16 minutes ago, themightyhedgehog said:

But I definitely think that you have to bring at least a small fighter screen to tie up the gauntlets. I could see IG88 and Saber, getting play to avoid any escort and have them hunt down these guys.

Depends on the list. I don't think that, in general, a pair of Gauntlets is dramatically more threatening to a squadronless fleet than, say, the same points spent on 4 TIE Bombers would be - just differently threatening.

As opposed to 4-5 damage per turn, you're losing a command or two. For something like a Madine Liberty that wants to navigate constantly, that's really scary; for a Cracken CR90 swarm, losing the ability to nav or concentrate fire on one or two CR90s is way better than having one die to a bunch of bombers. So every list is gonna respond differently, but I don't think it's a total paradigm shift for all squadronless builds or anything.

Gauntlets have such mediocre firepower for their price that if you're just grabbing a few with no support (other than maybe intel), they risk giving up free points in a matchup against, like, Sloane fighters that are just gonna hop in and alpha their intel and/or tie them up forever. But if you take intel, and then escorts for the intel, and then... suddenly you wake up and you're flying a normal heavy squadron list, except with Gauntlets, and a squadronless fleet has to defend against your raw damage output as much or more than your raid tokens.

1 hour ago, svelok said:

Depends on the list. I don't think that, in general, a pair of Gauntlets is dramatically more threatening to a squadronless fleet than, say, the same points spent on 4 TIE Bombers would be - just differently threatening.

As opposed to 4-5 damage per turn, you're losing a command or two. For something like a Madine Liberty that wants to navigate constantly, that's really scary; for a Cracken CR90 swarm, losing the ability to nav or concentrate fire on one or two CR90s is way better than having one die to a bunch of bombers. So every list is gonna respond differently, but I don't think it's a total paradigm shift for all squadronless builds or anything.

Gauntlets have such mediocre firepower for their price that if you're just grabbing a few with no support (other than maybe intel), they risk giving up free points in a matchup against, like, Sloane fighters that are just gonna hop in and alpha their intel and/or tie them up forever. But if you take intel, and then escorts for the intel, and then... suddenly you wake up and you're flying a normal heavy squadron list, except with Gauntlets, and a squadronless fleet has to defend against your raw damage output as much or more than your raid tokens.

I disagree a bit.

4 tie bombers have more overall hull, but less hull individually. This means ships can more likely just flak them to death over time, claiming the points and ending the threat sooner. Beyond that though, bombers aren't worth much without support. You need ships to push those bombers to keep them hitting turn after turn. The gauntlet is rogue, so it can chase down whatever it wants to mess with. So your bombers need carrier support and commands to be effective while the gauntlet is free to roam.

If I see 4 Tie Bombers with no dedicated command ship tossed into a fleet, I'm going to shrug it off pretty easily. If I see 2 gauntlets with no support, I'm going to get worried unless I have some fighters to deal with them. Those gauntlets could have contact with the enemy fleet by turn 2 and with the health they have, they could stick to almost anything all game long if they are smart about their positioning.

I could see the gauntlet being a pretty typical toss-in for Imp fleets of all kinds.

Squall should be super-fun with Gauntlets.

11 hours ago, Tokra said:

But saying that you dont need squadron anymore because of the Gauntlet is stupid. It might even be that you need even more squadron now, or in other words, that squadrons become more important.

Agree 100%

The game seems to have a bigger theme in encouraging division of units to spread risk.

Gauntlets will fit into medium squad forces whilst NOT making no squad or max squad obsolete.....

Funny that.

Please bring no squadrons so my Decimators can go to town on your ships.

22 minutes ago, TallGiraffe said:

Please bring no squadrons so my Decimators can go to town on your ships.

Posts like these really remind you that local metas are small. I've literally never seen a Decimator on the table, not a single time. That's a good thing for Armada, right? "You use that? No one uses that!" "Actually, around here, most everyone uses that..."

2 hours ago, Green Knight said:

Squall should be super-fun with Gauntlets.

Rapid launch bays are likely to be a better delivery mechanism.

24 minutes ago, IronNerd said:

Posts like these really remind you that local metas are small. I've literally never seen a Decimator on the table, not a single time. That's a good thing for Armada, right? "You use that? No one uses that!" "Actually, around here, most everyone uses that..."

Running a Wolfpack of Decimators is quite fun with Dengar for counter 2 and Intel along with Valen to lock enemies.

3 hours ago, kmanweiss said:

Those gauntlets could have contact with the enemy fleet by turn

1 with squall.

53 minutes ago, PT106 said:

Rapid launch bays are likely to be a better delivery mechanism.

I already suggested the raider delivery torpedo!

This is a different kind of fun.

I think it is too early to think one way or another, we don’t know how difficult to land hit in a game a hit against the rival, I only read worst/best scenarios. We don’t know how to eliminate raid tokens, etc... as other things seem too powerful on paper maybe on the table it is not so, And only have a niche, so I will wait until have whole info to start form my opinion and test several times after have one completely formed but like nearly all games or things it will depend un my hability and my meta XD

7 hours ago, thecactusman17 said:

In regards to the original post, Gauntlet fighters have all but killed the idea of no-squadrons fleets. If the idea of large ships trading salvos back and forth is what attracted you to this game over X-Wing, you can turn back now. The large command 3 ship is now effectively dead, killed by Thrawn's squadron escorts. Anything less than 100+ points of squadron superiority is now worse than useless

I'm very concerned about this Raid ability. This is the kind of drastic power-creep-in-place-of-rules-change that is breaking several other FFG Star Wars games. I just don't see a way that this benefits anyone. And I do mean anyone. Liked your squadrons? You now get to look forward to countering 40+ points of Rogue super-slicers gunning for your carriers every turn. Starting on turn 1. Wanted to be a happy medium? You'll get swamped by both sides and your carriers shut down indefinitely by Raid our simple obliteration. Low squads with powerful ships? They'll be hounded to death, never able to get useful commands off.

And before someone brings out the obvious, yes it's clearly supposed to injure Yavaris and maybe BTAvenger from spamming single commands. But maybe, just maybe, forcing a single real counter to those ships (completely erase or rewrite the commands) isn't healthy for the larger game. Maybe the real issue for those ships was the overpowered titles that functionally counted as a points reduction (a friend of mine did the math to show that Yavaris, for example, is effectively an additional 40 points added to your fleet).

One boarding team was something I could live with. Something to make the Hammerhead shine as the punching above its weight aggressor. You could carefully plan around it to kill or avoid the ship. Now it's just another squadron slog to bloat the game length and force players to choose between fun lists and functional lists.

I think that's a little bit overly dramatic considering we don't even know the exact raid token rules yet. However, I do agree with the general notion of power creep etc. IMHO Armada is a better game when played with a max of 1 upgrade (be it equipment or title etc.) per ship and no more than 2 named squadrons. This also makes the turns play out faster and allows for bigger fleet battles in the same amount of time.

edit: doublepost