Raddus has been with us for a while now and many people complained about how he breaks the previously established flow of the game and that they are not happy about it.

In recent major tournaments Raddus has done well, mostly as Mc75/Prof enabler or paired with a MonKarren.

Still, Raddus has some problems that can be exploited. Thus my questions: Depending on the ship that comes in: what lists and playstyles, in your opinion, are well suited towards dealing with him? What is your mental approach if you face him? Does it strongly depend on who is 1st and 2nd player? What are your previous experiences and what have you learned?

Honestly though it just depends your fleet.

If you're squadron heavy just remember to keep them spread out because Raddus can't Raddus onto squadrons and if they're Raddusing they'll likely have pretty light squad capabilities.

Not necessarily... You don't have to raddus in an mc75- it's just the greatest use for raddus.

I think the community responded to this problem by gripping rieekan even harder. Whatever ship raddus tried to delete at least has a chance to shoot back.

Which led to this last year's worlds scenario. Riekan, who is so broken he's been nerfed TWICE and still won worlds again, and Raddus who is so broken he requires a different broken mechanic to counter him. In this case Riekan. I'm sensing a cycle here.

I consider this topic closed.

If anyone feels like it, please continue talking about (pick your favorite ? ?

• Super unfair mechanics and upgrades.
• Armada being dead.
• When/If we will see an SSD.
• Which never used upgrade card is super good for some reason.
• The world cup or interestingly: which is better, the US or the rest of the world.
• Political issues and sexism as they relate to sci-fi movies.
• What other factions the game surely needs.
• Whatever a donk is.

I'll be thinking about how to win this year's store tournaments.

Armada is dead because Yavaris is OP and abuses the maneuverability of squadrons. Hopefully when the SSD comes out it will be a good counter; like everything else, it’s definitely going to be amazing with Tactical Expert. I just hope they don’t package Vice Admiral Holdo, Rose Tico, or Rey with the wave because they’re all blatant political propaganda created by SJW-aligned FIFA in an attempt to weaken America so we stop being better at everything. I guess including Resistance heroes would mean the creation of a Resistance faction, at least, which would be great. If anyone disagrees they can just put a donk on it.

10 hours ago, RapidReload said:

Raddus has been with us for a while now and many people complained about how he breaks the previously established flow of the game and that they are not happy about it.

In recent major tournaments Raddus has done well, mostly as Mc75/Prof enabler or paired with a MonKarren.

Still, Raddus has some problems that can be exploited. Thus my questions: Depending on the ship that comes in: what lists and playstyles, in your opinion, are well suited towards dealing with him? What is your mental approach if you face him? Does it strongly depend on who is 1st and 2nd player? What are your previous experiences and what have you learned?

Ok, I'll take a more analytical crack at this at 2am.

Right now Raddus is one of the power players because he prevents a ship from being forced to endure crossing the board (against Cymoons, Demolisher Runs, repeated fighter assaults from mass activations over a couple of turns, the works). Moreover, he can make this ship appear virtually anywhere he wishes via any ship in his fleet. So bringing 3-5 high speed single ships from everywhere on his side of the board allows FANTASTIC FLEXIBILITY on placement. The only drawback is such a unit cannot activate first.

Moreover, plenty of Raddus builds also rely on Profundity to do a nesting doll attack with 2 activations and an expendable craft to ram you to death (Typically a Hammerhead laden with E-Racks and Garel's Honor).

There are two ways you can try to deal with it: Before the Drop, and After the Drop.

Before the Drop involves somehow neutralizing those couriers before Raddus can use them. Gunnery team'ed batteries is what I'd typically choose as the Empire, but you're also dealing with some speedy and cheapy ships that can out-maneuver the massive front arc. Even if you are able to swing guns into position, the Raddus player can still get the trailing corner of a '75 base pretty far at distance 1. Then it nest-dolls out a ship at long range, effectively, from the delivery ship.

Another attempt might be to throw out squadron caltrops to block a '75 drop. A Raddus ship can't overlap ships or squadrons, so spacing them out can effectively limit where Raddus can go. Still, throwing out your fighters like that means they can be picked off individually should Raddus also bring some incidental squadrons.

G8s, had they been given longer range than long, might be able to restrict the movement of Raddus drop ships to an extent. The G7-X is a typical, popular counter by creating a zone of restriction to dare Raddus to drop a '75 into a zone where it can't use defense tokens. Thing is, that bubble is only distance 3. In the scheme of the rest of the board, it's not very big. GX-7s are not unique at least, so if you're feeling paranoid you can make that field larger.

After the drop is trickier, because now that the ship has appeared you only have the space of one activation to delete it before it winds up and opens fire in the exact position your enemy wants it to be. The worst I see it doing is capping at 13 damage (E-Racks, all doubles, and an APT for a face-up hit) out of the front arc, accompanied with a max ~11 damage blow from the flank. If Intel officer is on there, your brace is likely gone or threatened after the first shot. This is what you could be facing if you ignore it.

In terms of defense the '75 only has a brace and redirect, for 7 shields on top of 9 hull for 16 hit points you need to chew through to delete the ship. 18 if you switch Profundity to Aspiration.

Power tools for deleting ships include high-battery numbers utilizing XI7s/accuracy to punch through a hull, or using a high number of fighters for multiple attacks to blow away or exhaust defense tokens while you're chewing the target to death. If Raddus comes out of hyperspace at speed 1 into the middle of a fighter ball, that '75 is going to have a really hard time unless it speeds up after the initial attack.

As far as I knew there wasn't a guaranteed strategy to responding to Raddus while also putting up a strategy that responds to other, general lists. If you bring a super death VSD-I with Tua to the table and some fighters as a mousetrap against Raddus, how do you respond to a superlaser Cymoon list designed to annihilate ships at long range? Ultimately this is what happened at worlds- Raddus was wiping out lots of ships, so now we need a counter to Raddus that is also a good counter to everything else.

Enter Rieekan, the best commander to deal with situations where ships are going to die from powerful alpha strikes and you want to be able to do something about it.

Moreover taking Rieekan means you don't have to put a lot of thought into stopping Raddus. If he's going to drop and eliminate the lynchpin ship in your list, you might as well shrug and give it extra life insurance for the turn so Raddus has done his thing and you can focus on your response. If Raddus is going to wipe out one of your ships, might as well do the best you can to eliminate the '75 or whatever he dropped in return.

The TL:DR recommended tools and strategies when facing a Raddus drop;

• Invest in fighters, useful as blockers and force multipliers to do lots of small attacks against a large target.
• Decentralize your list- don't give your opponent one main massive target he'll want to aim a Raddus '75 at. Instead of Yavaris, take a couple of Peltas or flotillas. If you are going to centralize, make sure you have a response to 19+11 damage coming into one arc.

What worked me perfectly so far whenever faced it:

- threaten the flagship with demolisher

- screening with figthers allowing only bad drops

I've used a G7-X Grav Well Projector to fight Raddus. But if your opponent DOES deploy at speed 0 near the grav well token because it gives him a really good shot, you need enough firepower to load on him before he speeds up to speed 1. My opponent did, and he regretted it. 1st player advantage helped me out a lot in this game.

I've also seen a Thrawn player use his extra navigate dials for speeding up (1 to 3) and slowing down (3 to 1) his Kuat to A) put a Liberty in danger very suddenly, forcing a bad Raddus drop, and B) slowing down his Kuat in the next round to avoid the Raddus'd MC75's close range. Theoretically you could do the same thing with Ozzel, although it may not catch your opponent by surprise in the same way that Thrawn/Tarkin can.

1 hour ago, Norsehound said:

The only drawback is such a unit cannot activate first. 

They also loose activations ... up to two. This is exploitable by forcing the spotters to fly into range.

1 hour ago, Norsehound said:

Before the Drop involves somehow neutralizing those couriers before Raddus can use them.

Yes, or the Raddus ship itself - which is often forced to act as spotter as well. Killing Raddus before he can deploy equals a tabling pretty much. Forcing him to run Raddus away or risk loosing him (for example using fast rogues) might cost him a spotter. Forcing him to fly into a kitted out cymoon with vader at long range can delete a raddus cr90 in one shot.

1 hour ago, Norsehound said:

Another attempt might be to throw out squadron caltrops to block a '75 drop. A Raddus ship can't overlap ships or squadrons, so spacing them out can effectively limit where Raddus can go. Still, throwing out your fighters like that means they can be picked off individually should Raddus also bring some incidental squadrons.

Being a Raddus enthusiast myself I have never had much issues which finding a nook or cranny to fit the ships in between the squadron blockers. I would argue that this approach does not work very well unless u run 12 ties or something.

1 hour ago, Norsehound said:

After the drop is trickier, because now that the ship has appeared you only have the space of one activation to delete it before it winds up and opens fire in the exact position your enemy wants it to be. The worst I see it doing is capping at 13 damage (E-Racks, all doubles, and an APT for a face-up hit) out of the front arc, accompanied with a max ~11 damage blow from the flank. If Intel officer is on there, your brace is likely gone or threatened after the first shot. This is what you could be facing if you ignore it. 

Damage is on the high end but yes. I dont understand the need to delete the ship though. If it cannot kill you in the turn after the drop and you do not get your stuff blocked in place the close-range MC75 will pretty much never shoot in anger again. With that mindset, if you cannot face it head on, why not avoid the ship using for example activation advantage or by forcing the list to go second, let it pass, and if possible kill it with squads thereafter - or, if you run an MSU list, go after its spotters which more than likely are near you in a Raddus fleet. Should still work out to be a decent MOV if you yourself dont loose to much. This however also depends on the skill of the Raddus player and I have seen pretty silly Raddus deployments in the past.

If you run a brawler KUAT, the engagement depends more on who is first and on activation advantage in my opinion. There are quite a few Raddus lists that depend on a low bid, going second and let the enemy fly into them. That usually only works with activation advantage and no navigation commands set at your own ship / no token generation.

1 hour ago, Norsehound said:

As far as I knew there wasn't a guaranteed strategy to responding to Raddus while also putting up a strategy that responds to other, general lists. If you bring a super death VSD-I with Tua to the table and some fighters as a mousetrap against Raddus, how do you respond to a superlaser Cymoon list designed to annihilate ships at long range? Ultimately this is what happened at worlds- Raddus was wiping out lots of ships, so now we need a counter to Raddus that is also a good counter to everything else.

Ideally you want a list that wins against everything in the current meta. Sloane was that in my opinion. At this point, this does not exist I would content. I look for lists that are good against the major archetypes I identify, Raddus being one of them. While possibly having a bad matchup against less likely lists. I wager one would meet more Thrawn-Demo/Raddus/Rieekan lists than Vader Cymoons. Therein also lies an exploitable advantage to make niche lists that you are comfortable with in the likelier matchups. Its pretty much what you said just extended a bit.

34 minutes ago, Bertie Wooster said:

I've used a G7-X Grav Well Projector to fight Raddus. But if your opponent DOES deploy at speed 0 near the grav well token because it gives him a really good shot, you need enough firepower to load on him before he speeds up to speed 1. My opponent did, and he regretted it. 1st player advantage helped me out a lot in this game.

I've also seen a Thrawn player use his extra navigate dials for speeding up (1 to 3) and slowing down (3 to 1) his Kuat to A) put a Liberty in danger very suddenly, forcing a bad Raddus drop, and B) slowing down his Kuat in the next round to avoid the Raddus'd MC75's close range. Theoretically you could do the same thing with Ozzel, although it may not catch your opponent by surprise in the same way that Thrawn/Tarkin can. 

I would agree to all of that.

1 hour ago, Norsehound said:

Enter Rieekan, the best commander to deal with situations where ships are going to die from powerful alpha strikes and you want to be able to do something about it.

Yes, I still dont like Rieekan as a specific counter to Raddus. It somewhat works paired with Yavaris if he still blindly runs the MC75 into the heap, however, as JJ almost achieved (? he will never hear the end of that), why do that. Slow squads cannot cover all the angles where Raddus might come in - so I would pick the angle where there are not many/no squads and starting killing before jumping to speed 3 and running.

If you run Rieekan with a big ship, it's also not that meaningful as it generally cannot be killed in a single activation anyway. Therefore, it can still respond.

I think, it is quite possible to design lists that can face a Profundity Raddus drop. Force them to go second, if possible, have enough activations to force them to fly into you. If possible send cheap stuff to threaten the flagship. Keep in mind that the effective range a Hammerhead can double arc you in close range after coming out of the nesting doll is Range 5 + 3,5 from the spotter.

If you do not want a brawl: concentrate on long range damage and fast ships that are ready to navigate. Dont offer a target. If you want to brawl: have fighter support, run support ships to concentrate fire on the MC75 if it wants to drop close to your main target.

Anyway, in my opinion, the much larger threat is the MonKarren drop if played well. Not much you can do against that.

4 hours ago, The Jabbawookie said:

Armada is dead because Yavaris is OP and abuses the maneuverability of squadrons. Hopefully when the SSD comes out it will be a good counter; like everything else, it’s definitely going to be amazing with Tactical Expert. I just hope they don’t package Vice Admiral Holdo, Rose Tico, or Rey with the wave because they’re all blatant political propaganda created by SJW-aligned FIFA in an attempt to weaken America so we stop being better at everything. I guess including Resistance heroes would mean the creation of a Resistance faction, at least, which would be great.

You forgot the possibility of a new Leia that doesn't even need a ship.....

To expand

You can either put a donk on the flagship by threatening or killing it early.

Or put a donk on the favoured deployment spot with squadron and ship blockers.

20 hours ago, ForceSensitive said:

Which led to this last year's worlds scenario. Riekan, who is so broken he's been nerfed TWICE and still won worlds again, and Raddus who is so broken he requires a different broken mechanic to counter him. In this case Riekan. I'm sensing a cycle here.

Yawn.....

17 hours ago, RapidReload said:

I consider this topic closed.

If anyone feels like it, please continue talking about (pick your favorite ? ?

• Super unfair mechanics and upgrades.
• Armada being dead.
• When/If we will see an SSD.
• Which never used upgrade card is super good for some reason.
• The world cup or interestingly: which is better, the US or the rest of the world.
• Political issues and sexism as they relate to sci-fi movies.
• What other factions the game surely needs.
• Whatever a donk is.

I'll be thinking about how to win this year's store tournaments.

here here

11 hours ago, Ginkapo said:

To expand

You can either put a donk on the flagship by threatening or killing it early.

Or put a donk on the favoured deployment spot with squadron and ship blockers.

big donks? what is that?

????