I haven't used this card yet, and I am after some ideas...

What is the best platform to put this on? and why?

What are the best cards out there to look at using this on? Or what would make you want to flip the table if you got Vader'd?

The raider is really the only effective method to deliver him. Except your spending 47 points to deliver a one time use card that wamts to be used as soon as possible.

Extremely likely you'll lose the raider whilst doing so. So you better hope it's points well spent.

Imps could really use a cheap ship like a hammerhead...

The Kuat does quite well too, as it's not a perfect fit for BTs, wants to get in close and can take leading shots instead of OEs. Nothing quite so satisfying as getting the drop on Avenger and unleashing Vader to slaughter its Boarding Trooper complement...

6 minutes ago, The Jabbawookie said:

The Kuat does quite well too, as it's not a perfect fit for BTs, wants to get in close and can take leading shots instead of OEs. Nothing quite so satisfying as getting the drop on Avenger and unleashing Vader to slaughter its Boarding Trooper complement...

Why bother with the troopers? Just take off Avenger itself.

Vader is good, he's just dependent on your opponent's list design to make work properly. So when he's effective, he's brutal. When your opponent is running nearly naked swarms everywhere, he'll do almost nothing.

Also there's now a Star Destroyer that directly benefits from him as a Commander, soyou're giving that up.

1 minute ago, thecactusman17 said:

Why bother with the troopers? Just take off Avenger itself.

Vader is good, he's just dependent on your opponent's list design to make work properly. So when he's effective, he's brutal. When your opponent is running nearly naked swarms everywhere, he'll do almost nothing.

Also there's now a Star Destroyer that directly benefits from him as a Commander, soyou're giving that up.

I see tons of Avenger. Yet I never see DV-BT. Seems like regular AvengerBT is more efficient or something.

The sadder part is that the design is ALMOST amazing: DV and Jyn BTs don't care about what your squad value is, so that makes it possible to think about using them on small ships like Raiders or Hammerheads. Sadly, these die too fast.

14 minutes ago, Blail Blerg said:

I see tons of Avenger. Yet I never see DV-BT. Seems like regular AvengerBT is more efficient or something.

The sadder part is that the design is ALMOST amazing: DV and Jyn BTs don't care about what your squad value is, so that makes it possible to think about using them on small ships like Raiders or Hammerheads. Sadly, these die too fast.

That's because Avenger until recently had a great combo with Boarding Troopers which is now in greater jeopardy post-nerf. Avenger is still good vs smaller targets, but is more limited vs durable ships. That combo has been reduced in power significantly.

Once the meta stabilizes, I expect to see lots of Cham Syndulla and Darth Vader boarding parties to combat specific threats, starting with Imperial ISD lists.

I was lucky enough to win Denver Regional using a Kuat with Vader Bordering party and in each match he was instrumental. For anyone interested I'll refer you to the batreps I wrote up a short time ago.

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/272298-denver-regional-batrep/

1 hour ago, thecactusman17 said:

Why bother with the troopers? Just take off Avenger itself.

Vader is good, he's just dependent on your opponent's list design to make work properly. So when he's effective, he's brutal. When your opponent is running nearly naked swarms everywhere, he'll do almost nothing.

Also there's now a Star Destroyer that directly benefits from him as a Commander, so you're giving that up.

It's situational whether you want to take off Avenger (you think they'll hit when you have exhausted tokens) vs taking out the troopers (you don't want them to basically Intel Officer 2 of your tokens the entire round,) so I chose the thematically fun one. If Avenger gets hit late in the round, it will likely activate asap next round just to get any shot at all, but if it's early in the round things get trickier. I only use him as a nice "throw-in" boarding team; for his points he's about as appealing as unsupported BTs, just way more hot and cold.

Kuat refit is probably the best platform for Vader BT. I’ve used it couple of times and have gotten good uses out of it. One game I sent Vader to remove DCO followed by an ACM front salvo from my Kuat. Another time he removed a Gunnery teams but I ended up killing the ship that round anyway.

While BTroopers works best during Avengers own activation, Vader bt is better in that he helps the rest of your fleet by removing certain troublesome upgrades in your opponents fleet. Upgrades like ECM, EWS, Toryn, Brunson and the like are very common in the current meta and make for very good targets.

Vader bt is also better than BTroopers against ships like Landonition (remove Lando before he ruins your perfect roll) or Rieekan’s Yavaris(nueter that double tap B-wing monster shot).

He also presents an interesting counter-Raddus threat.

15 minutes ago, elbmc1969 said:

He also presents an interesting counter-Raddus threat.

The opposite: He's useless vs Raddus because nearly everything you want to counter in a Raddus build is off the table until it's too late.

Cham Syndulla on the other hand would scare the crap out of the average Raddus bomb.

As jabba and wraith said he seems to go well on a kuat.

Ive been running a double kuat where darth is on one and pryce/bt/avenger is the other one.

I think the logic with darth vs bt avenger is you kill the boarding troopers so avenger cant work in most cases.

Kill Avenger and you gain survivability for the rest of the fleet, too.

Some great info here, thanks for the replies everyone.

The Vader-Raider works once and then as soon as the threat from it is understood it gets burnt down before getting into range

In my last game, I had Vader on an ISD. Used it to remove Rapid Launch Bays on an MC80 before 4 B-wings could be launched...

Kill Rieekan's Yavaris title, I've seen him strip Home One (turning it into Home NONE!), Etc. He kills those troublesome upgrades you want gone, and if you view him as the Kuat Boarding Team troubleshooter, he's really solid.

2 hours ago, TheVillageIdiot said:

In my last game, I had Vader on an ISD. Used it to remove Rapid Launch Bays on an MC80 before 4 B-wings could be launched...

Have to agree stripped Admonition off with Vader and it makes a difference.

I also was able to remove an external racks before they were used.

Ive also had success with him on a Kuat. I view him as an Avenger/Demo deterrent. Which allows the Kuat to be even more aggressive. Just have to make sure you get to use yours first.

Seeing as you keep mentioning spending a lot of points to get rid of exhaustable cards

20 hours ago, TheVillageIdiot said:

In my last game, I had Vader on an ISD. Used it to remove Rapid Launch Bays on an MC80 before 4 B-wings could be launched...

There was a guy at London Regionals who used a Vader Raider to kill the profundity title before the GR75 full of bees could launch.

That story did the rounds very quickly!

I use Vader. I board you with 15 solid red dice.

On 14/04/2018 at 8:58 PM, TheVillageIdiot said:

In my last game, I had Vader on an ISD. Used it to remove Rapid Launch Bays on an MC80 before 4 B-wings could be launched...

Man I’d be pissed if that happened to me.

On 14/04/2018 at 5:07 AM, thecactusman17 said:

The opposite: He's useless vs Raddus because nearly everything you want to counter in a Raddus build is off the table until it's too late.

Cham Syndulla on the other hand would scare the crap out of the average Raddus bomb.

He's better if they're using Profundity to drop another ship after Raddus.

If they miss the trigger, just get Darth in there and BOOM goes the Hyperspace ship.