Thrawn with VSDs seems as good as Jerry to me, if not better. You can probably get 1or 2 turn of getting your fleet into position before combat starts so you don’t need Thrawn, then 3 dials for turns 3-5. And you don’t have to take a damage.

An argument could be made for cost issues of course.

i ran 3 VSDs with Thrawn. Need extra manoeuvre 3 times per ship is 9 damage. Thrawn seems worth that to me for 10 points.

Jerjerrod is in a way a thrawn specialized in Nav. He allows to have an excellent mobility while leaving the available orders to do something else. Nevertheless, you generally go to use his faculty that twice by party while Thrawn allows to optimize all your fleet hanging 3 tours.

There are two aspects to be reflected when you use Thrawn. It is the collective dial that Thrawn will give in the whole fleet and of the individual dial appropriate to every vessel.

For example used Thrawn to use Nav is bad, because there is not much luck only all vessels is need to navigate. On the other hand, you can use the personal dial of a vessel to navigate and given a generic order to the whole fleet. So the vessel which is in bad situation can take out there without penalizing the whole list.

When you build the list it is necessary to anticipate what will be the collective and individual dials. Furthermore, it will certainly be necessary to adapt your strategy according to your opponent. The list does not take place in the same way if you face a list full house squadron or a list without squadron.

11 hours ago, BrobaFett said:

Another aside- the problem with Thrawn + VSD's is that VSD's REALLY REALLY want nav. So they break the first golden rule above. It's not that thrawn is BAD for them, but that JJ is usually simply much better as he can give them greater maneuverability than thrawn with the same overarching effect of being able to get that movement without locking a nav command.

Maybe if you were running something like a STM 7thfleet Chimaera ISD2 and 2x 7th fleet DCAP vic2's and mid squads to run second player objectives so you really needed repair/squad every turn I could see it. Otherwise it's best to just look somewhere besides thrawn.

I found Thrawn to be really useful in my VSD list, there were a few times JJ would have been more helpful but less times than I'd feared. Thrawn's flexibility was a huge factor.

1 hour ago, ISD Avenger said:

Thrawn with VSDs seems as good as Jerry to me, if not better. You can probably get 1or 2 turn of getting your fleet into position before combat starts so you don’t need Thrawn, then 3 dials for turns 3-5. And you don’t have to take a damage.

An argument could be made for cost issues of course.

i ran 3 VSDs with Thrawn. Need extra manoeuvre 3 times per ship is 9 damage. Thrawn seems worth that to me for 10 points.

Yeah, I think he's worth the extra points over JJ for VSDs when I've been using them.

Ran a double VSD Thrawn list at a Store Champs recently and while it's definitely not a top-tier list it can be pretty successful with the right matchups. My Vics had Nav most of the game, Thrawn had 2 Squad, 1 Engineer. Normally looking to use Thrawn turns 3-5, and by the time I've started using him I've got a pretty fair idea what commands I'll need to stack for turn 6 on my VSDs anyway. http://armadawarlords.hivelabs.solutions/view_list.php?token=183750&key=ad0da7fec7f4bb853b3a7a61ff656748

3 hours ago, Angroth said:

this exact reason is what makes building a satisfactory list for me so difficult. A Kuat refit would be tempting but the 2 squadron command keep me from wanting it. I prefer the ISD 1.

Speaking of this - is the Avenger build common? I personally love the Boarding trooper Avenger disabling move. It is so devastating. Yet I rarely see it. With Thrawn she should be so much more deadly.

I have a 5 activation 2 ISD list that runs JJ/Cymoon/KUAT avenger and Raider Vader. It is 4-2 at 2 OP kits. Kuat BTavenger still hits brace and contain. With xi7, redirects are already taken care of....

And the loses were 5-6 both times. They got an ISD, but so did I, and then some...lol.

I forgot to mention Thrawn on Chimaera. If you want complete flexibility, that's the combo to take. Comms Net fuels Chimaera, and Thrawn lets you double down on a fleet command or potentially grant 3 "commands" to your entire fleet. And since you can token either command, there is no reason Chimaera can't trigger a fleet command every round. If you thought Repair+token was hard, try facing STM, Thrawn Repair+token, and a Nav. There's no way you can kill that ship if it's on the edge of the battle. Or try CF+Squad+Nav token+IF. Lot of damage and you get to change speeds, which is crucial on carriers.

In regards to Thrawn+Vics, I think the problem is the cost and poor nav chart. In general, fleet synergy should build on the strengths of it's components, not try to fix a weakness. Thrawn tends to fix the Vics nav chart, where as JJ does the same but better and cheaper. If you decide on a Vic carrier fleet, I'm not sure what commands you'd be running other than Nav and Squad. It's hard to fit 2 Vics plus 134 points of squads into a list and have some support. For this reason, I think Glads are a better option as a carrier because Thrawn allows them to double up as a carrier and he is not covering a weakness in the ship.

16 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:

I forgot to mention Thrawn on Chimaera. If you want complete flexibility, that's the combo to take. Comms Net fuels Chimaera, and Thrawn lets you double down on a fleet command or potentially grant 3 "commands" to your entire fleet. And since you can token either command, there is no reason Chimaera can't trigger a fleet command every round. If you thought Repair+token was hard, try facing STM, Thrawn Repair+token, and a Nav. There's no way you can kill that ship if it's on the edge of the battle. Or try CF+Squad+Nav token+IF. Lot of damage and you get to change speeds, which is crucial on carriers.

In regards to Thrawn+Vics, I think the problem is the cost and poor nav chart. In general, fleet synergy should build on the strengths of it's components, not try to fix a weakness. Thrawn tends to fix the Vics nav chart, where as JJ does the same but better and cheaper. If you decide on a Vic carrier fleet, I'm not sure what commands you'd be running other than Nav and Squad. It's hard to fit 2 Vics plus 134 points of squads into a list and have some support. For this reason, I think Glads are a better option as a carrier because Thrawn allows them to double up as a carrier and he is not covering a weakness in the ship.

I'm with you. I think 1 VSD with a Quasar, Demo, and gonzo was all I could fit, but I hadn't tweaked that Idea in a while. JJ does seem better there though.

I have looked at a 2 VSD Dictor build for tanking purposes, with Thrawn, but motti always fits better points wise there...I may be regurgitating what Broba said...Ill go re-read his post....

Edit: Dang, I thought my ideas were becoming original. That Broba, he's wicked smat!

?

11 minutes ago, moodswing5537 said:

I'm with you. I think 1 VSD with a Quasar, Demo, and gonzo was all I could fit, but I hadn't tweaked that Idea in a while. JJ does seem better there though.

I have looked at a 2 VSD Dictor build for tanking purposes, with Thrawn, but motti always fits better points wise there...I may be regurgitating what Broba said...Ill go re-read his post....

I've run the 2 VSD Dictor build several times with Motti and JJ. I got better results from JJ than from Motti. You really need a way to keep your main guns on target or your opponent can get around you. The extra hull from Motti tends to only have benefited one ship by the end of the game.

1 hour ago, moodswing5537 said:

I'm with you. I think 1 VSD with a Quasar, Demo, and gonzo was all I could fit, but I hadn't tweaked that Idea in a while. JJ does seem better there though.

I have looked at a 2 VSD Dictor build for tanking purposes, with Thrawn, but motti always fits better points wise there...I may be regurgitating what Broba said...Ill go re-read his post....

Edit: Dang, I thought my ideas were becoming original. That Broba, he's wicked smat!

?

Ah flattery! Hahahah

5 hours ago, Angroth said:

this exact reason is what makes building a satisfactory list for me so difficult. A Kuat refit would be tempting but the 2 squadron command keep me from wanting it. I prefer the ISD 1.

Speaking of this - is the Avenger build common? I personally love the Boarding trooper Avenger disabling move. It is so devastating. Yet I rarely see it. With Thrawn she should be so much more deadly.

Personally I see the BT Avenger build used more often with Sloan as it synergies well with her ability to exhaust defense tokens with squadrons as well.

My experience with Thrawn was that while it's possible to set all three dials differently then from turn to turn decide which to use, it was better to have the Thrawn dials all set to the best command in the game, and then plan well with the ships dials themselves. If Thrawn sets all different, say concentrate, engineering, squads. Then there's a good chance that of the roughly five activations that those dials go towards, a few get wasted. If you have flottilas, what good do they get out of a engineering command? So those are duds. Do all your ships have a shot if you concentrate? Not likely all of them, again gozantis probably don't care that much. Squads? Is every ship you have in range to order a squad? Profitably? Probably not. And this is what happened to me and to others I watched when they went with this approach, the Thrawn dials can whiff. To me, that's inefficient. So I set about trying to find a way to use the T-dials to Max effect as much as I could, and in conjunction with the dials I got to plan for. Partly because after playing him the first time I realized that the T-dials are planned almost as if they had a ships command value. You get to flip them in any order, but still only one at a time. So in essence, if you flip your first dial on average at turn two, and then another every subsequent turn, the last dial gets spent at turn four. If you start it a turn later, or skip one, your going all the way to planning a turn five. Like a Command 4 or 5 value ship. That turn four/five count becomes important later when I start deciding what command would I always want on turn four or five consistently. What this means is that for as good as you might think the responsiveness of Thrawn might be, your ships can actually make plans better for themselves at all times, at the very least a turn earlier. So then my ships, if planned correctly are less likely to waste their own dials, so they just need an assist. What extra dial would I want, on any given turn? NAVIGATE! Navigate basically never gets wasted. Every ship gets a consistent boost from it since it's not stat dependent, and it doesn't overlap with the things ships want to do for themselves, like the carrier ordering squads, and the destroyer concentrating fire. And it's technically, to my mind, the most useful command in the game since it gets you the position you want which is crucial in Armada.

So I built this, and every game set three navigate command dials. Got a good record with it before I moved on to other toys:

Thrawn's Avengers (399/400)
==========================
Cymoon 1 Refit (112 + 69)
+ Grand Admiral Thrawn (32)
+ Strategic Adviser (4)
+ Gunnery Team (7)
+ Intensify Firepower! (6)
+ Spinal Armament (9)
+ XI7 Turbolasers (6)
+ Avenger (5)
Arquitens-class Light Cruiser (54 + 6)
+ Slaved Turrets (6)
Arquitens-class Light Cruiser (54 + 6)
+ Slaved Turrets (6)
Gozanti-class Assault Carriers (28 + 15)
+ Minister Tua (2)
+ Comms Net (2)
+ Suppressor (4)
+ Electronic Countermeasures (7)
Gozanti-class Cruisers (23 + 2)
+ Comms Net (2)
2 x Lambda-class Shuttle (2 x 15)

Objectives to suit

(Actually, I rebuilt the list from memory, and I'm 90% sure this is not exactly it, bit it's **** close. I only remember playing with one gozantis. I don't think I originally had the Tua version. I thought there was a third Arquitten?)

52 minutes ago, ForceSensitive said:

My experience with Thrawn was that while it's possible to set all three dials differently then from turn to turn decide which to use, it was better to have the Thrawn dials all set to the best command in the game, and then plan well with the ships dials themselves. If Thrawn sets all different, say concentrate, engineering, squads. Then there's a good chance that of the roughly five activations that those dials go towards, a few get wasted. If you have flottilas, what good do they get out of a engineering command? So those are duds. Do all your ships have a shot if you concentrate? Not likely all of them, again gozantis probably don't care that much. Squads? Is every ship you have in range to order a squad? Profitably? Probably not. And this is what happened to me and to others I watched when they went with this approach, the Thrawn dials can whiff. To me, that's inefficient. So I set about trying to find a way to use the T-dials to Max effect as much as I could, and in conjunction with the dials I got to plan for. Partly because after playing him the first time I realized that the T-dials are planned almost as if they had a ships command value. You get to flip them in any order, but still only one at a time. So in essence, if you flip your first dial on average at turn two, and then another every subsequent turn, the last dial gets spent at turn four. If you start it a turn later, or skip one, your going all the way to planning a turn five. Like a Command 4 or 5 value ship. That turn four/five count becomes important later when I start deciding what command would I always want on turn four or five consistently. What this means is that for as good as you might think the responsiveness of Thrawn might be, your ships can actually make plans better for themselves at all times, at the very least a turn earlier. So then my ships, if planned correctly are less likely to waste their own dials, so they just need an assist. What extra dial would I want, on any given turn? NAVIGATE! Navigate basically never gets wasted. Every ship gets a consistent boost from it since it's not stat dependent, and it doesn't overlap with the things ships want to do for themselves, like the carrier ordering squads, and the destroyer concentrating fire. And it's technically, to my mind, the most useful command in the game since it gets you the position you want which is crucial in Armada.

So I built this, and every game set three navigate command dials. Got a good record with it before I moved on to other toys:

Thrawn's Avengers (399/400)
==========================
Cymoon 1 Refit (112 + 69)
+ Grand Admiral Thrawn (32)
+ Strategic Adviser (4)
+ Gunnery Team (7)
+ Intensify Firepower! (6)
+ Spinal Armament (9)
+ XI7 Turbolasers (6)
+ Avenger (5)
Arquitens-class Light Cruiser (54 + 6)
+ Slaved Turrets (6)
Arquitens-class Light Cruiser (54 + 6)
+ Slaved Turrets (6)
Gozanti-class Assault Carriers (28 + 15)
+ Minister Tua (2)
+ Comms Net (2)
+ Suppressor (4)
+ Electronic Countermeasures (7)
Gozanti-class Cruisers (23 + 2)
+ Comms Net (2)
2 x Lambda-class Shuttle (2 x 15)

Objectives to suit

(Actually, I rebuilt the list from memory, and I'm 90% sure this is not exactly it, bit it's **** close. I only remember playing with one gozantis. I don't think I originally had the Tua version. I thought there was a third Arquitten?)

When thrawn came out the assumption that nav as the universal command would be the 3 thrawn dials. I myself had posted after his release and my initial tests that this seemed the most obvious course of action for him.

This led to him falling Off in competitive use and getting overshadowed as not that great.

Reality is you are underusing him.

I stand confidently by what I said. ANY list using for him for all nav dials needs a different admiral. JJ would be better than thrawn for your purposes in that fleet above. Second would be vader.

54 minutes ago, BrobaFett said:

ANY list using for him for all nav dials needs a different admiral.

I don't have extensive experience with Thrawn that you do, but it seems to me that you're undervaluing both Thrawn's ability to change speed and the downside of JJ's damage component.

Certainly Jerry does things Thrawn navs can't do too, of course, and I do agree that for the most part you don't want to just blanket nav with Thrawn... but I think it's a bit overstating the case to say that there is no use case for an all-nav Thrawn over Jerry. I could imagine a low-squadron ET GSD swarm*, for example, that might want blanket navs to proc ET, to position precisely, and get the extra maneuverability but couldn't afford the Jerry damage.

*viability of a GSD swarm as such notwithstanding, of course.

10 minutes ago, Ardaedhel said:

I don't have extensive experience with Thrawn that you do, but it seems to me that you're undervaluing both Thrawn's ability to change speed and the downside of JJ's damage component.

Certainly Jerry does things Thrawn navs can't do too, of course, and I do agree that for the most part you don't want to just blanket nav with Thrawn... but I think it's a bit overstating the case to say that there is no use case for an all-nav Thrawn over Jerry. I could imagine a low-squadron ET GSD swarm*, for example, that might want blanket navs to proc ET, to position precisely, and get the extra maneuverability but couldn't afford the Jerry damage.

*viability of a GSD swarm as such notwithstanding, of course.

Thrawn dials dont trigger engine techs

3 minutes ago, Ardaedhel said:

I don't have extensive experience with Thrawn that you do, but it seems to me that you're undervaluing both Thrawn's ability to change speed and the downside of JJ's damage component.

Certainly Jerry does things Thrawn navs can't do too, of course, and I do agree that for the most part you don't want to just blanket nav with Thrawn... but I think it's a bit overstating the case to say that there is no use case for an all-nav Thrawn over Jerry. I could imagine a low-squadron ET GSD swarm*, for example, that might want blanket navs to proc ET, to position precisely, and get the extra maneuverability but couldn't afford the Jerry damage.

*viability of a GSD swarm as such notwithstanding, of course.

GSD ET Swarm has larger problems with it's ability to function than which admiral it takes - they aren't MC30s and we don't have Mothma ARd- but in that case I think Ozzel would be better than Thrawn.

Maybe saying simply JJ > Thrawn for Navs is an oversimplicity. I'll seed that point. But generally between Ozzel and JJ most of the time Thrawn is just a more expensive and sometimes less effective imitation of their effects. It's like truthi with his Madine ET TRC90's swarms where eventually he kinda realized that the ET TRC90 was the strong part, and they didn't really need Madine. 3 Nav Dial Thrawn is like that. It's nice cause it lets you do fancy things - until you realize that maybe you don't really need it as bad as you thought.

It's almost never BAD. But if it was awesome Thrawn use wouldn't have almost been non-existant in competitive play after his release, because 3 nav thrawn was IMMEDIATELY what everyone (including myself) did with him.

It's Armada with training wheels. But then it's a super expensive set of training wheels that you could trade in for taking an Admiral that actually lets you expand the threat profile of your fleet.

5 minutes ago, ExplosiveTooka said:

Thrawn dials dont trigger engine techs

Erhm... Pretty sure they do. Why wouldn't they?

5 minutes ago, BrobaFett said:

But generally between Ozzel and JJ most of the time Thrawn is just a more expensive and sometimes less effective imitation of their effects. It's like truthi with his Madine ET TRC90's swarms where eventually he kinda realized that the ET TRC90 was the strong part, and they didn't really need Madine. 3 Nav Dial Thrawn is like that. It's nice cause it lets you do fancy things - until you realize that maybe you don't really need it as bad as you thought.

It's almost never BAD. But if it was awesome Thrawn use wouldn't have almost been non-existant in competitive play after his release, because 3 nav thrawn was IMMEDIATELY what everyone (including myself) did with him.

It's Armada with training wheels. But then it's a super expensive set of training wheels that you could trade in for taking an Admiral that actually lets you expand the threat profile of your fleet.

I definitely agree with this general point, and I'd even generalize it that, in most cases, this applies to all maneuver-focused admirals. Anything Madine lets you do, you could've done with better planning and execution anyway. Same with Ozzel.

This is not 100% true, of course because there are tactical edge cases where all of them do something you simply wouldn't have otherwise been able to do (particularly Jerry and Madine). It's just that those cases are rarely substantial or impactful enough to justify their costs.

8 minutes ago, Ardaedhel said:

Erhm... Pretty sure they do. Why wouldn't they?

If they don't then I've been cheating.

1 minute ago, Ardaedhel said:

I definitely agree with this general point, and I'd even generalize it that, in most cases, this applies to all maneuver-focused admirals. Anything Madine lets you do, you could've done with better planning and execution anyway. Same with Ozzel.

Hahaha I love that we continually keep agreeing with each other.

My extension of this then, is - why turn Thrawn into essentially a kind-of-sub-par "maneuver-focused admiral".

At least JJ and Madine, and to a lesser extent Ozzel (who is really good in MSU's that don't want to waste their 1 token slot on a nav token), let you break the rules of manuvering.

Just now, Megatronrex said:

If they don't then I've been cheating.

Who is suprised ?

Just now, BrobaFett said:

Who is suprised ?

Not me that's for sure

1 minute ago, BrobaFett said:

Hahaha I love that we continually keep agreeing with each other.

My extension of this then, is - why turn Thrawn into essentially a kind-of-sub-par "maneuver-focused admiral".

At least JJ and Madine, and to a lesser extent Ozzel (who is really good in MSU's that don't want to waste their 1 token slot on a nav token), let you break the rules of manuvering.

NO SHUT UP YOU'RE WRONG. Let me explain to you why you're right.

1 hour ago, ExplosiveTooka said:

Thrawn dials dont trigger engine techs

RRG PG 5 EFFECT USE AND TIMING: Effects with a command icon as a header, such as “<navigate icon>:,” can be resolved once while the ship is resolving the matching command.

As far as I'm aware the only distinction between a Thrawn dial and a native dial is that the Thrawn dial is not revealed, meaning things like Crew Panic or Tactical Expert that trigger on revealing a dial don't trigger on his dial. He's still resolving the command, which procs ET, unless I'm missing something?

5 minutes ago, Ardaedhel said:

RRG PG 5 EFFECT USE AND TIMING: Effects with a command icon as a header, such as “<navigate icon>:,” can be resolved once while the ship is resolving the matching command.

As far as I'm aware the only distinction between a Thrawn dial and a native dial is the the Thrawn dial is no revealed, meaning things like Crew Panic or Tactical Expert that trigger on revealing a dial don't trigger on his dial. He's still resolving the command, which procs ET, unless I'm missing something?

I do not believe you are. Paging Dr. @Drasnighta

9 minutes ago, Ardaedhel said:

RRG PG 5 EFFECT USE AND TIMING: Effects with a command icon as a header, such as “<navigate icon>:,” can be resolved once while the ship is resolving the matching command.

As far as I'm aware the only distinction between a Thrawn dial and a native dial is the the Thrawn dial is no revealed, meaning things like Crew Panic or Tactical Expert that trigger on revealing a dial don't trigger on his dial. He's still resolving the command, which procs ET, unless I'm missing something?

Well, that's the thing, the trigger for ET is that the ship RESOLVES a matching command. Thrawn gives that ship a dial with a command in it. and the ship resolves said command, regardless of it coming from the ship itself or the blue man. So they do work with him.

With all the Info I got from you and after a lot of considering I finally made my first list that was satisfactory at least for a few moments. Then i discovered its weaknesses. But first:

The Gloves come off
Author: Angroth

Faction: Galactic Empire
Points: 391/400

Commander: Grand Admiral Thrawn

Assault Objective: Advanced Gunnery
Defense Objective: Contested Outpost
Navigation Objective: Superior Positions

[ flagship ] Imperial Star Destroyer Kuat Refit (112 points)
- Grand Admiral Thrawn ( 32 points)
- Strategic Adviser ( 4 points)
- Fire-Control Team ( 2 points)
- Early Warning System ( 7 points)
- Leading Shots ( 4 points)
- Assault Concussion Missiles ( 7 points)
= 168 total ship cost

Gladiator I-Class Star Destroyer (56 points)
- Demolisher ( 10 points)
- Ordnance Experts ( 4 points)
- Assault Proton Torpedoes ( 5 points)
= 75 total ship cost

Gozanti-class Cruisers (23 points)
- Comms Net ( 2 points)
= 25 total ship cost

Gozanti-class Cruisers (23 points)
- Comms Net ( 2 points)
= 25 total ship cost

4 TIE Bomber Squadrons ( 36 points)
1 Dengar ( 20 points)
1 "Mauler" Mithel ( 15 points)
1 Soontir Fel ( 18 points)
1 Black Squadron ( 9 points)
= 98 total squadron cost

Overall I like it. The plan is clear and the list is streamlined towards that goal. Get up close and personal.
But that is the biggest problem: Getting close. If my opponent has the means and the motivation he can just keep me at a distance to pling away at me. The other Problem would be a decidedly forceful fighter attack against my wing. But mostly I feel confident on that front.
Maybe I should alter the list slightly to go second and have objectives that force my opponent into range? that way I would avoid the problem of having to chase them if their objective demands it.
Then again that would hold the problem of the Demolisher not being able to triple tap as easily.

Or I go for a different approach with a ISD1 and some Arquitens. This would alter the list completely but makes it more flexible engagement-wise. I will see what I can come up with.

But what do you guys think? Does this list have potential? What needs fixing? How does it need fixing?