I’ve been reading a lot of comments that heavy fire zone is total garbage, but my reading of the card is that it’s potentially ok on some limited builds. Specifically a red flak dice ship With a turbo laser slot you don’t mind using to up your flak. It gives you an extra red dice at red range which considering most builds have fighters is nice. Specifically the assault prototype SSD will like it a lot......adding kallus that’s a standard of 3 dice at red range on aces....nasty, with linked turbo lasers and ravager that’s a up to a 7 dice blast with reroll ( mix of red and blue ).

Not saying it’s a good card or will see much play, but it can have a purpose, so not total garbage.

Yes, it's utter binder fodder. It might not be bad if you could pair it with LTT, but Libs lack blue flak and the SSD already has a red and needs it's turbo slots for more potent turbos as is.

Yeah, it might see use on an ISD-II Sloane Aces list that wants to soften a tanky sqaud ball before they're all locked up, a lot of times those lists will have Dengar or a Jumpmaster so they could fly out of engagement and get flakked with reds again while the Sloane squads go be mean to a ship.

For rebels a Neb-B Escort, maybe salted with Draven and a Home One within distance 5 - this could see a lot of use in this very specific list. You're probably going to do 1 damage to every squadron in arc, ace or non.

I guess you could do Warlord with Kallus but that's also janky.

Nebulon-B Escort Frigate. Either as a Yavaris add-on for extra flak muscle or with Vanguard flak build. Heavy Fire Zone and Ruthless Strategists means either it's flakking you at long and you're unengaged or it's flakking at medium or closer and gets a Toryn reroll and can Ruthless you as well if you're engaged. Add Draven I suppose if you really want to. It's only really appealing in a Y-Wing-heavy fleet but it can get some serious work done against other squad fleets and if the other guy doesn't have squads then it's a carrier, basically, and your 8+ Y-Wings just go to town.

The occasional ISD-II doesn't really tend to prioritize a turbolaser upgrade and I suppose it could be useful there.

Otherwise it's basically binder fodder. I'm not expecting to see much of it at all but in the right fleets it could be okay.

Why not just use ruthless strategists if you have that many b wings? Only real use of HFZ I can think of is on an Assault Annhilator ultra squad hater or on Warlord.

It seems niche, but Yavaris seems to be its home to me. Near Home one (the title), you have about a 60% Chance of putting damage on a scatter ace at long range. Not stellar, but if it’s cheap it helps you win the squad battle faster to get bombers on target.

6 hours ago, antisocialmunky said:

Why not just use ruthless strategists if you have that many b wings? Only real use of HFZ I can think of is on an Assault Annhilator ultra squad hater or on Warlord.

I would only use it with Ruthless Strategists, where you desperately need extra damage to squads and recoup the opportunity cost in efficient damage to ships (TIE Bombers, Scurrgs or Y-wings, anyone?)

Not worth an SSD or Warlord slot, definitely not worth taking without squads. That's 0-1 extra turns of flak that could have been H9s.

The only ship I see it worth it on is the Neb.

It must be really cheap to put it on a bigger ship considering the opportunity cost. The Mark as the biggest I would consider.

16 hours ago, The Jabbawookie said:

I would only use it with Ruthless Strategists

You can't use it with RS.

15 minutes ago, Formynder4 said:

You can't use it with RS.

But you lead the first long range shots with it then when they close you just RS them. Basically it buys you another turn of flak or multiple turns if they don’t want to close into RS range. Not sure if that’s good but that’s how I see the combo.

Auto include on an AF2A...

But in seriousness I could maybe see it on a Hammerhead Scout. I believe it's the cheapest way to get it on the table. It can be a dedicated flak boat, especially if Toryn is floating around for those sweet blue rerolls when the squads are in medium range.

I might stick this on a Neb-B or Afk Mk II if Home One is also around. Start pelting those Scatter Aces at Long...and I guess you could add Draven in for a Blue or Black against specific squad builds.

I guess it was too OP to change Black die, even to Blue because the Cymoon or MC80L could combo HFZ with LTT and get 4-6 die against one squad (2 for armament, 2 for LTT, 1 for Kallus/Draven if applicable, 1 for CF dial if applicable)

yikes.

11 hours ago, eliteone said:

I might stick this on a Neb-B or Afk Mk II if Home One is also around. Start pelting those Scatter Aces at Long...and I guess you could add Draven in for a Blue or Black against specific squad builds.

I guess it was too OP to change Black die, even to Blue because the Cymoon or MC80L could combo HFZ with LTT and get 4-6 die against one squad (2 for armament, 2 for LTT, 1 for Kallus/Draven if applicable, 1 for CF dial if applicable)

yikes.

That would make it feel like a truly heavy fire zone though! Like that every weapon in that capital ship was throwing everything I had into Maarek’s path.

Although I agree with you that one-shoting generics or putting 3-4 damage onto Maarek at longe range was probably the reason it’s blue only.

On 12/12/2019 at 4:03 PM, Formynder4 said:

You can't use it with RS.

Edit: never mind