9 hours ago, ClassicalMoser said:

If you      can  catch it in just 1 or 2, you'll probably do some  dama  g  e. 

*cries in 5 Awings*

The problem as I see it is that such aces make it nearly impossible for certain lists (2 attack dice) to win. A single 2dice shot is by far not enough to push damage onto a 3agility ace (Yes, we all had that one time with Soontir...), and same for two. You shouldn't get many more because of the repositioning.

Playing against Fenn and 1-2 Starvipers is the bane of my existence, as I never get damage in. Same for Vader, Defenders, other Awings, CLT Jedi and some more.

And of course I am frustrating others much more often - 5 ships with 3 agility are outright horrible for 2attack ships.

19 hours ago, ThinkingB said:

Ani Obi player here. Make no mistake, I want to kill everything. However, whether or not my opponent can set their dials in a reasonable amount of time and not make the game last only four rounds til time is called is the real trick. Also, if I am given literally not a single angle to approach from (Inferno Swarm with gas clouds), while the other player has to make the hard decision of pointing in my general direction, I'm gonna take a minute before I try and kill everything.

Point is, I'm here to play the game, zoom around, turn in with both for an IV 7, 8 dice double modded Alpha strike, and hopefully end the game through my ability to be consistently aggressive once I've entered the correct position. To be honest, it seems like it's always the other side that is trying to run down the clock (through choice or incompetence) when I play two ships because 99% of the time, it takes me under 15 seconds to choose each of my dials, while rebel beef has to take five minutes to figure out if they want to go forward and shoot at me with their jousters.

Remember, double aces start the game losing and then have to build their win from there, while 6 tie swarm and all of the other "literally just try to be pointed at them" lists start from a winning position and are then incentivized to prevent the game from progressing from there. Only in very rare circumstances do I want to intentionally win with a crap MOV aka run down the clock.

In my experience, it's always always always the 5+ ship players who run down the clock by pretending that they actually have hard decisions to make, when in actuality, they have just done the simple math already and are banking on the other side not wanting to feel socially awkward by calling a judge for blatant slow play.

I think people misinterpret ace play as running down the clock, when it's actually more along the lines of "I'm gonna dab on you for 75 minutes and still end up with full health ships because I chose to bring a list that is scaled off directly off of good decisions rather than just ignoring several fundamental aspects of the game and making a win impossible for you by limiting the total amount of rounds i e opportunities to shoot things down"

But I'm not salty about OP and switching to key forge or anything. Nope... definitely not.

I would like to know the opinion of @President Jyrgunkarrd

about this.

I would say " run like you stole something ". Not because a paired aces squad doesn't want to engage, but that any 'fair fight' must by definition come off worse for the aces. So whilst you want to kill stuff, your first objective has to be " don't get your ships killed ". That doesn't necessarily mean " waste one 23 point Academy Pilot then do the Supernatural Reflexes Samba for three-quarters of an hour rather than exchanging another shot " because, as @ThinkingB says, that will win you the game but lose you an event (eventually) on Margin of Victory compared to other players who actually got their teeth into their opponent.

I disagree that a swarm is by default 'winning'; but I know what I think you mean, and agree at least that far - if you blithely sail two expensive aces down the throat of a swarm, you're going to lose them . It's that simple because it has to be .

The swarm sets up first, has less choices for movement-to-contact because it has less repositioning options to 'bolt on' to its dial, those it does usually cost it its dice-fettling tokens, and it has generally less ability to modify its dice so each individual attack is less effective. Being able to mass multiple arcs of fire on a region and rate-of-fire its way through an aces defences is the only way it can win. The swarm wins by sensible deployment, and moving strategically (placing arcs of fire where they need to be, and will need to be in a few turns time) and figuring out how to route itself to cover a given area without using red moves which cost its precious few green tokens) rather than reacting to where the ace goes at a given instant, because its initiative is too low and its manoeuvrability too low to do that.

By comparison, the ace wins is forcing the swarm to spread out that potential so much to cover possible final positions that the remaining attacks are tolerable, or (harder but still possible) by finding a 'blind spot' where there is no return fire at all. It can outmanoeuvre the head-on pass of a swarm, therefore the balance of power is set up so it has to (to a greater or lesser degree).

Obviously both sides have exceptions, especially if you've got stuff like Leia Organa or Grand Moff Tarkin, or Boba Fett and Fenn Rau, who dramatically upset the basic principles (by allowing the 'swarm' to keep action efficiency whilst pulling silly manoeuvres, or by doing suicidal-looking stuff like flying into the teeth of a swarm for a killshot), but shorn of specific pilots or upgrades that's the basic principle.

15 hours ago, ficklegreendice said:

I'm confused

What does "what mistakes entails entail" entail?

It's whatever the mistakes entails entails entails.

8 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

*cries in 5 Awings*

The problem as I see it is that such aces make it nearly impossible for certain lists (2 attack dice) to win. A single 2dice shot is by far not enough to push damage onto a 3agility ace (Yes, we all had that one time with Soontir...), and same for two. You shouldn't get many more because of the repositioning.

Playing against Fenn and 1-2 Starvipers is the bane of my existence, as I never get damage in. Same for Vader, Defenders, other Awings, CLT Jedi and some more.

And of course I am frustrating others much more often - 5 ships with 3 agility are outright horrible for 2attack ships.

Well again, this is kind of why I think spam lists are bad in general - they're always hard-countered by something . In the case of agile 2-attack ships, defensive stacking is their weak point. If you dropped two for an X-Wing ace, a YT, a support platform, some missiles, Y-Wings, or whatever else, you could guarantee that punch.

TIE Swarms don't have too bad of a time with aces when they're able to pursue. ESC Drones can at least put 3 dice into them several times. But of course, you do you. It just might be frustrating against certain archetypes.

18 minutes ago, ClassicalMoser said:

Well again, this is kind of why I think spam lists are bad in general - they're always hard-countered by something .

Agreed. I tend towards spam lists more because I like the aesthetic of a squadron of ships of a matching type, but I fully accept that that is a 'fluff' choice which has little or no bearing on what's an effective 'game piece' (although it looks like squadron groups may become relevant in epic!)

A mish-mash of different chassis are probably more effective in practice; Imperials have a load of different options for a heavy swarm, but rather than 5 x Afterburners TIE/sk, or 5 x Barrage Rockets TIE/sa, or 5 x Fire Control System TIE/x1, a much better choice is all of the above in a 2:2:1 ratio; giving you a solid 'anvil', fast 'flankers' and a ship which can reliably thwock criticals on a target after someone else has taken its shields down.

Even then, massed 2-dice attacks are fine en masse because the degree of defensive stacks aren't as bad as 1st edition - no autothrusters, no every-single-shot lone wolf, that sort of thing.

6+ 2-dice attacks are fine.

5 or less, I feel like you've got to have a second string - missiles, calibrated laser targeting, predictive shot, whatever, if you find yourself engaging large numbers of agility 3 targets.

1 minute ago, Magnus Grendel said:

6+ 2-dice attacks are fine.

5 or less, I feel like you've got to have a second string - missiles, calibrated laser targeting, predictive shot, whatever, if you find yourself engaging large numbers of agility 3 targets.

Exactly this. A-Wings are great blockers, min-aces, or missile carriers. A little too expensive to spam without missiles though, and missiles are all 2 points too expensive anyway. If it were Z-95s, Y-Wings, or TIE Bombers, you wouldn't have this issue.

On the other hand, I find a simple Phoenix with Intimidation can really get some work done. If you have a couple and they play "dogpile on the ace" you can realistically reduce their agility by at least 1 a turn for some time, and whoever isn't blocking gets a 3-dice shot into reduced agility. It's a matter of how you kit them as much as anything.

5 A-Wings naked just doesn't strike me as a good idea. If you want naked A-Wings, bring a bigger stick.

23 minutes ago, ClassicalMoser said:

Exactly this. A-Wings are great blockers, min-aces, or missile carriers. A little too expensive to spam without missiles though, and missiles are all 2 points too expensive anyway. If it were Z-95s, Y-Wings, or TIE Bombers, you wouldn't have this issue.

On the other hand, I find a simple Phoenix with Intimidation can really get some work done. If you have a couple and they play "dogpile on the ace" you can realistically reduce their agility by at least 1 a turn for some time, and whoever isn't blocking gets a 3-dice shot into reduced agility. It's a matter of how you kit them as much as anything.

5 A-Wings naked just doesn't strike me as a good idea. If you want naked A-Wings, bring a bigger stick.

I sense a slight clarification is needed. @GreenDragoon 's "A-Wings" are Resistance RZ-2s, not Rebel RZ-1s and he doesn't run them naked.

11 minutes ago, Hiemfire said:

I sense a slight clarification is needed. @GreenDragoon 's "A-Wings" are Resistance RZ-2s, not Rebel RZ-1s and he doesn't run them naked.

I actually figured this was the case. I guess what I mean is that Heroic and AO don't do as much for punching through defensive-stacking aces. Someone should have prockets, crack shot, intimidation, or whatever.

Then again, with rear arcs it's not that hard to get multiple shots, and AO with heroic does mean you have a lot of 2-hit attacks coming through, which wears down a token stack pretty fast. So maybe it's not that bad?

1 minute ago, ClassicalMoser said:

I actually figured this was the case. I guess what I mean is that Heroic and AO don't do as much for punching through defensive-stacking aces. Someone should have prockets, crack shot, intimidation, or whatever.

Then again, with rear arcs it's not that hard to get multiple shots, and AO with heroic does mean you have a lot of 2-hit attacks coming through, which wears down a token stack pretty fast. So maybe it's not that bad?

Not as bad as running massed RZ-1s for sure. Especially with AO boosting the damage capability almost to the same as 3 reds.

1 minute ago, Hiemfire said:

Not as bad as running massed RZ-1s for sure. Especially with AO boosting the damage capability almost to the same as 3 reds.

But it never* gets above. With some bad luck, your target will roll 1-2 evades on every roll, maybe taking a damage after several shots. But more often one roll has two nattie evades and the other two modified evades.

*r1 of course, but often that's a bad idea. Specifically the 3 agility ships with 3 reds are a problem for me, and range 1 is one reason.

1 minute ago, GreenDragoon said:

But it never* gets above. With some bad luck, your target will roll 1-2 evades on every roll, maybe taking a damage after several shots. But more often one roll has two nattie evades and the other two modified evades.

*r1 of course, but often that's a bad idea. Specifically the 3 agility ships with 3 reds are a problem for me, and range 1 is one reason.

Intimidation dogpile is my favorite way to fly RZ-1 A-Wings. Reduced agility and R1 attacks are fun, and prockets or Crack Shot make it even better if you can afford them.

Notice: Phoenix + Intimidation + Prockets = 40 points. I feel like that actually makes for a more viable 5x A-Wing swarm.

But then, I only have 3 of them so I may never know 😛

2 minutes ago, ClassicalMoser said:

But then, I only have 3 of them so I may never know  😛

Same boat, but I prefer Pred/Marks Greens

5 rz-2 As just need to adapt

We got a resistance transport with a) autoblasters and b.) Jam.

New Squadron

(36) Tallissan Lintra [RZ-2 A-wing]
(1) Crack Shot
(1) Heroic
Points: 38

(36) Nodin Chavdri [Resistance Transport]
(2) R4 Astromech
(2) Autoblasters
(6) Tactical Officer
Points: 46

(33) Blue Squadron Recruit [RZ-2 A-wing]
(1) Crack Shot
(4) Advanced Optics
Points: 38

(33) Blue Squadron Recruit [RZ-2 A-wing]
(1) Crack Shot
(4) Advanced Optics
Points: 38

(33) Blue Squadron Recruit [RZ-2 A-wing]
(1) Crack Shot
(4) Advanced Optics
Points: 38

Total points: 198

(Tallie doesn't have optics as I think she's the best coordinate target as I 5 has the easiest time getting a target lock; can always change later)

Rz-1s...well it's pretty much just intimidation arvel init?

On 7/15/2019 at 6:59 PM, ficklegreendice said:

I'm confused

What does "what mistakes entails entail" entail?

Definitely entrails...

On ‎7‎/‎15‎/‎2019 at 3:56 PM, Cuz05 said:

LOL
Now see, these are the kinds of discussions I come here for.
The 2 ace vs 5 mini-ace lists

how do you fight a certain type of fleet with what you have
bravo