It seems like there are a lot of Imperial STar Destroyers and Mc-75s and Home Ones being played, along with squadron centric builds. How are people finding small ships are faring against those types of builds? Are the strengths of Raiders, Gladiators, Corvettes and Nebulon-Bs still useful enough to be good in a ruthless competitive setting?

I've been beating my head against the Large ship builds for a month and a half now. Short answer: it's really flipping hard. Using smalls as support is fine and good and leads to viable builds; not everything needs to be Vader Double ISD. But man, I don't know if an "all smalls" build for ships is viable anymore. Vader Cymoons exist, Raddus bombs exist. They're all things. You CAN do a Rieekan Aces build I guess, but man, I at least ran Dodonna. And you're still in trouble if/when Raddus throws a Hammerhead into Yavaris' side arc. Cracken can do work, but he bores me personally.

In short, if you can get it to work I'd be all for hearing about it.

Yes lethality of getting into their major arcs is deadly for small ships. The firepower creep of ships even at red range is getting high. Maneuverability to get into their rear or flanks (isds) is the key now for MSU. But even that is getting hard. The mc75 doesn't really have a weak arc.

Triple MC30s are still working. You just have to maneuver a bit more.

Sato Hammerheads does fine against large ships, it can hang against other MSUs.

I had some limited success with my DeMSU Ozzel swarm but it's an anxiety-inducing experience. It seems like you can generally take out one ISD but against a double-ISD fleet you generally won't have the ability to bag both of them.

It's tricky for sure. A lot of the normal small type ships, (raiders, cr90s) usually rely on being able to take one hit before either making their big attack run or getting behind the enemy. Your raider deflects a bit of damage at long range, then flies up to drop the exrax, and flies away. Your CR90 eats one shot at long range and then spends the rest of the game harassing from outside those scary arcs.

Right now though Vader Cymoons are very capable of popping these ships at long range in a single shot. I've even one-shot hammerheads with an angry Cymoon roll. Raddus allows dropping a massive ship within close range of squishy targets, easily capable of killing them in one shot. Pryce allows a low activation fleet to avoid being horribly out-maneuvered by a swarm fleet. There are a lot of tools that make running the smallest ships very precarious right now.

The tougher smalls (arqs, gladiators, mc30s) seem like they can still do their job. Demo's pretty hard to drop before it gets to at least hit you once. Admo is probably impossible to realistically kill in one hit.

I definitely think that small ships work best right now with a large ship to compliment them. Raiders do well hiding in the shadow of an ISD. CR90s are much less appetizing to shoot at with a scarier target you are also afraid of.

The titled ships (Yavaris, Demo, etc) will probably never go out of style. Their abilities are just sooo good.

In wave 6 my ECM demo was a beast that did some serious work in conjunction with slippery navs. But I knew i could eat 1 or 2 big shots and still be ok.

Vader cymoons and mc75s changed that. One has such a huge threat range that you can't practically approach it until its too late to kill it without it being able to kill you first. Mc75s simply put out a ton of damage at close range when you add in apt/ACM and exracks.

Cymoons effectively end trc90 swarms, and the proliferation of larges means xi7 is everywhere which has hurt mc30s and gladiators in general.

Pray you don’t run into EWS...

I put my MC30 swarm on the table today for the first time since W7 hit: I brought a Rieekan/ACM variant to a small Q1 tourney.

My first two games were against newer players, so while both went pretty well for me, that was attributable at least as much to player experience as relative list strength, so not a great yardstick.

Last round I faced @Karneck's Sloane Avenger. It was a really rough fight that went 6-5 in my favor, with the outcome due at least partly to an error on his part that left the ISD at close range of double arcs from 3 of my SFO/OE/ACM MC30s, with a predictable outcome. Not a lot of W7 came into play in this game--mostly just his SAd and, indirectly, my pivot back to ACMs in response to the shifting meta.

Things I took away:

* Strategic Advisor is nice, but still a bit of a meta call whether it's better than Pryce or not. If you're right on the average number of ships for your area, SAd is better to push you over that line to give you the one-up on activations; otherwise, Pryce is still the better bet.

* Vader/IF ISDCs are scary, but still really take some thought and skill to bring to bear, and (@Green Knight's truly miraculous rolls in Vassal aside) are certainly survivable at range--at least if you have 2 evades and 2 redirects. What's scary about them for me is those side arcs--3Bu/1R is nasty if you've already taken a beating at red range. Even if you get out of the Doom Arc, you're definitely going into a side arc.

* Staple DCO to the MC75, unless you have a really good reason not to. There are just too many crit effects out there now not to have that in your pocket. They're tanky, but not that tanky. Two rounds of ACM MC30's did one in, through EWS and with only fishing up an acc on the brace once.

* I think I counted 3 instances of shrimp lost because I didn't bring Queen Mothma. She's still the greatest.

* In a large ship meta, ACM > APT. I faced an ISD or MC75 in every game today; in every case, I killed the large ship. ACM showed their worth. (Granted that APT may have performed equivalently with lucky draws, but in every case I had to burn down all of the shields to get the kill anyway so ACM's lack of focus cost me basically nothing.)

* @Karneck is a total BAMF at flying Gozantis.

* With each wave, life keeps getting harder for the shrimp swarm, but it keeps pulling out the wins. Better bring your XI7s cause Mothma's a-comin' for you.

Sleepy. Maybe more in the morning. Bottom line: swarms still work. At least, mine does. At least, it did today.

edit: I should've noted--@Karneck won the tourney despite my taking our matchup, and I got second. The internet tells me this means that Armada's not a real competitive game or.... something. Grats, dude! And thanks for running it, @shmitty.

Always bring XI7, the shrimps are still about.

I made some calculations on my blog. The short version is that Admonition is very hard to kill at long range, but pretty easy to wound badly. Same with Foresight. Non title shrimps are entirely killable at long range.

EWS makes swarms life ****. Also, w7 raised the average VP you need to win a tourney to a point where (maybe its just my style of flying swarms) they cannot exceed minmax fleets. I can reliably get 7 points and go unbeaten all tourney, but scoring 8,5-9 point with them is really hard.

What about not Mc30's? I already know they're exceptional better than other small ships

Impression seems like small ships otherthan the Mc30 are more difficult than getting the same result with big ships.

Only the MC30s are generally good enough at applying pain, the others - Hammerheads and the like - just don't put out enough damage to cause large ships problems.

Speaking as a large ship primarily player, i feel the slight increase in firepower the past 2 waves has made it to where i feel like point pinatas matter. I feel medium ships suffer the most from the increase, too big to run away and not big enough to survive in most cases. The same seems true to me if you have over a certain number of smaller ships as well, as you cannot avoid all the arcs with everything and they hurt more now.

11 minutes ago, bleachorange said:

Speaking as a large ship primarily player, i feel the slight increase in firepower the past 2 waves has made it to where i feel like point pinatas matter. I feel medium ships suffer the most from the increase, too big to run away and not big enough to survive in most cases. The same seems true to me if you have over a certain number of smaller ships as well, as you cannot avoid all the arcs with everything and they hurt more now.

Craken TRC-s are exeptions here. Just the EWS... Cymoon as well. Apart from these, the decreasing number of fighters helps this list.

1 hour ago, Coldhands said:

Craken TRC-s are exeptions here. Just the EWS... Cymoon as well. Apart from these, the decreasing number of fighters helps this list.

Are you saying cracken + ews? As they both obstruct and you can only obstruct once to remove 1 die, i think thats throwing points away flr no reason. If you mean ews against msu shots, yes its quite good.

Yes, he means EWS vs MSU... nothing quite like lining up a sato hammerhead wall for long range crits and then running into an EWS ISD that you can no longer shoot at...

7 hours ago, Ardaedhel said:

I put my MC30 swarm on the table today for the first time since W7 hit: I brought a Rieekan/ACM variant to a small Q1 tourney.

My first two games were against newer players, so while both went pretty well for me, that was attributable at least as much to player experience as relative list strength, so not a great yardstick.

Last round I faced @Karneck's Sloane Avenger. It was a really rough fight that went 6-5 in my favor, with the outcome due at least partly to an error on his part that left the ISD at close range of double arcs from 3 of my SFO/OE/ACM MC30s, with a predictable outcome. Not a lot of W7 came into play in this game--mostly just his SAd and, indirectly, my pivot back to ACMs in response to the shifting meta.

Things I took away:

* Strategic Advisor is nice, but still a bit of a meta call whether it's better than Pryce or not. If you're right on the average number of ships for your area, SAd is better to push you over that line to give you the one-up on activations; otherwise, Pryce is still the better bet.

* Vader/IF ISDCs are scary, but still really take some thought and skill to bring to bear, and (@Green Knight's truly miraculous rolls in Vassal aside) are certainly survivable at range--at least if you have 2 evades and 2 redirects. What's scary about them for me is those side arcs--3Bu/1R is nasty if you've already taken a beating at red range. Even if you get out of the Doom Arc, you're definitely going into a side arc.

* Staple DCO to the MC75, unless you have a really good reason not to. There are just too many crit effects out there now not to have that in your pocket. They're tanky, but not that tanky. Two rounds of ACM MC30's did one in, through EWS and with only fishing up an acc on the brace once.

* I think I counted 3 instances of shrimp lost because I didn't bring Queen Mothma. She's still the greatest.

* In a large ship meta, ACM > APT. I faced an ISD or MC75 in every game today; in every case, I killed the large ship. ACM showed their worth. (Granted that APT may have performed equivalently with lucky draws, but in every case I had to burn down all of the shields to get the kill anyway so ACM's lack of focus cost me basically nothing.)

* @Karneck is a total BAMF at flying Gozantis.

* With each wave, life keeps getting harder for the shrimp swarm, but it keeps pulling out the wins. Better bring your XI7s cause Mothma's a-comin' for you.

Sleepy. Maybe more in the morning. Bottom line: swarms still work. At least, mine does. At least, it did today.

edit: I should've noted--@Karneck won the tourney despite my taking our matchup, and I got second. The internet tells me this means that Armada's not a real competitive game or.... something. Grats, dude! And thanks for running it, @shmitty.

I may have come in 3rd yesterday, but as far as I can tell I won at Armada for all of Wave 7. I actually used Jyn’s second ability to win an objective. I Raided the objective ship in Intel Sweep which won me the 75 points. So, there it has happened and I never have to play Jyn again.

Haven't gotten to play much for a week or two, but here are my (early) thoughts based on what I'm seeing out of reported events and my own experiences.

Several large ships have gotten new abilities to make them extraordinarily tanky and this has markedly improved their overall durability compared to small ships. The firepower boosts over the past 2-3 waves on the other hand have been moderate at best, but have instead focused on improving reliability for doing consistent medium-high damage. This has made large ships the consistently reliable big hitters in the fleet as opposed to their previous role of tanky damage spikers.

Medium ships have been almost entirely relegated to the Support role even when they were designed for more generalist or even combat roles, which is a major reason we see so few of them in top end play (excepting the Quasar, which was designed from the get-go as a cheap fleet support specialist). Medium ships have to compete on the cost-to-benefit scale with some of the most cost-efficient small support ships in the game and generally miss out. They also have to compete with small and large combat ships that point-for point either spike more damage (Demo, Admo, Hammerheads) or get medium-high damage more consistently (Vader Cymoons, BTAvenger, Doom Pickle MC80, Raddus Bomb Profundity etc)

Small ships have been subdivided into two major roles: combat and support. Because of their low cost and often specialized upgrade bar, we see that small ships are frequently well-suited for acting as a purpose-built role such as Demolisher for assassinating enemy tanks and supports by rushing across the table, Admo bursting through heavy firepower to critically injure a major combat ship, or Jaina's Light TRC-90s peppering large ships with small amounts of unavoidable damage from beyond effective attack range. On the support side of the equation, the flotillas continue to benefit from being super cheap activation fodder that carry powerful individual effects plus act as decent pocket carriers in a pinch, and Yavaris turning fighter balls into meatgrinders capable of tearing down even the most expensive large ships in a single turn.

One of the core issues we currently see in the game is that support ships currently feel either entirely overpowered, or completely worthless with very little room in between, largely thanks to which cards they can take and what their platform is designed for. High end support cards with basically no downside such as Yavaris (at least now that Flight Commander and Fighter Coordination Team have made the "don't move" mechanic meaningless) or Comms Net are so powerful compared to other options that they basically eliminate effective choice or counterplay. Frequently, cards that might technically have counterplay options instead require counter-building, incorporating design elements that render cards or abilities useless instead of actively playing a round with the intention of avoiding them. Further, quality support cards are multiplicative effects instead of additive, so they stack with other game effects such as re-rolling dice or repositioning outside the normal movement restrictions to maximize their overall value. Support ships that can't use or stack with these multiplicative effects rarely have tremendous value as support ships.

I remember I didn't pick up any wave 7 before my local regional, I took an all small ship list consisting of an Admonition, CR90, 2 Hammerheads, 2 flotillas, A-wings and VCXs. Every match I played had at least one large ship on the opponent's side. I remember I had a match against a Raddus Nesting Doll build, along with an MC80 Star Cruiser, a CR90B, and a flotilla and Tycho, Shara. He had problems with my fleet because I spread mine out wide and his fleet was built on concentrating on a massive bulk of points, and the ship worth the most points was the Admonition. He focused down one of my hammerheads and a flotilla, but my MC30 was able to nearly kill the MC75 with some nice tricky maneuvering. I also collected tokens from the Sensor Net objective, allowing me to beat him. I ended up placing 9th in a regional of about 30 people! LONG LIVE THE MSU!

After the Regionals yesterday, I don't think MSU lists will be viable anymore. I want to say there were 2 or 3 lists without a large ship, and there were a ton of lists with near max squads. Bail, Pryce, and SAd alter the activation game, which MSU heavily relied on to keep ships alive. Now when you face a Pryce ship, it's likely you will be losing something early in the game, or Bail will wipe out 1 or 2 small ships at the start of a round. Max squads allow for surgical strikes on ships without any wasted dice, so your ISD is using its only attack on a damaged ship.

@Ardaedhel

Truely a great game, excellent flying on your part. He was flying 4 mc30s with ACM and 3 transports with Rieekan.

We both knew going into our game that my ISD was going to die, but for me it was a game of "how many MC30s can I kill before I do". The answer is 2, possibly 3 if I didn't fudge up my ISD movement by not range checking everything before I did.

Ard used a sacrificial MC30 to pin in my movement which was an excellent play. And I had a Goz survive two side arcs of MC30 fire, which was helpful to me. Overall MC30s are still crazy good and cost effective.

Experiance is a factor, I knew that neither of us were going to get a blow out win, 6-5 was the best each either of us could of expected, which for a final round in a tournament could of meant another tables player earning a blowout win overtaking us (and almost did).

As for MSU swarms, if those ships had been any other small ship other than MC30s, I would of swatted them aside easily. As I did face a 3 Raider, Demo fleet and destoryed them all at red dice range for the most part. Sloane is still very powerful when backed by an ISD2 avenger with the standard aces ball and Jenson/Stele combo.

I think MSU has a place, but will really need to boost survivability on everything other than MC30s. Just know that in this meta, it'd be hard to pull out wins greater than 8 points which is whats needed to win tournaments.

@shmitty

Fantastic game, I think you've got the right idea going for your fleet, just needs refinement and practice, Raddus is **** terrifying.

1 hour ago, Undeadguy said:

After the Regionals yesterday, I don't think MSU lists will be viable anymore. I want to say there were 2 or 3 lists without a large ship, and there were a ton of lists with near max squads. Bail, Pryce, and SAd alter the activation game, which MSU heavily relied on to keep ships alive. Now when you face a Pryce ship, it's likely you will be losing something early in the game, or Bail will wipe out 1 or 2 small ships at the start of a round. Max squads allow for surgical strikes on ships without any wasted dice, so your ISD is using its only attack on a damaged ship.

Add Strategic adviser here too.

4 hours ago, bleachorange said:

Are you saying cracken + ews? As they both obstruct and you can only obstruct once to remove 1 die, i think thats throwing points away flr no reason. If you mean ews against msu shots, yes its quite good.

Cracken TRC-s sit happily anywhere in red range apart from 3+ red arcs, being able to pepper reliably with 1-2 red dice TRC shots, and they are quite tanky there. With TRC nerf (small part) and EWS(possible) its damage reliability is completely gone. I could field 4-6 corvettes with couple of transport, a possible m30, 0-8 YT200, and be competitive. But you gotta fly extra carefully now, and that way you wont score much, even if you win 3, youll most likely sit in 4th-8th position at the end of the tourney at best.