One of the things that I think helped our guys was in some of our older leagues, you got bonus league points for running different commanders and ships. So sure, you can run Dodonna Liberty for 6 weeks straight, but the guy who plays several different commanders is both going to win the League and get fancier swag than you. And he gets bragging rights, which is worth almost as much as swag. Same with ships and squadrons, too.

Theoretically, also, run a Corellian Conflict game with a few specific commanders they can choose from.

1 hour ago, Snipafist said:

I'm not going to say that it's unwise to create fleets that you feel have a good chance against what's popular. That's just being intelligent. But a cycle of hard counter skew fleets creates the churn you're experiencing and in my experience, players who chase the churn never get good enough with any particular fleet to do well with it at a competitive event against players who have stuck to an archetype and nailed it down. Ideally, you should be trying to get to the end of the dialectical process before anyone else and stay there: people who are chasing the churn use extreme fleets that are either a thesis or antithesis to the current hotness, you ideally want to arrive at a less-extreme more-stable synthesis that incorporates the good ideas of both and can hold its own in that environment without being a skewed caricature.

I think this is exactly the goal you want to have in mind, a self-stabilizing meta where there are enough players that can win games against their counters on a skill basis and while there are still "meta" concerns for very large competitive events, the players have had a chance to develop the tacit knowledge required to fly their fleets in unfavorable matchups and either not lose badly or even squeak out wins when the opportunities present themselves. Remind your players of this fact, that while it's good to be familiar with everything they are going to need a strong base of skill to fly a single fleet well even into its hard counters. Also point out that such fleets and such players are far less prone to being brought down at tournaments by said hard counters than they might be if they made a meta call, or worse made a meta call and got it wrong.

Have a random draw for Rebel and Imperial commanders. Eliminate Tagge, Konstantine and Garm. Or, find a different counter to the Dodonna drill than bombers, specifically to break the cycle. Ideally, make it a different counter from everyone else’s counters. The trick to breaking a circle is just to actively disrupt things. Eventually, chaos will ensue unless all the players coordinate fleets beforehand. (helps to have a co-conspirator for this.)

A player can very definitely get a read on a local meta (especially if the playerbase remains fairly constant) and bring the counter to emerging lists as they come out.

If you can say "this player is going to bring that fleet (or some variation thereof)" and you can do that for a good proportion of the playerbase then it's pretty easy to select a list based mostly on how many opposing fleets it hard-counters. But this may not necessarily be a problem:

He can only do this for as long as the local players remain predictable. All it takes is for a couple of people to predict him(or to not follow the pattern), then things will start to get very interesting.

The situation you describe is fairly typical of a small(ish) closed meta. It doesn't tend to happen to such a degree on a larger scale because when you show up to a bigger event you have far less certainty about what you will face, then the priority shifts from playing a narrow hard-counter list to playing a more generalist list that can reliably confront as large a variety of opponents as possible.

The "circular meta" problem does get empasised slightly in armada as opposed to other games mostly because it's not that difficult for a player to amass enough of a collection so that they can play pretty much what they want, and can swap & change on a weekly basis. (By contrast something like mtg has a huge financial barrier to being able to switch & swap lists like that. Which means that even in a closed meta players aren't always that eager to change to a different deck if one player has a hard counter to it.)

As an idea (if the local players have the collections to accommodate it) you could have some kind of a blind draw:

Put a bunch of ship names (or admiral names) into a bag, (split by faction if you want) then each player draws one of those names at random. Then they have to build around that thing for the next event.

There's probably a few specifics that need to be ironed out, but that could be a pretty fun way to get players building without following the meta

17 minutes ago, The Jabbawookie said:

Have a random draw for Rebel and Imperial commanders. Eliminate Tagge, Konstantine and Garm. Or, find a different counter to the Dodonna drill than bombers, specifically to break the cycle. Ideally, make it a different counter from everyone else’s counters. The trick to breaking a circle is just to actively disrupt things. Eventually, chaos will ensue unless all the players coordinate fleets beforehand. (helps to have a co-conspirator for this.)

I do have a particular method of jank I wanna try. What makes his DD so powerful it that it has intel officers so in a sustained firefight he's killing your brace... and with XI7s you REALLY need it. But IOs are exhaustible. I've been playing with a few 1st player ms-1 counters.... without that intel officer, he's not so tough...

Double post

49 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

fuckery.

You have bested the machines

3 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

I do have a particular method of jank I wanna try. What makes his DD so powerful it that it has intel officers so in a sustained firefight he's killing your brace... and with XI7s you REALLY need it. But IOs are exhaustible. I've been playing with a few 1st player ms-1 counters.... without that intel officer, he's not so tough...

It's a Liberty. Get into its side arcs, run an MC30 Admo at it, HH can generally tank one shot from it (especially with TFA), Raiders catching it/last-firsting it, squadrons, HIE significantly, Cymoon H9-Quad Turbolaser Cannons....

Liberty's often end up dead based on how I run them, haha. How cagey is he with them? And what's the full list if you don't mind me asking?

1 minute ago, MandalorianMoose said:

You have bested the machines

Oh it went though?! I thought for sure they'd edit that out lol

Just now, geek19 said:

It's a Liberty. Get into its side arcs, run an MC30 Admo at it, HH can generally tank one shot from it (especially with TFA), Raiders catching it/last-firsting it, squadrons, HIE significantly, Cymoon H9-Quad Turbolaser Cannons....

Liberty's often end up dead based on how I run them, haha. How cagey is he with them? And what's the full list if you don't mind me asking?

It's not a bad plan, but he's running the Mc75 in his list as an excellent blocker. Mind you, I haven't run mc30s against it yet, but he man handled a demo I was running like that. lemme see if I can get him to cough it it. lol

16 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

It's not a bad plan, but he's running the Mc75 in his list as an excellent blocker. Mind you, I haven't run mc30s against it yet, but he man handled a demo I was running like that. lemme see if I can get him to cough it it. lol

Mc75 and a Liberty? Sounds like it's Vader double Cymoon time.

11 minutes ago, geek19 said:

Mc75 and a Liberty? Sounds like it's Vader double Cymoon time.

Sloane should also provide plenty of grief if you can force him to fight with only one ship at a time. Hood and Prince of Wales can also work (75 & H80 under Ackbar).

1 minute ago, geek19 said:

Mc75 and a Liberty? Sounds like it's Vader double Cymoon time.

++ Standard (Rebel Fleet) [400pts] ++

MC80 Battle Cruiser *flagship* [164pts]:
-General Dodonna
-Intel Officer
-Spinal Armament
-SW-7 Ion Batteries
-XI7 Turbolasers
-Caitken and Shollan
-Mon Karren

MC75 Ordnance Cruiser [116pts]:
-External Racks,
-Ordnance Experts,
-Reinforced Blast Doors
-Strategic Advisor

CR90 Corvette A [53pts]:
-Turbolaser Reroute Circuits
-Jaina's Light

Hammerhead Torpedo Corvette [44pts]:
-Ordnance Experts
-Garel's Honor

GR-75 Medium Transports [23pts]:
-Comms Net
-Leia Organa

+ Objectives +

Assault Objective: Opening Salvo

Defense Objective: Fleet Ambush

Navigation Objective: Dangerous Territory


He says it's important to remember there's about 8 points in upgrades he shifts around on this depending on his mood. Though I could't tell you what they are lol I know the version I faced didn't have GH on the HH.

Opening Salvo with 2 large bases seems like a bad time against MSU swarm or squadron spam. Especially IF! ISD with a heavy dose of repair commands late game (so, Chimaera?). I do like that MC75 loadout, cheap as it is though.

3 minutes ago, geek19 said:

Opening Salvo with 2 large bases seems like a bad time against MSU swarm or squadron spam. Especially IF! ISD with a heavy dose of repair commands late game (so, Chimaera?). I do like that MC75 loadout, cheap as it is though.

Msu and squadron spam should be pretty effective against this any way you cut it. Neither are particularly well loved in our meta though, and with wave 7 out everyone is trying their big ships, even the 1 or 2 players who typically go squads and msu. We do have a player running a dual ISD sloane fleet regularly right now, but he was able to chew through it for a marginal victory. He really struck with this number at the most opportune time.

I think someone tried a vader cymoon fleet against it and fell victim to insane rolls.

I'm.... Trying MSU again with some changes and variations. I'll let you know how it goes.