On 1/5/2020 at 8:50 AM, Irate Pooka said:

As Dras points out: so if it's just Cracken, the attack is obstructed and no extra red die. But if the attack is obstructed by an Asteroid Field or another ship as well as Cracken or EWS or some other card effect, then the attack is NOT obstructed, and the extra red die is added.

But isn't the attack still obstructed, only it's "instead of removing a die add a die" - it doesnt change the state of obstruction on the rule only what to do if an attack is obstructed.

17 hours ago, eliteone said:

But isn't the attack still obstructed, only it's "instead of removing a die add a die" - it doesnt change the state of obstruction on the rule only what to do if an attack is obstructed.

Romodi's card explicitly states that the effect takes place "if the attack is obstructed by a ship or obstacle". Then it clarifies that if that happens, the effect takes place even if its obstructed by a card effect.

1 hour ago, eliteone said:

But isn't the attack still obstructed, only it's "instead of removing a die add a die" - it doesnt change the state of obstruction on the rule only what to do if an attack is obstructed.

You're right on that. The attack is still obstructed. Disengaged Fire Control damage card will ruin Romodi's day.

1 hour ago, ovinomanc3r said:

You're right on that. The attack is still obstructed. Disengaged Fire Control damage card will ruin Romodi's day.

Yes, thank you for the clarification: I misspoke. I was thinking of ability when I said obstruction. Apologies!

5 hours ago, JauntyChapeau said:

Just out of curiosity, since my initial post got a lot of 'confused googly eye' reactions, why do people seem to think that Raddus is overpowered enough to deserve a nerf? HAS he been winning/top 4ing big Organized Play tournaments and I've just been missing it?

6 hours ago, LordCola said:

Posting that multiple times doesnt make it more true. In our area, NebB is organizing an annual Armada Tournament. One of the best players thought about Raddus the same as you do and to proof his point he took a Raddus Bomb list and played it to proof how easy it was to win with it.

he lost with it, he might at that point make the cut pending the 6th game but usually he is among the top players. He changed his opponion about Raddus (after having actually played him a bit) to: Raddus can be a strong commander but he is in no way an auto win or overpowered. (The player in question still doent like Raddus however. Here is his geman blog in reverse game order https://sailormeni.wordpress.com/category/sm-geek/armada/)

Raddus has not dominated tournaments, I think some people dont like him because he is frustrating to play against and may not be the best game design from a game enjoyment perspective. Game balance-wise he was fine.

On 1/3/2020 at 4:21 PM, JauntyChapeau said:

Is it? I don't think Raddus has every really been that good. He certainly hasn't been taking Organized Play events by storm.

14 hours ago, JauntyChapeau said:

Just out of curiosity, since my initial post got a lot of 'confused googly eye' reactions, why do people seem to think that Raddus is overpowered enough to deserve a nerf? HAS he been winning/top 4ing big Organized Play tournaments and I've just been missing it?

He is (or better was) one of the best and most powerfull rebel admirals. Right after Rieekan (who could get another "change", if you ask me 😉 ). And he was one of the most annoying one to play against. On top of this, he is one of the easiest to play (you do not have to worry or think about deployment, just drop where you want...).

Basically he was ignoring deployment rules and was not stoppable. If the Raddus player has two transports, he was nearly able to drop anywhere he want in turn 2. It was not predictable where he comes out. And this makes him really powerfull. The problem is, that the opponent has to play totally different (this is not the bad part!), but in a way the game is annoying.

I would not even say he was nerfed this bad. He got 3 changes:
One clarification: Raddus does not work with the Starhawk or any huge ship that might come out. This is fine, as the Starhawk came out after Raddus. It would be different when it was the other way around.
One boost: distance 1-2 instead of only distance 1. This is nice, but because the distance 2 is not this big, the change is not such a big deal (would be way more extreme with distance 1-5 or medium range).
One nerf: only works from flagship. This is not even a problem for any of the lists, that used a large ship as drop. And it even allows total new fleets (MC75 with Profundity got a huge boost).

This "nerf" is even only bad for a handfull of fleets. Basically these with a lifeboat (CR90 with Raddus flying around the edge that is not killable) and 2-4 small ships as "anchors" to drop the big ship. If the opponent is not able to kill all the small ships, the Raddus drop will be unpredicable.
I am not sure if this was bad, but playing against such a Raddus list was always a pain and resulted in a extremly defense play from my side. And if the opponent decide to not fight, and stay out, he could do so without any chance from my to do something against it (it really only happend once). This might not even be the reason for this nerf, but it was always a problem.

12 hours ago, ovinomanc3r said:

You're right on that. The attack is still obstructed. Disengaged Fire Control damage card will ruin Romodi's day.

I had that on my first Romodi/Onager Game. Frustrating!

57 minutes ago, Tokra said:

This "nerf" is even only bad for a handfull of fleets. Basically these with a lifeboat (CR90 with Raddus flying around the edge that is not killable) and 2-4 small ships as "anchors" to drop the big ship. If the opponent is not able to kill all the small ships, the Raddus drop will be unpredicable.
I am not sure if this was bad, but playing against such a Raddus list was always a pain and resulted in a extremly defense play from my side.

In a certain way it is always predictable as you want to take out a ship as a main goal (carrier for Aces, biggest ship from the opponent). The problem for me as Raddus always was a list with squadrons, as you can block the deployment zone easy if you know what the Raddus is up for. And it was always a dice race to drop in front of an ISD or near a good bomber list. It had always pros and cons and for me it was okay. It was a fun way to play as I like that asynchronus gameplay. Now he is a Commander that only has a drop zone near the flagship, which is okay for some Profundity lists, but now it is highly predictable. There are always lists where you have to adapt (like playing against an SSD) and thats ok for me, that makes Armada less generic.

Sloane is a much more painful opponent to play against, kill the crit rerolls and she is okay.

7 hours ago, RapidReload said:

Posting that multiple times doesnt make it more true.

Right you are. But that was not why I posted that.

The intention of my post was to make clear that you don't geht to post "why is no one replying to my statement and instead only giving me confused emoji reactions" when there is an answer to your post that you haven't even replied to.

7 hours ago, RapidReload said:

In our area, NebB is organizing an annual Armada Tournament. One of the best players thought about Raddus the same as you do and to proof his point he took a Raddus Bomb list and played it to proof how easy it was to win with it.

he lost with it, he might at that point make the cut pending the 6th game but usually he is among the top players.

Nice anecdote. Allow me to raise my own: I have a friend that I would generally consider a worse player than me. I can consistently beat him, except for when he plays Raddus. In that case his win rate against me suddenly goes through the roof. Now maybe I am just bad when it comes to playing against Raddus. But the same thing also occur in tournaments. Usually I rank higher than him in tournaments we participate in, except for when he plays Raddus. With Raddus he consistently ranks higher than me in tournaments.

7 hours ago, RapidReload said:

Raddus has not dominated tournaments, I think some people dont like him because he is frustrating to play against and may not be the best game design from a game enjoyment perspective.

Isn't that reason enough to change him? I agree. As stated before, I don't think he is overpowered in higher tier play but man is he not fun to play against. I love this game. I love playing everything and I love playing against everything, with one exception, Raddus. Games against Raddus are always (for me) significantly less fun.

3 hours ago, spike2109 said:

In a certain way it is always predictable as you want to take out a ship as a main goal (carrier for Aces, biggest ship from the opponent).

Yeah, it is usually predictable which ship he wants to attack, that still only leaves a literal infinite amount of attack angles for him to choose.

3 hours ago, spike2109 said:

The problem for me as Raddus always was a list with squadrons, as you can block the deployment zone easy

This is a statement I always hear but in reality this has always turned out to be false. I love playing LFC but if Raddus has 2 or 3 "spotter" ships they can consistently surround their desired target in a way that there are soooooooooo many good drop position that you can't even begin to block them all with your squads.

3 hours ago, spike2109 said:

Sloane is a much more painful opponent to play against

I get that Sloane can be a painful opponent to play against. The difference is that Sloane just makes squads (a normal game mechanic) stronger, whereas Raddus completely bypasses the most fundamental game mechanic, movement and positioning. I am not defending Sloane here, I am just saying why I think Raddus is so much worse than Sloane.

7 minutes ago, LordCola said:

Now maybe I am just bad when it comes to playing against Raddus. But the same thing also occur in tournaments.

Because you play a list that is good for a Raddus player. Every list has a weak spot. An ISD with less squads is a good target

7 minutes ago, LordCola said:

This is a statement I always hear but in reality this has always turned out to be false. I love playing LFC but if Raddus has 2 or 3 "spotter" ships they can consistently surround their desired target in a way that there are soooooooooo many good drop position that you can't even begin to block them all with your squads.

How can it always be false when I as a Raddus player share that as my experience from tournaments? I have to drop in worse spots if the opponent is clever. If I wait until round 3 or 4 before I drop my ships for the drop may be gone. That's true. All of it!

2 minutes ago, spike2109 said:

Because you play a list that is good for a Raddus player. Every list has a weak spot. An ISD with less squads is a good target

That's a possibility I raised:

15 minutes ago, LordCola said:

Now maybe I am just bad when it comes to playing against Raddus.

But me playing bad against Raddus does not explain why he also wins unusually many tournament games with him.

5 minutes ago, spike2109 said:

How can it always be false when I as a Raddus player share that as my experience from tournaments? I have to drop in worse spots if the opponent is clever.

If I play an ISD and there is a CR90 on both sides of my ship in my experience so far my 8 squads where never enough to block all good drop positions. The funny thing is that Raddus doesn't even need a good drop position. If Raddus just drops a Profundity somewhere so that it can get a double arc and also unloads a Hammerhead at close range those two ships will in a single turn destroy a completely undamaged Motti ECM ISD. That is really frustrating. So if you play against Raddus the game is usually over if he manages to get 2 CR90 around your big ship. And getting 2 CR90s in those positions is not exactly difficult.

16 minutes ago, LordCola said:

If Raddus just drops a Profundity somewhere so that it can get a double arc and also unloads a Hammerhead at close range those two ships will in a single turn destroy a completely undamaged Motti ECM ISD. That is really frustrating.

He has to drop it close so that you can't escape. If you get out with Nav 3 and with no black attack range left ... there will not enough damage to get through (and no APT). Or you place your Demo near than the Mc75 would also get destroyed, bad trade for Raddus. The only setup where a bad positioning is ok is with a Liberty drop behind the ISD.

I can only suggest to try a good Raddus list yourself, you will see it is not always so easy as presented by you ...

10 minutes ago, spike2109 said:

Or you place your Demo near than the Mc75 would also get destroyed, bad trade for Raddus.

Wait, what? Raddus trades a MC75 for an ISD and that is a bad trade? You do know that the ISD is the more expensive ship, right? And on top of that, the ISD is going to be the imperial players flagship while Raddus is not on the MC75. Trading that MC75 for a flagship ISD would be an amazing trade for Raddus.

18 minutes ago, LordCola said:

Wait, what? Raddus trades a MC75 for an ISD and that is a bad trade? You do know that the ISD is the more expensive ship, right? And on top of that, the ISD is going to be the imperial players flagship while Raddus is not on the MC75. Trading that MC75 for a flagship ISD would be an amazing trade for Raddus.

Going on the example with the profundity drop (where the HH dies most of the time) it's not even a 50/50 trade. And you want to win without loosing it so you have to keep the ISD in double arc. There is no amazing in a 6:5 win.

I’m kinda surprised at a lot of the “he can drop anywhere so how can I predict where Raddus comes in?”

Sure, there is an infinite amount of placement options... in a very finite area of good placements.

The Raddus drop needs to do all of a few things:

1) Land where activating second isn’t going to allow the opponent to get away.

2) Land where the Raddus drop isn’t getting double arced.

3) Land where the ship can trade up.

4) Occur before the flagship dies.

The amount of smart places to deploy that Raddus drop isn’t that big of an area. I’ve played him a lot and dropped quite a few different ship variants. The windows where Raddus wants to drop that ship really aren’t that big.

Pause between rounds on a league/free play night, walk around the table, and pretend to be the Raddus player. If you know you opponent, even take the time to try placing the Raddus ship yourself (before removing it and letting your opponent do the actual drop) and work out where the “good” places to drop it are. It’s a smaller window than you’d think

I have to agree with @LordCola about blocking Raddus drop with squadrons is (was) more difficult by far than the harm a "bad" drop may do onto Raddus strategy.

Once Profundity is out you may still block your opponent's way out with the hh and/or those cr90 that you don't need anymore. And most of the time you don't even have to as the speed and other factors like ship base size allow you to let it go without actually going anywhere.

1 hour ago, ovinomanc3r said:

Once Profundity is out you may still block your opponent's way out with the hh and/or those cr90 that you don't need anymore.

Bold of you to assume it will live long enough when you're fighting something you don't want to just block with Profundity.

1 hour ago, The Jabbawookie said:

Bold of you to assume it will live long enough when you're fighting something you don't want to just block with Profundity.

It doesn't matter too much. It already activated and the target is not going anywhere anyways.

2 hours ago, Church14 said:

The amount of smart places to deploy that Raddus drop isn’t that big of an area. I’ve played him a lot and dropped quite a few different ship variants. The windows where Raddus wants to drop that ship really aren’t that big.

This is the way!

Just now, ovinomanc3r said:

It doesn't matter too much. It already activated and the target is not going anywhere anyways.

I mean that non-Rieekan dead things don't block, because they're gone.

Have to say, this thread (on top of X-Wing getting an updated RRG again ) does remind me how painful it is not to have an updated RRG in this game.

I mean, isn't it a bit ridiculous that we've had [Contain] defense tokens in the game since wave 2 , and STILL we have to tote along a binder of product-specific rules because it's not defined in the RRG?

8 minutes ago, xanderf said:

Have to say, this thread (on top of X-Wing getting an updated RRG again ) does remind me how painful it is not to have an updated RRG in this game.

I mean, isn't it a bit ridiculous that we've had [Contain] defense tokens in the game since wave 2 , and STILL we have to tote along a binder of product-specific rules because it's not defined in the RRG?

You think THAT is ridiculous? 😁

34 minutes ago, Drasnighta said:

You think THAT is ridiculous? 😁

Just one item in a long line of Armada-related ridiculousness...

Other than what's in the forum thread, you need 4 documents for all the normal Armada rules; the Rules Reference, the FAQ, the SSD rule leaflet and the RitR book (although maybe that misses the Experimental Retrofit definition). With Wave 8 you'll need 1 more document for all the rules; the Onager rule leaflet. For tournaments you also need the Tournament Rules.

That sounds like a lot, but it really isn't. I've just got into Legion; the Learn to Play booklet for that is twice as long as the entire Armada Rules Reference. The Legion Rules Reference currently stands at 82 pages, to Armada's 16, plus 19 for the FAQ.

Sure, it would be great to have a single document with all the rules in (and hopefully we'll get that later this year, with Clone Wars), but one thing I love about Armada is how few rules it needs; most of the complexity comes from the cards, not rules. I'd rather have a few rules scattered across a few pieces of paper than a lot of rules in one. Provided someone at an event has all the paperwork (around here that tends to be me), you're fine.

Armada follows the model of included rules, too.

Each expansion is self contained and only requires you to have the core set as well, for both equipment and rules.

You shouldn’t have anything on your side you don’t have the rules for, basically - it’s why the tournament regulations state that SECOND PLAYER provides all obstacles to be used - so you don’t end up having an objective you don’t have the equipment for, because you haven’t been able to purchase it.