20 minutes ago, Brikhause said:

First you learn to play Mon Mothma! Then you profit!

Um.....

No.

2 minutes ago, Mikael Hasselstein said:

Um.....

No.

I have proven it to work, over and over.

I mean, granted it's not a solution for you, as a pawn of the the fascist oppressors. But it does work, and does hard counter the build.

5 minutes ago, Ardaedhel said:

I mean, granted it's not a solution for you, as a loyal stalwart of the legitimate galactic regime.

FTFY

18 hours ago, Ardaedhel said:

Lol, well, I fly the hard counter regularly, soooo... eh?

You are missing the point. The generalized point is that when faced with an equally skilled opponent, using a top tier list that is not 2-3 Rebels, would you feel like you are on an even playing field with the match up. If not, its OP.

You can cutely dance away from the question by saying you play the "hard counter," to a list that we have spent a over a year puzzling over how to stop while remaining balanced enough to fight other threats, but do you really think that most well thought out lists that are not specifically built to fight 2-3 would have a 50/50 chance of victory?

It is my opinion that while the match up has been beaten in a lot of cases, the other player was playing into a significant up hill fight, uneven difficulty for victory is by definition, imbalance.

I am eager to see this "hard counter," list of yours that is also well rounded enough to take on other top lists, rise to the top and out perform 2-3 rebels.

2 minutes ago, Space_Cowboy17 said:

You are missing the point. The generalized point is that when faced with an equally skilled opponent, using a top tier list that is not 2-3 Rebels, would you feel like you are on an even playing field with the match up. If not, its OP.

You can cutely dance away from the question by saying you play the "hard counter," to a list that we have spent a over a year puzzling over how to stop while remaining balanced enough to fight other threats, but do you really think that most well thought out lists that are not specifically built to fight 2-3 would have a 50/50 chance of victory?

It is my opinion that while the match up has been beaten in a lot of cases, the other player was playing into a significant up hill fight, uneven difficulty for victory is by definition, imbalance.

I am eager to see this "hard counter," list of yours that is also well rounded enough to take on other top lists, rise to the top and out perform 2-3 rebels.

4 mc30s, 3 GR75s, 5 point bid, Mon Mothma. He's been running it for a few years now. I played a version of it myself earlier this year (pre nerfing) and it seemed good, just not my playstyle. I lost to a Rieekan ace list but some of that was my unfamiliarity with my list more than anything, as I didn't bring all my ships to bear/attack the important ships at the same time and then jump out FAST.

It's not my playstyle, but it's solid.

3 minutes ago, geek19 said:

4 mc30s, 3 GR75s, 5 point bid, Mon Mothma. He's been running it for a few years now. I played a version of it myself earlier this year (pre nerfing) and it seemed good, just not my playstyle. I lost to a Rieekan ace list but some of that was my unfamiliarity with my list more than anything, as I didn't bring all my ships to bear/attack the important ships at the same time and then jump out FAST.

It's not my playstyle, but it's solid.

That’s exactly it. He changed it up quite significantly right before Worlds too, which is what probably contributed the most to his unfortunate performance (on top of some completely bonkers rerolls from squadrons against his defense tokens).

But when he’s in the zone, it wins Regionals, even against Rieekan Aces (even if it’s only by 4 MOV)

both of you are missing the point.

he is "answering," my question about the even playing field concern with a specific list that is intended to counter my example. That logic only invalidates my point if many other lists are also hard counters to a 2-3 rebels list, which I think we can agree they are not.

One counter example does not invalidate the overall point.

I find it frustrating that while I am sure he knows all this, he still throws out that response as if it completely counters my general point. Not to mention that there are 2 factions in this game, both of which must be able to field lists that can compete on a 50/50 playing field with the list (in order for it not to be OP), so at a minimum he would need to provide 2 examples, one from each faction, to even begin to refute my point. In conjunction with being able to prove that said lists are also capable of winning against a multitude of other top level fleet builds.

That is a large task to disprove, specially with a "...eh?" response. I am concerned that the response is less about trying to answer the question and more about boasting in how he personally is unconcerned about 2-3 rebels and we as a community need to "get gud," like him.

This is not about his ego, but the larger community, just because the list he likes may be ok against 2-3 Rebels, we cannot dismiss the issue and must concern ourselves with both factions and multiple playstyles not being invalidated at the top tier competitive levels by a single build.

I think y'all are missing each other's points. @Space_Cowboy17's point is solid if his pretense of "Reikan 2+3 is too strong when played perfectly" is true.

A counterpoint of "yes but it's really hard to play perfectly" doesn't matter *IF* that pretense is true. In any game, it feels really really bad if your win condition is "I am relying on my opponent making a mistake, and I have no agency until they make one."

For example, in a fighting game if you can chain a combo that is literally uncounterable if timed perfectly, the game is broken. The agency is taken away from your opponent and they are left waiting for you to mess up. They cannot do anything until you mess up.

Now I don't know Armada nearly well enough yet to know if the original pretense is true or not. But I must agree that if it is, then there's a problem.

18 minutes ago, duck_bird said:

I think y'all are missing each other's points. @Space_Cowboy17's point is solid if his pretense of "Reikan 2+3 is too strong when played perfectly" is true.

I think that perhaps it needs to be explored what 'playing this list perfectly' really means. That would allow us to identify elements that can cause a player to not play the list perfectly.

28 minutes ago, Mikael Hasselstein said:

I think that perhaps it needs to be explored what 'playing this list perfectly' really means. That would allow us to identify elements that can cause a player to not play the list perfectly.

This is a good idea because from what has been posted earlier, there seem to be a fair few variations on the fleet and it still is considered riekan 2+3. Is it the ships or the squads, specific squads or ships present, or certain upgrades? The only consistency i have seen thus far is yavaris, gallant haven, 3 flotillas, and b wings.

If Dodonna is the admiral of the 2+3 is it still OP?

Is the Imperial 2+3 equivalent (such as the Quasar + Demo + 3 I play) just as strong? (Or maybe Sloane 1+4 that isn't that far off from this and has won it's fair share of competitive fields?)

I am starting to lean heavily on the idea that it might not necessarily be Rieekan 2+3, but the underpinning design of 2+3 itself that is overpowered. Rieekan just has an insane amount of synergy in that structure which makes him stand out, but truly, I find that almost any time you follow that formula - 2 ships, 3 flotillas, max squads - you find success. Is it maybe time we start looking at how to alter that structure from being so powerful, rather than looking at individual components of a single list archetype?

What makes 2+3 work?

2 Ship Threats - either as squadron pushers or attack threats themselves (1 in the case of sloane, but it's a big *** threat). The idea is that if the game is balanced around damage per point, this lets you put 340ish points of damage into 2 activations (or 1). It is an unbelievably focused and withering assault that happens all at once and gives little to no opportunity to balance or recover from. This fleet is the haymaker punch- it reels all the way back, and lets you punch at it while it winds up, but then it OHKO's you in return.

3 Non-Combat Activations- If your 400pt combat potential is a pie, 3 transports let you sacrifice 15% of that combat potential in order to bring the full 85% remaining to bear reliably. If your opponent even expends a cr90A's worth of combat potential inefficiently, not being able to bring it to bear, you are already even as far as potential goes, and if you can force them to waste more of their total potential while conserving yours it begins to tilt the game heavily in the favor of 2+3. Essentially, unless you bring 3+ non combat activations against it, to similarly conserve force, it is going to MOST LIKELY be able to immediately trade up against an opponent.

134pts of points in squads which are:

A. Flexible - In the early game, these squads can mass together for a huge alpha, either in the form of adar/yavaris or a quasar FC throwing 6 ties. Late game this is slippery damage as flotillas dial in commands via relay while they avoid being killed, meaning opponent ships that entered the engagement area even if victorious are going to continue to get blown up even when they have no effective targets left to pursue. They can stick around after the engagement to mop up, they can bug out of dangerous situations to prevent the opponent from scoring, and they can quickly and easily heal while not losing any combat effectiveness thanks to the station. Ships can't do that.

B. Amplifiable (via jendon or yavaris). This multiplicative effect on the damage potential is not available to ships, and is a huge part of the squadron dominance because it simply makes the already efficiently spent points unmatched. If an opponent brings 2+3 of combat ships, light/no squads this multiplication of the squad points means that opponent is still fighting at a disadvantage. That is a really significant thing to latch onto I think. Ships damage increase is typically additive (add a dice) while squads can be multiplicative. So squadrons will dramatically outpace ships in the damage per point category.

C. Efficient - The point cost : required damage expenditure to remove from the game : damage potential ratio for squads is very advantageous. It takes a lot of work to get a squad off the table in general, especially aces. Meanwhile they are dealing a lot of damage in small amounts which effectively overloads def tokens.

What makes Rieekan 2+3 more dangerous than other varieties?

It covers the weakness to alpha strikes. The greatest risk to running 2+3 is putting the squads in a position where they can simultaneously have the potential to meaningfully contribute without eating a ton of damage or even losing one or 2 in an alpha strike before they can activate. Yavaris/Jan/GH causes squads to effectively be immune to the alpha strike. There is simply no way to trade up against unactivated squads under GH with Yavaris as a last activation in the turn. You can't acc Jan's tokens, GH's damage reduction kills output, and even if you kill something, Yavaris is going to multiply the counter attack to a level that is infinitely worse than anything you could throw at it.

So how can you counter it?

Lots of good ideas brought up in the thread, combined with lots of "yeah but..." And that is just it, your mileage may very with any solution depending on self and opponent skill. Anecdotally everything or nothing may work. My biggest issue with the 2+3 fleets, and especially the Rieekan variant is that it doesn't really feel like I am ever playing to win. I am playing to not get 10-1'd. That feeling is really unfortunate, and while I am grateful that this fleet design is not OVERLY used in my meta, I can completely understand that for those for who it is, it takes a huge portion of the legitimate fun out of the game. I know I don't like playing against it, but unfortunately in a competitive scene the best rise to the top, so it's going to be something we continue to face on a regular basis until a fundamental change is made to the way the game works.

In general here are some of the ways I approach 2 + 3:

1. Also run 2+3+aces. Not necessarily with Rieekan, it can be successful with a wide range of admirals and both factions. I know this is not helpful to many, but it is simply a formula that has consistency and baked in advantages just because of how the game is designed.

2. Out activate it. But the problem is out activating it AND making those activations both efficient and equally strong.

3. Give it first and play for the 6/5. It's lame Armada, but if you know your fleet can't play against 2+3, then take advantage of the fact GH and Yavaris are speed 3 and have to sacrifice squad commands to hit that speed (as they typically deploy 1-2). If you take second and run away you force them to decide to give you 6pts or risk taking the squads out of their protection to chase you, giving a you a chance to piece the fleet apart. This is harder than it seems as it is difficult to run as second player, but can effectively lead into the next strategy.

4. Shoot for a turn 5 or 6 engagement and hope that a quick nuke takes away the advantage that 2+3 gets by allowing the squads to clean up and make back a point deficit. If you can be 0 MOV going into turn 5 and nuke either Yavaris, GH, or overextended squads, limiting it's ability to counter attack you, you can potentially get too far ahead too fast with not enough time for the squads to chip you down.

5. Run whatever you like, play however you like, and know it's a game and that someone using 2+3 is playing to win and win big and just do your best. If they beat you, they beat you. Doing your best and losing is never shameful, and in the end it's all a game where we push around plastic to win more plastic. So long as when you finish you had fun it's still a win.

Anyway, I just felt like focusing on Rieekan in particular was only half of the problem. He is simply what I would consider the hardest to beat of the hardest to beat. But there are a lot of layers there to peel away, and as with most things, it is never one single thing that makes this fleet as strong as it is. It is everything, trickling all the way down to core game design, that make 2+3 such a strong fleet.

to me, playing the fleet mistake free involves not letting a fast mover like Demo, or Avenger past your Flotilla Cage to quickly kill one of your vital actual ships, and making sure you are very methodical about holding formation such that Yavaris is protected, your squadrons don't spend much time outside of GH's bubble, and you have to have good target priority against both sqaudrons and ships to make sure you kill off the big threats first.

The things that really can leave openings for this fleet to get beaten to me include:

1. trying to extend to far in order to jump on a ship that takes your squadrons outside of their buff auras and not getting the kill. A fast moving ship will only let those B-Wings get 1 round into it in many cases, if the ship escapes, the fleet has wasted a valuable resource and exposed their squadrons to normal squad on squad combat for no points gain. Knowing what you can, and cannot reliably kill in time is important.

2. Flying your formation to tight and bumping ships, forcing the formation to fragment, or forcing predictable activation order with poor placement can give away the important 5 activation advantage this fleet often utilizes. This also has something to do with your Dial/Token usage and command stack. A lot of times you want squadrons keyed up so you need to be able to fly well and safely without relying on Nav. Dials all the time.

3. activating unique squads in ways/at times that do not leverage their abilities. There are a lot to keep up with and some times they get forgotten about or misused.

When people say, "you still have to play the fleet well to win," it is true, but that is the case with any list. These considerations and possible mistakes are also present in many other bomber oriented lists. No one says it's a push button list, just that GH, makes mistake free squadrons way harder to kill than other mistake free squadrons, that Yavaris increases the attack output of squadrons better than any other title in the game and the limitations intended to balance it's overt power are more and more easy to circumvent, and Reeikan offers a degree of mistake forgiveness/alpha strike defense that makes a poor activation choice or bad maneuver that would sink most other fleets.

We all play with the same considerations and poor flying losses games (as t should), it's just that this perfect storm of factors is only getting better and better as cards come out enhancing its strengths and more importantly covering its weaknesses.

to echo Brobafett, activation padding has a huge impact on games, far beyond the points invested in those extra flotillas. Limiting flotillas such that no fleet could have more flotillas than actual ships would help to alleviate some of these concerns, removing some of the power of these annoying 18 point ubiquitous game mechanic abusing ships.

This is armada, you shouldn't be trying to take as minimal a ship complement as you can so you can load up on throw away activations, to leverage squadrons almost exclusively.

Vader is a 36 point admiral who at a cost allows rerolls on ship dice. How much more efficient is an 8 point upgrade that allows the same effect on squadron dice, with no defensive cost?

Unchecked, squadron efficiency is way to high, it must be tempered by the threat of being undercut by the loss of their carriers in order to be reasonable. Flotillas and to a lesser extent Reeikan make these carriers very hard to hurt.

8 minutes ago, Space_Cowboy17 said:

Unchecked, squadron efficiency is way to high, it must be tempered by the threat of being undercut by the loss of their carriers in order to be reasonable. Flotillas and to a lesser extent Reeikan make these carriers very hard to hurt.

Don't forget flotillas are also effective carriers in and of themselves, and even killing the primary ship threat means you have done nothing to reduce the overall squadron threat. IMO this is the huge flaw in the "kill the carrier" approach to 2+3. It simply doesn't work.

I'm not going to take the time or space to respond to everything, as it's been more or less addressed for the most part, but this ****

2 hours ago, Space_Cowboy17 said:

I am concerned that the response is less about trying to answer the question and more about boasting in how he personally is unconcerned about 2-3 rebels and we as a community need to "get gud," like him.

This is not about his ego, but the larger community

pisses me right the **** off. You want to talk about

3 hours ago, Space_Cowboy17 said:

frustrating

, you spend a year and a half posting the same answers in the same threads, trying to help others in the community share your success against this archetype, only to have like 3:1 odds of getting shat on and dismissed outright every time.

If I post my specific fleet, I get "not everybody wants to play your fleet!"

If I generalize the advice, I get "we need specific examples!"

If I talk about how to do it with Rebels, I get "why don't you have an answer for Imps too??"

If I talk about how others have done it with Imps, I get grilled on details like in responsible for Paul's ideas or something.

If I keep it sort, I get a laundry list of "gotcha" edge cases.

If I put in the time to write something in-depth, I get "TL;DR"s.

If I explain the theory behind it, I get "yeah but you're going to lose against anything else!"

If, like here, I point to specific cases as evidence that it works, I get "REEEEEE he said to git gud!"--even if it's somebody else's ******* success that I highlighted!

But forget this, I'm done getting shat on for trying to help people with this. If Ace Holes starts dominating again because people would rather QQ for nerfs than explore the available workable solutions, so much the better for me.

I've said my piece and given my advice upthread, and I'm done here.

8 minutes ago, Ardaedhel said:

I've said my piece and given my advice upthread, and I'm done here.

I still like your upthread advice of "maybe some random weird **** might actually both kill it and be good on it's own?" Without testing, who knows if Ozzel 7 Raider, Vader 6 Arquitens, or Konstantine might actually be good against this and several other lists? Maybe it's Tagge!

@Ardaedhel

While I'm certainly not saying your solution doesn't work, or the other solutions listed, and I dont think you are really aiming your comment at me in particular, I do want as someone who is newer on these forums to discuss the general strategies of fighting against this list type. By all means, give up on us reprobates if you cant stand the discussion.

So far, what I have gotten out of this is you either a) dont fight and preserve tournament points, b) delay, kill the high point ships and gtfo, or c) run a similar list and try to outplay the player. Playing objectives against such a deadly list is very difficult, at least for me.

28 minutes ago, Ardaedhel said:

I'm not going to take the time or space to respond to everything, as it's been more or less addressed for the most part, but this ****

pisses me right the **** off. You want to talk about

, you spend a year and a half posting the same answers in the same threads, trying to help others in the community share your success against this archetype, only to have like 3:1 odds of getting shat on and dismissed outright every time.

If I post my specific fleet, I get "not everybody wants to play your fleet!"

If I generalize the advice, I get "we need specific examples!"

If I talk about how to do it with Rebels, I get "why don't you have an answer for Imps too??"

If I talk about how others have done it with Imps, I get grilled on details like in responsible for Paul's ideas or something.

If I keep it sort, I get a laundry list of "gotcha" edge cases.

If I put in the time to write something in-depth, I get "TL;DR"s.

If I explain the theory behind it, I get "yeah but you're going to lose against anything else!"

If, like here, I point to specific cases as evidence that it works, I get "REEEEEE he said to git gud!"--even if it's somebody else's ******* success that I highlighted!

But forget this, I'm done getting shat on for trying to help people with this. If Ace Holes starts dominating again because people would rather QQ for nerfs than explore the available workable solutions, so much the better for me.

I've said my piece and given my advice upthread, and I'm done here.

For what it's worth, I am interested in trying your fleet.

10 minutes ago, Steck638 said:

For what it's worth, I am interested in trying your fleet.

You will feel dirty once you get the hang of it. The hardest part is just learning to line up the boats so that they hit the same big target on different rounds, and that only 1 or maybe even 2 are able to be shot each round.

1 hour ago, BrobaFett said:

5. Run whatever you like, play however you like, and know it's a game and that someone using 2+3 is playing to win and win big and just do your best. If they beat you, they beat you. Doing your best and losing is never shameful, and in the end it's all a game where we push around plastic to win more plastic. So long as when you finish you had fun it's still a win.

For better or for worse, this is the strategy I've been using for a while. I know several counter lists exist, notably @Ardaedhel's Mothma 30s, as well as other somewhat more scattered Imperial lists, but I've yet to find one that works for me, and I'm fine with that. I'm a synthesist, not an inventor, so that I haven't yet found a version that works for me is not that surprising, I know I need more table time against it and I don't get as much of that as I would like, period. I do agree that it is a confluence of factors that makes the list so obscenely strong, but at the end of the day, I'm here for the game, not winning (pound cakes don't need icing, but I'll never turn it down), and dual ISDs and other off-the-wall lists are fun.

Incidentally, I do think that there is a chance to beat an Acehole list at a tournament by simply outscoring it so badly it can't catch you, but as my run in Atlanta showed, you have zero room for error on your scores, and the Acehole player needs to A. not do well enough that he ends up against you round 2, B. end up against enough players that can bleed him enough he can't table everybody like you're planning to. It's definitely not a plan, but it's a bypass that almost worked for me in Atlanta.

Just now, geek19 said:

Konstantine might actually be good against this

He actually is, but just like Ard..... I've already said that, nobody cares. (Though to a much lesser extent as Konstantine is still terrible whereas 7 activation MC30s is not)

17 minutes ago, Ginkapo said:

He actually is, but just like Ard..... I've already said that, nobody cares. (Though to a much lesser extent as Konstantine is still terrible whereas 7 activation MC30s is not)

Plus people tend to have comms net on these lists.

Just now, TallGiraffe said:

Plus people tend to have comms net on these lists.

Thats why Konstantine carries tractor beams, to remove the token

Two great recent posts, one by @Ardaedhel and one by @BrobaFetthave added greatly to the discussion.

I think one thing to look at in a list is whether it gives you chances at winning. That's really the question we should be asking. There's still too much thinking that is trapped in a paper/rock/scissors mindset. And while it is true that some kinds of units can act as a hard counter to others, its also true that well designed lists have an answer for playing a variety of lists.

I think Broba makes a fairly important contribution in looking at 2+3 or 1+4 plus max squads more generally. That does seem to be a pretty important pattern that shows up repeatedly. The game is strutured around activations, so it is pretty difficult to play competitively outside of 5 activations. And since the squadron sub-game is pretty important, you really cannot go above 2 combat ships and still have the points for the squads. In any game, something is always going to rise to the top and be better than anything else. One of the beauties of Star Wars Armada is that it really took us to 2016 Worlds in November before that emerged on a major scale, and until 2017 worlds before it really sealed the deal. This isn't to say that exceptional players like Ard cannot play squadron-lite lists and do well, but that it really takes a fairly high skill level to make those lists work, thus they are fewer in number.

Since I think many of the problem that people have highlighted about Aceholes are structural to the game of Armada itself, and reflective in a general archetype as Broba noted, I don't think really simple nerfs solve the problem. One would really have to do something structural, probably to flotillas themselves, to get at that underlying problem. Now, if we just give it 2 months for the new wave to get here, we've got at least 2 spoiled upgrades already that mess with activations. We're probably dealing with another generic officer who will do that as well, and we're still not sure what the defensive retrofit Early Warning Radar does, though some expect anti-squad. If we're messing with first/last activations, then we're changing the way flotilla activation padding can affect a list. If add in something that helps against squads, then we're going to affect how squads get played in the game. So while I can empathize with the frustration of playing specific lists, I'm really interested to see what is coming.

We can't expect FFG to nerf everything in this sort of list otherwise we would end up with at least a full page of erratas for Rebels. (I personally think the GH works before defense tokens spent would be enough to make the list easier to fight. I also think sloane is a bit too strong too, but I want to see how wave 7 shakes things up.)

Just to echo others, quality activations help and neutralizing enemy activations help.

Stick to your strengths and try to control your engagements on your terms as best as you can.