Would you do this? How do you setup tokens, deploy and fly fleet... I think it's doable but I want to hear from the community about it.

Yeah, its useful if you are a castle / carrier set up. it's good against MSU or a single MC30 or Demo that wants to come in and ruin your day. It's not about killing anything, it's just extra damage to weaken it so you can follow up on it.

You do telegraph where you are going to be since you have to place them before fleets, but I always have them as close to distance 5 as possible if my opponent has strategic, if he doesn't, I'll pop them out a tad further.

It is certainly possible but some strategic does help. It can be made harder if the enemy have strategic and you don't have enough squadrons to lock them down.

If you are second player then you can put the tokens left, mid left and centre and then deploy your ships in the left corner. As second player if the enemy don't come in then you win by default.

If your first player then feel free to pick the mission if others are more difficult. Just plot a repair command or comms net over a repair token or two.

I think its the downside risk of having this in your deck with no shuttles and then facing someone that does. So your objective wouldnt be giving you any benefit except maybe luring his fighters into a bad position.

Even then its not like minefields or firelanes that could backfire badly.

1 hour ago, Ophion said:

I think its the downside risk of having this in your deck with no shuttles and then facing someone that does. So your objective wouldnt be giving you any benefit except maybe luring his fighters into a bad position.

Even then its not like minefields or firelanes that could backfire badly.

yeah exactly... someone picked my ions in a match and I put them spread out to one side of the map... my opponent rightly refused to go near them, didn't have strategic either and the cannons didn't shoot, I won the match anyways, and had their been a 7th round cannons would have gone off for sure likely taking down a ship. making me think I probably should have deployed behind cannons and sat there... and why not.. but I feel like that may result in non-games and that can be bad-ish in a tourney.

also, it seems like one shuttle is probably not enough to impact your ions too bad, they might get one out of the way but not all of them... and can leave their strategic vulnerable...

3 hours ago, SkyCake said:

... I probably should have deployed behind cannons and sat there... and why not.. but I feel like that may result in non-games and that can be bad-ish in a tourney.

No-score wins should penalize the attacker (7-4, at a minimum--very low scores should carry a penalty as well), but then you'd have to include penalties for second players who just run away and/or minimize damage to themselves at the expense of attempting to destroy the enemy.

I've done it a few times. Set up the tokens so your opponent has no choice but to fly through at least one ion cannon token. You normally don't hurt him too much, but some good die rolling can work wonders, and it usually messes with his opening deployment.

Planetary Ion Cannons is the perfect defensive pick for a list without squads, as it provides no benefit to enemy players. Even if the opponent moves all the tokens on turn one, that means they will have to spend time and resources moving those out of the way without gaining and VPs or tactical advantage. Plan to get just 1-2 shots off, and aim them at an enemy ship that either is depending on a particular shield facing or which might be depending on having a whole set of unexhausted tokens at the start of the round.

Can you exhaust more than one token in a round? It says target one ahip per objective token but doesn't sau a limit (if there is a ship within range of all 3 tokens can i use all 3 token attacks?)

2 minutes ago, buckero0 said:

Can you exhaust more than one token in a round? It says target one ahip per objective token but doesn't sau a limit (if there is a ship within range of all 3 tokens can i use all 3 token attacks?)

You cannot. The FAQ clarifies this.