2 hours ago, Piratical Moustache said:

Affecting squadron aces as well might require a points hike though I think that it would be worth it to protect our fragile TIEs.

The problem is that the Imperial scatter aces only have 3 hit points otherwise, so...tend to die in the next shot they take after they lose their scatter (or, gods help them, an enemy accuracies it). I just don't know that he'd actually help that much.

And, of course, consider that even then - he's more expensive than Sloane and Jerjerrod, and the same price as Motti.

It feels like it would give him something - and be a relatively minor change - although honestly, would a list focused on Imperial scatter-aces really take even nuTagge over Sloane?

6 hours ago, Piratical Moustache said:

I think his current ability doesn't represent him very well. He was the only one aside from Thrawn who took the Rebels seriously, and saw the Death Star as a waste of resources (again like Thrawn).

 Maybe to represent his cautious respect towards the Rebellion, he can copy a Rebel Commander's ability at the Rebel Commander points cost plus 5 points?

For example Tagge copies Ackbar for 43pts or Raddus for 31pts.



Alternatively, Tagge would work great if he was the inverse of Palpatine. Place one of each defense token type on his card. At the start of the ship phase discard a defense token from Tagge to regain any discarded tokens of that type (and refresh any exhausted tokens of that type) in your fleet. This lets you safely burn through a token or two in the initial engagement and then you regenerate it when you need it.

6 hours ago, Norsehound said:

I really can't tell if all this is one massive circle-sarcasm thread of conversation. If you guys are serious about your claim that Tagge is good, show us some battle reports so the rest of us can understand why it worked and what conditions let Tagge actually succeed. I'm too skeptical to take these casual claims at face value, and I'm not savvy enough to detect this level of sarcasm

It’s not sarcasm.

the tournement I won had I believe 12 players including Gink who was king of Swiss at euros not long after and Prez who came second at euros (and was honing his fleet).

I took a Tagge fleet which was a combination of heavy TIE bombers plus Quasar and a BCC Gozanti to push them, and an ISD2 devestator to bully ships. I think I went 10-1, 9-2, 6-5 (against prez in the final and that led to him making the changes that clearly worked well for euros).

There are some very tasty Tagge combos - devestator is awesome with him, Tua/ECM/slicer/suppressor/Gozanti is horrible. But the main way to conceptualise him is as breaking the fundamental game rule that defence tokens are a finite resource. Don’t think about reclaiming tokens, it’s being able to reclaim tokens that is the power.

1 minute ago, Dr alex said:

It’s not sarcasm.

the tournement I won had I believe 12 players including Gink who was king of Swiss at euros not long after and Prez who came second at euros (and was honing his fleet).

I took a Tagge fleet which was a combination of heavy TIE bombers plus Quasar and a BCC Gozanti to push them, and an ISD2 devestator to bully ships. I think I went 10-1, 9-2, 6-5 (against prez in the final and that led to him making the changes that clearly worked well for euros).

There are some very tasty Tagge combos - devestator is awesome with him, Tua/ECM/slicer/suppressor/Gozanti is horrible. But the main way to conceptualise him is as breaking the fundamental game rule that defence tokens are a finite resource. Don’t think about reclaiming tokens, it’s being able to reclaim tokens that is the power.

I was hoping for something a little more blow-by-blow to take apart and analyze. What were the matchups you faced? How did you deploy against them? What objectives were chosen, were you bidding for first or second? If there are a mix of good battle reports about Tagge not sucking, it would help me at least find the strategies that made him work and try to emulate them in the next list I bring to the table.

Tagge working at the start of round 3 means he has to be in a position to lose defense tokens on round 1. I would guess you either need to be hyper aggressive or have Fleet Ambush in your objective deck to make this happen (which may be possible, since FA is seen at least around here as a bad objective that often folds against the player taking it). Was this the case?

Not engaging on turn 2 to lose some tokens and burning your brace too early means you go two more turns without the token back, and possibly lose Tagge in the process of waiting for him to respawn those tokens.

I remember some early games when he just came out of running him with 2x VSDs against a mixed rebel force, but it's so long ago I can't remember the specifics. I remember my opponent being irked that my VSDs were getting their tokens back, but I can't remember the circumstances to get back those braces.

Also, in the present day of accuracy and XI7s effectively side-stepping token use, I'd think Tagge doesn't even get a chance to use his ability under some circumstances.

Norsehound. Just try it yourself, you dont need us to hold your hand.

It was about five months ago so the only match up I can remember was against Prez’ MC75 raddus bomb in the last round, though I’d add that Amy fleet that requires good match ups to dowell is not a good fleet.

objectives were:

red: either advanced gunnery or most wanted, I can’t remember but both work

yellow: contested outpost

blue: superior positions

finally if you are aiming to use Tagge’s ability, that is a trap, you have to take damage to use it and what is better than using tagge’s ability is not getting shot at. Tagge’s real ability is he gives you the opportunity to use it. If you decide to go full speed into a swarm of yavaris b-wings on turn 2 because you might get your brace back, you have only yourself to blame.

people don’t aim to use Rieekan or Motti, they have it if they need it or want to use it, you don’t try and get your Rieekan yavaris killed because you can zombie it. Same principle with tagge

And Tagge without ECM is like Sloane without squads

Hang on, you are trying Tagge VSDs? Can I interest you in Cracken MC80Hs?

you can’t have the option of using Tagge if you are too slow to be able to engage on your own terms in round 2.

7 hours ago, Norsehound said:

I really can't tell if all this is one massive circle-sarcasm thread of conversation. If you guys are serious about your claim that Tagge is good, show us some battle reports so the rest of us can understand why it worked and what conditions let Tagge actually succeed.

You cannot be a good admiral if you asked that. It is obvious the conditions were they lost defense tokens at the right time to recover them at the right time...?

58 minutes ago, Norsehound said:

I was hoping for something a little more blow-by-blow to take apart and analyze. What were the matchups you faced? How did you deploy against them? What objectives were chosen, were you bidding for first or second? If there are a mix of good battle reports about Tagge not sucking, it would help me at least find the strategies that made him work and try to emulate them in the next list I bring to the table.

Tagge working at the start of round 3 means he has to be in a position to lose defense tokens on round 1. I would guess you either need to be hyper aggressive or have Fleet Ambush in your objective deck to make this happen (which may be possible, since FA is seen at least around here as a bad objective that often folds against the player taking it). Was this the case?

Not engaging on turn 2 to lose some tokens and burning your brace too early means you go two more turns without the token back, and possibly lose Tagge in the process of waiting for him to respawn those tokens.

I remember some early games when he just came out of running him with 2x VSDs against a mixed rebel force, but it's so long ago I can't remember the specifics. I remember my opponent being irked that my VSDs were getting their tokens back, but I can't remember the circumstances to get back those braces.

Also, in the present day of accuracy and XI7s effectively side-stepping token use, I'd think Tagge doesn't even get a chance to use his ability under some circumstances.

You should consider the effect of Tagge's presence on your opponent. Forcing him to delay the engagement allow you to:

- save a round of bombing.

- Better positioning to make an alpha strike.

- another round of free objective scoring.

Also forcing him to throw his stuff sooner allow you to:

- an extra round of bombing

- to deal with an uncommanded alpha strike

- less time to outmaneuver

Just some examples. I am far for being an expert. I just try him a couple of times with Tagge just to win with him being mostly irrelevant (actually completely irrelevant) but I noticed some things an @Dr alex shared here some more so I am really considering start a new adventure with him after the Nationals to take a breath from triple ISDs

You want a fix for Tagge? Chance his cost to 10, and you will see him being played. With 25 he is way to expensive with this effect, and there are way to many better commanders around at this price (Motti and Sloane).
Or allow to recover any number of defense tokens. This might help to see him on the field again (but even with this effect i doubt it).

To allow his effect for squadrons will not change anything. Squadrons will be dead or not have the tokens spend at this time. And if someone is playing with this many Ace Squadrons he will, most likely, use Sloane for 1 point less.

Palpatine works so that you 'play' a defense token from him and then if the opponent uses that token that round they have to discard it (like a mass-effect Intel Officer).

Could not Tagge work in a similar way? You place tokens on him at the start and can then 'resupply' ships with those tokens during play provided they could have those tokens in the first place. i.e. you could have one of each token placed on Tagge but you can choose when to refresh that token type during the game but can only refresh one token type per round. So if you 'play' the brace token one round any ships that have discarded a brace token get it back?

6 hours ago, Norsehound said:

Also, in the present day of accuracy and XI7s effectively side-stepping token use, I'd think Tagge doesn't even get a chance to use his ability under some circumstances.

Not every ship has xi7s, though. Is your meta built where it IS?

1 hour ago, Zamalekite said:

Palpatine works so that you 'play' a defense token from him and then if the opponent uses that token that round they have to discard it (like a mass-effect Intel Officer).

Could not Tagge work in a similar way? You place tokens on him at the start and can then 'resupply' ships with those tokens during play provided they could have those tokens in the first place. i.e. you could have one of each token placed on Tagge but you can choose when to refresh that token type during the game but can only refresh one token type per round. So if you 'play' the brace token one round any ships that have discarded a brace token get it back?

Wouldn't Tagge become a hard counter to Palpatine for ten points less?

40 minutes ago, Bertie Wooster said:

Wouldn't Tagge become a hard counter to Palpatine for ten points less?

Yes you're right. Might be better to limit the restoration to once per token but you can restore more than one token type per round?

Tagge is actually better with xi7 and accs in the meta. ECM and spend that brace! I played @Dr alex with an early iteration of my Vader fleet and I was terrified of it. Tagge hard counters Intel officer, for one thing.

The only thing holding Tagge back is the round 3 and 5 thing. And considering how some imperial players just charge straight in, I'm surprised he's not more popular.

7 minutes ago, rasproteus said:

Tagge is actually better with xi7 and accs in the meta. ECM and spend that brace! I played @Dr alex with an early iteration of my Vader fleet and I was terrified of it. Tagge hard counters Intel officer, for one thing.

The only thing holding Tagge back is the round 3 and 5 thing. And considering how some imperial players just charge straight in, I'm surprised he's not more popular.

Has Tagge been good this whole time?

No, no, its the children who are wrong.

I've got a fix for you:

At the start of the first round, choose either Brace, Redirect or Evade; each ship you control gains defence token of that type.

Alternative : on turn 2 and 5, get back any discarded token and card to their original ships.

Good ? Possible. Powerful? Not really, but it does something unique and opens a lot of small combo with cards that see little games (except boarding trooper, but that's the obvious combo: tagge+BT+Avenger twice a game. Might be a problem...)

15 hours ago, Coranhann said:

Alternative : on turn 2 and 5, get back any discarded token and card to their original ships.

Good ? Possible. Powerful? Not really, but it does something unique and opens a lot of small combo with cards that see little games (except boarding trooper, but that's the obvious combo: tagge+BT+Avenger twice a game. Might be a problem...)

Recover just discarded officer upgrades. Your concerns solved.

7 hours ago, ovinomanc3r said:

Recover just discarded officer upgrades. Your concerns solved.

Agreed, it fixes the potential issue. But it loses opportunities such as Titles (Pursuant), Defensive Retrofit (Reinforced Blast Door) Ordnance (External Racks) or Offensive Retrofits (Disposable Capacitors). The first two are pretty "meh" (Good effect, but it will be rare really benefiting from it). The other two would be quite strong. Again, like BT, potentially too strong. Yet, with the effect only triggering turn 2 and 5, you effectively have a hard time getting him to fire off turn 2. But such effect would already be awesome for turn 5 ...

What could easily 'fix' Tagge is the ability to use it twice per game, no round requirement.

"Twice per game, you may exhaust this card. If you do, each of your ships may recover one of it's discarded defense token."