Would it be worth it to get 2 Onagers? .....an, if so, does anyone have a list put together that has 2 in it .... ????

5 hours ago, Kramerr said:

Would it be worth it to get 2 Onagers? .....an, if so, does anyone have a list put together that has 2 in it .... ????

I think there’s a good list to be made with two Onagers, yes. Can’t say I’ve cracked the code yet myself, but it seems totally viable.

You can put together a pretty decent OTB for around 130 points, give or take. Romodi is a great Commander for them, and he’s dirt cheap, so that right there is about 310 for Romodi and two well-outfitted Testbeds. 1-2 other (probably small) ships, and maybe a token squadron presence, or a squadless build, and there ya go.

You could strip the OTBs down a bit, maybe get away with 115 points per, and have a bit more room for other stuff, or use OSDs and ALL THE UPGRADES, and probably still have a viable list with very few activations.

I’ve even considered picking up a third, and seeing if three Testbeds with minimal upgrades could run under Darth Vader and do alright, but that seems pretty extreme.

Fun fact : I made a "theory" list with 2 onagers (only got one) 2 days ago!

It's far from being perfect. The idea is to have 2 "barebone" onagers, and one "brawler" ship, with the bare minimum squadron coverage. Screed helps with fixing dice. And there is even a small bid to take first players on maxed out lists.

The isssue is: VSD are not great brawlers. I find them to be less tanky than what they promise... but they can pack a hidden punch with D-caps.

Squadrons could be better (Ciena / Valen or Ciena / Tel for 1 to 4 more points)

Twonager
Author: Coranhann

Faction: Galactic Empire
Points: 394/400

Commander: Admiral Screed

Assault Objective: Station Assault
Defense Objective: Contested Outpost
Navigation Objective: Solar Corona

Onager-class Testbed (96 points)
- Strategic Adviser ( 4 points)
- Ordnance Experts ( 4 points)
- Orbital Bombardment Particle Cannons ( 5 points)
= 109 total ship cost

[ flagship ] Onager-class Testbed (96 points)
- Admiral Screed ( 26 points)
- Ordnance Experts ( 4 points)
- Orbital Bombardment Particle Cannons ( 5 points)
= 131 total ship cost

Victory II-Class Star Destroyer (85 points)
- Harrow ( 3 points)
- Expert Shield Tech ( 5 points)
- Gunnery Team ( 7 points)
- Engine Techs ( 8 points)
- Disposable Capacitors ( 3 points)
- Spinal Armament ( 9 points)
- Leading Shots ( 4 points)
= 124 total ship cost

2 YV-666s ( 30 points)
= 30 total squadron cost

1 hour ago, Coranhann said:

Fun fact : I made a "theory" list with 2 onagers (only got one) 2 days ago!

It's far from being perfect. The idea is to have 2 "barebone" onagers, and one "brawler" ship, with the bare minimum squadron coverage. Screed helps with fixing dice. And there is even a small bid to take first players on maxed out lists.

The isssue is: VSD are not great brawlers. I find them to be less tanky than what they promise... but they can pack a hidden punch with D-caps.

Squadrons could be better (Ciena / Valen or Ciena / Tel for 1 to 4 more points)

Twonager
Author: Coranhann

Faction: Galactic Empire
Points: 394/400

Commander: Admiral Screed

Assault Objective: Station Assault
Defense Objective: Contested Outpost
Navigation Objective: Solar Corona

Onager-class Testbed (96 points)
- Strategic Adviser ( 4 points)
- Ordnance Experts ( 4 points)
- Orbital Bombardment Particle Cannons ( 5 points)
= 109 total ship cost

[ flagship ] Onager-class Testbed (96 points)
- Admiral Screed ( 26 points)
- Ordnance Experts ( 4 points)
- Orbital Bombardment Particle Cannons ( 5 points)
= 131 total ship cost

Victory II-Class Star Destroyer (85 points)
- Harrow ( 3 points)
- Expert Shield Tech ( 5 points)
- Gunnery Team ( 7 points)
- Engine Techs ( 8 points)
- Disposable Capacitors ( 3 points)
- Spinal Armament ( 9 points)
- Leading Shots ( 4 points)
= 124 total ship cost

2 YV-666s ( 30 points)
= 30 total squadron cost

You could skip the Vic-II and put in Demolisher. That would give you enough room to slightly improve the fighter screen, add a second Weapons Team (to improve those reds) on both OTBs, and probably get a healthy bid for first (I would only follow the Demolisher plan if you include at least a 10-15 point bid).

I like what Demolisher brings to the table in double-OTB; it provides a real deterrent to enemies who want to close fast (and given the punishment the OTBs can spit out at range, I think you’re gonna get charged frequently). You just have to resist the urge to charge Demo in too early!

Sloanager Doublemint (398/400)
Empire - Author: Cpt ObVus

Commander: Admiral Sloane

Objectives: Surprise Attack, Planetary Ion Cannon, Superior Positions

[flagship]
Onager-class Testbed (96)
- Admiral Sloane (24)
- Orbital Bombardment Particle Cannons (5)
- Veteran Gunners (5)
= 130 total points

Onager-class Testbed (96)
- Rakehell (4)
- Orbital Bombardment Particle Cannons (5)
- Veteran Gunners (5)
= 110 total points

Quasar Fire I-class Cruiser-Carrier (54)
- Squall (3)
- Expanded Hangar Bay (5)
- Boosted Comms (4)
- Taskmaster Grint (5)
= 71 total points

Squadrons (87/134):
1x Captain Jonus TIE Bomber Squadron (16)
1x Saber Squadron TIE Interceptor Squadron (12)
1x Tie Interceptor Squadron (11)
1x Howlrunner Tie Fighter Squadron (16)
4x Tie Fighter Squadron (32)

Here’s something I’ve been meaning to try out. Pretty sure this isn’t fully optimized; just threw it together from concept in about twenty minutes.

The basics: Starhawks scare the willies out of me. It’s not that they’re super-dangerous, they’re just REALLY hard to kill, partially because of their high hull and shield values, and partially because they feature a boatload of defense tokens. Sustained fire from an Onager’s superweaponry can beat them up pretty badly; they’re typically too slow to evade it. TWO Onagers should be **** on them. Sloane can expedite the process by throwing waves of sacrificial TIEs at it, either to chip away at shields or (better yet) selectively fry crucial defense tokens. This is a bit of an unusual Sloane list, in that it isn’t all-in on squadrons... which was a difficult but necessary compromise. If I hit a heavy squadron opponent, I may have to play more conservatively, while my big guns blast their carriers out from under them.

The ships that keep Onagers on their toes are fast, maneuverable ships like CR90s and (especially) MC30s. I’m not too horribly worried about CR90s in this list; I think my fighters should do good work against them, and Salvo as well, if they start to get after the OTBs. MC30s should be dealt with by overlapping fields of fire, and again, using squadron attacks to rip away those defenses with Sloane.

So there’s a possible two-Onager list. Critiques welcome!

I have a 2 onagers list I'm thinking of giving a spin. Feel free to salvage what you like.

Romodi dual onager (85/400/400)

===============================

Onager-class Testbed (96 + 46: 142) + General Romodi (20) + Intel Officer (7) + Veteran Gunners (5) + Ordnance Experts (4) + Orbital Bombardment Particle Cannons (5) + Cataclysm (5)

Onager-class Testbed (96 + 21: 117) + Intel Officer (7) + Veteran Gunners (5) + Ordnance Experts (4) + Orbital Bombardment Particle Cannons (5)

Gozanti-class Cruisers (23 + 6: 29) + Reeva Demesne (4) + Comms Net (2)

Gozanti-class Cruisers (23 + 4: 27) + Hondo Ohnaka (2) + Comms Net (2)

Morna Kee (27)

Maarek Stele (21)

Colonel Jendon (20)

Ciena Ree (17)

Most Wanted

Rift Ambush

Hyperspace Migration

22 hours ago, Coranhann said:

Fun fact : I made a "theory" list with 2 onagers (only got one) 2 days ago!

It's far from being perfect. The idea is to have 2 "barebone" onagers, and one "brawler" ship, with the bare minimum squadron coverage. Screed helps with fixing dice. And there is even a small bid to take first players on maxed out lists.

The isssue is: VSD are not great brawlers. I find them to be less tanky than what they promise... but they can pack a hidden punch with D-caps.

Squadrons could be better (Ciena / Valen or Ciena / Tel for 1 to 4 more points)

Twonager
Author: Coranhann

Faction: Galactic Empire
Points: 394/400

Commander: Admiral Screed

Assault Objective: Station Assault
Defense Objective: Contested Outpost
Navigation Objective: Solar Corona

Onager-class Testbed (96 points)
- Strategic Adviser ( 4 points)
- Ordnance Experts ( 4 points)
- Orbital Bombardment Particle Cannons ( 5 points)
= 109 total ship cost

[ flagship ] Onager-class Testbed (96 points)
- Admiral Screed ( 26 points)
- Ordnance Experts ( 4 points)
- Orbital Bombardment Particle Cannons ( 5 points)
= 131 total ship cost

Victory II-Class Star Destroyer (85 points)
- Harrow ( 3 points)
- Expert Shield Tech ( 5 points)
- Gunnery Team ( 7 points)
- Engine Techs ( 8 points)
- Disposable Capacitors ( 3 points)
- Spinal Armament ( 9 points)
- Leading Shots ( 4 points)
= 124 total ship cost

2 YV-666s ( 30 points)
= 30 total squadron cost

With 124 points sunk into that vsd; I'd be tempted to swap it for an interdictor.

You could get a suppression variant with targeting scrambler & your choice of either the speed 0 one or the obstacle one, then you could stick projection experts on there & use it to throw extra shields at the OTB's whilst protecting them from rush attacks. (Other upgrades on the interdictor are definitely possible; I'm just brainstorming at this stage.)

In terms of fighter support; my shout goes out to cienna/valen:

Same price point as your YV666's & well established as one of the best fighter screens empire can get at a low cost.

21 hours ago, miedomeda said:

Romodi dual onager ( 85/400/400 )

===============================

Onager-class Testbed (96 + 46: 142) + General Romodi (20) + Intel Officer (7) + Veteran Gunners (5) + Ordnance Experts (4) + Orbital Bombardment Particle Cannons (5) + Cataclysm (5)

Onager-class Testbed (96 + 21: 117) + Intel Officer (7) + Veteran Gunners (5) + Ordnance Experts (4) + Orbital Bombardment Particle Cannons (5)

Gozanti-class Cruisers (23 + 6: 29) + Reeva Demesne (4) + Comms Net (2)

Gozanti-class Cruisers (23 + 4: 27) + Hondo Ohnaka (2) + Comms Net (2)

Morna Kee (27)

Maarek Stele (21)

Colonel Jendon (20)

Ciena Ree (17)

Most Wanted

Rift Ambush

Hyperspace Migration

I’m curious: what’s Reeva doing for you here? The ship she’s protecting isn’t really worth protecting. Besides which, if someone attacks it and hits an accuracy, it’s just as dead as it was without her, only now you gave up four more points.

On 2/29/2020 at 4:38 PM, Cpt ObVus said:

I’m curious: what’s Reeva doing for you here? The ship she’s protecting isn’t really worth protecting. Besides which, if someone attacks it and hits an accuracy, it’s just as dead as it was without her, only now you gave up four more points.

Well the reasoning behind Reeva is she's kind of a budget, reverse tua+ecm: the latter combo basically prevents death if the gozanti is attacked by only one ship, while Reeva helps when 2 or more ships are shooting the gozanti, as long as they're not getting accuracies. Plus, 4 points is not a lot.

4 hours ago, miedomeda said:

Well the reasoning behind Reeva is she's kind of a budget, reverse tua+ecm: the latter combo basically prevents death if the gozanti is attacked by only one ship, while Reeva helps when 2 or more ships are shooting the gozanti, as long as they're not getting accuracies. Plus, 4 points is not a lot.

Yep. Totally not worth it. And 4 points IS a lot to pay for a card that won’t carry its weight in the role in which you’re using it.

Think about it: to get any real value out of Reeva requires that you’re being shot by at least three enemy ships.

With Reeva: The first one fails to hit an accuracy. Ok. Scatter. Then the second targets her transport. Ready the token, Scatter again. If she gets attacked again, AND they fail to hit a third accuracy, discard it... they still need a fourth shot to kill you. But my god, they must have REALLY wanted that transport dead! And you clearly served it up on a platter if they got that many shots at it!

Without Reeva: They still need to hit you with THREE attacks in a row that all have no accuracy. That’s... pretty unlikely, unless your opponent is running nothing but black and red dice with no fixing.

But in the first scenario, with Reeva, if your opponent hits an accuracy at any point before that fourth attack (and he probably will), your transport is dead anyway, and now you’re giving him extra points for killing Reeva too? And what if he just says, “screw it, I’ll just ram it to death instead?”

Moreover: what’s Reeva protecting? You don’t even have a critical piece of tech like a Bomber Command Center on that flotilla. Let it go.

Reeva’s meant for ships that have multiple potentially life-saving tokens, to keep your defenses up so that your opponent has to hit multiple accuracies over multiple attacks to really catch you out. Putting her on a ship that gets pretty well killed with one accuracy is a bad investment.

Some context: we're talking about Reeva in a list with 2 onagers and Romodi. This means that the role of that gozanti is to 1) push squadrons 2) provide obstruction for Romodi procs. This implies that said gozanti will be, in fact, in the thick of things and with the onagers sitting back, I wouldn't be surprised if it come to a scenario where only the gozantis are in range of my opponent weapons.

While I totally get your point, and I wouldn't bother putting Reeva in any gozanti, in this specific case it makes sense to have a 4pts upgrade to somewhat boost its survivability. Also, something that I feel your post doesn't address is the effect Reeva can have over multiple turns: in fact, over 1 single turn, Reeva is only useful against the third shot without accuracies, and I can agree that is unlikely (but not unheard of anyway). But! Over multiple turns it gets much better as the second shot it takes would cause it to discard its scatter and essentially become a free kill, while with Reeva you don't have to discard the token and on the next turn the gozanti is gonna be as good as new.

So, to sum this up: you're totally right, Reeva is not a huge survivability boost, and definitely not the recipe for a standard all around gozanti. However, in this particular scenario, I can afford to spend 4 points to boost the gozanti's survivability a little and it seems to me that it makes sense doing so.

3 hours ago, miedomeda said:

Some context: we're talking about Reeva in a list with 2 onagers and Romodi. This means that the role of that gozanti is to 1) push squadrons 2) provide obstruction for Romodi procs. This implies that said gozanti will be, in fact, in the thick of things and with the onagers sitting back, I wouldn't be surprised if it come to a scenario where only the gozantis are in range of my opponent weapons.

While I totally get your point, and I wouldn't bother putting Reeva in any gozanti, in this specific case it makes sense to have a 4pts upgrade to somewhat boost its survivability. Also, something that I feel your post doesn't address is the effect Reeva can have over multiple turns: in fact, over 1 single turn, Reeva is only useful against the third shot without accuracies, and I can agree that is unlikely (but not unheard of anyway). But! Over multiple turns it gets much better as the second shot it takes would cause it to discard its scatter and essentially become a free kill, while with Reeva you don't have to discard the token and on the next turn the gozanti is gonna be as good as new.

So, to sum this up: you're totally right, Reeva is not a huge survivability boost, and definitely not the recipe for a standard all around gozanti. However, in this particular scenario, I can afford to spend 4 points to boost the gozanti's survivability a little and it seems to me that it makes sense doing so.

Sound argument. Let me know how it works!

This list has served me fairly well. I can explain every single card, but is still more than happy to take your opinions, of course:

Name: Onager x2 copy
Faction: Imperial
Commander: Admiral Motti

Assault: Surprise Attack
Defense: Fleet In Being
Navigation: Solar Corona

Onager Star Destroyer (110)
• Intel Officer (7)
• Veteran Gunners (5)
• Weapons Battery Techs (5)
• Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)
• Superheavy Composite Beam Turbolasers (7)
= 141 Points

Onager Testbed (96)
• Minister Tua (2)
• Gunnery Chief Varnillian (6)
• Orbital Bombardment Particle Cannons (5)
• Electronic Countermeasures (7)
= 116 Points

Gozanti Cruisers (23)
• Darth Vader (1)
• Comms Net (2)
= 26 Points

Raider I (44)
• Admiral Motti (24)
• Corvus (2)
= 70 Points

Gozanti Cruisers (23)
• Comms Net (2)
• Reserve Hangar Deck (3)
= 28 Points

Squadrons:
• 2 x TIE Fighter Squadron (16)
= 16 Points

Total Points: 397