Would be great to have a strategy discussion here. To start off, do people have an opinion on which deployment side they prefer?

Map for reference 😉 (click to make bigger):

The sides seem pretty similar so, without having played it yet, I think I start with the blue side to have a bit more manuring freedom in my deployment zone due to less blocking terrain.

I agree with the movement freedom. I do prefer the terminal on the red side, it’s a bit easier to hide but maintain threat with multiple figures. Both are reasonably similar though. Based on this I’d argue that red is better for blitz and blue is better for fluctuations, but I don’t have nearly enough reps to confidently say this.

Major advantage of blue wall is, that it is a little longer on the left, so you can shoot or choke your opponent while still in cover.

It is also easier to draw los to their hallway from the terminal side, because there is no additional wall.

The left-most lane is where everybody who isn't playing Spectre Cell wants to fight Spectre Cell.

I played for the first time on Lothal this past weekend at our local event. We had the scenario where each player alternates deploying a single character or group (up to 8 spaces) until all pieces have been placed. Then you start the first round.

I started in the blue area, and ended up with most of my figures on the left side, as I was reacting to my opponents placement of Thrawn and the Emperor over in that general area. Lots of maneuvering as we danced around that RED blocking terrain square in the middle of the corridor. His heavy hitters were positioned about 6-7 squares in from the left near the BLUE terrain diagonal squares.

We ended up having a good slug fest, with my Onar, Zeb, Sabine and Hondo trying to take down his big guns. I actually liked the map, despite the deployment conditions/scenario we were working with.

So according to the new Zions Finest, facing spectre cell on Blitz will end poorly unless it's a mirror. Like, conceding round one, middle of round two poorly. I'm about halfway through the episode, but I'm already bummed out.

Apparently you just bum rush your opponent and let the math take over.

Fortunately, my play group prefers eclectic lists and no one brings Spectre when we're not campaigning, but this doesn't look good for the health of the game.

Be interesting to see how Worlds goes.

edit: oh hey rules clarification, if you go diagonally between the blue squares, center left (the crevice looking tile) does that require additional movement points? We always played no, because the space you're entering isn't blue but I wasn't sure if we're missing something

7 minutes ago, Jaric256 said:

because the space you're entering isn't blue

That. Each space is considered separately. Only the spaces you enter matter, not the spaces you exit or do not enter.

It's so satisfying when you've interpreted the rules correctly.

So finished the Zions Finest episode and I'd encourage anyone who intends to play competitively to also listen. With the caveat that they intend to do more testing, SC is going to be a serious problem with this rotation. According to the gang, the only chance you have against Spectre cell on Blitz is with a Vader list and even then you need darn near perfect card draw and dice rolls to have even a small chance.

Their advice for non Spectre players was basically to practice getting destroyed against SC on Blitz so you don't go on tilt when it happens at a tournament. That's about as bleak as it gets from dudes way smarter about this game than I am.

1 hour ago, Jaric256 said:

So finished the Zions Finest episode and I'd encourage anyone who intends to play competitively to also listen. With the caveat that they intend to do more testing, SC is going to be a serious problem with this rotation. According to the gang, the only chance you have against Spectre cell on Blitz is with a Vader list and even then you need darn near perfect card draw and dice rolls to have even a small chance.

Their advice for non Spectre players was basically to practice getting destroyed against SC on Blitz so you don't go on tilt when it happens at a tournament. That's about as bleak as it gets from dudes way smarter about this game than I am.

I haven't played blitz with my sc, but like this it looks to me I will lose easily against Han-Ranger and IG-Hunters. Can you tell us why SC should be super strong on this map? (I hate podcasts)

13 minutes ago, Trevize84 said:

I haven't played blitz with my sc, but like this it looks to me I will lose easily against Han-Ranger and IG-Hunters. Can you tell us why SC should be super strong on this map? (I hate podcasts)

Quite the opposite. Both those lists rely on a "ramp up" round and getting the right command cards. With the "blitz" mission specifically, none of that will happen.

If the SC players goes totally aggressive and just bums rushes the opponent, you're attacking round one before any of that has a chance to happen. Since SC relies on crushing math and doesn't care about command cards or focuses, etc, all the advantages SC has against a list under normal circumstances are magnified to the point where top players playing lists they know are conceding round one/early round two.

If you're playing SC on Blitz, against something other than Spectre, throw caution to the wind and you'll have (according to the podcast) something like a 95% chance of winning.

By the way, if anyone has a way around this by all means share, because as it looks like now, World's is going to be Spectre Bowl 2019. I couldn't make an argument not to bring Spectre to a competitive play tourney other than personal preference. Especially if not doing so means a default loss if all missions are played during tourney format.

4 hours ago, Jaric256 said:

Quite the opposite. Both those lists rely on a "ramp up" round and getting the right command cards. With the "blitz" mission specifically, none of that will happen.

If the SC players goes totally aggressive and just bums rushes the opponent, you're attacking round one before any of that has a chance to happen. Since SC relies on crushing math and doesn't care about command cards or focuses, etc, all the advantages SC has against a list under normal circumstances are magnified to the point where top players playing lists they know are conceding round one/early round two.

If you're playing SC on Blitz, against something other than Spectre, throw caution to the wind and you'll have (according to the podcast) something like a 95% chance of winning.

makes sense...

45 minutes ago, Trevize84 said:

makes sense...

Yeah, Ezra is allegedly in your deployment zone killing your dudes round one and there's almost nothing you can do about it. If it's as bad as they claim, we're about to be on some weird Demolition Man world where in the future all lists are Spectre Cell.

God help us if Lothal Battlefront ever comes into rotation. The deployment zones are right next to each other for both missions.

On 2/14/2019 at 11:45 AM, Jaric256 said:

So finished the Zions Finest episode and I'd encourage anyone who intends to play competitively to also listen. With the caveat that they intend to do more testing, SC is going to be a serious problem with this rotation. According to the gang, the only chance you have against Spectre cell on Blitz is with a Vader list and even then you need darn near perfect card draw and dice rolls to have even a small chance.

Their advice for non Spectre players was basically to practice getting destroyed against SC on Blitz so you don't go on tilt when it happens at a tournament. That's about as bleak as it gets from dudes way smarter about this game than I am.

As much as I love kenny and the gang, they are prone to over reacting a bit. Remember when doubt was going to kill all rebel lists? I think we need more than the half dozen data points from their practice games.

In any case, at least it isn’t Ugs on raining freight...

Played blitz against Han-Ranger yesterday... My SC lost in a close match. This says nothing about quality of SC on this map. I always lose against Han-Ranger!

On 2/18/2019 at 5:35 PM, Averagejo3gam3r said:

As much as I love kenny and the gang, they are prone to over reacting a bit. Remember when doubt was going to kill all rebel lists? I think we need more than the half dozen data points from their practice games.

In any case, at least it isn’t Ugs on raining freight...

When we opined that Doubt was going to really hamstring focus-dependent Rebel lists, we were operating in a world in which Spectre had not been spoiled. If Spectre had never entered the mix, you better believe that Doubt would be something that we'd still be griping about. Doubt isn't an issue because Spectre is so insanely powerful, not because it isn't a strong card in its own right. Lots of the strong European Spectre players have been running Doubt instead of Motivation.

You can say that we overreact, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to find examples other than Doubt--which was overshadowed by the arrival of Spectre. Unlike lots of players wanting nerfs to On The Lam, hunter cards, Zillo, Vader, etc., I have long been on the "let the meta settle" train, which is why I was so particularly disheartened by what Spectre Blitz represents.

@Averagejo3gam3r , if you think I'm overreacting, I want you to play against Janway running Blitz on Spectre and see if you can win one game out of five. Just one. If you can, I will qualify my claim. But I played Han Rangers and the Box against Matt who had never run Spectre before that night and got absolutely crushed in the first or second round every game. JK fared no better with Scum Hunters. That's me playing one of the strongest lists in the meta and another list that I created and have honed for almost two years and not standing a chance at all.

All the Spectre player needs to do is approach the opponent's deployment zone, collapsing off all routes of escape, and then going for a big removal play at the top of round one or start of round two. As long as they don't hold back they should do totally fine.

Was it an overreaction to say that Ugs had almost an auto-win on Raining Freight? Why not? Because it was clear that they had a strong advantage in being able to quickly soak up points off the board and put their opponent in the unenviable position of overexposing to get crates or shoot into the Ugs' deployment zone.

Similarly, Spectre has an incredible advantage on Blitz because the mission compensates for Spectre's major weaknesses--card draw and a perilous approach. Spectre is able to start right outside their opponent's deployment zone, and they are also able to deny their opponent's card draw due to their ability to put pressure on the terminal. Spectre can be attacking their focus-dependent and card-dependent opponents before they are able to get properly set up, so now the Han Ranger player has to decide whether to take suboptimal unfocused and un-carded shots with Rangers or to hope that they can survive long enough to add some firepower with focus and card draw, which a good Spectre player is not going to allow them to do. Pointing this out isn't overreacting; it's where we are at.

Spectre won sixty percent of Regionals before the arrival of Blitz. Even then, I remained optimistic that other lists could find some play in the joints in order to make things happen. I won the Utah Regional after having defeated some incredibly strong Spectre players, and there are other players like @seef1033 , @GottaBadFeelingAboutThis , and @ryanjamal who continued to have success with things besides Spectre. Before Blitz, I was hopeful that there would several strong answers to Spectre in the lead-up to Worlds. After Blitz, I think that non-Specter players need to think real hard about how they are going to win their five other missions at Worlds.

By all means, test it. Have your opponent run Spectre, have them just run at you, and see if you can win a game with a focus-dependent list like Han Rangers or Scum Hunters. Scott thinks that Vader might have a chance, but I remain skeptical, although that is something that we are actually going to need to put through the paces more.

The point Kenny is making is not that Blitz SC is unbeatable, we know it is beatable, the problem is that the non SC side starts with a severe handicap. And if you were to tech for SC Blitz, you are most likely handicapping yourself against any other match ups/maps.

There should never be a map in rotation where statistically speaking one side has a 95% win rate. That shouldn't happen.. I've only tried it twice as the SC player, but it was two very one sided wins against two very good players. The one game I removed Drokotta in the very first activation of the game. How do you recover from that?

51 minutes ago, FrogTrigger said:

And if you were to tech for SC Blitz, you are most likely handicapping yourself against any other match ups

Unfortunately, I don't think that's going to be that much of a problem in the near future.

4 hours ago, kennydkbrown said:

By all means, test it. Have your opponent run Spectre, have them just run at you, and see if you can win a game with a focus-dependent list like Han Rangers or Scum Hunters.

And if you can beat it consistently, please share how with the rest of us.

I really don't understand Motivation. I can only see the cons of the card... I mean making Kannan a 9 PTS target is not exactly what you want. Normally you would like to discourage the opponent attacking Kannan. Also movement point is kind of situational as well as condition removal. Hearth of Freedom usually does the job and Set for Stun apart, stunning isn't too common. I feel Doubt a much better choice for SC as it fixes weakness of SC against lists that try to kite (snipers in general, usually relying on focus)) and it's synergic with some CCs like Tough Luck in example.

I think all of the Spectre lists I've played against have placed motivation on Zeb (and that's where I put it the few times I've played Spectre).

I liked it because it made me less concerned about stun and gave extra movement options. Makes it harder for your opponent to calculate a "safe range" especially for the SC attack.

I love Hunter lists so I'm obviously not a fan of doubt, but I have been able to play around it. Granted, it changes the way I play so that might be worth the cost, but it's possible depending on the map/mission.

It's probably less useful against Imperial lists, and since Vader might be the best SC counter list it might be more popular. Plus, since there's going to be A LOT of Spectre in competitive play, who doesn't focus or give tokens to anyone, (outside of command cards) you get no value against the most popular list.

Well if you fear stun, that's on Ezra so the guy close to him is Kannan

8 hours ago, Trevize84 said:

Well if you fear stun, that's on Ezra so the guy close to him is Kannan

True, but all you need is line of sight and Zeb is (or at least he is when I play him) going to be up close as well.

And yeah I do fear stun because that could prevent a SC attack which can really limit your options.