800pts on half the board.

4 hours ago, flatpackhamster said:

800pts on half the board.

I had some tough choices as first player. He brought a solid fighter wing, so I couldn't take fighter ambush, and surprise attack would have meant Thrawn would be dead by round 3. So I went with superior positions. I corner deployed to cover one flank. He stacked up on me. lol The whole game played out on 3x3 lol

does it come down to super-activations and super-focus-fire? I don't find that fun.

Would putting more obstacles break the blobs up more? (Also considering rules-testing squadrons take 1 damage when voluntarily moved onto non-healing-obstacles)

This made my day

3 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

does it come down to super-activations and super-focus-fire? I don't find that fun.

Would putting more obstacles break the blobs up more? (Also considering rules-testing squadrons take 1 damage when voluntarily moved onto non-healing-obstacles)

You could try playing it, then deciding if you like it.

I get the sense you might feel FFG is treading on your turf.

I can't speak to whether that's right or wrong, but it is a format many seem to find enjoyable. Give it a shot, house rule if you like. Whatever makes you happy.

🙂 Obligatory favorite picture:

7 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

does it come down to super-activations and super-focus-fire? I don't find that fun.

Would putting more obstacles break the blobs up more? (Also considering rules-testing squadrons take 1 damage when voluntarily moved onto non-healing-obstacles)

Not really.

Essentially, at 800 points you build a fleet around a function like usual, the difference is you then have enough points to fill out the weaknesses of the fleet and add sub functions.

Personally, when I built 800 point fleets I try to have at least 3 function specific task forces.

For instance, this fleet was designed to be a thematic representation of the 7th fleet from Rebels. To me, that ment at least 3 ISDs, the 7th fleet titles, and the Chimera had to be present. So I brought 3 ISD IIs. Considering the defensive ability of the 7th fleet title, I decided to kit the ISDs on the defensive side. The two 7th fleets got DCOs and were designated to be the forward line. The Chimera was given shields to max and kitted similarly for late game follow up.

After toggling with a few interdictor builds that used Konstantine, I switched to Thrawn and added a couple of kittens kitted to pressure tokens and strip shields.

I only had a little bit of room left so I added 2 gozzers to share tokens.

Lastly I had to figure out my squadron force. At 800 points I think it's pretty foolish to ignore the squadron game completely, but my fleet wasn't centered around pushing them, so I decided to try out the new card for swarm ties. I added a bunch of ties and a few interceptors then added reserve hangar to 4 of my ships.

This brought me to my final fleet.

Task Force 1, the ISDs, moved up with the 7th fleet 1st and chimera to follow as the main attack group.
Task Force 2, the kittens, moved up the flanks pressuring tokens and shredding shields as needed.
Task Force 3, the Gozzers, ran the rear tossing tokens and acting as respawn points for the ties.

On 2/16/2020 at 3:14 PM, flatpackhamster said:

And you still haven't worked out where they're coming from??

Well, the funny thing the first two required a lot of effort and medical help. The second two were surprises at the first opportunity.

10 hours ago, The Jabbawookie said:

You could try playing it, then deciding if you like it.

I get the sense you might feel FFG is treading on your turf.

I can't speak to whether that's right or wrong, but it is a format many seem to find enjoyable. Give it a shot, house rule if you like. Whatever makes you happy.

🙂 Obligatory favorite picture:

I do feel that for Task Force, but not for sector fleet lol. Trying to get an idea of the style before jumping in, its easily half a day or more of time commitment.

I simply didn't find waiting for super-activations and super blob focus fire to be that meaningful for fun nor strategy.

Thanks for the input

On 2/25/2020 at 11:10 AM, Blail Blerg said:

Trying to get an idea of the style before jumping in, its easily half a day or more of time commitment.

I simply didn't find waiting for super-activations and super blob focus fire to be that meaningful for fun nor strategy.

I haven't found either of these to be the case, and I think I can explicate the reasons.

Second point first: there is a lot of firepower on the table. Because of this, light skirmish ships like the CR90 that rely on avoiding the bulk of the fire have substantially reduced options for doing so, and become less viable. That means fleets tend to be overall heavier, focusing on the big cruisers and battleships. The AF2 is probably the lightest ship that I've seen do well at 800.

Squadrons also tend to be less dominant in my experience. There are a couple of reasons for this, but it mostly comes down to 1) density of incoming flak, and 2) the lower cap means they still really only can reliably take down one ship in a round, which isn't enough to build your list around at 800.

On the other hand, the large weight of fire means you also really can't afford to put all your eggs in one basket. That means you want multiple of these large ships.

All those factors combine to recalibrate the game toward multiple medium/large ships with light or moderate upgrades, possibly supported by a relatively small proportionate investment in light support ships outside the wall of battle. I usually see the ship count hover between 6 and 8; if they bring a squadron screen, it's not often substantially different from a 400-point squadron wing. Obviously this is a generalization, and there are exceptions, but this has been my broad experience with the format.

So what you end up getting is a bunch of large ships having at each other. That makes ECM virtually mandatory, especially with the absolutely brutal scaling of the Home One title, so you pretty much figure everything is going to have it. That makes the game all about multiple large shots to try and overheat braces, which is eminently achievable in the format. What you don't get a lot of is single all-in haymaker turbo-activations, because they're assuming you'll be spending that brace anyway, and thus building for multiple fairly heavy shots rather than one super-shot.

All that combines to go back and inform the first point: you're not seeing a lot more activations on the table--maybe +2 or 3 relative a normal game. You're just seeing those activations taking the form of bigger ships. And that huge weight of fire means things will often start dying with a quickness by late 2/early 3. My 800 point games are usually substantially pared down, if not detemined, by the end of round 3.

The increased activation count does increase the game time, but not nearly as much as you'd expect. In my experience, it adds maybe a half hour or so to the game length, maybe an hour if one player hasn't played the format much yet.

TL;DR: 3-4 Large + (2-4 medium/small + squadrons || 2 Large) is sort of where I see the meta land at 800 (SSDs aside). Because stuff dies fast, it doesn't take much longer than a 400.

11 minutes ago, Ardaedhel said:

TL;DR: 3-4 Large + (2-4 medium/small + squadrons || 2 Large) is sort of where I see the meta land at 800 (SSDs aside). Because stuff dies fast, it doesn't take much longer than a 400.

This. Light ships cannot survive in the line of battle, so they just don't appear much. An MSU at 800 points is going to have a lot of problems. But the Corvettes and light frigates get a good "flanking" role as long as they deploy late. I've used 200 points of CRs at 800 + for activation advantage and end-run moves quite happily.

I see. Thanks @Ardaedhel for the insight.

Are SSDs a big deal/common in 600-800?

Is there any change you would make after trying for a few games to make small ships more viable at 600-800? (I will try it first without any changes, but I am looking for formats that improve diversity)
It seems like at the current moment, pure-MSU, lots of small ships isn't good at all at 400 nor at 600-800. (And arguably, without a large ship half rule, not particularly great at 200pts either)