14 hours ago, shmitty said:

As I said upthread I primarily play 60-80 points of squadrons with plenty of success against full squad players. I generally feel confident in my ability to meet all three of your criteria.

1. 60-80 points easily gives me enough to have another effective combat ship more than the heavy squad/carrier player. Sometimes it’s an extra ship, sometimes I have a small gunship while they have a flotilla.
2. I can reliably kill at least the equivalent points in squadrons and earn my points back. Not every time, but with high enough frequency that I don’t feel the need to re think my basic tactics.
3. My squads do get killed off sometimes, but they are never thrown away without specific purpose.

Now, this works for me and my fleets. I tend to play lots of long range ships in my fleets which colors how I use my squadrons.

When I am significantly outnumbered in the squadron game (and even when not), I play my squadrons to counter attack. This generally means letting my ships get attacked by bombers. Then I can counter attack a part of the enemy squads and hopefully kill it. The key for me is making sure that the squadron fight happens in range of my flak. My mid sized squad force plus flak can usually get things going well for me.

Does it always work, no. But it works more often than not and well enough that I can take 60-80 points in squads to a tournament and not feel like I’m gonna get rolled. I looked at all the fleets in my fleet builder and they all fall in that range. My record against 120+ squad builds is well above .500 playing in the 60-80 range.

This sounds like a great topic for a blog article or another of your very informative YouTube videos.

17 hours ago, Ginkapo said:

I see a lot of people activate their pair of squads simultaneously with one squad command. Why?

In most cases these days your opponent can only activate two squads at a time from flotillas. This is crappy and unable to cause any major damage in one activation.

What this means is that you can activate tycho and tie up the majority of the ball, but outside intel range. Now for their squads to bomb they need to shift intel, but if they do so, they know Shara will move in. So what do they do? Watch them and see. 2 at a time they cant kill Tycho if that is their approach. Learn your opponent before using the other 50% of your squadron force.

Using 100% of your squadron force in a single activation is a sign of overexcitment. Calm it..

This also sounds like the makings of a good article.

18 hours ago, Green Knight said:

Demolisher is expendable. It's a prowling threat, ready to pounce, and not afraid to die.

The rest of the list is about setting up the Cymoon for last/first. Doesn't have to be a literal last first. The isd is also very good at removing clothes and corvettes and the like, creating activation advantage.

Relay flotilla spam fleets are oc tricky to deal with. There is no denying that.

But it's very fun ?

Late to the thread, but you are saying ISD's are very good at a certain kind of harassment.

2 hours ago, Thraug said:

The problem I've had with Phantoms is that they get destroyed before their Cloak allows them to do anything useful. Point for point, 4 hull Phantoms don't compete against other squad builds in the squad-to-squad battle. Often, you lose 2-3 in the first exchange, and now with their cost premium you are way behind and who cares if a few Cloakers move away?

You are completely right. I meant I see how thematically that could be the idea behind cloak. To be sneakier than intel. Practically it is pretty useless most of the time, with notable exceptions.

Yeah. Phantoms really want to run with TIE Advanced to escort them.

Which is a really weird thing from a fiction point of view - flying fighters to draw fire in order to protect fighters which are supposed to be invisible.

2 minutes ago, Democratus said:

Yeah. Phantoms really want to run with TIE Advanced to escort them.

Which is a really weird thing from a fiction point of view - flying fighters to draw fire in order to protect fighters which are supposed to be invisible.

The Cloak keyword in armada is just lame. It's doesn't do a good job at portraying anything cloak-like.

3 hours ago, jbrandmeyer said:

I smell what you're cookin', and I still do believe that it is possible to build an effective MFC and have fun with it. But didn't the Madine Liberty list you flew at regionals have a gaggle of generics? 6 A-Wings, 4x YT2400's, and 4x flotillas. I appreciate the practice and skill that it took to place that well. But with all due respect, 1+4 and max squadrons rather exemplifies the game's problems at the competitive level.

I do think there is a problem as do others in this thread. I think the objection is more what a light screen can actually do, in which case my own experience is quite a bit different.

4 hours ago, Matt Antilles said:

This also sounds like the makings of a good article.

And where is your article?

7 hours ago, Green Knight said:

The Cloak keyword in armada is just lame. It's doesn't do a good job at portraying anything cloak-like.

If they made it at the start of the squadron phase it would be worth it.

Cloak should have made a squadron harder to engage. Maybe like allow a squadron with cloak to cancel up to 2 dice rolled by attacking squadrons. Hard to hit, but not impossible. Or maybe allow them to force the attacker to reroll their dice. Just my 2 cents worth

Reading along to hopefully learn about Armada stratagem, but am lost on some jargon. What do abbreviations like the following mean:

Rieekan 2+3

1ISD+4

???

Thanks!

13 minutes ago, ShoutingMan said:

Reading along to hopefully learn about Armada stratagem, but am lost on some jargon. What do abbreviations like the following mean:

Rieekan 2+3

1ISD+4

???

Thanks!

Rieekan 2+3: Two combat ships, almost always gallant haven and yavaris plus three flotillas. Rieekan as commander.

The second number after the plus indicates the number of flotillas. So ISD + 4 is 4 flotillas.

Squadrons should be weaker when under half strengt. Ships can get critical effects in them but 2 damaged b-wings is just as effective as 5 newly deployed.

49 minutes ago, jocke01 said:

Squadrons should be weaker when under half strengt. Ships can get critical effects in them but 2 damaged b-wings is just as effective as 5 newly deployed.

Yeah, but an ISD with 10 facedown damage cards is just as combat effective as at the start of the game. But honestly that issue is way down on my "things that will get a house rule" list.

Honestly, obstruction, and lack of blast damage when a ship dies are my two favorites.

A ship should obstruct the same amount of dice as the Motti scale.

When a ship dies, it should potentially do damage to anything within distance 1 at least. Again, use the Motti scale for number of blue damage dice.

56 minutes ago, jocke01 said:

Double post.

59 minutes ago, jocke01 said:

Triple Post

5 hours ago, cynanbloodbane said:

Yeah, but an ISD with 10 facedown damage cards is just as combat effective as at the start of the game. But honestly that issue is way down on my "things that will get a house rule" list.

Honestly, obstruction, and lack of blast damage when a ship dies are my two favorites.

A ship should obstruct the same amount of dice as the Motti scale.

When a ship dies, it should potentially do damage to anything within distance 1 at least. Again, use the Motti scale for number of blue damage dice.

Well a ship that "dies" dosen't have to explode like the death star. It could just be disabled or cut in half.

Yes I would like some rule for damaged cap ships, but at least they can get crits