flyby", pounce on him with squadrons.

-Demolisher with 1st player bid.

-a heavy slugger ship deployed a rank 'behind' whatever the bait ship is. Let's say there is a nice, juicy, high value, threatening ship deployed midfield that I want to take out with my Shrimp. AFMK2, a squadron pushing Vic, something like that..something in the 70-90 pt. range. Something that will tempt me to take a risk...

You put that out there. Not foolhardy, mind you. But deployed behind it, backfield, is a "sweeper". This could be something as small as a pair of offensively tricked out raiders, which should be able to take out an MC30. He will have a hard time doing his murder-run and ending up in a safespot, knowing he's about to get pummeled after he does so.

16 hours ago, Plessiez said:

I only play against a couple of people and one of them has settled on a list that I'm struggling against. He runs Reeikan and a pair of MC30 torpedo frigates with external racks, ordnance experts, H9s and advanced projectors.

He runs them in close formation and puts navigate commands on them every turn. Then he commits a drive-by murder with them and jets away. He usually expects to lose one of them as he's invariably trading it for something more expensive.

I'm not sure what a good counter against this is? They put out a tonne of damage, are quite survivable and can scramble away out of trouble at speed 4.

I play both Rebels and Imperials so interested in what sorts of counter might work for both.

Thanks!

From the perspective of the guy behind the MC30s...

It depends what the rest of the fleet looks like. The two ships you described plus Rieekan are about 200 points.

If the other half of the list is squadron support, bring more or equal activations than him. One of them should be an ISD2 with Gunnery Teams, Leading Shots, and XI7. You need to carefully control your ISD's speed to force him into your front arc at close-medium range without allowing him to force you into a close-range double arc. Then, activate your ISD last, at which point, if you've done it right, you've got a very strong shot going into both of the shrimp, and it's the end of the round so Rieekan does nothing for him. Even if he doesn't present you with both of them at the same time and you only kill one of them, one MC30 is not going to be able to take down an XI7 ISD2 solo in most cases, even with good positioning.

If the other half of his list is more small ships like CR90s and Hammerheads with few squadrons, the answer is much simpler: rogues and avoidance. Rogues absolutely annihilate squadronless lists in general, and MC30s in particular. If you've got them (or you guys are down with proxying), this is the ideal use case for a pile of YT-2400s or Decimators. Otherwise, mix and match whatever rogues you have, valuing speed and numerous small attacks . I haven't faced it yet because who even brings them, but a pile of Lancers would be just murderous against squadronless MC30s. You can achieve a similar effect with Relayed squadrons, but remember that once your carriers are dead it's all over for you, so dodge those MC30s for all you're worth.

Many others are suggesting you out-bid him and take first player. That's an option, but without knowing how skilled your opponent is, it's hard to say how much good that will do you. MC30s are definitely easier to play as P1, but they don't need it by any means. Someone who has put in the time to learn how to employ the ship well will have practiced using it just as well as either P1 or P2. So, if it's the case that he's pretty much always P1 in this matchup, it may be worth pushing him off-balance by trying to out-bid him, but don't hamper your own fleet too much to get that bid.

In terms of more general tactics, concentrate your fire . This is so hugely critical against MC30s, because they live and die by their defense tokens. This is the source of the MC30s reputation for being impossible to kill: they take no damage-no damage-no damage- DEAD ... but you only get to the DEAD part if you concentrate your fire well, so for someone unfamiliar with the ship, it looks like all of your shots are doing a whole lot of nothing. Even if you're taking a long-range shot that's not going to put any damage through right now, if you can force him to choose between burning defense tokens and eating damage, always take that shot. Two damaged MC30s are still shooting you at full or almost-full strength. A dead MC30 and a full-health MC30 are shooting you at half strength.

This was kind of quick and dirty off the top of my head. Hope it's helpful!

Edit: Worth noting that none of these suggestions are required to beat an MC30 list. They're just a couple of turnkey approaches that should be pretty straightforward to implement and play to have a stronger chance in your particular scenario.

All good stuff mentioned above. When I fly Mc30s these are some things that are always super dangerous:

-Swarm of Rogues

-Rhymer Firesprays

-Big ships with XI7s - especially if the Mc30 doesn't have last/first

-Triple tapping Luke

-Ram spam

Is he putting admonition or foresight on the 30s?

Generally, the best way to beat nerfed Rieekan is to force him to pick and choose which ship to lose first.

Without a title, it takes 8 damage with X17s to kill an MC30. 1 shield, then the typical hull and shield set.

There are only a few ships that can muster that all in one attack. Your better bet is going to be a combination of big hits to overload the defenses, then finish it off with something less powerful. But there are options.

You haven’t mentioned their objective choices, which makes me think they are going first. Put a bid in to undercut them and take first payer advantage away. See if it has am impact on their style. Demo gladiator (I'd pick Assault Concussion but APTs also work) can quickly put the hurt on for these two if they don't have the titles. Also, a big Star Destroyer will tank a few hits and can punch through. I'd suggest Avenger with Boarding Troopers.

On the squadron side, the trick is to use relay and distributed pocket carriers to spread out while keeping your bombing force concentrated on his most threatening ships. When he goes after one, the others slide away while focusing fire until it's dead. Force multipliers like Yavaris, Col Jendon, Adar Talon, and Bomber Command Center increase the odds that he will have to quickly burn those redirects and give you a big advantage if a combat ship follows up the shot.

Thanks for the helpful advice everyone. In answer to a couple of questions people asked:

He doesn't use Admonition or Lando and I dread the day that he does.
He's happy going first or second with them but I'm not happy going second against them so should probably increase my bid.
Objectives vary, we're still in "happy to try objectives we've not played before" mode rather than always being super optimised.

I'm not that confident in my ability to correctly manoeuvre bombers (especially relatively slow rebel ones) into position to catch MC30s at full motoring speed but this is probably something I need to practice.

9 hours ago, Ardaedhel said:

ISD2 with Gunnery Teams, Leading Shots, and XI7

Mix with Jerjerrod, then sprinkle with Evil Laugh

x17s might make him never want to touch AP again. =)

Bid for 1st.

Try Avenger BT.

Try Luke + squadron friends.

Ramming still works.

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Also no lie: The forum knows this. The MC30 is extremely strong value for its cost. Probably just barely on the side of not-overpowered. Its pretty easy to protect also with speed, first player and a healthy bid.

28 minutes ago, Blail Blerg said:

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Also no lie: The forum knows this. The MC30 is extremely strong value for its cost. Probably just barely on the side of not-overpowered. Its pretty easy to protect also with speed, first player and a healthy bid.

It’s certainly a glass cannon in a gunfight... if you are not prepped for it, it will run roughshod over everyone and everything with a sardonic laugh...

But if it’s ever caught with its pants down, the glass aspect really holds in... it just shatters.

the main problem is it’s wealnesses are generally something you need to specialize for, so if you don’t go out of your way for it...... it’s still a cannon in a gunfight... ?

Squadrons, Mc30s really don't play the squadron game with a single blue die and only 1 squadron value. Mc30s are all for ship to ship combat, so going ship to ship may not be the best choice.

2 hours ago, Drasnighta said:

It’s certainly a glass cannon in a gunfight... if you are not prepped for it, it will run roughshod over everyone and everything with a sardonic laugh...

But if it’s ever caught with its pants down, the glass aspect really holds in... it just shatters.

the main problem is it’s wealnesses are generally something you need to specialize for, so if you don’t go out of your way for it...... it’s still a cannon in a gunfight... ?

I contest the glass part:
1. Its the most durable small ship outside of xi7s usage.
2. It might still be the most durable small ship even with xi7s.
3. It has particular resilience to squadrons in general due to amount of shields. It is the hardest small ship to kill even with Yavaris and Norra.
4. All of this for an extremely competitive cost, making it easier to get first bid.
5. With how the game works with activations, offense and deleting things can work as a replicable defense with low skill floor.

Everything dies when its caught wrong. That doesn't define anything.

Come to think of it though, exactly is this a reply to what I said? That the forum knows this? You don't seem to be directly engaging any of my statements. You make true statements of your own. Compared to other larger ships, it is more fragile.