I still don't understand how a flotilla can be both

A.) navigating in a direction that it can even be hit by that narrow onager extreme arc without either exposing the sides of the Onager without being sacrificial already
B.) and be the lynchpin of a rebel fleet.

Have Mc30's stopped being a thing? Yeet that torpedo monster in that 2 shield side zone and laugh in rebel First/Last double arcs? Has Lando disappeared? If that GR75 is so important why is Lando not on it? He can have all the doubles and accuracies he wants Lando's still gonna laugh.

I don't get it. The onager is more of a pest than a threat. I don't even main rebels and it's not that tough. I can think of a particular Craken list I faced before the onager even dropped that would straight LOL at it.

On 10/21/2020 at 12:10 PM, DarthRulesLawyer said:

Well, most of you are not playing against optimal Cataclysm builds. All they need to do is dial in a firepower command and roll 3 blanks + double hit + accuracy (or better). Sensor team spend a blank to get a second accuracy, Gunner Chief Varnillian to switch out a blank with a double hit. 4 hits and 2 accuracies and boom, your flotilla and all of its upgrades are gone.

And if they don't get all four they have Intel officer to take a token and make darn sure they'll get you next turn.

And not all fleets can just "split up". Your completely removing them from the meta.

Cataclysm needs banning. Everything else with the onager is probably okay.

Yeah man. You... with all respect... need more practice playing against this thing. The whole Varnillian business... where’s she just automatically getting a double red from? My experience flying both with and against Cataclysm is that it’s pretty hard to line up multiple shots with it, and if it’s busy focusing on a flotilla you’ve baited it with in the center, just launch your flankers in at high speed and wreck it. Trade that flotilla for a 150 point warship that’s probably the centerpiece of the opposing fleet. It feels good.

Which isn’t to say that the Cataclysm isn’t good! It is. But it has weaknesses, and as the opposing player, your job is to exploit them.

I’ve had great success flying Cataclysm, and also had it come up a big disappointment, as my opponent managed to arc-dodge me. I’ve also used the THREAT of the superweapon to cause my opponent to make bad choices and come in too fast, and had the Cataclysm come up big with regular non-ignition attacks and win the day. In the end, it’s a neat ship with a neat set of abilities with many strategic applications, but it’s NOT overpowered. It IS beatable. Sometimes it’s extraordinary (I’ve used it to ice a Starhawk on turn three), but mostly it’s just good.

11 hours ago, Darth Sanguis said:

I still don't understand how a flotilla can be both

A.) navigating in a direction that it can even be hit by that narrow onager extreme arc without either exposing the sides of the Onager without being sacrificial already
B.) and be the lynchpin of a rebel fleet.

Have Mc30's stopped being a thing? Yeet that torpedo monster in that 2 shield side zone and laugh in rebel First/Last double arcs? Has Lando disappeared? If that GR75 is so important why is Lando not on it? He can have all the doubles and accuracies he wants Lando's still gonna laugh.

I don't get it. The onager is more of a pest than a threat. I don't even main rebels and it's not that tough. I can think of a particular Craken list I faced before the onager even dropped that would straight LOL at it.

Furthermore, if this guy’s beating it with CRACKEN, it must be crap. Cracken’s terrible!

Cracken MSU is awesome against the Onager. Once your strikers get around to a side arc they become very safe against both the weak side arcs and salvo.

16 hours ago, Cpt ObVus said:

Furthermore, if this guy’s beating it with CRACKEN, it must be crap. Cracken’s terrible!

Them's fighting words

But seriously, as one of the resident (not particulary good, but good enough to seriously comment on the subject) cracken players, I think the two reasons cracken doesn't work right now are

a) small spam doesn't work in general RN
b)his ability has no effect on squads. If speed three or higher granted a reroll against squads, or forced the attacker to remove a die (to a minimum of one) or removed bomber or something he'd be a lot more viable.

Alrighty, on the onager. I guess I have a list of complaints:

a) "Get gud" isn't helpful advice, if you're thinking of saying "get gud" explain how you've had success with it instead, or if you don't feel like typing it all out, don't engage.
b) the 96 point version with the red cannon is significantly more cost effective than the 110 point version. I feel the 110 point version is more or less balanced. The big issue I have with the testbed is that at 96 points, you can effectively run three with two flotillas and strat advisor. While they don't have deployment advantage, it is extremely difficult to arc dodge 3 ignitions at once with small ships(unless you're running a 7 activation first activation fleet, but that's huge skew too), and generally large ships will be forced to take multiple shots.

c) corvettes cannot take that much fire from onagers. Getting hit once will either kill it, or insure that it will be killed next turn. This goes into "right now MSU in general isn't viable" but the onager makes an existing issue even worse.
d)the onager means that a very strong soft counter exists against carrier lists, particularly quasars which get murdered extremely quickly. I'm not sure it is healthy, because "getting murdered by onager" is a consideration in balancing squadron play, and only imperials have access to the onager.

It is a shame that we are under quarantine. I hope that the regional data project continues again once the vaccines are out and normal play returns. I think we will see a significant overrepresentation of the onager testbed, and I hope that the devs look at that data and decide to mildly/moderately nerf the testbed. Then again, maybe they already did in 1.5. We will see I suppose.

9 hours ago, ExplosiveTooka said:

Them's fighting words

But seriously, as one of the resident (not particulary good, but good enough to seriously comment on the subject) cracken players, I think the two reasons cracken doesn't work right now are

a) small spam doesn't work in general RN
b)his ability has no effect on squads. If speed three or higher granted a reroll against squads, or forced the attacker to remove a die (to a minimum of one) or removed bomber or something he'd be a lot more viable.

Alrighty, on the onager. I guess I have a list of complaints:

a) "Get gud" isn't helpful advice, if you're thinking of saying "get gud" explain how you've had success with it instead, or if you don't feel like typing it all out, don't engage.
b) the 96 point version with the red cannon is significantly more cost effective than the 110 point version. I feel the 110 point version is more or less balanced. The big issue I have with the testbed is that at 96 points, you can effectively run three with two flotillas and strat advisor. While they don't have deployment advantage, it is extremely difficult to arc dodge 3 ignitions at once with small ships(unless you're running a 7 activation first activation fleet, but that's huge skew too), and generally large ships will be forced to take multiple shots.

c) corvettes cannot take that much fire from onagers. Getting hit once will either kill it, or insure that it will be killed next turn. This goes into "right now MSU in general isn't viable" but the onager makes an existing issue even worse.
d)the onager means that a very strong soft counter exists against carrier lists, particularly quasars which get murdered extremely quickly. I'm not sure it is healthy, because "getting murdered by onager" is a consideration in balancing squadron play, and only imperials have access to the onager.

It is a shame that we are under quarantine. I hope that the regional data project continues again once the vaccines are out and normal play returns. I think we will see a significant overrepresentation of the onager testbed, and I hope that the devs look at that data and decide to mildly/moderately nerf the testbed. Then again, maybe they already did in 1.5. We will see I suppose.

Cracken is terrible. Leaving completely aside the fact that he doesn’t EVER help large based ships, practically reducing the fleets he’s used in to only small and medium bases, his ability then limits you to keeping your ships at speed 3+, which is terrible, because it makes them predictable and often forces you to move them faster than they oughtta be moving. And for what benefit? -1 attack die? Of the opponent’s choice? And never mind that a well-flown Romodi fleet essentially blanks Cracken’s text.

He sucks. As conceived, I think he’s pretty much in a class by himself: Commander cards which are unsalvageably awful, given any level of price adjustment. I wouldn’t use him at 20 points, because Dodonna is ALWAYS better at that range. I *might* give him a look at a price point less than 20, but it would merely be because he was the cheapest available option. At 26, he’s laughable, especially considering that Mon Mothma is considerably more powerful, at only 4 points more.

As to the Onager:

a) “Get Gud” isn’t how phrased my response, and sometimes phrasing is important. “With all respect, you need more practice against the Onager” only equates to “get gud” if you’re being unnecessarily reductionist. The OP didn’t come in saying, “Man, Cataclysm is rough. How do you beat this thing?” He came in saying, “Cataclysm is an overpowered NPE, and should be banned, this game is busted,” which is demonstrably NOT the case. I (and others) offered him a range of solutions, from bid to activation advantage to altered deployment strategies to practical strategic advice. “Get gud” was not remotely the extent of the advice given.

b) This is an interesting argument. I personally own two Onagers, and haven’t yet fielded more than one at a time. I figured two might be an interesting fleet, but three strikes me as overwhelmingly powerful when it’s in a good matchup, and horribly weak in a bad one. Never mind the fact that some of the really great Onager upgrades (like Varnillian) are unique. I dunno. I just don’t find the concept of 3 Onager Testbeds very menacing. Maybe they’re great? Show me some results, talk about some successes.

c) An intelligently-deployed Corvette will rarely be shot at by an Onager, and their Evade tokens make for rough times getting much damage to stick. But if the opponent insists upon chasing your ~50 point Corvette with their 140+ point behemoth, *you’re probably winning*. Flank ‘em with your MC30, or your GSD, or your ISD or MC80, and wreck them.

d) Quasars, especially Squall, are most important on turn one, maybe on turn two. Once they’ve thrown their squadron ball at you, Squall is pretty inconsequential; it’s done its work. And I’ll trade Squall for Cataclysm all day.

Not to state the obvious, but.....

@Cpt ObVus , you do realise that just because you have Cracken does not mean you HAVE to fly at speed 3+ right? He gives you the choice to determine what is best in any given situation. Sometimes flying slower can give better positioning and reduce incoming damage by more, whilst boosting outgoing damage.

You know Dodonna only works on crit effects right? Thats ridiculous really given how often damage is absorbed by shields. If we are going to consider commanders being worthless if they are not effective in every single moment the Dodonna has to be considered in a class of his own. Utterly garbage.

This game is nuanced, flying is nuanced, choosing to use upgrades is nuanced.

I've tried out triple Onagers, and also faced that version with 2 Gozantis and almost no upgrades. Online play is great for testing ships you don't own.

They will murderise Starhawks and other very slow, large ships.

They lose (badly) vs MC30s and CR90 spam and bombers. Their lack of dice-fixing or defensive upgrades mean they are ridiculously fragile and undependable: my poor flying meant my MC30 took 4x 8-dice Ignition attacks in the face, but got through the gauntlet without any hull damage at all. I don't recommend that method though, my opponent had blanks on half of his red dice!

Double Onager is probably a much better fleet but one is even better, allowing it's fleet to be more balanced and able to take on anything (in theory).

Generally, a CR90 will live through one Ignition attack. Flotillas won't, unless they get an accuracy - which is why I prefer Sensor Team and don't use Varnillion on my Testbed (Ordnance Experts get the other slot).

Once even one CR90 gets behind the Testbed, it will beat it. Send 2, one gets shot up badly and probably dies, the other one kills the Testbed. An MC30 laughs at it and kills it. Demolisher probably does the same, but might need to last-first it.

2 hours ago, Ginkapo said:

Not to state the obvious, but.....

@Cpt ObVus , you do realise that just because you have Cracken does not mean you HAVE to fly at speed 3+ right? He gives you the choice to determine what is best in any given situation. Sometimes flying slower can give better positioning and reduce incoming damage by more, whilst boosting outgoing damage.

You know Dodonna only works on crit effects right? Thats ridiculous really given how often damage is absorbed by shields. If we are going to consider commanders being worthless if they are not effective in every single moment the Dodonna has to be considered in a class of his own. Utterly garbage.

This game is nuanced, flying is nuanced, choosing to use upgrades is nuanced.

Dodonna is sometimes just good because he is the cheapest available option. Or at least, he was, before Agate. And of course, he’s still got a spot if you build for critical damage.

Cracken’s just bad, man. I’m sure someone... probably many people... out there have built Cracken fleets that aren’t total rubbish, but they’d be hard-pressed to convince me that the fleet is good BECAUSE of Cracken, and even harder-pressed to convince me that in most cases Mon Mothma wouldn’t fill the spot better. His ability is conditional (requiring speed 3+, doing absolutely nothing if you would otherwise have been obstructed already), disruptable, counterable (to a degree) with Romodi (a good Commander who sees a lot of play), and barely worth the points to begin with. He’s a bit like Tagge, in that, even if his ability worked reliably, I’m not certain he would be worth it. I think if there were any hope for Cracken it would be in some list that uses him instead of Mon Mothma because she literally doesn’t fit, and that four points is the difference between another crucial upgrade making the list or not. That’s a scenario I can imagine.

I’m not typically a guy who declares ANYTHING unplayable. I’m a “card optimist,” who tends to think that everything can be made to be *at least* decent, if built for correctly, but Cracken is one of those cards that I read, and immediately thought “this is not great,” then saw in action and was further unimpressed.

And I mean, maybe I’m just wrong. Maybe your Cracken fleet is absolutely killer, and I’m missing out. I just haven’t seen any strong evidence that he’s anything but binder filler.

I PERSONALLY dont care for Cracken but he has applications. He helps against Salvo, he works against Romodi if you're not using Cracken's ability (so hes not actually working against Cracken?). Cracken actually has a decent shot against him so long as he gets to speed and isnt using the rocks to protect him.

As for the "only smalls or mediums" argument, there's people who like MSU. There's dozens of us! I've flown a large like..... maybe 6 times or less this year?

I have used Cracken with some success but I admit he could do with a slight improvement. " Enemy squadrons may not reroll dice when attacking Speed 3+ small & medium ships " would be a nice addition or just a 4 point cut. Anyway here is my current list for him.

398/400, Surprise Attack , Asteroid Tactics , Infested Fields .
CR90-A, TRC, Jiana's Light, Cracken . 79
CR90-A, TRC. 51
CR90-A, TRC. 51
CR90-A, TRC. 51
GR75-T, BCC, Bright Hope, Boosted Comms. 32
Lando, Ketsu, Shara, Dutch, Gold Squadron, Rogue Squadron, 2 Lancers. 134

The CR90s dance at long range and try to get into get into the quiet firing arcs of the enemy such as flank/rear of most Imperials. Once here Chracken's obscured effects and our evades can keep us alive while we throw in double red hits from the TRCs. Let the Rogues do the work. Strong enemy squadron forces could be tricky but Surprise attack can hand out Squadron Raids an the yellow & blue objectives benefit from space slugs taking chunks out of enemy squadrons.

2 hours ago, Cpt ObVus said:

I’m not typically a guy who declares ANYTHING unplayable. I’m a “card optimist,” who tends to think that everything can be made to be *at least* decent, if built for correctly, but Cracken is one of those cards that I read, and immediately thought “this is not great,” then saw in action and was further unimpressed.

And I mean, maybe I’m just wrong. Maybe your Cracken fleet is absolutely killer, and I’m missing out. I just haven’t seen any strong evidence that he’s anything but binder filler.

I don't think anyone here has a problem with you not being impressed by him. I get it: I've built around him a bunch of times and never liked the results. But I don't think he's a commander to be dismissed out of hand. It's really difficult to gauge his impact on a game because we don't know what those obstructed dice would have been. Maybe they were already going to turn up blank. Or maybe they were critical results that would've meant the difference between life and death for that ship. We never find out.

And if a player's fleet is one that likes to fly fast anyway, spending an extra 6 points to maximize the thing they were going to do anyway makes a lot of sense to me. You mentioned Mon Mothma, and yes, I prefer her to Cracken myself. But she has her limits, too. After all, you have to have the Evade token to spend in the first place, and then you need it to not be locked down by Accuracy.

I agree with the assessment that he could use a little help against squadrons, as we well as the fact that he's situational. But you mention Dodonna as sometimes being good because he's the cheapest option (pre-Agate, as you say). Cracken is only 6 points more. And yes, maybe that buys an upgrade I want, but maybe 6 isn't enough to get me anything else I want that isn't just me spending points because I have them. And maybe I wanted to fly MSU, and my MC30s are sporting ACMs, while my CR90s aren't built for crits. I'm clearly looking to hit and run with such a fleet, so Dodonna might work fine with it. But Cracken feels like a better choice, here. He won't always work, but the intended synergy makes more sense.

Again, not saying the commander is brilliant or anything. Just saying I really think there's more to him than binder fodder. The only commander I've resigned to the binder is Konstantine. Even Tagge has surprised me a bit on the SSD. I don't love it, and he's not an auto-include. But I can see it. For me, it's Konstantine who is in a class by himself.

7 hours ago, Cpt ObVus said:

Cracken is terrible. Leaving completely aside the fact that he doesn’t EVER help large based ships, practically reducing the fleets he’s used in to only small and medium bases, his ability then limits you to keeping your ships at speed 3+, which is terrible, because it makes them predictable and often forces you to move them faster than they oughtta be moving. And for what benefit? -1 attack die? Of the opponent’s choice? And never mind that a well-flown Romodi fleet essentially blanks Cracken’s text.

He sucks. As conceived, I think he’s pretty much in a class by himself: Commander cards which are unsalvageably awful, given any level of price adjustment. I wouldn’t use him at 20 points, because Dodonna is ALWAYS better at that range. I *might* give him a look at a price point less than 20, but it would merely be because he was the cheapest available option. At 26, he’s laughable, especially considering that Mon Mothma is considerably more powerful, at only 4 points more.

As to the Onager:

a) “Get Gud” isn’t how phrased my response, and sometimes phrasing is important. “With all respect, you need more practice against the Onager” only equates to “get gud” if you’re being unnecessarily reductionist. The OP didn’t come in saying, “Man, Cataclysm is rough. How do you beat this thing?” He came in saying, “Cataclysm is an overpowered NPE, and should be banned, this game is busted,” which is demonstrably NOT the case. I (and others) offered him a range of solutions, from bid to activation advantage to altered deployment strategies to practical strategic advice. “Get gud” was not remotely the extent of the advice given.

b) This is an interesting argument. I personally own two Onagers, and haven’t yet fielded more than one at a time. I figured two might be an interesting fleet, but three strikes me as overwhelmingly powerful when it’s in a good matchup, and horribly weak in a bad one. Never mind the fact that some of the really great Onager upgrades (like Varnillian) are unique. I dunno. I just don’t find the concept of 3 Onager Testbeds very menacing. Maybe they’re great? Show me some results, talk about some successes.

c) An intelligently-deployed Corvette will rarely be shot at by an Onager, and their Evade tokens make for rough times getting much damage to stick. But if the opponent insists upon chasing your ~50 point Corvette with their 140+ point behemoth, *you’re probably winning*. Flank ‘em with your MC30, or your GSD, or your ISD or MC80, and wreck them.

d) Quasars, especially Squall, are most important on turn one, maybe on turn two. Once they’ve thrown their squadron ball at you, Squall is pretty inconsequential; it’s done its work. And I’ll trade Squall for Cataclysm all day.

If you think Cracken is terrible, I suggest practicing with him more.

See how unhelpful that is? Although I didn't mean to call you out specifically for the "Git Gud" comments, I meant in general this forum post contains a lot of this unhelpful (lack of)advice.

Cracken is not top tier, but he is no konstantine

There are a bunch of reasons to run Cracken. The overarching one is that he changes the fundamental arithmetic of the game. A Raider becomes a hammerhead, a star destroyer a liberty, a gozanti a gr-75.

a) Against large dice attacks, a full health corvette without cracken has a huge change of dying. With cracken, there is practically no chance of dying, or no chance of dying without a ram. Being able to survive allows you to get a shot, or two shots off, and maybe escape with your points. A ram means that the large is in an extremely predictable location, which allows you to decrease the offensive power going out against you, and increases your ability to get shots out on target. Also, from a efficiency of action standpoint, an ISD having to use two shots to kill corvettes as opposed to one shot, is an extremely unhappy camper.

b) once you've jumped into the side arcs(or are taking shots at long range), you have a field day. 4 dice become 3, 3 become 2, 2 become 1, 1 become 0. Reducing the dice coming in by that amount is extremely meaningful.

c) rebels at the moment primarily place their carrier force in flotillas and yavaris. All of which have 3 notches at speed 3, and all of which need to be somewhat in the thick of things in order to command squads. Cracken lets you keep your carriers alive long enough to tear through the enemy squad ball and get into the juicy ships with yavaris.

You bring up a good point about the speed three requirement, but there are two important factors:

a) you don't have to go speed three if speed three will put you in more danger

b)you're already going speed three or more to arc dodge, and also to get within striking range with ion and ordnance.

Now, onto onagers

b) We can't really see results in hard data until the competitive scene starts up again. However, triple onager is wildly seen as a pretty hard counter to Sloane Onager Squall and starhawks, two very good lists in the current meta. And it tends to suffer from very good or very poor match ups, which turns the game into rock paper scissors at list building. There is also double onager + interdictor+ grav rift objective, which makes a huge swath of the board only deployable at speed zero, meaning either you have to let them get multiple turns of shots off, or let cataclysm get some ridiculous damage off turn one.

c) this is not the case. Most lists have around 8 deployments. MSU tends to have at least three corvettes. You will be able to drop an onager in a good place to kill one. Also, a corvette dying from one shot is terrible for MSU players, who, at max, have 6 corvettes. And with sensor teams and varnillian you generally can guarantee an accuracy to lock down the redirect or the brace, which with concentrate fire will generally murder your corvette. The threat zone for an onager is much larger than the threat zone of an imperial star destroyer or a pickle. Look at the area for the medium range of an ISD II's front arc. Compare that to black range of an ignition attack. Or compare a kuats blue or black range to an OSD's blue or black range. The narrow arc is, paradoxically, a lot easier to get on target because of how far away your target is.

Also, assuming you're msu with a heavy hitter like a demolisher or mc30, onagers are still pretty **** tanky. They have more raw health on them than a liberty. Against an intelligent onager player, a single ordnance frigate is not going to do the job.

d)Squall is needed past turn 2 for most fleets, IDK what to tell you. If you've invested super heavily in squadrons to the point you're bringing Squall, you want Squall to stay around so you can efficiently bomb things.

Most who devalue Cracken seem to have the mindset that Cracken should be a zero squadron fleet commander. This simply isn't the case and they are this disappointed. I'm not quite sure why the idea is so reoccuring, I can only imagine its the false logic that to get the most oit of commanders you must have maximum ships. Wierdly this logic never gets applied to Motti.

7 minutes ago, Ginkapo said:

Most who devalue Cracken seem to have the mindset that Cracken should be a zero squadron fleet commander. This simply isn't the case and they are this disappointed. I'm not quite sure why the idea is so reoccuring, I can only imagine its the false logic that to get the most oit of commanders you must have maximum ships. Wierdly this logic never gets applied to Motti.

I think theres a lot of people who've been in a 0/134 mindset and if the commander isnt 134, well.....

Cracken I think has the issue that if you're fast enough (speed 4 and engine techs) you can outrun a good swath of speed 3 Rebel squads. I'm hoping the 4 ace change and the intel adjustment will allow for more variance in the squads taken.

I don't know why this thread has suddenly become a "Cracken gud?" debate.

Cracken can't be a hard-counter to an Onager (w/ or w/o Cataclysm) because his ability only removes 1 attack die if the defender is at Speed 3+, but the Onager's Special Arc can roll between 3 and 7 attack dice (more with Romodi). At long or extreme range, Evades are far more useful than Cracken. At medium or close range, the Onager's attack pool will be large enough that reducing it by 1 die is unlikely to be the difference that saves a small ship or flotilla from being one-shotted.

If there is a Rebel Commander that is best at countering the Onager, it's probably Kyrsta Agate, because she can give an extra defense token to the ship that is dangled out in front of the Onager to draw its fire, letting the flankers whip around and attack it from the sides or rear.

Mon Mothma is probably the second best Rebel Commander against an Onager.

Cracken is near the bottom of the list, as usual.

I think the Onager is slightly overpowered. But cataclysm is not it's breaking point. It's like all archetypes if it goes against a slow list with low activations it will do well. There are counter lists. I think the hawks super weapon is underpowered though.

The "bad" part of the Onager is that it reduces list diversity. Specifically, Speed 2 ships are a high risk because they are not able to escape being shot with Ignition every turn once they are in the Ignition zone. Starhawks are less at risk only because of their hull values, but everything else with a max speed of 2 is going to have a bad game if it is in the Ignition arc any round before 4. As a player who frequently played Speed 2 ships, it makes me sad.

Shown above: S-Tier anti-Onager tech

2 hours ago, Alzer said:

Shown above: S-Tier anti-Onager tech

Darude's Sandstorm?

11 hours ago, Revan Reborn said:

I don't know why this thread has suddenly become a "Cracken gud?" debate.

Cracken can't be a hard-counter to an Onager (w/ or w/o Cataclysm) because his ability only removes 1 attack die if the defender is at Speed 3+, but the Onager's Special Arc can roll between 3 and 7 attack dice (more with Romodi). At long or extreme range, Evades are far more useful than Cracken. At medium or close range, the Onager's attack pool will be large enough that reducing it by 1 die is unlikely to be the difference that saves a small ship or flotilla from being one-shotted.

If there is a Rebel Commander that is best at countering the Onager, it's probably Kyrsta Agate, because she can give an extra defense token to the ship that is dangled out in front of the Onager to draw its fire, letting the flankers whip around and attack it from the sides or rear.

Mon Mothma is probably the second best Rebel Commander against an Onager.

Cracken is near the bottom of the list, as usual.

"Mon mothma is probably the second best commander against the onager"

Are we playing the same game? Mon mothma does absolutely nothing against extreme range attacks. against shorter range attacks Cracken reduces damage more than mon mothma.

Reducing 4 dice to 3, or large pools by one, significantly increases the survivability of small ships. I think you might want to do less theory crafting and more testing.

I don’t care if I’m flying zero squadrons (which I almost never do), 80 points of squadrons, or 130 points of squadrons; Cracken is underwhelming at best. His ability has always been conditional and unreliable. If he flatly said, “All attacks against friendly ships are obstructed,” he’d be great. If he were just cheaper, maybe 20-21 points, he might be okay. But as it stands, too many conditionals have to line up correctly for him to function as often as I want a 26-point Commander to function. After trying to make him work, and seeing others try to make him work, I’ve developed a very low opinion of the card. My main point, though, had little to do with Cracken. It had a lot to do with the fact that there are plenty of good options available to tackle Cataclysm, which is not overpowered.

This is my hot take on the Armada FFG Boards:


Topic 1: Game Element X is too good, it seems problematic for the balance of the game.
-- 95% of responding community members: Git gud, this game is wonderfully balanced, there are all sorts of counters you can fly! Element X is not invicible, heck it's honestly kinda bad if you know how to play.

- meanwhile elsewhere in another thread-

Topic 2: Game Element X seems really bad... I don't think it's viable.
--95% of responding community members: Git gud, this game is wonderfully balanced, there are all sorts of X lists you can fly! Element X isn't impossible to win with, heck it's one of the best things in the game if you know how to play.



Whenever anyone says anything remotely critical of an aspect of the game (whatever the reason), the community piles on with dismissals and reassurances about how Armada is just amazing and beyond reproach. Which is why I've been playing this game for nearly five hears and have only popped into these boards a handful of times.

1 hour ago, geek19 said:

Darude's Sandstorm?

46 minutes ago, EBerling said:

This is my hot take on the Armada FFG Boards:


Topic 1: Game Element X is too good, it seems problematic for the balance of the game.
-- 95% of responding community members: Git gud, this game is wonderfully balanced, there are all sorts of counters you can fly! Element X is not invicible, heck it's honestly kinda bad if you know how to play.

- meanwhile elsewhere in another thread-

Topic 2: Game Element X seems really bad... I don't think it's viable.
--95% of responding community members: Git gud, this game is wonderfully balanced, there are all sorts of X lists you can fly! Element X isn't impossible to win with, heck it's one of the best things in the game if you know how to play.



Whenever anyone says anything remotely critical of an aspect of the game (whatever the reason), the community piles on with dismissals and reassurances about how Armada is just amazing and beyond reproach. Which is why I've been playing this game for nearly five hears and have only popped into these boards a handful of times.

So you have been playing Armada quite happily for five years but take issue with the idea the game is well balanced?