13 minutes ago, Biophysical said:

If I've learned anything from flying Strikers, it's that you can close ground incredibly fast from a huge number of directions.

This. Range control is easy for a higher PS ship in a straight-line head-on joust.

But if a ship with ailerons is playing chicken with....well....pretty much anything, either he's got a really devious plan in mind you haven't seen it, or it's Countdown, or you've basically already won anyway.

32 minutes ago, wurms said:

Lets reel this back a bit. A reaper is not going to be stopping any alpha strike unless the alpha player has no idea what he is doing. The reaper has to get range 2 in arc, or range 1 out of arc. And knowing the fastest speed is basically a 5 straight with ailerons, the alpha player will wipe it off the board instantly. Fenn on the other hand...

Yes, it is. This is advanced slam. There is no escape, there is no "well if I had done X instead I could have dodged it"

Range 2 is a 5 straight, and like you noted they can go 5 straight (though the bank 3 bank goes a bit farther)

This means a reaper can go easily from range 4 to jamming you if it's moving before you, and it's obviously trivial to jam something you're moving after.

I'll make a map, not that anyone would believe it

32 minutes ago, wurms said:

Lets reel this back a bit. A reaper is not going to be stopping any alpha strike unless the alpha player has no idea what he is doing. The reaper has to get range 2 in arc, or range 1 out of arc. And knowing the fastest speed is basically a 5 straight with ailerons, the alpha player will wipe it off the board instantly. Fenn on the other hand...

Yes, it is. This is advanced slam. There is no escape, there is no "well if I had done X instead I could have dodged it"

Range 2 is a 5 straight, and like you noted they can go 5 straight (though the bank 3 bank goes a bit farther)

This means a reaper can go easily from range 4 to jamming you if it's moving before you, and it's obviously trivial to jam something you're moving after.

I'll make a map, not that anyone would believe it

6 minutes ago, Brunas said:

Yes, it is. This is advanced slam. There is no escape, there is no "well if I had done X instead I could have dodged it"

Range 2 is a 5 straight, and like you noted they can go 5 straight (though the bank 3 bank goes a bit farther)

This means a reaper can go easily from range 4 to jamming you if it's moving before you, and it's obviously trivial to jam something you're moving after.



I'll make a map, not that anyone would believe it

IT IS CALLED AN HONORABLE JOUST FOR A REASON!!

There is no honor in range control.

4 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

This. Range control is easy for a higher PS ship in a straight-line head-on joust.

But if a ship with ailerons is playing chicken with....well....pretty much anything, either he's got a really devious plan in mind you haven't seen it, or it's Countdown, or you've basically already won anyway.

That's all true, but even in a heads up joust, if both ships are set up on the deployment zone edge, the Reaper moves 5 total spaces initially and the alpha ships move 2 total spaces. Next turn, Reaper moves 6 spaces, for 13 total spaces moved. This is roughly half a base out of Range 2, but it can do a 1-bank + 3-bank to make up that half space and get the alpha ships in R2 to Jam one (or both, if they're dumb) before activation. It's pretty cut and dry.

3 minutes ago, Biophysical said:

That's all true, but even in a heads up joust, if both ships are set up on the deployment zone edge, the Reaper moves 5 total spaces initially and the alpha ships move 2 total spaces. Next turn, Reaper moves 6 spaces, for 13 total spaces moved. This is roughly half a base out of Range 2, but it can do a 1-bank + 3-bank to make up that half space and get the alpha ships in R2 to Jam one (or both, if they're dumb) before activation. It's pretty cut and dry.

This is why starting with your ships pointing directly forward is historically not always awesome?

11 minutes ago, Boom Owl said:

This is why starting with your ships pointing directly forward is historically not always awesome?

Agreed, but the situation presented in favor of the alpha strikers was a heads up joust. If you start throwing in angles, it favors an Ailerons ship even more.

1 hour ago, wurms said:

And knowing the fastest speed is basically a 5 straight

1bank+3bank

(e: sorry, couldn't resist. It's not even half a length further, but might just make the difference...)

3 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

1bank+3bank

The most dishonorable move imaginable.

1 hour ago, wurms said:

Lets reel this back a bit. A reaper is not going to be stopping any alpha strike unless the alpha player has no idea what he is doing. The reaper has to get range 2 in arc, or range 1 out of arc. And knowing the fastest speed is basically a 5 straight with ailerons, the alpha player will wipe it off the board instantly. Fenn on the other hand...

I'm also assuming the reaper player knows what they're doing, plus they have other ships. Any alpha with at least one of their alpha's turned off will struggle to knock an 8HP ship off the board.

31 minutes ago, Brunas said:

I'll make a map, not that anyone would believe it

I'll believe it. I've seen it happen in real time.

a reaper should not be able to mess with an alpha strike. Mess with a rebound attack, yes but the initial attack? **** no.
Its Jam is action-bound, and doesnt reach to R3. Meaning unless it moved last AND got moderately close it cant do a dang thing. Fenn has no limited range, just be in arc and not across the table range, and worse of all he is NOT action bound so his final position (which is done at PS11) is the only thing that matters, while the reaper needs a position at a certain time to work.
Reaper is faster than it looks due to the AA but its still no faster than an interceptor/fang, but has a faster minimum speed (1fwd + 1fwd > 2fwd due to the basehop). The only reason strikers get away with their weird movements is because strikers typically do not warrant immediate attention, the reaper does.

15 minutes ago, Vineheart01 said:

a reaper should not be able to mess with an alpha strike. Mess with a rebound attack, yes but the initial attack? **** no.
Its Jam is action-bound, and doesnt reach to R3. Meaning unless it moved last AND got moderately close it cant do a dang thing.

I'll bet you money I can mess with an initial alpha with a Reaper moving first.

15 minutes ago, Vineheart01 said:

a reaper should not be able to mess with an alpha strike. Mess with a rebound attack, yes but the initial attack? **** no.
Its Jam is action-bound, and doesnt reach to R3.

This is explicitly not true. The reaper jam range is well beyond range 3 - that reaper gets to move first, and if it jams, no alpha strike.

Again, I'll make a map, but this is the same argument as "my ace can avoid advanced slam bombs". You can't, unless your opponent doesn't understand basic maneuvering.

15 minutes ago, Brunas said:

You can't, unless your opponent doesn't understand basic maneuvering.

It unirronically might actually be correct at this point to assume that they dont?

i havnt actually bought the reaper box yet since im not really playing 1e atm.
I thought the Jam action was R1-2 only?

1 minute ago, Vineheart01 said:

i havnt actually bought the reaper box yet since im not really playing 1e atm.
I thought the Jam action was R1-2 only?

Yes, Jam is range 1-2 only, but it also moves before that. Because of that, the reaper moves up to about 6 straight, then jams with an additional range 2 from the final ending position. That makes the total jam range about 4.5 or so, unless I'm bad at math today. You go from very far out of range to jamming without any real difficulty.

1 minute ago, Brunas said:

That makes the total jam range about 4.5 or so, unless I'm bad at math today.

Exactly range 4.4, plus half a ship length if using the 1bank/3bank to go to a total of 4.6

I've been playing around with Reapers on Vassal, and maybe it's that I'm still new to them: but they seem **** good at what they do. **** Good. Remember also that Fenn Rau's ability does not meddle with his opponent's defense (HotCop followed by at least one more attack aside), while Jam does. Tokenless mods are, of course, the natural response, but aside from Reinforce, Rey, & Lonewolf - tokenless defensive modification is a bit rare.

1 hour ago, Incard said:

I've been playing around with Reapers on Vassal, and maybe it's that I'm still new to them: but they seem **** good at what they do. **** Good. Remember also that Fenn Rau's ability does not meddle with his opponent's defense (HotCop followed by at least one more attack aside), while Jam does. Tokenless mods are, of course, the natural response, but aside from Reinforce, Rey, & Lonewolf - tokenless defensive modification is a bit rare.

I'd say this is what has the potential to make Reapers actually worse than Fenn Rau (if possible), or at least make them "feel" worse. Neutering attacks is annoying, but killing defense and losing a ship instead can feel worse, and might be worse to some squads. Basically, losing an attack still gives you time to try and outplay, but losing defensive tokens and then getting hammered just means a ship might be gone, no outplaying that once it happens.

Of course when one of the Reapers get mods when the target lacks tokens...

Ouch.

2 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

2 hours ago, Brunas said:

That makes the total jam range about 4.5 or so, unless I'm bad at math today.

Exactly range 4.4, plus half a ship length if using the 1bank/3bank to go to a total of 4.6

You can even jam a little further since Slicers let you assign a jam token to a ship in R1 of that first jammed ship. I think the math would work out to just shy of range 6.

39 minutes ago, Biophysical said:

Of course when one of the Reapers get mods when the target lacks tokens...

Major V's mod is so good that I never bothered to fix a Weapons Failure crit he had. It was always better to Jam anyway.

1.0 Jam has me really looking forward to 2.0. Currently trying to list build for a store champ and 90% of what I like to fly gets ruined by slicers, and 2x Reaper with ISB Slicers and LWF leaves plenty of points leftover for some hurt, and they still can spike damage just fine.

12 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

@DR4CO how did you fly that Miranda Low Strezra matchup?

1.0 jam does nothing against reinforce, right? So Low will still spend his token to save the other two. Usually he‘s my first target - does that change? I could imagine that two reapers and Inq can burn down Ezra pretty fast (PS kill, even), so he might be a first target, too?

I actually blew Miri out from under him, for the loss of Inquis the round after Miri died. It was just clean up from there. I don't know if that was the right choice -- normally I'd target Lowie first, as well -- but decided to try "hard mode" to test the list. Turns out leaving the other guy without attack mods greatly helps your ability to not fall behind in the damage race even with Lowie and Threepio shenanigans. Also, Miri hates Optimised Prototype.

Like really, really hates Optimised Prototype.

57 minutes ago, DR4CO said:

Like really, really hates Optimised Prototype.

1 hour ago, DR4CO said:

I actually blew Miri out from under him, for the loss of Inquis the round after Miri died. It was just clean up from there. I don't know if that was the right choice -- normally I'd target Lowie first, as well -- but decided to try "hard mode" to test the list. Turns out leaving the other guy without attack mods greatly helps your ability to not fall behind in the damage race even with Lowie and Threepio shenanigans. Also, Miri hates Optimised Prototype.

Like really, really hates Optimised Prototype.

that was my Miri. into hull turn 1, dead turn 2. that was perhaps the most one sided match i have had in 6 months of flying 100pt miri.

my Harpoons, Rey and Selflessness were essentially unusable. there were turns where stressing the reapers would only make things worse because then they could move slower.