Consistent ranged shots or iffy close up crits? I've gone back and forth many times about this and was stubbornly in the turbolaser/ion cannon camp until the MC75 dropped.

Just this past Saturday I ran the following list at Adepticon in Chicago;

Most Wanted, Con O, Solar

MC75 Ordnance

Strat Ad, OE, Quad Lasers, ECM, APT, Ord Pods

CR90B Dodonnas Pride

Pelta Assault

Dodonna, Projection Ex, IF!

CR90A Jainas TRC

GR75

Toryn Comms Net

3 YT2400s

For me this is a very 'crit fishy' list and it had a pretty mediocre performance, I placed 10 out of 16. Just for context this was my first major tourney and I had only played the list once before on Thursday.

The thing that got me was that I didn't roll that many crits(although the Interdictor Targeting Scrambler sloughed a few) and I am wondering if crit effect weapons are more effective than those which add dice control or negate defenses(i.e. XI-7's or Leading Shots). I'd like to hear your thoughts, anecdotes, and perhaps even charts and graphs on the subject.

It depends the ship but I'll almost always go for straight damage on a serious list. X-I7's are my go to turbolaser upgrade on nearly every big ship, leading shots my ion upgrade unless the ship has 4+ blue dice in which case I go with SW-7's (you seldom need more than 1 accurcy with X-I7's).

But we're talking about large ships there, for smaller ships like 90's TRC is pretty hard not to take. with MC30's and Demo's APT is pretty much mandatory(ACM's are fine too, I find both arguments compelling for either but just prefer the cheaper cost and hull damage).

I will say overall if you try to rely on gemicks like crit effects you're going to have a bad day, try to remove as much of the random from the game as possible and you'll find your lists preforming better.

Good job on attending your first tournament- 3 games back to back is bigger step than you think, and then 10th is very respectable.

Something you clearly started to see is consistency is king!

The number one upgrade for your fighting ships will be the one that gives you the most consistent damage output, and most of the time, that means rerolls. Some ships only shoot two rounds a game- you need to make it count!

Now if you have spent points on cards that require a certain dice face, this is even more important.

For your MC75, you brought Ordinance Experts, so I can only suggest that you probably got unlucky triggering APTs, or you weren’t aggressive enough rerolling plain hits.

For Dodonna’s Pride, you can’t really help the rolling as effectively as OE, but you could consider Leading Shots. Here though, often the best course of action is to simply have a concentrate fire dial. More dice means more chance of that crit, especially out of the side arc.

2 hours ago, TheCallum said:

For your MC75, you brought Ordinance Experts, so I can only suggest that you probably got unlucky triggering APTs, or you weren’t aggressive enough rerolling plain hits.

I think this is very important. I just ran a dual MC75O list at Denver Regionals, both with ACM. If my first roll has no crit icons, I rerolled all dice to fish for them. The crit is worth three full damage and average damage on a black die vs a ship is 1, so the odds are with you. If my initial roll contained a crit, I only rerolled blank dice.

Of course, this doesn't guarantee you crits. Very few things in Armada are more galling than rolling five black dice with rerolls and getting no crit icons, but it happened a couple times to me, and once to my opponent.