So I'm wondering what tactics are employed by this combo and how to counter it. Demo I have always found to be a dangerous opponent, but it has a nice 2 squadron value too. So with Thrawn what can it do? Bring along buddies Maarek and Jendon. This little taskforce can toss 4 bomber dice(that's unlikely to miss due to Maarek's ability) and then demo jumps in to drop another 4 blacks. And the apt/acm crit. This is akin to a demo double arc and will easily pop smalls while maiming other ships. Cool and annoying thing is that Demo does not lose it's tempo from command dials as Thrawn takes care of the squadrons.

Maybe I should give a little context. My most recent face off was against a Thrawn ISD demo and squad ball, and I was using Leia msu and an LMC80. I spread my fleet perpendicular to the 2 enemy ships and snipe-plinked the demo as it came in. It came in, crippled my LMC80 with a nasty apt crit, and then ate up some smalls with the combo and barely limped away on 2hull while the ISD and other squads mopped up.

What would you employ against this combo or how do you usually use it in ur fleet?

P.S. I'm not ranting that M/J/Demo is broken or needs to be nerfed. Rather want to learn it and how to fight it/use it well for next times

I like the idea.

Even without Thrawn I occasionally use GSDs to do a squadron command on turn 2 just to ensure you throw your full fighter force into action rather than waiting for the squadron phase. You can do it with Rogues on turn 2 then leave them alone for the rest of the game to look after themselves. TIE-Interceptors also appreciate a turn 2 alpha strike then you can leave them locked down in dogfights as they live or die but at least their counter(2) + swarm gets you extra damage. A passing flotilla can squadron command for later turns and activate a few, particularly those on 1 hit point remaining.

GSDs can take FCTs if you don't already plan on using Engine Techs. If you have a flight commander on-board it can get your fighters a little more distance although usually Imperial squadrons have decent speed. Even if you don't take a FC the FCTs can work nicely with Bossk & Morna Kee who can shuffle forwards distance 1 then move distance 3 in the squadron phase and attack Demolisher's target already softened up by ACMs. On turn 1 the FCTs will also have moved the rogues even closer to the enemy possibly getting them an attack in T1's squadron phase, IG88 for example can be nasty this way with distance 1 + distance 5 + range 1 shooting. Put Vector on a nearby Gozanti then Demolisher can FCT rogues forwards Turn 1 and the flotilla can then squadron them distance 4 for a nasty surprise.

In missions where collecting tokens is important GSDs with FCTs can be very useful shuffling tokens around the board twice a turn with Lambdas. Fire lanes, Intel Sweep, Capture the VIP, Salvage Run & Sensor net all get a lot easier. Minefields can be rather deadly with an FCT Glad and Lambda dragging along a host of mine tokens.

Use squadrons, especially Shara and Tycho to either tie up Maarek or to protect your LMC80 (obvious). If you’re using Leia, I assume you have a fair number of squadrons. Less obvious is the positioning of your smalls. Your LMC80 can take a hit from just Demo. Try positioning your smalls to punish Demo after it hits the 80. If this is a recurring problem, try sticking Lando on the 80 to neuter one of the Demo shots. If you’re consistently out-activated and out-bid, I highly recommend dropping the LMC80 for something else as it is quite fragile and needs to play the activation game. The 75 with DCO can handle a Demo fairly handily in my experience.

Maarek/Jendon are relying on their braces rather than scatters like most Imperial squads have, so I typically find one of them (usually Maarek) is my opponents first target to kill. Of course saying "just kill them" is a bit over-simplistic, but if you've got a decent squad wing it can certainly be done. Dutch/Wedge could be fairly effective there as they can't scatter away any damage from Wedge meaning you can just toggle Maarek then blast him with Wedge for silly dice.

14 hours ago, CommanderDave said:

Use squadrons, especially Shara and Tycho to either tie up Maarek or to protect your LMC80 (obvious). If you’re using Leia, I assume you have a fair number of squadrons. Less obvious is the positioning of your smalls. Your LMC80 can take a hit from just Demo. Try positioning your smalls to punish Demo after it hits the 80. If this is a recurring problem, try sticking Lando on the 80 to neuter one of the Demo shots. If you’re consistently out-activated and out-bid, I highly recommend dropping the LMC80 for something else as it is quite fragile and needs to play the activation game. The 75 with DCO can handle a Demo fairly handily in my experience.

Leia is a squadron commander? I used her in an msu although I did have 4 squads since Gr75s can command more squads with her. They all went to bomb demo in the early game before getting tied up with the rest of the enemy squadball, and my smalls tried to plink-kill demo but it still came in like a fireball. I'm thinking I might need a sacrificial blocker when dealing with Thrawn demo.

The LMC80 was actually on the other flank to jab the side of the ISD which was next to demo and thus barely ate an obstructed shot from demo. It did leave the ISD on 1 hull before blowing up from the ISD's engines exhaust.

Lando is a good idea, he could roll away crits, I'll consider him 👍

A bit of context will be that the squadron list of that build is :

Maarek, Jendon, Dengar, Mauler, Tempest Sqn, TIE Adv and 2 TIE Defenders.

The ships are an ISD2 and a Demo. Very low activation count which is a major weakness imo.

Maarek/Jendon need not be activated by Demo. The ISD2 pushes 4 squads which can also include Dengar and Tempest. 4

I am curious as to how you would exploit the activation weakness.

Was there Pryce on ISD? Anyways, the activation disadvantage lasts until engagement...after that the quality of each activation is pushed to the hilt, about as good as any list can get out of two activations... for at least the first round of fighting you can't stop the bombing... After that killing dengar requires a lot of effort, then you need to keep tying up the other fighters as well... Conversely you can just focus on morna and maarek which is probably as hard... I prefer this later method, as a result I usually kill one the first round of engagement and then the other on the second round of engagement, then I promptly lose my squads... Better to lose my squads than my ships though... Other than that, I usually go all out on killing ISD and staying away from demo, then later in the game deal with demo if I can... To kill their ISD you need some way to neutralize that brace, Vader officer, nym, avenger, Intel officer, msu swarm... Second you need survivability, hull, lots of ships, def retro, rieekan, Raddus, interdictor, Lando, admo, projection experts.... Last, squads are big in the meta right now and they will happily take your superior positions and turn it against you... So unless your sure to win squads game, consider picking non fighter objectives you can really leverage in your favor... Ion Cannon, Intel sweep, etc etc...

Hope that helps