10 minutes ago, emsgoof said:

@Viktor Tanek I had originally looked at running the XI7 on Avenger also, but decided against it. What made you choose to go with them?

Most good players and slippery rebels are going to do everything to stay out of close range of your front arc. Xi7 makes the medium range shots I have do more. I added it at the last second and I felt that it paid off. I dropped EHB from the quasar and don't feel like I missed it.

On 12/10/2017 at 0:39 AM, Blail Blerg said:

Hey @Ken-Obi, thanks for the contribution, can you elaborate more though? Do you really think it can handle most other T1s very well? I find that no-matter your deployment, you're going to lose a lot of ships vs bombers if you dont have any squadrons.

Yeah - this is my buddy's list and I helped him refine it. Our local meta is all over the place, and this list seems to either hold its own or do well (he won one of our store championships). I do think heavy bombers are its toughest matchup. Sloane aces rolling really well can also give it a run for it's money. He has only been playing it for the last 2-3 tournaments so it isn't like we think this list is a silver bullet or anything, it's just pretty reliable. My buddy doesn't enjoy running fighters, so this is one of the best lists we've found to let him play in that space. Really the only reason I included it in this thread is because IIRC you mentioned you'd like a tough Imp list to practice against and we've found this list is really annoying to have to deal with.

When my buddy runs up against either a Sloane aces or a bomber list, the idea is the same - it's highly unlikely you'll lose one ISD before it can take out at least 1 important enemy ship. This is primarily due to RBD giving you 14 hull (since an ISD is almost never one-shot), and with JJ giving you the nav you need, spamming engineering. Usually another key factor in the game is going speed 3. Run the turn you need to, as well as take advantage of the inside turn where you need to. With LS and all those dice, you get easy points from killing flotillas. Having the 2 ISD2s with LS and GT gives you lots of area to threaten ships, so go after them and only shoot at the fighters if for some reason you can't get decent shots on 2 different ships or if against Sloane aces. His comms flotillas usually give an engineering token, or nav if he knows he wants to slow down without an inside turn. 2 flotillas stay out wide to give the ISDs maximum maneuverability and to be a moving obstacle drawing ships trying to flank into an ISD. The 3rd flotilla stays behind the ISDs, so you nearly always lose an ISD before you lose a flotilla. Now that I think about it, he might use the assault flotilla as that trailing one to have the blue die AA. I think my buddy usually does nav the first two dials and then engineering the rest of the game for the ISDs. He uses the nav dials to position himself instead of taking a token.

One other person mentioned that the weaknesses of this list are well known, which I agree with, but not every fleet can realistically exploit those weaknesses. Good fleets can handle beating up on 1 ISD for sure... but 2 fully loaded ones that are both super maneuverable and fast, constantly repairing themselves, and are loaded to beat up (if not one-shot) everything isn't easy to deal with. Again, we don't think this is a super power list or anything so maybe it doesn't qualify as a "tier 1" list by your criteria but what we've seen is that even if it gets one bad matchup and also loses that matchup, it's probably losing 5-6 (maybe 4-7) but it's winning the other 2 games 9-2 or 10-1. Maybe a Tier 1 Minus or a Tier 2 Plus Plus? It's also really fun to see 2 ISDs on the table, and if you're playing both sides in a game for practicing a new list, I think this is a good one.

Hope that helps and I'd be happy to answer any other questions, or ask my buddy more about it. I've been beaten up with it a lot! I have enjoyed practicing my MC30 flying against it as well as Yavaris bombers.

It is rarely the list.

It is usually the commander (and I don't mean the card).