My experience- the T-47 is effective if you have a plan for using it. The combination of speed, firepower and altitude can hit the enemy VERY hard in the first round or two, seriously hampering their effectiveness. It’s speed will easily let it cover 14” of movement with 18” of eligible targeting beyond that- that 42” of battle field which aren’t safe in the first round. In a Long March, that’s not going to help much, but any other set-up configuration will let the T-47 line up an attack on round one. Give it long range comms to keep it flexible as long as it lives and pummel the enemy with air strikes.

Anecdotal- first game I played, the T-47 wiped out all but the unit leader from a Stormtrooper unit. That removed the guys protecting Veers. Barricades are hard pressed to give cover against something as high up as the airspeeder.

Last night, while the speeder didn’t do as much damage on round one, it still took out half a squad on round one. And it got close enough to prevent the HH-12 from being useable. It was dead by round three, but it dealt a lot of damage before that.

Plan for the speeder to be an early tool to limit enemy capability- lots of attrition. If the enemy has fewer troopers than you, you’ll have better flexibility to move where you need to for objectives. If you force him to cover, imposing suppression with attacks and/or moves, that also gives your forces more flexibility.

Add to that the T-47’s armor and cover, making it problematic for anyone without impact, and the airspeeder becomes apparently useful. Maybe not the most point efficient, but also not as bad as some claim.

From what I've seen, the primary problem Vehicles face is actually their immunity to suppression. Armor isn't reducing incoming damage all that much more than the cover bonus from suppression and they end up paying a premium for an ability that isn't quite as effective as expected. Having a rule that ignores it means they're weak against weapon types infantry are not, which makes me curious if the proliferation of Sharpshooter will help change this somewhat.

Vehicles were really only meta for a few months because there was nothing else to use. Many rebel players even played naked atrt just to soak points for activations. Atrt die very easily without dealing worthwhile damage, the atst is too expensive for its damage output so it can be completely ignored, and the t47 is flat out garbage as it dies so easily and is very expensive. Bikes were great but now having triple strike teams raining reliable 2 dmg each shot and Leias bombardment, they die so quickly too. Hopefully there are some more tanky vehicles that are not as expensive as the atst so players have to bring at least some impact.

I guess the yes or no approach to armor in this game doesn't help vehicles either. There is just not enough gradual difference in the chance to absorb damage between different vehicles. This means they are pretty naked against the right keywords instead of just heaving a reduced resistance against them. What I'm saying is that impact should somehow weaken armor instead of deleting it.

If you're having fun building, painting, and running them, then they are not bad.

On 11/9/2018 at 5:51 AM, LennoxPoodle said:

I guess the yes or no approach to armor in this game doesn't help vehicles either. There is just not enough gradual difference in the chance to absorb damage between different vehicles. This means they are pretty naked against the right keywords instead of just heaving a reduced resistance against them. What I'm saying is that impact should somehow weaken armor instead of deleting it.

It's about as granular of a system as you can get. Impact only gives you a set number of extra crits after all. It doesn't convert every success into a crit usually.

I have great success running an AT-ST in my local meta. Most people don't have enough impact to deal that much damage to it so as long as I mind the rear then I can do whatever I want with it. I doubt that will be the case at LVO though so I'm gonna have to change up my list.

In the Superior Positions Operation in a mirror match, I dropped in a T-47 and in two turns wiped out two corps units and an AT-RT. It took 0 damage. It played a role in scoring 6 of my 8 victory points.

In a tournament setting, maybe not the best unit to include, but there are lots of ways to play this game so yes, vehicles have a place.

I would argue another heavy vehicle option is very near in the pipeline if not the next new announcement. I mean with each faction having 3 commanders, one operative, 2 corps, 2 SF, 2 supports, AND specialists on the way - the heavy slot is definitely due to have another option.

I'm not sure what the Imperials will get, but I bet Rebels get some form of ground vehicle... it will be interesting to see how the meta will change around the Rebels having a more tank-y heavy option.

44 minutes ago, Jman444 said:

I would argue another heavy vehicle option is very near in the pipeline if not the next new announcement. I mean with each faction having 3 commanders, one operative, 2 corps, 2 SF, 2 supports, AND specialists on the way - the heavy slot is definitely due to have another option.

I'm not sure what the Imperials will get, but I bet Rebels get some form of ground vehicle... it will be interesting to see how the meta will change around the Rebels having a more tank-y heavy option.

Maybe the TX-225 for the Empire? The tank used on Jedha. It would fit the design for Legion, certainly, though I'm not sure about the size, exactly...

@LunarSol What I meant was a more granular approach on a per dice base. For each individual dice there are only two possibilities either hit and crit count, or just crit. Some stages in between that would help.Something were the chance to wound gets reduced by armor (preferably to varying degrees) and anti vehicle weapons dial that back (to varying degrees) but not the full way(in most cases). This would mean, that (generally speaking) an anti armor weapon would have a lower chance on inflicting damage to an armored target than a "normal" weapon against an unarmored one. (speaking on a per dice basis again) In the end vehicles would be harder too damage for everyone just less for anti armor stuff.

I have fun with my vehicles and my losses are always pretty close. Indicating to me that if I was a better player (ie got more practice) they'd be fine. You can't just crash them into the enemy lines though, you have to think about what to do with them.

I've discovered that T-47 can be as good as it can be useless totally, just plan very specific what you want to do with it. T-47 has been in my setup ever since i got it and best results have been stellar, nailing down AT-ST and slaying troops and in contrast it's been shot down in just few turns. Will continue to take rather first T-47 than AT-RT, that one has been maybe the worst unit by my experience.

I've had matches that AT-ST -has pretty much been useless turret standing still, where it's really been feeling like waste of points. Speeder bikes are pretty ok, but really vulnerable without armor and i'd really need another squad of those to make them really effective and hit harder.

By my opinion only real problem about vehicles is that we don't have MORE of them yet, more variety in all kinds of vehicles would be cool (i'm looking at you AT-AT)!

11 minutes ago, xmarkusx said:

I've discovered that T-47 can be as good as it can be useless totally, just plan very specific what you want to do with it. T-47 has been in my setup ever since i got it and best results have been stellar, nailing down AT-ST and slaying troops and in contrast it's been shot down in just few turns. Will continue to take rather first T-47 than AT-RT, that one has been maybe the worst unit by my experience.

I've had matches that AT-ST -has pretty much been useless turret standing still, where it's really been feeling like waste of points. Speeder bikes are pretty ok, but really vulnerable without armor and i'd really need another squad of those to make them really effective and hit harder.

By my opinion only real problem about vehicles is that we don't have MORE of them yet, more variety in all kinds of vehicles would be cool (i'm looking at you AT-AT)!

Why do you think the At-Rt is useless. I have found that it can eliminate squads if used correctly

3 minutes ago, Jabby said:

Why do you think the At-Rt is useless. I have found that it can eliminate squads if used correctly

Dunno, maybe bad luck? Haven't had any good experiences with it at all. Maybe it proves to be better and serve it's purpose when playing in properly terrain containing boards etc.

20 minutes ago, xmarkusx said:

Dunno, maybe bad luck? Haven't had any good experiences with it at all. Maybe it proves to be better and serve it's purpose when playing in properly terrain containing boards etc.

With enough terrain and correct movement and/or battlecards e.g. disarray with limited visibility a comms jammer flamer at-rt can get very close to enemy units before they can shoot at it. Expert climber is underrated. Especially on boards with hieght 2 terrain. Just keep it away from bikes, vader/luke or hh-12 and ion and use it to eliminate lone squads with the flamer and comms jammer and as a fire-magnet to protect infantry with the rotary. The laser Cannon i can see uses for but I almost never use it.

6 minutes ago, Jabby said:

With enough terrain and correct movement and/or battlecards e.g. disarray with limited visibility a comms jammer flamer at-rt can get very close to enemy units before they can shoot at it. Expert climber is underrated. Especially on boards with hieght 2 terrain. Just keep it away from bikes, vader/luke or hh-12 and ion and use it to eliminate lone squads with the flamer and comms jammer and as a fire-magnet to protect infantry with the rotary. The laser Cannon i can see uses for but I almost never use it.

I've used mostly it with laser cannon, but did not really do anything with it on that game. Flamer tempts me the most of it's weapon choices and i've tried to run it maybe in two games, but both times it was shot to pieces before getting anywhere near anything. Those were again very early games when we had pretty much no terrain pieces or LOS block aside barricades, so i'll def try it again cause slowly improving the amount of terrain etc.

I used to use the laser cannon AT-RT for sniping at units at long range to add suppression, though now we have actual snipers for that. A sniping AT-RT actually stands a fair chance of putting hits through cover because of the surge and an aimed laser cannon has pretty consistent damage against enemy armour which may be more useful this time next year.

The flamer can be hard to get into range and even harder to keep alive after it starts shooting. Give it an HQ uplink and Han can protect it with 'reckless diversion' or give it unbeatable initiative with 'sorry about the mess'.

I found it hard to get used to how they maneuver because of a history of working with stompy robots in other games. It's hard to find cover for them, and when you do you can end up blocking your own movement if you're too close to it.