Can you use a command dial on the same turn you remove a matching raid token with a matching command token?

I assume yes, due to the wording: when a ship with a raid token REVEALS a command dial...

...allowing the ship to then resolve their command dial? Yes?

If so, raid is pretty useless, but gives life to Ion Canon Batteries. If not, raid is very powerful.

That is how I read it, yes.

"While a ship has a raid token, it cannot resolve the command matching that raid token."

"When a ship... reveals a command dial... it may discard a command token to discard a matching raid token."

By the time you're resolving the dial, you've already discarded the raid token.

Ardaedhel is right, the correct order is this:
-Reveal a command dial.
-Here you have the choice of discarding the command token to discard a matching raid token.
-To resolve the command dial you have to spend it, and you still haven't done that, so the command dial is still there awaiting orders
-You choose whetear you spend that command dial to resolve it's effect or turn it into another token

So.... Yavaris can or can not simply burn a Squadron token in order to allow it to resolve a Squadron command?

If you can just pitch a squadron token to ignore Raid then a 2 point investment in comms net on an activation pad flotilla and raid is functionally useless.

8 minutes ago, Space_Cowboy17 said:

So.... Yavaris can or can not simply burn a Squadron token in order to allow it to resolve a Squadron command?

If you can just pitch a squadron token to ignore Raid then a 2 point investment in comms net on an activation pad flotilla and raid is functionally useless.

Yet it forces the flotilla to activate first,

which may mean Yavaris target gets away... or worse, kills it.

12 minutes ago, Drasnighta said:

Yet it forces the flotilla to activate first,

which may mean Yavaris target gets away... or worse, kills it.

or you use Hondo, or you bank a token in anticipation of this, or you Comm Net the previous turn if the Raid squadron was moved in via a squadron command, or you get lucky and time out Bail Organa as first player and get your tokens that way.

There are so many easy ways to defuse this raid mechanic if you can spend a token in order to free up your dial, surely this is not how it plays. Who would FFG waste our time with such a weak mechanic?

Who would seriously invest in such a mechanic if it is not even guaranteed to proc, and even if it does, can be neutralized turn after turn by a super common piece of tech known as a comms net...

20 points for a generic squadron that will die easily once it makes its attack run, that may not hit at all, and requires an Intel ship in order to fire in most cases, that is countered by a banked token, and then in subsequent rounds countered by a comms net you had in the list any way? Surely FFG is not wasting out time with this. It must play the other way, that is the only way it is remotely worth the investment needed to use it.

5 minutes ago, Space_Cowboy17 said:

Who would FFG waste our time with such a weak mechanic?

I remember when, back in the day, people were up in arms about how obscenely powerful Raid was, and how FFG had dropped the ball and ruined Armada.

I remember it as if it were yesterday.

Because it was yesterday.

Like many Armada upgrades, they often make you work extra hard to get the super powerful abilities working. Except for the obvious ones, like Demolisher and AvengerBT.

Yes, initially Raid tokens can easily be circumvented, but after the first avoidance it'll become more and more difficult to ditch the Raid tokens. It may be too late for the Raid tokens to impact the game, but who knows until we battle with them?

Raid could be a tool that punishes fleets that live and die off off squadron commands. I am not sure what other type of fleet it is supposed to negatively effect except fast moving Nav. oriented fleets, which we already have tools to effect via tractor beams, Interdictors, Konstantine, etc.

All of those I just mentioned are pretty bad, specifically because of how easy they are to counter with a little token sharing. They require a huge investment in order to work and are easily mitigated by several common upgrades. Let us hope raid is not the same way.

I am all for making it a risk to put all your eggs in one basket. If you must have a squadron command in order to meaningfully interact in the game, that means you have a one dimensional list. Well rounded fleets that mix weapons fire, and squadrons are much more enjoyable and require more actual combat ships to achieve. You want to threaten the 1-4 and 2-3 para dime, this could be it, or it could be a way to feed Yavaris 32+ points on a 75% chance to keep it from getting to spend its squadron token to get the tripple tap, instead having to settle for the double tap, assuming it wants to go first. If it can wait one activation it is unaffected entirely.

And how many tines can you use Hondo?

And it’s not as if there are ways to strip tokens from you.

and it would take some sort of crazy person to have a list that is designed to deliver raid tokens to the enemy with the first activation of the game... which makes you burn your one shot options immediately...

becayse who who would do that? ?

The nose punch just got some brass knuckles.

5 minutes ago, DiabloAzul said:

The nose punch just got some brass knuckles.

It will be glorious........ If Asmodee Canada delivers on target.

Hothgary Regional is Feb 3.

No room for errors there.

I view raid a lot like strategic. A lot of the time it will have no use, but when you get into a game where you can use it, it's going to be powerful. To that end, I'll probably find a way to stick one raid capable fighter in my builds if at all possible.

I can think of plenty of scenarios where it would come in handy. Shutting down a carrier from unleashing a swarm of fighters/bombers is just one of them. How bout a large target that you've been beating on for a round or two and finally have in a good position to finish off....as long as he doesn't repair. How about a larger, not so maneuverable ship that just made a pass against your fleet and is pointed towards the edge of the board. You both know he needs a maneuver command to not go flying off the board, and you can prevent that command. Or heck, even a ship like an MC30 or Gladiator that came in at full speed and is likely going to use a maneuver to slow down and stay in firing range for a round or two...now he's going to fly right out of combat and may struggle to get back to the action.

Sure, there are ways to counter it, but not every fleet is packing comms net, or even flots to stick a comms net on. And yes, there are other upgrades that can provide or move tokens around, but again, they don't show up in every fleet. And even if you have them, you force the enemy to activate in a certain order to utilize those tokens, and likely in a way they weren't intending. Beyond all that, there are still times where this would be helpful.

Take Yavaris. He's planning to double attack with 3 B-wings right? Well, now he's limited to 2 because he has to toss that token away. And that Interdictor that was going to use 8 engineering points is now limited to 5 because you forced them to ditch that token. Or what about that CR90 that was going to engine tech double ram your flot? Well, now he lost his token and can't. Or how about that boarding party you just disrupted? Even dropping an engineering raid on an ISD might get them to discard a CF command in order to use the repair command that is already loaded in their stack for later thus reducing the dice they throw against you.

It's not so much that raids are going to completely disable a fleet. It's more that an opportune use of raid could really spoil a plan. In that way, the fact that it's a rogue with 4 range is pretty impressive as it allows it a lot of flexibility.

I just don't see how this is any better than Slicer Tools, which is more reliable because it does not require any dice rolls to activate, and does change the dial away from what the ship most wants no matter what tokens they have. Slicer Tools also cannot be blocked by things like fighter screens, obstruction, being intercepted before launching their attack run, etc.

Slicer Tools are more reliable, easier to use, and cheaper when you consider the needed intel squadron in order to actually get to bomb with a gauntlet fighter, and Slicer Tools have not proven to be effective on a large enough scale to shift the meta away from carrier based dominance. I see very few, if any Slicer Tools in most regional events across the entire field, much less in the top 4.

What is the point of this mechanic if Slicer Tools can't make any meaningful headway affecting the meta?

A banked token plus Hondo, or a Comms Net (2 point fleet wide investment that is also useful in other match ups) can defeat a raid token attack for 2 whole turns, in which time the raid squadron will almost certainly be destroyed, resulting in at best a trade of a 20 point squad for the one time use of a 2 point upgrade. IF YOU EVEN HIT WITH YOUR 75% chance bombing run.

Well, at a minimum you're forcing Yavaris to discard a token, thereby decreasing it's activations by a third. 4 B-wing attacks are much less scary than 6.

Yeah, the token variant made it a useful general ability that has some value in interupting plans and overtaxing coms net. Actually, when you consider it, it is more of a counter to COMS NET than it is a specific ship archetype.

I think it's a shame it doesn't take a dial, because IMO dedicated carriers have such a high upside giving them an equally risky downside was not an overreaction. However, it doesn't mean raid is useless. My DCAP raider-II with ICB and a squad token is still gonna shut Yavaris down

Raid as a burst mechanic seems underpowered, Raid as an ongoing threat seems like a very powerful tool to ultimately weaken the performance of a fleet in subtle ways. Basically what that translates to is Jyn Erso being a momentary distraction while Gauntlet Fighters can be a more persistent frustration with their Rogue ability.

11 minutes ago, thecactusman17 said:

Raid as a burst mechanic seems underpowered, Raid as an ongoing threat seems like a very powerful tool to ultimately weaken the performance of a fleet in subtle ways. Basically what that translates to is Jyn Erso being a momentary distraction while Gauntlet Fighters can be a more persistent frustration with their Rogue ability.

That's a great way to put it. It's not completely obviated by token tech (unless you're just swimming in different ways to get them on-demand), but it's also not going to be totally locking anybody out of what they need unless they just showed up completely unprepared for it.

4 hours ago, Space_Cowboy17 said:

or you use Hondo, or you bank a token in anticipation of this, or you Comm Net the previous turn if the Raid squadron was moved in via a squadron command, or you get lucky and time out Bail Organa as first player and get your tokens that way.

See, all of these either can be counterplayed, or are still impacted by raid tokens, especially from the Gauntlets. If you actually wargame out how each of those scenarios will go, it basically boils down to: a hit by a Gauntlet or a Jyn raid denies the use of a token for the given command, or denies the use of that command if you don't have token tech. I think that's a pretty good balance.

So no, they're not the gamebreaking unstoppable juggernaut some people thought they would be, but neither are they totally useless. Just don't build your fleet around them, rather think of them more as a nice bonus or a tool to influence your opponent's activation order.

Also worth noting is their strength against Fleet Commands that match the owning ship's primary function. If it didn't account for Raid at listbuilding, now that carrier AFFM Pelta has to choose: use that squadron token to trigger AFFM, or spend it to be able to push squadrons.

Theres this iften overlooked imperial commander, whats his name?

Ah, tarkin.

Theres also a up and comming eagerly await imp admiral.

Named thrawn.

Theres the rebel equivelant to tarkin.

Garm.

There are numerous officers, such as

Raymus antilles, wulff yularen, aresko, etc.

All who allow you to gain tokens. And this list is ignoring comms net. The game is full of options to gain tokens so in light of this raid seems so easily removed.

I think the threat of raid will be stronger than the effect of raid...

ie I might have 1 option of giving raid in my list so now you are building the counter into yours, and when we are playing it's always there so limiting your options. I mean you have tarkin so you give out sqn token to all your ships to guarantee that the carrier can carry out that command rather than the engineering or navigation that 2 or 3 ships need

edit - so your next step is to give tarkin the sovereign title on his isd... ooh I'm now controlling part of your list building with a 4 point upgrade which I might not even take

4 hours ago, DrakonLord said:

Theres this iften overlooked imperial commander, whats his name?

Ah, tarkin.

Theres also a up and comming eagerly await imp admiral.

Named thrawn.

Theres the rebel equivelant to tarkin.

Garm.

There are numerous officers, such as

Raymus antilles, wulff yularen, aresko, etc.

All who allow you to gain tokens. And this list is ignoring comms net. The game is full of options to gain tokens so in light of this raid seems so easily removed.

Actually, the Chimera expansion seems to give Thrawn a couple of cool new tricks. But more to your point, by forcing users to choose between removing tokens piecemeal or sacrificing dials to remove multiple Raid Token effects it is degrading your command ability and weakening the value of token generation mechanics like the ones you described.

Araedhel makes a convincing argument that instead of battling spammed dial systems, this appears more to be a way to battle the token generation effects of Comms Net and similar abilities by forcing them to be used on removing the Raid tokens. And this makes a high degree of sense because other upgrades in this wave really make tokens powerful such as the expansion of Fleet Commands and upgrades that radically increase the potency of Engineering and Squadron tokens in particular.

I still say that changing dials is better than changing/removing tokens. Carriers and Projection Expert batteries want full strength Squadron and dials Engineering. Again, if Slicers is not good enough to see play in the top lists, how does this have a prayer of actually making an impact on the meta?

Raid is supposed to attrition you down? What? how long do you think those squadrons will last? Surely not more than 2 full game turns, which like I have said, only requires a banked token, and a comms net token to stop.

Jyn Erso... one time use raid ability... that is a joke... so trivial for the oppertunity cost alone that it is laughable if we are saying that a token can free up a command dial.

The only way that raid has any effect on the meta is if it can make you have to throw out a dial or token to get rid of it without getting the dial, Carriers are not crippled by the loss of a squad token. At that point the Imperials now have a reasonable way to threaten Aceholes by shutting down their squadron activations on one ship, for one round. The Gauntlet gets killed, by other activated squads, but that small window could offer a brief attack window to the empire. That is a pretty fair trade, denying one Squad dial at the cost of a 20 point squad, and an at least 12 point intel squad needed to allow the shot, for the 75% chance of blocking a single dial.

There should be ways shut down carriers so that people cannot build little anemic fleets that cannot fight on their own and must rely on squads. Force people to bring ships and fleets that are multirole instead of leaning very heavily on one aspect of the game.

FFG is giving the Imps a tool against Aceholes and we are going to invalidate that with a timing chart argument?

28 minutes ago, Space_Cowboy17 said:

Again, if Slicers is not good enough to see play in the top lists...

Well, to be fair, Slicers does require leaving your Flotilla at medium range of an enemy ship.

Anyway, it may (arguably) be true that Raid will have little or no impact in the meta beyond slighly decreasing the overall token economy. But... is this a problem? Is it fair to place the burden of "fixing Armada" on Jyn or the Mandalorians' shoulders? Shouldn't we judge the impact on the game on its own merits, rather than on some wishful thinking?

I know this is the Rules Sub-forum, but...

Rather than competing, don't Slicer Tools and the Raid mechanic synergize?

sssh dont let on to people that there is more than one way to build a list ......:p