Has anyone ever tried paring BT Avenger with RLB and 4 tie bombers? Could even throw flight commander in the officer slot for a good bomber drop. Is this over kill? Not worth it? Thoughts?

35 minutes ago, Belisarius09 said:

Has anyone ever tried paring BT Avenger with RLB and 4 tie bombers? Could even throw flight commander in the officer slot for a good bomber drop. Is this over kill? Not worth it? Thoughts?

Haven't tried it yet but I want too

It’s a thing. Most people like a Jumpmaster in there so opponents don’t just spread their squads in front of the target and engage. Maarek, Jendon and Firesprays have also been used.

So if I'm not mistaken, you would have to have a Squadron Token to activate BT, and a Squadron Dial to drop the bombers. BT then exhausts all of their tokens, and your 4 bombers activate, doing 4 damage... but the thing is that whatever they're damaging, the target may as well burn his tokens completely. So if you roll doubles, the first one is braced to 1 damage, any blanks are just blanks, and at least 1 will be redirected away. So you'll end up probably doing 2 additional damage to a large target via the bombers.

Now that two could be the difference between life and death, in which case it's 42 points well spent. Plus the bombers can then contribute later on. Without seeing it in action, I would question whether it really is the best use of points. You're going to want to make sure that you make use of the turbolaser slot, otherwise you'd be better off with a Kuat imo. The main downside of the Kuat is the squadron 2 (so when going against another ISD you have to decide if you lock down one redirect, leaving a second green, or if you lock down the contain. The decision will likely be centered around whether it has ECMs or not... no ECMs and you gamble for the single accuracy to lock the redirect... otherwise, lock the contain because he'll use the redirect anyways), but the secondary downside is the lack of Turbolaser. And actually, the lack of turbolaser wouldn't be a big deal it wasn't Squad 2. So your ISD1 doesn't need XI7s, I guess you'd be best off with Spinals, which makes it a pretty decent long range threat, and then a deadly close range threat.

If you put Flight Commander in there, you can last/first and get two rounds of bombing. It really comes down to how confident you'll be able to kill the target with the BTvenger by itself. 15 damage from an ISD-1 BTVenger onto the front hull of another ISD is unlikely... 18 against a Motti ISD is even more unlikely. So getting 2-8 damage (FC for double tap) from the Bombers first definitely increases the likelihood of a kill.

Meanwhile, the Kuat will throw 6 black, 2 blue, 3 red for an average of 11 damage (and 66% chance of an accuracy for that redirect, though you can game the leading shots / CF dial to hopefully get it up to about 80+%) from the front shot. And then another 4 damage (braced to 2 and redirected for 0 actual useful damage) from the side shot. That 11 (er 12 if you include the ram) damage is not enough to kill an ISD. But it is enough to kill everything else (except a Lando MC75/80)... But if the ISD has taken 3 damage (or if you can get arc on the side hull and it's taken 2 damage) then it should be enough to kill it. And seeing as you're going to have a long range shot the turn beforehand that you're throwing 3 reds, you have a pretty decent chance of doing some damage... though 3 reds won't do 3 damage... Even in the best case scenario of 3 doubles, it'll get braced down to 3 damage, and then redirected to the side, for 0 actual damage.

But wait... That's all based on an ExRacks CF Kuat. If you have RLB, you're an ISD-I, and you're taking a Squadron command. Let's assume you have Spinals, so you're throwing 3 black, 2 blue, 4 reds. This averages about 9 damage. But your previous round, you're throwing 4 reds (or perhaps you're better off with XI7s instead of Spinals?), which comes to 3 damage, braced to 2 and redirected to the far side, so for a net of 0 damage (XI7s would yield 2.25 damage, braced to 1-2, and redirected to 0-1, so unlikely to be a better result seeing as you're losing the die for the next shot as well). Let's also assuming a JM5k in there to ensure that your other 3 squads can do some damage. And you know what - let's upgrade the bombers to Jendon, Maarek, Boba and a JM5k. Boba is going to activate twice, and they're going to take the damage on the rear shields, so his ability is useless... But Jendon is going to let Maarek attack twice each round, and Boba throws blue/black which is better than the FS31 blue/blue or the Defender Blue. We're not going to point efficiency here, we're just trying to figure out if we can kill it. Let's also assume a BCC. With BCC, Maarek has a 88% chance to do 2 damage, we're going to assume that doesn't get braced the first round of shooting because he already spent the brace for the long range ISD shot. But we will say it gets redirected. Then he shoots again via Jendon, and gets another 2 damage. He may or may not burn a redirect for that. If it was me, I would probably say that I know that I have a single use of it remaining (same with the brace), so I might as well take it on 2 damage. Far side shields are gone, front hull still at 4, close side at 2 (via ISD shot brace/redirect). Boba will kill both rear shields from his two activations, and blue/black with no rerolls yields 1.75 average damage, jumps up to 2 with a single black reroll. So the other redirect gets burned to pull off the side shields. We're going to say the JM5K does no damage on his shot. Next round your ISD activates first, spends his squadron token to BT whatever tokens are remaining, and then you activate your Squadron command to loose the bombers again, Maarek will do 2+2 damage, might as well spend the brace and lose 3 front shields, we'll ignore the JM5k shot again, and then Boba strips the final rear shield (which we already accounted for), and does 2 damage himself, which will be the first hull, but the ISD will burn the contain. Now, your ISD has his 9 dice shot, which we said averages 9 damage, all of that goes onto the hull, and the ram should kill him. If you get the double arc, the ISD you're attacking no longer has tokens to spend, and therefore you can actually push through another 3.5, which should actually be enough to kill even a Motti ISD... often without even needing the ram.

Yay, your ISD can "1 shot" it this way. But wait, is that really a fair comparison? The ISD-I build has 250 points compared to 134 on the Kuat build. Those 116 points available on the Kuat build could definitely help out quite a bit towards killing that ISD. Heck, for 116 points, you could technically grab a Cymoon and have 4 points left over. I'm pretty sure the Cymoon would then be better at doing what amounts to 2 extra damage (since most of the damage the squadrons do are shield damage). And with 250 points between 2 activations, you're going to need a lot of cheap activations elsewhere to ensure last/first. You can only add 3 more activations, for a total of 5. Meanwhile, the Kuat build can easily get to at least 5+1, and worst case you can take Pryce to ensure last/first.

TL:DR - A Kuat BTVenger should be able to 1 shot pretty much everything except an ISD. Taking RLBs to augment your BTVenger forces you to take an ISD-I instead of a Kuat. This means you have to make up for the loss of 3 black dice. But if you put FCs on your ISD and dual arc it, you should be able to kill a Motti ISD with the squadrons plus the ISD. But the point cost in order to effectively pull it off leaves the Kuat build with enough left over points to be more effective. And you might not be able to get enough activations to reliably last/first with the ISD-I variant, and if you can't last/first, then everything falls apart.

22 hours ago, Khyros said:

Snip

Though I think you don’t account for the fact you have the bomber firepower for the rest of the game, and I think you underestimate Pryce and overvalue activations, this is a solid rundown of the options.

Kudos for the effort in typing this up.

11 minutes ago, TheCallum said:

Though I think you don’t account for the fact you have the bomber firepower for the rest of the game, and I think you underestimate Pryce and overvalue activations, this is a solid rundown of the options.

Kudos for the effort in typing this up.

Absolutely. I believe I said somewhere that you end up with bombers the rest of the game as a single sentence somewhere. But I also didn't discuss the impacts that the 116 points of Cymoon or Arquitens or whatever you choose to take could have on the game either. But the question wasn't "what's more effective in a game?" It was "would RLB be overkill on a BTVenger?" And the main purpose of BTVenger is that single turn, so I focused on that single turn. You're giving up the Round 2,4,5,6 effectiveness of a Cymoon in order to get that devastating Round 3 of the BTvenger, so that's what I discussed.

The issue with Pryce though is that you really need Flight Commander as your officer, otherwise you just get one round of Bombing with RLB, in which case, they're really not contributing anything to the attack (since the defender should be able to redirect/brace 2 of the 3 damage from the single attack to hull zones that don't matter). To really make them shine, you need that Flight Commander to drop em' the round before in location and get two rounds of bombing. And with FCs, you don't have Pryce. And if you don't have Pryce, you need activations.

Hey just seeing this - for what it's worth, I have ran Avenger with bomber (in lieu of BT, on an ISD2) for a long time - I took it to 2017 worlds but was playing it even before then. It's an incredibly solid combo. I think what the OP presents, however, ventures into the realm of overkill. I think BT and bomber Avengers are a "one or the other" kind of thing. Bomber avenger throws a bunch of damage to strip all the shield, daring them to use tokens or take all the damage right to shield zone I'm about to hit with my ISD. BT just shuts off the tokens for one big crippling strike. I prefer bombers because it's going to happen every turn, and is great for just drilling 1 hull zone. I can still accomplish the "killing anything in the game in 1 shot" more often than not.

That's just to say, if RLB in Jendon, Morna, Maarek, and Dengar you have a potential 8 damage in squads followed up by BT venger. With Flight commander I would say that is a pretty solid hit + avenger follow on.

7 hours ago, BrobaFett said:

you have a potential 8 damage in squads

9 if you roll three hits with Morna the first time and feel lucky enough to Jendon her instead. ?

I was figuring you hit morna 3 damage about 50%. You cant bank on 9, but you will almost always get 8.

Morna is always the right option to jendon tap in a vacuum againt ships.

@BrobaFett 42% on Momma M. ❤️

Morna forever! Am I the only one that think is one of the best arts for squadrons? Not because it is cool rather than being the most story suggesting. Is she ordering silence? Blaming him for his incompetence? Asking fo a cigar while she blasts rebels terrorists? I am so curious.

22 hours ago, ovinomanc3r said:

Morna forever! Am I the only one that think is one of the best arts for squadrons? Not because it is cool rather than being the most story suggesting. Is she ordering silence? Blaming him for his incompetence? Asking fo a cigar while she blasts rebels terrorists? I am so curious.

“But... But Mom said it’s my turn to play!”