9 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:

In a tournament? Nah, I'm playing to win unless I've already won the alt arts.

Casual? That's the best practice you can get to learn how to beat the list.

I live in an aggressive meta. You adapt or die.

And I think that's the key. I will never begrudge a player for the fleet they bring to a tournament. I sure as heck might begrudge the developers or OP support people for not addressing imbalance issues.

In casual, good etiquette gauges the audience. Is this a new player? Is this a player who just plays for fun without fine tuning their fleets? Is this a player that consistently loses and struggles to improve their game? Those are all situations where I might talk through every decision that I make or choose a more experimental list. But against those players that I know want to have a challenging game, I'm going to throw a current competitive tournament list that I have against them. It's the only way either of us gets better. I'd have loved some practice against 1+x before Regionals because it might have given me a better option against @Church14 than running away due to perhaps some more confidence.

I think we need to have a thread on fun. Where people can share their ideas on fun. And other people can shame yet more people for having the wrong ideas about what fun is and is not.

It could be titled "Who took the fun out of your profundity?!"

7 minutes ago, SkyCake said:

I think we need to have a thread on fun. Where people can share their ideas on fun. And other people can shame yet more people for having the wrong ideas about what fun is and is not.

It could be titled "Who took the fun out of your profundity?!"

The answer is: Darth Vader on the Devastator.

Just now, Green Knight said:

The answer is: Darth Vader on the Devastator.

New tournament rule: all unique officers, titles, and squadrons must be consistent with established canon.

Actually, that's not bad for another tournament format idea.

Wow, so if a fleet archetype is not geared towards driving towards you and rolling dice it gets fleet shamed?

10 minutes ago, Irokenics said:

Wow, so if a fleet archetype is not geared towards driving towards you and rolling dice it gets fleet shamed?

Yeah, it's an armada staple. Made famous by light rebel ships refusing to engage VSDs head on. 'Kiting' they called it - it's an evil thing.

Well done, I prefer less flotillas and more corvettes as it gives you better punch, but much of a muchness.

in relation to the rest of this thread:

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

1 hour ago, Undeadguy said:

It's AG on a doom pickle. FL and Sensor Net with 3 VCX. No good choices.

TAKE TWO STRATEGIC UNITS AND FIRE LANES.

ITS REALLY REALLY EASY TO COUNTER

SO WHY DOES NO ONE?

Not shouting at Undeadguy, he just happened to post the clearest pointer to the error most are making. Its not just up to second player to provide 3 tough objective. Its also on first player to make it difficult for second player to find a single good objective...

And AG on a doom pickle is a trap for the doom pickle. Take it down and you win, big. That means everything is expendable to kill the pickle. The doom pickle can kill two things a turn. Present it with more than two things to kill which will in turn kill it.

31 minutes ago, Irokenics said:

Wow, so if a fleet archetype is not geared towards driving towards you and rolling dice it gets fleet shamed?

Yup, it's basically in the core rules. You're only allowed to fight the way your enemy wants you to.

11 minutes ago, Dr alex said:

And AG on a doom pickle is a trap for the doom pickle. Take it down and you win, big. That means everything is expendable to kill the pickle. The doom pickle can kill two things a turn. Present it with more than two things to kill which will in turn kill it.

Yup. The "OMG AG pickle can't be stopped!!" meme is out of control.

There are basically three ways to deal with this list that I see.

- Bring a fast, killy squadron list to shut down the Strategics fast to minimize the advantage of SN,
- Bring your own Strategics and steal the ******* Fire Lanes tokens on first activation (yes, that's a thing you can do), or
- Take AG in a combat list and kill the pickle.

There are lots of archetypes that can do one or more of these. If this fleet is showing up in your meta and you didn't bring a way to do one of these things well, your plan was bad and that's on you.

I've never had the pleasure of facing this type of list, but I want to throw out something. I assume that when people do take AG, they are picking their own big, bad combat ship as the objective ship? Is that smart, considering the double points? If I run up against it, I'll pick AG and stick AG on a flotilla out of harms way. That way I can give up an ISD, as long as it means killing the pickle. Is there any reason I'm not seeing that this wouldn't be effective?

1 minute ago, IronNerd said:

I've never had the pleasure of facing this type of list, but I want to throw out something. I assume that when people do take AG, they are picking their own big, bad combat ship as the objective ship? Is that smart, considering the double points? If I run up against it, I'll pick AG and stick AG on a flotilla out of harms way. That way I can give up an ISD, as long as it means killing the pickle. Is there any reason I'm not seeing that this wouldn't be effective?

Nope, that's definitely an option sometimes. Just depends on what approach you're taking. You lose out on the advantage (super GT) on your big bad ship, but may be worth it if you think you're going to be sacrificing that ship anyway.

I kind of wonder what Gar Saxon, Mauler, Zertik, and Bossk could do with an AG'd Gladiator 2 to three VCX's.

4 hours ago, ripper998 said:

Strategic is starting to get abused bad with people vying for second. That list may not be unbeatable but a very small subset of lists can beat it however they struggle against anything else. Why would someone take a direct counter to this if they are going to get trashed by alot of other folks? Why WOULDNT someone take a list like this is there is a very small chance your going to face a bomber list?

Strong second player options are vital. Anything that breaks up the dominance of last first demo/avenger/whatever is healthy. Remember the certainty that clonisher was unbeatable?

Anyway wasnt it this time last week we were all sure the gallant yavaris ace holes were the blight on the game?

4 minutes ago, Ophion said:

Strong second player options are vital. Anything that breaks up the dominance of last first demo/avenger/whatever is healthy. Remember the certainty that clonisher was unbeatable?

Anyway wasnt it this time last week we were all sure the gallant yavaris ace holes were the blight on the game?

10 minutes ago, Ardaedhel said:

Sooo true hahahahaha

19 minutes ago, Ardaedhel said:

I am out of likes again!

I could point out that the argument that "that" tactic is unfair because it exploits the rules of the system, rather than following the gentlemanly rules that you find fun and enjoyable, is almost the exact argument that was levied against General Washington during the American Revolution. Delaying Action? Shooting from behind trees? Not surrendering when he is obviously beaten? This is not how War is supposed to work!

And to our British friends, the same can be said of British Navy tactics against the French at the Battle of the Nile.

The objective is to win in a Tournament, I would prefer everyone have a good time, but I will not ignore obvious avenues to victory just because my opponent may get upset loosing to them. I would be highly insulted if someone in a even a friendly game did that. In fact the only time I feel it is appropriate, is when teaching a new player, coaching someone who is having difficulty, or you are playing a more restricted event. "Monster trucks comes to mind."

1 hour ago, Ophion said:

Strong second player options are vital. Anything that breaks up the dominance of last first demo/avenger/whatever is healthy. Remember the certainty that clonisher was unbeatable?

Anyway wasnt it this time last week we were all sure the gallant yavaris ace holes were the blight on the game?

I miss Clon

1 hour ago, Ardaedhel said:

Rack has it coming...so OP

4 hours ago, Green Knight said:

The answer is: Darth Vader on the Devastator.

And he took out the whole Profundity too

18 minutes ago, TallGiraffe said:

I miss Clon

He should be past the halfway point of his missionary work. We may have Clon back before we get wave 8.

2 hours ago, IronNerd said:

I've never had the pleasure of facing this type of list, but I want to throw out something. I assume that when people do take AG, they are picking their own big, bad combat ship as the objective ship? Is that smart, considering the double points? If I run up against it, I'll pick AG and stick AG on a flotilla out of harms way. That way I can give up an ISD, as long as it means killing the pickle. Is there any reason I'm not seeing that this wouldn't be effective?

2 hours ago, Ardaedhel said:

Nope, that's definitely an option sometimes. Just depends on what approach you're taking. You lose out on the advantage (super GT) on your big bad ship, but may be worth it if you think you're going to be sacrificing that ship anyway.

Or if your ISD already has GT on it anyways(overrides AG). Alternatively you can AG your raider/small ship and go eat some flots while your whale charges his.

It's an unusual fleet, and a challenging one. I think a lot of the losses come down to people being unprepared or having no plan to beat it.

To aid in getting prepared or to help make a plan to beat it, watch the angles and moves Dupy uses take down Caribbean Ninja (one of our top players) in this battle report

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/265958-3rd-annual-armada-vassal-world-cup/?do=findComment&comment=3194881

3 hours ago, Ginkapo said:

TAKE TWO STRATEGIC UNITS AND FIRE LANES.

ITS REALLY REALLY EASY TO COUNTER

SO WHY DOES NO ONE?

Besides taking 30 points of squads I don't want to? But then I need Intel so I can actually use them, so that's 42 points. But should I protect my Intel with Escort? Because I've seen people berated for not protecting Intel with Escort.

Come on, we both know how this circle goes. We've both told people the squads they need to run in order to be successful. And running Strategic tends to not be a good move because you cannot readily fit them into every fleet and make them work. Adding Strategic is inefficient unless your list is built to use them, in which case you end up with something like the Fish Farm, and you're no where closer to fixing the issue.

Design an efficient squad ball that can work with 75% of lists and it would be a different story.