1 hour ago, Biophysical said:

I've only played Nantex with lower initiative on Hyperspace, so not quite the same.

As per arc spreading you are wrong. Spreading ships does not mean spreading arcs. You can have ships in different places with arcs converged on a a single area. With 6 potential targets, you're not worried about having an ace dodge out of all 3 arcs.

I'm not saying that this would solve your problem. Might just be a bad matchup, but the picture you showed seems suboptimal for how I would attack the Nantex while moving first.

Someone wrote an interesting article about that very topic!

https://starfightermafia.blogspot.com/2019/08/article-12-dispersed-jousting.html?m=1

1 hour ago, Biophysical said:

You can have ships in different places with arcs converged on a a single area.

Kill box? (n00b still learning the jargon)

1 minute ago, Spinland said:

Kill box? (n00b still learning the jargon)

Imagine every one of your ships firing arcs was glowing on the board in front of the ship (like in Tabletop Simulator). If the board got darker for every arc overlapped in a spot you can really see the killboxes.

A killbox is where you have a bunch of firing arcs overlapping a specific area. If something lands in that area (box) it will probably die (get killed).

So that's a valid term for the condition described in the text I quoted?

3 minutes ago, Spinland said:

So that's a valid term for the condition described in the text I quoted?

Yes

Hyperspace only. 3 Cheers for the EDF!

200 Scum v 61 CIS


185 FO vs 118 CIS


95 CIS Swarm vs 34 CIS Bugs

21 minutes ago, Boom Owl said:

Hyperspace only. 3 Cheers for the EDF!

Oh man, I love this but it hurts both my brain and my eyes.

52 minutes ago, Boom Owl said:

Hyperspace only. 3 Cheers for the EDF!

EDF! EDF! EDF!

2 hours ago, dezzmont said:

EDF! EDF! EDF!

5 hours ago, Boom Owl said:

Hyperspace only.

There are barely any bullseye shots, which means hyperspace or extended does not matter.

Also illustrates how much Spamtex needs bullseye, and how they can't just joust using their 2dice turrets

58 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

Also illustrates how much Spamtex needs bullseye, and how they can't just joust using their 2dice turrets

I think the question is how many bullseyes do they need to land, and how much that varies matchup by matchup.

Part of why they are scary is they don't NEED to bullseye to hurt just because the list has access to I-killing on many ships and they got 12 red dice without the bullseye which is respectable, and then they can do acey stuff on top. So they can play it by ear turn by turn if they want to joust or be ace-ish. So I think its a mistake to say they 'need' the bullseye. Hitting the bullseye 50% of the time for example pushes them to being 15 red dice, which is on par with 5X. Assuming you get free damage via arc dodges that you wouldn't otherwise get pushes this higher because you can kiiiinda evaluate an arc dodge turn as that ship getting to get an extra attack in a sense down the road.

They definitely make a great case for why 'labbing' a matchup can be deceptive though. I suspect we won't really know exactly what we are dealing with for a bit. But I do agree that we can probably call it early that it is going to be, paraphrasing, 'Rotten Food.' We are just dissecting if we can try to brush off the moldy bits or if it is gonna give us botulism and kill us.

26 minutes ago, dezzmont said:

I think the question is how many bullseyes do they need to land, and how much that varies matchup by matchup.

As long as that's >0 they need the bullseye.

1 minute ago, GreenDragoon said:

As long as that's >0 they need the bullseye.

So your saying a Nantex list will lose if it misses the bullseye even once?

5 minutes ago, dezzmont said:

So your saying a Nantex list will lose if it misses the bullseye even once?

No

e: You turned "needs to land more than zero" into "cannot afford to miss a single one". So not only is it not what I'm saying, it's the complete opposite of what I said.

17 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

No

Cool. So what is the threshold on how many they can miss? 50% seems like it may be too few, as that still is a pretty extreme amount of firepower at 18 red a turn, which is more than 8 droids despite having I-kills and arc dodges. Maybe they can afford to miss 66%, that is still 16 dice before range 1 bonuses? That seems like a relevant consideration considering trying to get those/deny those has a positional cost and understanding how important it is.

Judging by some (anecdotal) play evidence, seems like its extremely useful, but not critical to go for every turn. Which makes sense, the arc dodge is almost certainly more valuable than the bullseye, after all, because an arc dodge gives that ship an infinite ratio of outgoing damage compared to incoming damage.

19 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

e: You turned "needs to land more than zero" into "cannot afford to miss a single one". So not only is it not what I'm saying, it's the complete opposite of what I said.

I misunderstood what you meant by this and thought you were talking about range for some reason? So that is sincerely my bad. It should have been obvious by context.

Still, that is literally semantics. When people say 'they don't NEED the bullseye' they are saying 'just because you are out of bullseye doesn't mean your safe.' Obviously the bullseye matters in the sense it matters it exists, but I don't think that is an observation that contributes much, especially when those gifs aren't uh... 'indicative of potential Nantex tournament performance' for other reasons.

Not to diminish Owl's efforts to defeat the bug menace of course, a well earned victory!

How many bullseyes they need to land is going to depend entirely on the match up and variance. That they have it, and can ofver varying devrees of punishment with it, is the swing.

In purely average terms, dice, opposing HP, ship count, all that unaverageable stuff, I think I'd want to be getting 2 of my bullseyes in play per turn. Greater than that- win more. Less than that- I might need to do some fancy flying to tease out a strong end game.

They obviously don't need 6 bullseyes on target all the time, but that pool of win more is a good deal deeper than most lists. What it gives them is flexibility, which is a big deal.

Obviously in HS, they have less power in it and it becomes a more even thing. But can we keep in mind Extended could use balancimg too, please?

Playing against it, I'm flanking and pulling bullseyes aside. Putting rocks in the lanes and engaging on the turns. Having to avoid 4 bullseyes a turn to keep the game open feels like a lot of work.

On the flip side, I'm forcing you to avoid 3 aggressive bullseyes in order to swing 3 onto you from wider positions, 1 of those you may be able to avoid. Avoiding all 3 should put you in line with the aggressive lot.. Doesn't sound that hard.

Clearly I'm just making this up, but still.

26 minutes ago, Cuz05 said:

that pool of win more is a good deal deeper than most lists.

This is it, exactly this

On 9/15/2020 at 9:38 PM, Cloaker said:

that's started the rabbit hole. is 5 a swarm? probably not--but it's certainly a lot more models on tables than before, maybe more now than at anytime since the game began 6 years ago? With non AG3 synergistic Rebels it's moar arcs and time on target against them in said lower ship counts, and they suffer exponentially more when losing a ship in the scrum. Buncha AG3 mooks handling the Rebs 3-4 attacks on average, seems like diminishing returns.

but what do I know, I'm the guy who flies 2 WSFs with Wedge sometimes

I think FFG's big mistake was assuming the popularity of Rebel beef lists last year was due to them being OP, rather than it was the only competitive list for the second most popular faction.

Granted Leia needed a nerf, as 1 point was ridiculous, but they nerfed every element of the standard list (Wedge, Cassian, Leia, named B-Wings) when they didn't really need to (bar Leia). If they want more variation among the Rebel lists, they should have made the disproportionate amount of trash pilits and chassis in the faction viable.

12 hours ago, Boom Owl said:

Hyperspace only. 3 Cheers for the EDF!

200 Scum v 61 CIS


185 FO vs 118 CIS


95 CIS Swarm vs 34 CIS Bugs

Did Grievious do anything other than gifting CIS opponent points in those 3 games?

12 hours ago, Boom Owl said:

Hyperspace only. 3 Cheers for the EDF!

Honest question: Did you play them against yourself? I guess not because you wouldn't be that bad with CIS.

scum game, turn 2: why no banks and proper range control? Turn 3 has a couple of good repo options and none are taken. Particularly the one nantex who bumped and dies could have dodged an arc and helped to remove a tie.

But if you have only seen games like that then I understand where you're coming from. You should also understand that such games were not enough to win two events.

I’ve not followed most of this but in those animated games the Nantex were being flown very very badly, I think.

Right now people are taking three solutions to nantex that are basically too easy to be true:

1) "I just need to move after them and I win" - no, they're ridiculously good blockers with turrets. Moving after them is better than moving before them but they beat 90% of things that move after them too.
2) "I just need more beeft" - no, they're flinging INSANE offense, you can't repel it. It's like jousting 6 Jumpmasters in first edition.
3) "I'll just alpha strike them down" - no, 3 agility is too hard to reliably punch through. It's hard to kill one, you definitely won't kill two, and you'll be left with 5 angry Nantex who hurt you more than you hurt them

Any solution to Nantex that involves the word 'just' is onto a losing track. If they were beaten by 'just' doing any one thing they wouldn't have the crazy win record they have now.

The key word is 'and'. As in, "I need to do this AND that"

13 minutes ago, Stay OT Leader said:

The key word is 'and'. As in, "I need to do this AND that"

Exactly.

Probably i5-6 (or i4 with bid) and alpha strike - or something similar to alpha strike like Dash/Rey.

Imperial looks most promising to me with high initiative, force, and ships like Redline/Deathrain/ Vynder. Scum should also do ok in principle.

I still suspect that the third option besides high i and alphastrike is massed agi3, which gives FO and Scum more options.

One thing I found usually overlooked is the sheer physical mat presence of 6 nantex. Add obstacles to the equation and a ship moving before them is left with almost no option that allow it to do an action and that's without even taking into consideration how easily nantex can arcdodge.

After the first engagement it's usually a lose lose situation for any ship moving first, it can't even relay on the usual safety net of provoking e a bump to avoid at least a shot cause the nantex would just take the 3 unmodded turret dice while taking none in exchance

We’ve had this discussion elsewhere but I don’t think High-I alpha strike cuts it. Vs a focused 3 agility target the premium you’ve paid for that high-I, high-mod, high dice attack is not rewarded highly enough. I don’t think you can spend 60-70pts on a Redline and expect to trade that ship for 2 whole Nantex, which is what you’d need to do to even get on par.

Move after them AND move in unpredictable ways they can’t block AND hit hard while you’re doing it. I think that’s the recipe that has led so many players to Dash, and it’s not a recipe many squads can apply.