13 hours ago, Lord Tareq said:Mass bombers + relay to be able to keep the carriers out of range of the ISD’s
Rebs lack meaningfull relay, Imps lack really good bombers.
For me, the tourney was a bit disappointment diversity-wise. Too much ISD-s and MC75. Im not sure but there were 2-3 max squad lists, I faced 4 ties in 3 matches. My Sloane did well against two big ship lists, if you win P1, one of them doesnt even exists, then its 1v1 
Haven't had much chance to try it out myself, but how about the Rebel equivalent? Two MC75s w/Exodus fleet & Garm bel Iblis. You're guaranteed to have a token on turn 3 to refill your front shields, so I'd feel pretty confident about my ability to joust with an ISD and if you can set up the fairly simple dual arc, a 75 will shred an ISD. If you rush up on them at speed 3, you should be able to mitigate the long-range damage they'll be doing to you.
13 minutes ago, JauntyChapeau said:Haven't had much chance to try it out myself, but how about the Rebel equivalent? Two MC75s w/Exodus fleet & Garm bel Iblis. You're guaranteed to have a token on turn 3 to refill your front shields, so I'd feel pretty confident about my ability to joust with an ISD and if you can set up the fairly simple dual arc, a 75 will shred an ISD. If you rush up on them at speed 3, you should be able to mitigate the long-range damage they'll be doing to you.
I've played against Rieekan, dual Ord 75s with EWS, OE, APT, ER, Exodus, and Lando/Strat, supported by 2 Comms Net and Repair Crew, n Tycho+Shara.
It's **** hard bringing one of those down. 6 activations, 8 Repair and Obstruction, plus Rieekan. Once you get one down to a few hull, Exodus will bring up 4 shields to keep it alive an extra round. You'll destroy it next round, but Rieekan keeps it in play.
EWS counters squads, and so does 8 Repair. Rieekan beats last/first and BTA. And 2 75s can quickly down an ISD. It's a very sturdy fleet.
2 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:I've played against Rieekan, dual Ord 75s with EWS, OE, APT, ER, Exodus, and Lando/Strat, supported by 2 Comms Net and Repair Crew, n Tycho+Shara.
It's **** hard bringing one of those down. 6 activations, 8 Repair and Obstruction, plus Rieekan. Once you get one down to a few hull, Exodus will bring up 4 shields to keep it alive an extra round. You'll destroy it next round, but Rieekan keeps it in play.
EWS counters squads, and so does 8 Repair. Rieekan beats last/first and BTA. And 2 75s can quickly down an ISD. It's a very sturdy fleet.
When flying against an ISD, have you found that the EWS is better/as good as ECM? I'm worried about the occasional 9-10 damage spike that throws a wrench into the plan.
3 minutes ago, JauntyChapeau said:When flying against an ISD, have you found that the EWS is better/as good as ECM? I'm worried about the occasional 9-10 damage spike that throws a wrench into the plan.
I take ECM. Wave 7 is a large ship meta. Better off repairing to keep shields up to fend of squads and ECM to Brace the large attacks. EWS is effective against MC75s and Vics though, so it depends on what you see frequently.
Wait, I take it back, high firepower might be ISDs right now. You can easily get 6 red out of the Cymoons. And def at close range, with black dice + ER or EL the Kuats are the most raw firepower in one shot. But that's at close range.
I think if you tried MC80 and MC30 with lots of toys you might be able to put a good amount of firepower onto your targets. MC80 runs away, MC30 goes in for a pass -> first last.
Some great ideas here, thanks guys! For the record, I think dual ISDs is pretty thematic that it should be terrifying. No problem with it being the hotness, just I like to be contrarian and use something else to defeat it! Which is pushing me toward Rebels.
Although there are plenty of counters, I am really interested to what can also win big in a 3 round tournament. Thanks to @Baltanok for the data on winning points - with an average of 27, you are aiming for a 9,9,9 or 10,8,8 at minimum.
Therefore, my 2 cents on some of the options proposed:
- TRC corvettes, and/or Crackelator. Not sure on this one. With EWS as a thing it badly hurts the Corvettes’ ability to hit the big guy. Plus it suffers against bomber swarms - I speak from experience of running this archetype during the 7 round Euros last year!
- Bomber swarm. Still good and matches well against other fleet types. But I feel that Governor Pryce and EWS will mitigate the damage on Avenger such that it can get in and nuke something meaningful (Yavaris / Gallant Haven). In which case you probably need Riekaan to make this work.
- Ackbar swirl. I think this is a contender. Lots of firepower, usually an accuracy to jam up their brace (if they didn’t bring ECM, which isn’t an autoinclude on Avenger). Can keep the ISDs at arms’ length and punch them hard. Needs engine techs on the MC80 to keep it put of dodge. I have a wacky idea to put tractor beams on two large Rebel ships to see if this helps slow down Avenger. Combo with token shenanigans to force your opponent to impail themselves on your doom pickles.
- Rebel joust. This is really interesting. By ganging up those double arcs it can put the hurt on the ISDs and bring them down quickly. Probably needs 2 from list of MC75 ordnance / MC30 Admonition / MC80 with Defiance, and defensive tech to weather the storm (Lando, Bail, Mon Cal Exodus, RBDs, Riekaan, etc.) An aggressive fleet type so has a good chance of getting high scores.
Keen to give the last two a try and see how they get on!
21 hours ago, Ardaedhel said:
Bail. Bail Bail Bail. "Gee, that's a really nice 40-point bid for first you've got there. Why don't you go ahead and tell me which turn you're going last on, then I'll tell you which turn I'm going first on."
Yeah I used Pryce once and it was an absolute brain melt trying to get my speed and movement right to last first effectively. I think if opposing Bail with Pryce unless there is a good secondary target available you may well be better choosing to not use Pryce instead.
More broadly, I really think double Kuat is a great option for double ISD. You can throw ordnance porgs on both of them, which combined with the fact that the kuat is a very polarised Shoot to Kill/Not worth shooting at all ship so it can happily flak most turns without gunnery teams. I took down Dutch Vander with flak alone the other night which I have NEVER done before otherwise.
Two Kuats can also both take ECM, which dovetails nicely with my new up and coming commander...
A figure of legend/written off for being too crap only just returning from the unknown regions...
Allows you to brace the heck out of everything and laugh at the intel officers...
More dangerous than you realise....
General Tagge!
10 hours ago, Coldhands said:Rebs lack meaningfull relay, Imps lack really good bombers.
For me, the tourney was a bit disappointment diversity-wise. Too much ISD-s and MC75. Im not sure but there were 2-3 max squad lists, I faced 4 ties in 3 matches. My Sloane did well against two big ship lists, if you win P1, one of them doesnt even exists, then its 1v1
I saw and played a number of rebel MC-80 (both type) lists.
It's no real surprise that there were a lot of MC-75s around. It's only just come out and people like to use new stuff, especially for Regionals where it's at a level where people are still happy to experiment a little.
I flew 3 out of my total 4 MC-75 games at that event because it's new and I've not had time to get it to a table.
