I know that they are not really broken but wondering if they need do have the added wording of can only equip on small or medium like the D-Caps. I say this because I have never seen boarding troopers run on anything but an ISD.

From the articles when they came out I think they were meant to allow smaller ships like the hammerhead or the quasar to hit above their point value. But it seems they are mostly being used to allow ISD's that already hit hard to hit harder.

Yea, but if you can avoid the front arc at close range, they are wasted points. Especially if you can hound them in the rear arc.

The BT avenger is inherently weak to bomber swarms and MSUs. I just played a BTA list over the weekend and the only fleet that beat it was an MSU. 2 mc30s, a cr90, a hammeread, and 2 gr75s. I couldn't kill squat. Lost by 51 points

I really don't think they're OP, it just takes the right mindset to avoid. (I saw a few liberties arc dodge the heck out of a similar fleet this weekend).

Boarding Troopers is glued to a lot of ISDs because of Avenger, specifically; not because of the frame itself.

3 minutes ago, Payens said:

From the articles when they came out I think they were meant to allow smaller ships like the hammerhead or the quasar to hit above their point value.

If that were the case, they wouldn't have made the cards scale with the ships' engineering/squadron values.

There's only a handful of frames that can take the boarding teams - Hammerheads, Assault Frigates, Raiders, Quasars, ISDs.

Assault Frigates and Quasars don't usually want to get close to the enemy; Boarding Troopers is the more popular of the 2 (well, 3 counting Cham), and isn't as impactful on Hammerheads or Raiders with their Squadron 1. All of the above have steep opportunity costs, as the Weapons Team slot is fairly valuable for Gunnery Team or Ordnance Experts or Flight Controllers.

Avenger can accept that opportunity cost, because it can take advantage of its own BT and operate independently, has the durability to survive ploughing into the enemy, treats red tokens as gone so doesn't need to put in an extra turn of shooting to benefit from spending them, and can reliably destroy most ships at close range without their tokens. That's... not so true of stuff like the Quasar.

Without Avenger, Boarding Troopers is just a different (and on most ships, affecting fewer tokens) avenue to Overload Pulse, which was itself never exceedingly popular - because of the multiple moving parts needed to really benefit from it. Boarding Engineers and Chan are both kinda weird and niche, by contrast, although I'm sure somebody somewhere has done well with them (that seems to basically always be the case in Armada).

Just now, cynanbloodbane said:

Yea, but if you can avoid the front arc at close range, they are wasted points. Especially if you can hound them in the rear arc.

Plus the opportunity cost of not take Gunnery Teams / whatever else. BTVenger is strong because there's so many big ship lists these days.

Stay out of front arc and your fine.

Boarding Troopers were created so that Imperial Star Destroyers could hurt ships in a way that was more in line with their cost. Strange I know, but prior to Boarding Troopers the most lethal combat ships in the game were both Small bases (Gladiator and MC30, respectively).

Seeing as how the ONLY ship we've seen on screen with Boarding Troopers was an ISD (specifically the Devastator) and we've seen that twice, I'd say that it is working quite as intended.

1 hour ago, thecactusman17 said:

Boarding Troopers were created so that Imperial Star Destroyers could hurt ships in a way that was more in line with their cost. Strange I know, but prior to Boarding Troopers the most lethal combat ships in the game were both Small bases (Gladiator and MC30, respectively).

This is the most convincing answer I've seen regarding BTA.

I think BT should require a Squadron Dial to activate. Allowing the use of a token makes it to easy to just token up early, Hondo the token the turn you need it, etc. and get this supremely powerful combo to go off. Combos that are hard to use should be very powerful, but allowing the token to activate the BT's takes much of the planning out of the combo, allowing the ISD to spam Nav the whole time if they want, in order to make the approach easier. Also, by allowing a token to activate the card, you are freeing up the dial to be used to push squadrons. Few things can endure a front shot from Avanger with no tokens, even less can endure a preemptive bombing run followed by the same shot.

We all want/need ISD's to be big and scary but a ship that can move in last from outside of weapons range and activate first, killing basically any full strength ship it encounters is a game design issue (see Demo Nerf). that needs to be toned down. Medium and large base ships should not be getting one shotted from full health by a single activation. This marks a regression back toward the "Demo days," where low bid, high activation fleets abusing first-last tactics were king.

One would hope we had moved past that to a more strategic game where numbers of activations does not play such a massive role in fleet design and game play mechanics. Medium and Large base ships should have to duke it out over the course of several rounds, allowing for strategic interactions that give the game more tactical depth.

There is very little depth in using JJ to 4-5 click, 3 speed an ISD in after all their ships have gone and then activate first from black range and killing any ship in the game. The threat range is to large, and the counter play options are to limited for this tactic to be valid in a competitive game...

In general, one-shotting things in turn based games is bad for tactical depth as a rule. Stuff should not die so fast that the other player never has a chance to respond...

BT's is a once only use, takes two upgrade slots, both of which are slots that vi for other upgrades. It's opportunity cost of use is quite high from that standpoint and as said, is fairly easy to avoid on its primary delivery system (ISD-I)

It is fine as is :-)

Boarding troopers/Avenger combo works as intended. It’s also not the easiest thing to get to work. Just stay out if it’s front arc and it is not nearly as powerful. I’ve gone up against it and gotten crushed by it but I’ve also easily stayed at medium -long range from it when I put forth the effort. Fly your ships better and this combo doesn’t do much.

This is purely in my opinion, so take anything with a grain of salt:

It’s barely not broken, but it is very bad game design. On any other platform than Avenger, BT requires two moving parts and is a challenging to use but potentially powerful card. On AvengerBT, it provides the only way to guarantee the death of any ship (except Mott ISD) in the game in a single activation. No support or moving parts, just a “your pristine 160 point Ship just disappeared because I activated.” It essentially becomes a hard counter to people playing any other large base ship.

I say it isn’t broken, because there are some ways to fight it. Though none are reliable. Blocking comes to mind, but that means you are throwing away ships into the front arc of an ISD and hoping to slow it down. Dodging works - if you have a small, fast ship. No large ship save for Engine tech Liberties can reliably dodge. If they take a JJ AvengerBT, then dodging is not realistic as a defense. Preventing a squad token from being on the ship or available is nearly impossible if the person with AvengerBT isn’t pantscrap stupid in their gameplay.

So so it’s a cheap upgrade, single activation, easy to trigger, easy to play, where counterplay is difficult to pull off and requires a much higher skill level than the person using it, that allows you to kill nearly anything in one shot and basically everything else in one activation. Actually, **** that. It’s broken.

Let us pretend that I missed something in my analysis. Let’s just look at how fun it is to face. Congrats, your most expensive ship will die for no return because you dared to bring a non-AvengerBT large ship AND didn’t bring a 25+ point bid for first player. Don’t worry, all those people who are leaving XWMG over power combos will absolutely join us when they see a 82 point Demolisher, a 122-132 point AvengerBT, 92 points in Gozantis, and a token squad screen out activate you and wait for your large ship to come in range. Then AvengerBT can one-shot your most expensive ship and Demo can first-last something else next turn.

But it maybe you don’t bring the fleet abusing nearly every game mechanic. Maybe you just have a new guy walk in and all you brought is your AvengerBT fleet. Again, how likely are they to come back after watching their MC80 just explode for no gain with no clear way to defend against it

That lack of fun makes it bad game design.

Errata it to small and medium only, and it becomes an awesome card that I like.

3 minutes ago, Church14 said:

This is purely in my opinion, so take anything with a grain of salt:

It’s barely not broken, but it is very bad game design. On any other platform than Avenger, BT requires two moving parts and is a challenging to use but potentially powerful card. On AvengerBT, it provides the only way to guarantee the death of any ship (except Mott ISD) in the game in a single activation. No support or moving parts, just a “your pristine 160 point Ship just disappeared because I activated.” It essentially becomes a hard counter to people playing any other large base ship.

I say it isn’t broken, because there are some ways to fight it. Though none are reliable. Blocking comes to mind, but that means you are throwing away ships into the front arc of an ISD and hoping to slow it down. Dodging works - if you have a small, fast ship. No large ship save for Engine tech Liberties can reliably dodge. If they take a JJ AvengerBT, then dodging is not realistic as a defense. Preventing a squad token from being on the ship or available is nearly impossible if the person with AvengerBT isn’t pantscrap stupid in their gameplay.

So so it’s a cheap upgrade, single activation, easy to trigger, easy to play, where counterplay is difficult to pull off and requires a much higher skill level than the person using it, that allows you to kill nearly anything in one shot and basically everything else in one activation. Actually, **** that. It’s broken.

Let us pretend that I missed something in my analysis. Let’s just look at how fun it is to face. Congrats, your most expensive ship will die for no return because you dared to bring a non-AvengerBT large ship AND didn’t bring a 25+ point bid for first player. Don’t worry, all those people who are leaving XWMG over power combos will absolutely join us when they see a 82 point Demolisher, a 122-132 point AvengerBT, 92 points in Gozantis, and a token squad screen out activate you and wait for your large ship to come in range. Then AvengerBT can one-shot your most expensive ship and Demo can first-last something else next turn.

But it maybe you don’t bring the fleet abusing nearly every game mechanic. Maybe you just have a new guy walk in and all you brought is your AvengerBT fleet. Again, how likely are they to come back after watching their MC80 just explode for no gain with no clear way to defend against it

That lack of fun makes it bad game design.

Errata it to small and medium only, and it becomes an awesome card that I like.

The force ghost of Admiral neilson has returned. You forgot to blame Ben also.

1 minute ago, ninclouse2000 said:

The force ghost of Admiral neilson has returned. You forgot to blame Ben also.

I blame game designers. Nobody else needs to be involved

I played against a BTA list in Nordics tournamnet, my opponent charged in his BTA ISD in one turn on my previously activated Liberty to be at close range for the beginning of next turn, he ended up just a bit outside of close range on my Liberty.

Then my Yavaris double B-wing combo made a Last first Activation on it... +30 attack dice later and the BTA was eaten up as BTL sandwich.

True story

To be honest it was a bit dicey charging head on a BTA, especially when its ISD brother was comming charging right around behind it.

(deep breath to steel self against the internet rage)

I actually think that Flotilla activation padding is the core issue. BT Avenger without 5+ activations removes the first last issue by allowing the other player to at least reserve one ship to activate after avanger, Even activation= you have a chance to dodge the avenger attack at short range.

As long as the other player has a chance to react before the one shot combo lands I am pretty ok with it. The inability for the opponent to react is the deal breaker.

BT Avenger would not need to change if activations were equalized between all fleets or flotillas were limited to 1 per fleet (like they should be in my opinion) Who needs that many cheerleader non-combat ships in a real battle?

Also, just because there exists A counter, or an example where a combo did not win, does not mean it is not OP.

OP can lose games and still be OP, OP is anything that is way more effective than the skill required to use it, such that it crowds out other fleet design options under the weight of its ease of use and power.

The question is not "can it be beaten," because there will always be example where it can, but "is this as skill demanding as other lists of its same power level."

If the answer is no then it is OP

12 minutes ago, Church14 said:

This is purely in my opinion, so take anything with a grain of salt:

It’s barely not broken, but it is very bad game design. On any other platform than Avenger, BT requires two moving parts and is a challenging to use but potentially powerful card. On AvengerBT, it provides the only way to guarantee the death of any ship (except Mott ISD) in the game in a single activation. No support or moving parts, just a “your pristine 160 point Ship just disappeared because I activated.” It essentially becomes a hard counter to people playing any other large base ship.

I say it isn’t broken, because there are some ways to fight it. Though none are reliable. Blocking comes to mind, but that means you are throwing away ships into the front arc of an ISD and hoping to slow it down. Dodging works - if you have a small, fast ship. No large ship save for Engine tech Liberties can reliably dodge. If they take a JJ AvengerBT, then dodging is not realistic as a defense. Preventing a squad token from being on the ship or available is nearly impossible if the person with AvengerBT isn’t pantscrap stupid in their gameplay.

So so it’s a cheap upgrade, single activation, easy to trigger, easy to play, where counterplay is difficult to pull off and requires a much higher skill level than the person using it, that allows you to kill nearly anything in one shot and basically everything else in one activation. Actually, **** that. It’s broken.

Let us pretend that I missed something in my analysis. Let’s just look at how fun it is to face. Congrats, your most expensive ship will die for no return because you dared to bring a non-AvengerBT large ship AND didn’t bring a 25+ point bid for first player. Don’t worry, all those people who are leaving XWMG over power combos will absolutely join us when they see a 82 point Demolisher, a 122-132 point AvengerBT, 92 points in Gozantis, and a token squad screen out activate you and wait for your large ship to come in range. Then AvengerBT can one-shot your most expensive ship and Demo can first-last something else next turn.

But it maybe you don’t bring the fleet abusing nearly every game mechanic. Maybe you just have a new guy walk in and all you brought is your AvengerBT fleet. Again, how likely are they to come back after watching their MC80 just explode for no gain with no clear way to defend against it

That lack of fun makes it bad game design.

Errata it to small and medium only, and it becomes an awesome card that I like.

BTAvenger has the same weaknesses as every other overly reliant on first player high bid high activation list: squadrons utterly wreck it, failing to get 1st player wrecks it, and highly tuned objective play makes it nearly useless.

Strange as it may seem, the upcoming ISD release is going to drastically reduce the power of BTAvenger by making it only truly viable on the ISD1 platform. The Cymoon doesn't really benefit and the KDY refit doesn't get to use X17s to make it a recurring threat for double-arcing against ships without redundant defense tokens. Further, those ships have reduced squadron value, which means they can't simply erase tokens.

However, they also have the marginally useful benefit of utterly annihilating ISD1s in a head-to-head fight. Gee, I wonder why that is?

The current problem with Boarding Troopers is no worse than Demolisher post-nerf. All evidence points towards being able to fix it with game expansion no later than the next wave.

38 minutes ago, Church14 said:

On AvengerBT, it provides the only way to guarantee the death of any ship (except Mott ISD) in the game in a single activation. No support or moving parts, just a “your pristine 160 point Ship just disappeared because I activated.” It essentially becomes a hard counter to people playing any other large base ship.

Ships without Motti that I have personally survived BTAvenger with

ISD

Victory

Interdictor

Liberty

Home One

None of these ships are guaranteed to survive BTA but they're certainly not guaranteed to die either. I mean it takes careful play to insure that they survive but it's no more difficult than surviving B-Wings Rapid Launched from a MC80 Command Cruiser followed by an Ackbar barrage and I don't hear people complaining about that. I don't personally care if they nerf it or not but if they do then I think that Boarding Troopers will become a rarely seen upgrade.

26 minutes ago, thecactusman17 said:

BTAvenger has the same weaknesses as every other overly reliant on first player high bid high activation list: squadrons utterly wreck it, failing to get 1st player wrecks it, and highly tuned objective play makes it nearly useless.

Strange as it may seem, the upcoming ISD release is going to drastically reduce the power of BTAvenger by making it only truly viable on the ISD1 platform. The Cymoon doesn't really benefit and the KDY refit doesn't get to use X17s to make it a recurring threat for double-arcing against ships without redundant defense tokens. Further, those ships have reduced squadron value, which means they can't simply erase tokens.

However, they also have the marginally useful benefit of utterly annihilating ISD1s in a head-to-head fight. Gee, I wonder why that is?

The current problem with Boarding Troopers is no worse than Demolisher post-nerf. All evidence points towards being able to fix it with game expansion no later than the next wave.

None of the weaknesses you list really make up the difference to me. ISDs travel speed 3, so any bombers that are going to kill it are going to need something besides the target to activate them and the speed necessary to keep up. So Bwings and Ywings get one turn of hits and then the ISD is gone. TIE Bombers can keep up, but they will need relay or a fast carrier pointed in the right direction (opposite what most of your fleet is doing). Both of which are solutions that require multiple moving parts.

Not getting first... doesn’t cripple it in any way it just means that AvengerBT gets hit before it one-Shots it’s target. Unless you just lost a bid to another AvengerBT, it isn’t a big concern. Losing a bid for a true MSU is a bigger deal as the Lynchpin unit used to be a glass cannon. ISDs are very much not.

Fleets tuned to win objectives might have a better time, but look at what is available. None of the common red objectives Generate a lot of points. The best blue is superior positions for points, but you would never pick that for deployment issues. The best yellow for points is fire lanes and kill player 2’s biggest ship on turn 2 makes that a lot weaker. The rest are typically 80 points or so for second player and you make that up by one-shotting (usually) a 120+ point Ship. Funny enough, Advanced Gunnery is desirable to see in 2nd player’s list. It lets you most likely wipe out their Gunnery ship without it firing.

I am willing to wait and see what the new wave brings, but until I get more than a rumor saying there is something useful, I won’t hold my breath. FFG tends towards waiting until something becomes a either a crisis or a meaningless joke before fixing it. As it is, I intend to use Raddus once 7 drops as a sanction against AvengerBT. He is the only reliable way to keep a large ship away from it.

1 minute ago, Megatronrex said:

Ships without Motti that I have personally survived BTAvenger with

ISD

Victory

Interdictor

Liberty

Home One

None of these ships are guaranteed to survive BTA but they're certainly not guaranteed to die either. I mean it takes careful play to insure that they survive but it's no more difficult than surviving B-Wings Rapid Launched from a MC80 Command Cruiser followed by an Ackbar barrage and I don't hear people complaining about that. I don't personally care if they nerf it or not but if they do then I think that Boarding Troopers will become a rarely seen upgrade.

I could have added the caveat that it does depend on dice rolls. You can always get shafted by RNJesus. The thing is that a RLB MC80 requires multiple moving parts and a serious points investment on top of that same ship. AvengerBT just takes a single activation from a difficult to stop ship.

1 minute ago, Church14 said:

I could have added the caveat that it does depend on dice rolls. You can always get shafted by RNJesus. The thing is that a RLB MC80 requires multiple moving parts and a serious points investment on top of that same ship. AvengerBT just takes a single activation from a difficult to stop ship.

Like I said, I don't care whether they nerf it or not. I just figure I'm a fairly mediocre player and out of the ten or so times I've faced it I've only lost two ships to it. It doesn't scare me and I wouldn't call it OP because it's one of those things with multiple possible counters.

6 minutes ago, Church14 said:

None of the weaknesses you list really make up the difference to me. ISDs travel speed 3, so any bombers that are going to kill it are going to need something besides the target to activate them and the speed necessary to keep up. So Bwings and Ywings get one turn of hits and then the ISD is gone.

Hit ISD in face. ISD moves. Hit ISD in butt. That's a solid 2 turns IF and ONLY IF the ISD never landed on your squadrons. If it did, that's another turn fully.

6 minutes ago, Church14 said:

Fleets tuned to win objectives might have a better time, but look at what is available. None of the common red objectives Generate a lot of points. The best blue is superior positions for points, but you would never pick that for deployment issues. The best yellow for points is fire lanes and kill player 2’s biggest ship on turn 2 makes that a lot weaker. The rest are typically 80 points or so for second player and you make that up by one-shotting (usually) a 120+ point Ship. Funny enough, Advanced Gunnery is desirable to see in 2nd player’s list. It lets you most likely wipe out their Gunnery ship without it firing.

If I'm letting you kill my biggest ship turn 2 when we're playing fire lanes, ot my Advanced gunnery ship on turn 2 then I'm playing several things wrong; fire lanes/advanced gunnery, my big ship, and the arrangement of the rest of my ships as well.

I definitely don't have a problem with it, even though I'm playing against it more often that not. I actually really like having it in my meta because Defiance has become stupidly prevalent. Nothing eats Defiance quite like BTA. That in turn allows some room for other types of play.

I think BTA is squeezing out speed 2 ships that have no hope of escaping from it. Things that can manage speed 3 may be able to make it miss, but the speed 2 ships can not clear out fast enough to escape is BTA wants to eat them, that is a huge meta limiting factor right there...

1 minute ago, Space_Cowboy17 said:

I think BTA is squeezing out speed 2 ships that have no hope of escaping from it. Things that can manage speed 3 may be able to make it miss, but the speed 2 ships can not clear out fast enough to escape is BTA wants to eat them, that is a huge meta limiting factor right there...

My MC80H disagrees with you. I faced an BT Avenger list this last weekend ran by a very skilled opponent and I managed to keep my mc80H out of range 1 and for the most part only in long range of the ISD. Set up is key when facing a BT Avenger as well as using navigate and engine techs to create space.