There's been games where around turn 5 I would love to get a missing brace token back.

Although I wonder if the damage a brace would save would offset the additional hit points Motti provides anyway.

No.

Just.

No.

Seriously though- if you look at it anecdotally you can conjure instances where Tagge is better than motti, but where he fails is practicality. If you are playing Tagge I will kill your large ship turn 3/4. That is not difficult. It's literally how 90% of games are played. If you rush in hoping to get use out of him turn 2 you make this *even easier* on me.

Ultimately Tagge is bad because not only does he do nothing for you during the critical turns of the game where you need those tokens the most, but he encourages you to play dumb. This is a bad combo, making for a bad admiral. There is no universe where the guarenteed benefit of motti accross your entire fleet is outclassed by Tagge outside armchair admiraling.

9 minutes ago, BrobaFett said:

There is no universe where the guarenteed benefit of motti accross your entire fleet is outclassed by Tagge outside armchair admiraling.

Does “SSD where Huge ships are NOT large” count as Armchair Admiraling?

Since I’ve half tried it? ?

Yeah the situational aspect of him really weakens him compared to Motti's always static bonus.

17 minutes ago, Drasnighta said:

Does “SSD where Huge ships are NOT large” count as Armchair Admiraling?

Since I’ve half tried it? ?

If you are running JUST an SSD with Motti, then in that one case Motti and Tagge are equals.

4 minutes ago, BrobaFett said:

If you are running JUST an SSD with Motti, then in that one case Motti and Tagge are equals.

Not to belabour the point, but, from what you said above about turn 3/4 ...... Of all things to survive until Turn 5 to get a benefit, the SSD is it.

I mean, sure, hands down, 99% of the time, outside of that one instance... Total Garbage that I've tried too hard to make work with DoubleDictors and such...

1 minute ago, Drasnighta said:

Not to belabour the point, but, from what you said above about turn 3/4 ...... Of all things to survive until Turn 5 to get a benefit, the SSD is it.

And potentially turn 3 as well since it's so enormous. But I remain of the opinion expressed above

5 minutes ago, BrobaFett said:

If you are running JUST an SSD with Motti, then in that one case Motti and Tagge are equally useless.

Small ship MSU benefits more from Tagge than Motti

Tagge ECM Gozanti makes people cry, now they’ve taken all their anti-flotilla tech out.

29 minutes ago, TheCallum said:

Tagge ECM Gozanti makes people cry, now they’ve taken all their anti-flotilla tech out.

How does one remove ramming from their list?

Ive been running a double ecm isd list recently.

Generally agree with Broba.

To get tagge to work properly you need him to be in combat turn 2. If it works you burn out your brace but do crippling damage in return.

But this is problem if it leads you to getting swamped by bombers in turn 2.

Where i did have success is when i ran a tua ecm cymoon plus an ecm isd2.

Then you have the long range fore to get some good damage in t2.

But overall too specialised and not worth it.

Yeah the only ship that Tagge can work with is the SSD

Tagge: Regain up to 2 discarded defense tokens for every friendly ship when you activate a ship, 30pts.

Just remove the turn 3/5 requirements and up the price a bit.

Tagge would be a great admiral IF he allowed you to return a single token per ship once a game regardless of turn. Twice a game may be overpowered, as is, he is next to useless for all the reasons so far stated.

Tagge > Ozzel though. ?

5 minutes ago, Crabbok said:

Tagge > Ozzel though. ?

Thems fighten words!

Here is my take on Tagge, but a disclaimer; I've never actually played with or against him in a proper game. I believe that Tagge is truly much better in some very specific situations. I.e he hard counters certain upgrades, unfortunately these are far too situational to spend your commander on, and design your list around. I'll get to these later.

In theory I can see why people may think Tagge is better then Motti. In fact I thought this myself for some time. This being the rationale that for Tagge to equal Motti on a large ship his burnt brace must save 3 damage, or 2 damage on a medium ship, or just 1 damage on a small ship. Seems easy right?

The problems are however;

1. He is restricted in which turns he has his effect. And generally you won't really get use out of both turns, due to the following;

• If you rush in planning to burn those tokens on turn 2, to restore on turn 3, realistically you have probably overshot and are out of significant danger by turn 6.
• If you slow roll planning for the late game token recovery, then turn 3 will be a dud.
• If you rush in for turn 2, then slow right down until turn 5, you will probably be dead.

2. Your burnt brace saving 3 damage is not a sure thing, and 3 damage only strikes even with Motti (approximately, there are some pros and cons either way);

• The trouble is you need to defend against two large dice pool attacks on either turn 2 or 5 so you can double spend that brace to good effect. Both incoming attacks need to have 6 or more damage. How often does this happen? Many lists aren't even capable of this feat outside of extreme dice rolls. Is flying your ship into two deadly arcs actually going to end well?
• Getting into two different large dice pools on turn 2 is actually unlikely as they are probably only at red dice range.
• Waiting for turn 5 seems like you really holding out for any benefit from your admiral, meanwhile your opponent has been using theirs all game.
• As I said above, is deliberately flying your ship into two big arcs the best strategy?

3. Restoring other tokens are underwhelming

• The exception is evade, these are nice and only need to prevent 1 damage on a small ship to match Motti
• I usually spend my last redirect with my last shields, no point in preserving them beyond this
• Contain would save only 1 extra crit
• Scatter, to be honest why is your opponent targeting your flotilla with low accuracy dice pools before a Tagge turn? And Tua ECM is expensive.

4. You telegraph your intentions

Where does Tagge do well?

• Intel Officers; he counters single big ship lists, as their mega dice pool relies on popping your brace on one round then hammering you for full damage. Difference with above is that your brace only need to be spent on a single 6 damage attack to compare favorably to Motti.
• Similarly he would counter the Emperor somewhat, although he won't use the brace kill just before a Tagge turn.
• Counters Sloan somewhat, similar to above.
• Counters NKs, but you never see them.

Where does Motti do well?

• Motti has a constant benefit. He works vs big ships, small ships, bombers, APTs, ramming, everything. All the time. No fuss.
• Drawback of Motti is that his effect is reversed if killed.

If I you want to try and make Tagge work, I'd recommend mixing small ships with singe evades to rush for the turn 2 boost, and a big ship to slow roll aiming for turn 5. Maybe even add Needa for some overlap.

Tagge is bad. He's not Konstantine awful, but that's a really low bar. If he triggered at the start of round 4 instead of 3 it would make him substantially better but there's nothing that can really be done for it now.

The only thing that would make Tagge good is if he had no round restrictions, would probably cost more but I would find a use for him then.

6 hours ago, xero989 said:

The only thing that would make Tagge good is if he had no round restrictions, would probably cost more but I would find a use for him then.

Would he have to cost more though?

Say he worked every round for 25 points.

Would you take him over motti, sloan or jerry?

For tagge to be good you still have to live long enough under fire that getting back your tokens makes a difference.

Get your redirect back after all your shields are gone?

No point your demo getting its brace back when its down to 2 or 3 hull and surrounded.

13 hours ago, Ginkapo said:

Small ship MSU benefits more from Tagge than Motti

Something I also noticed after trying him with my triple Cymoon: Tagge's problem is not only timing, also having a useful token to recover. Large ships only have the brace (as contain is not a great one anyways). With two redirects ships run out of shields before they need to recover one redirect token. Evade+brace+redirect seems a good token setup for Tagge as even keeping the brace you will get use to a recovered evade or maybe redirect.

I didn't try it yet though but I guess glads will take the most advantage from him also with flotillas.

15 hours ago, ovinomanc3r said:

Something I also noticed after trying him with my triple Cymoon: Tagge's problem is not only timing, also having a useful token to recover. Large ships only have the brace (as contain is not a great one anyways). With two redirects ships run out of shields before they need to recover one redirect token. Evade+brace+redirect seems a good token setup for Tagge as even keeping the brace you will get use to a recovered evade or maybe redirect.

I didn't try it yet though but I guess glads will take the most advantage from him also with flotillas.

I think it is a solid conclusion. Before Demo nerf Tagge was a good option for a DeMSU to increase Demo survivability (especially against squadrons). However controlling the tempo of the game is crucial for Tagge and DeMSU was the only fleet that had that level of control.