From the Imps. Use a combination of Raider I, Glad II, IG88, Bossk and sustainted point defence. I have killed 5 AWings, (4 full health) in one activation with a Raider I. The Rebels cannot command enough AWings (unless they Yavaris for 3 and every shot hits and you don't have Motti and you walk into it like a chump) to kill a Raider in one activation. It can get ****** up but it will live. Rebels often get greedy with the speed 5 and throw them out of Ship Red Dice Battery range and move into it after they activate. Meaning you don't take follow up fire from the Carrier. If you present a small ship as bait they might pounce. Leave it isolated BUT within your squadron range. It went: *Squadron Command Bossk who kills one outright *Two arcs fire, 2 double taps, 4 damage each (it gets crowded when you jam 8 Awings next to a Raider) * One arc kills the one Bossk wounded Squadron phase last turn * Impetuous kills one hit for 2 for another 2 With Ordnance Experts you have 88% chance to hit one both dice (i was told). Raider was alive on 2 hull, it flew away. Or just use Bobba, Bossk, Vader, IG88 to power through them. AWings aren't as bad/good as they were Wave 1 due to stronger Hull Imp fighters and Double Point Defence. I will respect the **** out of Awing Flight Controllers though.

This type of vague numbers game is the perfect exmaple of over reliance on statistics and wanting to reduce a strategic game to such. The percentages we are meant to guess at will never be quantifiable, therefore it is usless to discuss. Even if we have a number what does that even translate into? I prefer tangible ideas. Think about your stratergy, how it relates to the Objectives, their fleet, how you loose/gain advantage from choosing, what facing one way with a Ship will gain you as oppossed to another. Curve ball. How about some games when deployment means nothing but sometimes it means everything? What about Composition? Do you hate pick, play what you know and you deploy to neuter advantage, try something new? We could amble on forever and never find a number!

- Vader is effectivley a 'Bomber' because his crits add damage.- Vader is huge with flight controllers, consistently one shot-ing Tie generics stretching out to Xwings. But Vader costs 21 and is a laser magnet, how to get around this? Send him in last. Bombers have tons of HP they can look after themselves. When your bombers are dropping in Hull send in Vader. He should aim to kill a high value target or anti squadron-squadron to weaken their ability to return fire. Vader should not be thrown away as an escort bait. A generic can be. I aim to persevere Vader every game by I)not leading with it II) Destroying single squadrons on the outside of a ball so he is not pinned III) only escorting 1-2 Hull squadrons and generally the expensive ones You can lead with Vader if you combo though, Punishing One, Sontir Fel ball etc

I played the final game. Your Glad was pretty awsome and I have been singing it's praises. Squadron 3 (with token) Double blue dice, twice with Demolisher AND ruthless strat triggers whenever you want. Super effective. It gave up Ordnance Expert, which cost it an APT trigger but it was so strong vs squadrons it's a valid swap. Im looking at Vader to potentially manipulate the dice for those crits vs ships but when hunting Bombers Motti is good. The activations really help. Wiffing the chance to double tap and hopefully kill the Raider really hurt. It's a trick I used twice that day. The Engine Tech Glad hunts the small 4th ship. In game two Glad went after the Cr90 Intel Sweep ship on turn 2, it put just enough hurt on that a Firespray killed it at long range. Players might not fully account for just how fast and dangerous speed 4 Demolisher is. Not only that but with the added move your Yaw is very good. At speed 1 you do Raider turns at speed 2 you turn tighter than a Cr90. Favorite moment of the game was the speed 0 VSD its always a nice surprise. Who's says Ozzel on a VSD is bad!

What is half assing anti squadron in terms of points? 32-48 points? As Imp you might be able to squeeze in a 4-5 Ties, a Raider or make a ship larger, more upgrades. I think all of the above are bad against a competent player with a Fireball. I have never lost to an all ship list with my Fireball from Vader to Akbar. The minimum Tie screen I aim for is 5 Ties and Howlrunner. This is my ship list composition. I consider this a somewhat dangerous distraction force. BUT. Two things give me pause for thought. One. I played a really unique Gladiator II at Store Champ a few days ago. Glad II, Demolisher, Ruthless Strategist, APT. He opened with 3 squadrons thrown into me, two Blue point Defense Dice, Ruthless Strat triggers. Then Demolisher move + double Blue Point Defence + Ruthless again! It was savage. Demolisher on a Glad II reliably throws out two arcs of two blue dice. He gives up Ordnance Expert but I don't consider that terrible if you know you are playing Squadrons. I'm actually trying to make it work in a Vader list to add dice manipulation for APT against ships. I considered that that Demolisher was threatening enough my squadrons that I myself would have no issues running it. I can't say it's impossible to all ship, Point Defence is severely underplayed from most people, but I just don't know (I have never tried but I have also never seen it work). But if you can kill a Fireball that's around 130 points to pick up. It becomes worth engaging with multiple ships. I think a Glad II/Demolisher for double arc point defense, Raider I/Instigator/Ordanance Experts and or Raider I/Impetuous with Tarkin or Motti for engeering would be the place to start, for Imps at least. Two. The most successful all ships fly in certain ways. Blitzkrieg. Ignore the squadrons and kill all the ships. Fast speed and get into close range with the carrier and pressure it. Move the squadron zone of control back to their side of the board. This is where I have been pressured the hardest. If you amble molasses like Rhymer will ******* destroy you (to put it bluntly)

There is no pre determined turn do do anything. Boosted Comms is how you keep your squadrons in the fight. When considering squads you have two main choices I) Do I want to attack ships, if so you need more expensive Black Dice/Blue Bombers. II) Do just want Anti Squadron Squadrons, usually any squadron that lacks bomber is your anti squadron. These are generally less effective vs ships. The first can be more expensive (Advanced, Tie Bomber). The latter is cheaper (Tie Fighter, Interceptor) Then there are hybrids. They are cost inefficient but make up for this in flexibility, raw power/spike damage/hull. Bossk, Vader, Firesprays. You just need to consider what you want and stick to that and play it like that. Howl runner + 5 ties is a pretty cheap anti fighter force that will do nothing against ships. 4 Firesprays and Rhymer will punish ships but is not effective against squadrons. It's about using combos, using Boosted Comms + Flight controllers on the aforementioned Firesprays mitigates squadron inefficiency. The pitfall of Sontir + Ties Fighters/Inter is ship weakness. Consider running X number of Tie Advanced with Sontir. That way you get his auto damage via Escort and your Advanced can do ship damage.

Ironkenics beat me too it! There were 6 VSD's in the top 4 and 1 ISD. If we stretch that out to top 5 (because top 4 was the main prize pool) there were 9 VSDs. 9 VSD in the top 5. There were definitely more VSD overall than ISD but there were ISDs and good players at the helm. There were of Mc80, a few Akbar and loads of Bombers. So why so many VSD in the top spots? Cost efficiency. ISD takes up to much room. 4 ship ISD is possible if you skimp a lot on the 3 other ships and your squads. 3 ship ISD gives a token Fireball or decent Generic Bomber/Counter Squadron complement. 3 ship VSD gets you a full strength Fireball and x2 other ships partially to fully upgraded, depending on the Ship Size. 3/4 Top 4 lists were Bomber heavey. One Fireball (mine) and two Generic Bomber Rhymer Balls. Boosted Comms lets you pound Large Ships, from out of ship range, which are not defensively better than a VSD against Bombers. Then at long range the VSD can throw 5 Red Dice with the correct positioning. I have also found the VSD much easier at long range (compared to ISD) because a) it's smaller and easier to place to get a double arc at long range b) it is less susepcitble to return fire because of it's small base Interestingly the non Fireball VSD list (3rd place) beat out an ISD list in the second round. It was 2 VSD I, 1 Glad II all upgraded plus a naked Raider I. His fighters were Bobba, Ties & Vader. I'm thinking 4 ships gave him the advantage there. A sidenote: Akbar, to my knowledge, placed way up at 9th or 10th. I think a Dodona Scrugg was 8th. Akbar almost never places in Australia, never 1st to my knowledge.

Simple. There is no weak commander, there is just pros/cons/how it's used. There is no way to "objectively rank" Commander. Such a ranking can't take into account builds/play style/meta etc... Clearly the people saying Ozzel have never played Ozzel.

It all depends. It increases size with importance to the list. It increases in a meta with bids. It increases in an unknown meta in a high stakes game (tourney) 8 is what I aim for for. This is on the generous side. 10-12 in tourney or away. This counters farmiliar faces countering me or an unknown meta. I saw a bid of 12 because he knew his friend was bidding 11, that was cold.

No. Small or medium AND up to 3 squads. You get zip!

Neither! Xi7, Expanded Launcher, Ordnance Expert. 10 dice, mostly black, pile driver. On the question on hand, if given the choice, HTT. Lacking ordnance/only 2 black front dice, the crit fishing is not consistent enough for me.

Firesprays. On versatility alone. It's hard to qualify it in a cost comparison. You can move/shoot, shoot/move, act independently, huge amounts of damage, Rouge into Rhymer in the squadron phase. I'll probably never want to tun TB over FSpray most of the time. Unless it's a a multI ship with X squadon command = X bombers

Wulf. Hands down awesome. 1 Extra squadron, 2 Engineering, Nav (+2 Ozzel), CF reroll is the weakest link. The first 3 are crazy good. 2 shield redirects or 1 shield. Combined with a Dial you can do 2 damage cards, 1 shield/1 redirect/1 damage. The best part is you can do any command and throw in a Nav command when needed.

#1 of flying Raider for combat, you need to be the first player. Raiders are great activation control if you are second though but much weaker/less damage potential #2 play it with Ozzel or take a Nav token first turn every turn. You fail to move correctly you die. This also leads us to why being able to go Speed 2 is so important #3 use it's aggressive turning OR Engineering to Redirect/present full shields for more survivability #4 if you are not using the Rdr for bait give the enemy two things to shoot at ie: raider + ship or raider + bombers #5 on a Rdr I Ordnance Experts is an auto include, Impetuous close second. I have killed 5 Awings and 5 Tie X ships in single activations with this. Check my posts for a tourney write up, every game the raider made a key play (killing mc80, killing 5 squads, trying to technical win game ) Other things: Expanded hanger bay, good with any missiles and Rdr I is superior. On point defense alone. With the exception of ISD/VSD1,Glad/Mc30 you will take the same damage at medium range so there is not much benift in Rdr II Use the Raider as activation control or ambush predator. Jump in as first player for efficient dice/cost and jump out. Don't lead with it unless bait. Present a better target to punish them for shooting it or be happy when it is ignored. Well costed, amazing utility, powerful when timed right and unforgiving. My kind of ship.

Lando + Mon Mothma. If not Mon I run Admonition. I still use Lando as I prefer Walix on a ship with Brace. Lando is an evade that hits their entire dice pool. He's pretty good. I'm currently trying TRC, Expanded Launcer and Ordnance Experts.

Imps are complaining about Wave 2?! An announcement might be nice but Wave 2 is still settling in and Store Champs are happening. I think it's in a good place.

Tournament Report Event: SpaceCon Attendance: 23 Venue: Three D6, Australia First of all a big thanks to the TO at ThreeD6 and all those that attended the event. It is a large venue, with great facilities (including live streaming) people came from over three hours drive away. It was a great number and I hope it is repeated in the future. Pre Tournament Prep: Based on last event our play group, (four attending SpaceCon), thought it was going be ship heavy. I tweaked my list for more bombers, usually preferring Vader/Ig88 in our squad heavy meta, Others made minor tweaks but one of us decided to go in a radical departure from squads and went all-Imp-ship. Given the large pool of players and ship he and we thought it was well worth a try! My List: http://armadawarlords.hivelabs.solutions/view_list.php?token=10461 -H9/Warlord/Ruthless is the only aspect that might make some curious that and Ozzel on a VSD. -The Glad is pretty much fully upgraded and the Raider is there to pick up the anti fight slack/cheap activation. -H9 is an auto damage to squadrons due to being able to manipulate any Blue dice facing into a single hit. Warlord takes the average two Red Dice output of 1 damage and makes it a double. If you can reliably double tap at long/medium range it is a good damage boost. With Ruthless you can use your Firespray/Bossk hull to deal out two auto damage. - It comes to down to not being able to run anything else. At 16 points i can do only a few things. +Expanded Launchers/upgrade but i need to combat ships which is not how the VSD is played in this list, or other upgrades from the Glad/Raider. I cannot fit an extra squadron because i am at 133. -Ozzel on a VSD is amazing for a certain playstyle. That is avoidance. If you are outside of Red Range why move into it? Go to 0 and use a Wulf token to kick back up to full speed when they get into long/medium range (depending on the ship). -Ozzel is god-tier on Raiders/Glads. On a Glad you can drop from Speed 1 to 3. If you have engine Techs you can drop from speed 3 to 1 and Engine Tech a x2 double Yaw. This gives your Demolisher Raider turns. Game 1: Akbar, Mc80/Akbar, Cr90/Jania/Projection Expert, x2 Guppy/EA (other upgrades i forgot) Initiative: Me Objective: Dangerous Territory, no to Advanced Gunnery, Fleet Ambush Counter Play: I place my obstacles in my two back corners and the last one away from the majority of theirs. I don't bother collecting. I simply want to mitigate how many they can expect to collect. Deployment: Place Raider in middle + 6 squads. They deployed in a conga. I deployed my VSD right of raider and my Glad right of both of those, all ships pointing towards where the Conga is flying. Turn 1: VSD grabs Nav Token. Raider stays at speed 1, VSD speed 1 yaws slightly right. Glad flanks far right intercepting leads guppy. Turn 2: VSD grabs Squad Token. Rouges fly into Rhymer, hitting the Mc80 in the Squadron Phase. Turn 3: The lead Guppy moves first and drops to speed 1. I sent my Glad yawing right speed 3+Engine Tech into the front arc, medium range. VSD kills speed to 0 comfortably out of range and sends in bombers. Turn 4: Glad goes to speed 1 + Engine Tech into close range now the Guppy is trapped for at least two turns. VSD at 0 bombers, Raider uses Ozzel/token to speed jump to 4 into medium of MC80. Their Mc80 double yaws exposing VSD/Raider to side arc. Their second Guppy breaks off to start collecting the 3 tokens. Turn 5: VSD activates 3 squads, Firesprays/Bobba, H9 flips one dice on front/side arc for two doubles, it uses a Wulf token to get to speed 1 (defense tokens back online) Mc80 is on two. Their turn. They can Akbar the Raider or VSD (both on full health) and get no shots on the bombers or shoot the bombers/shoot a ship. They shoot the bombers seeing as some are getting low from the double blue point defense. The VSD takes a normal broadside for 3 damage. The Raider double taps and kills Mc80 then flys towards the Cr90. Glad double taps and kills the Guppy. Their last Guppy collects a token. Turn 6: Raider kills Cr90, their last ship grabs a token. 9-1 MOV 280-ish. Their only points were the 91 point Guppy and 30 DT tokens. Game 2: Motti ISD I, Relentless, Boosted, Expanded, Flight Controller, VSD APT/ EA, 2 Ties, 2 Interceptor, 1 Rhymer, 3 Tie Bomber Initiative: Me Objective: Superior Positions. I will be out deployed anyway so Superior it is. Counter Play: I believe I can wipe his 3 hull squads and get more tokens. Deployment: My typical setup. VSD pointing away ready to run and at an angle that will let it double tap in later turns. Then surprisingly he deploys very far away. This is bad news. I need to crank to max speed otherwise I won’t score highly. Turn 1: Raider stays in place, VSD pushes up with Glad. Turn 2-3: Mostly positioning but Fireball slammed his Gladiator because I have first player. Importantly the Raider jump from speed 1 to 4 and gets into position for turn 4 as I baited his fighters/he answers my Firesprays. Firesprays shoot his anti-squadron-squadrons and retreat, with Intel/Squad Command. Turn 4: Raider activates with Squad Command. Bossk kills Interceptor, then the Raider double taps Interceptor/Tie, front Arcs a Tie/Interceptor and Impetuous an Interceptor killing all 5 at once. This is why I no longer run 3 Hull Squadrons. It scoots and now my Bombers go Ham on his Glad and finish it. Turn 5: I rear arc his VSD with Glad Red dice, and rear Arc bomber, racking up Superior Position points. Turn 6: Squad Command bombers to rear of VSD, pinning his genericTie Bombers positioning on my flanking Glad. Gladiator shoots and Demolishes his VSD killing it. 9-1 MOV 340 ish. 150 points from Superior Positions. Game 3 Motti ISD II, Avenger, Gunnery Team, Leading Shots, Boosted, Xi7,ECM, VSDI, Boosted, Rhymer, 3 TB, 1 TA, Vader, Sontir, Bobba, Jump Master Initiative: Me Objective Minefields: Contested outpost was perhaps the best choice (for a decisive game) in hindsight because I'm not taking Advanced Gunnery. Counter Play: Minefields can work out fantastically for me. It depends on the deployment. I hide behind the Mines and Command my bomber wing. This was no such setup. Deployment: Typical setup by facing towards the exit of the minefield. The board was cut in half and way to dense to move around. There is only one clear area of play. I deployed raider center right and he deployed way to my left with VSD. With mines in between I thought he was walling in from a technical win. However, we were both on 18, to close to the rest of the field to to risk a draw so he deployed his ISD parallel to the board flying towards to the mine free area. He quickly realized I was not going to flying into the debris hell. So we both headed from the clear area at slow speed, getting closer waiting to see who blinked. It was not an action packed game and I don’t think he was too happy about my running but as we later talked about the setup was wrong for a decisive game. Turns 1-3: Raider takes a Squad token. Around turn 3 I lost an advanced that strayed half a centimeter to far from Punishing One. I could not fly back to attack fighters, they would not be in Squad Command range. So now I’m down 12. I tucked my fighters right into the VSD. I needed to make something happen. Turn 4: Glad tries to bait bombers for the Raider. Glad turns around at speed 1+Engine Techs, it’s doing Raider turns. He doesn’t bite. Turn 5: He activates bombers by Squad command just to position differently giving me a good chance (or bait?) to send in my Raider, which I do. Turn 6: Raider goes first and double taps two bombers, front arcs Rhymer and a Bomber. It kills one via Impetuous and another due Bossk. Now they are pinned by Bossk. I fly my Raider into the side arc of the ISD. VSD kills another bomber via squadron command. Raider takes 3 damage via non bomber squadrons. ISD needs to roll 5 dmg or 3dmg + Accuracy to kill. He rolls a double and 3 hits! 4-6 MOV 37. Summary and Take Aways Summary: 4th was Rebel Scrugg Bombers (122points squads) I placed 3rd over all (133points squads). The final game opponent placed 2nd (134points squads). Coming in 1st was IonKenics with the SpaceCon Special. ISD II x3 Glads! He faced 2 all ship and 1 Rebel Bombers. Against the Rebel Bombers he went 10-0! I am unsure what lists 2nd/4th played. Take Aways: * Squadrons won handily against all ship lists with the expectation of 1st place! Very interesting. They got 2 out 3 matchups they wanted (all-ship) but went 10-0 against the Rebel squadron list they played! What this means for future all ship lists I'm not sure, and I'm not trying to take away from his list or play at all. This was perhaps a once off meta call, he way well already retire this list. But if the other top 4 lists are anything to go off of...I'm sticking by prior statements that squadrons will be ubiquitous but given the right player or fly style maybe all ship can survive. * Akbar placed 5th. A poll of attendees for Admiral winner put 5 votes for Motti (which it did, and on a mostly small ship list, another discussion is in order) and 4 Votes for Akbar to take it down. And Akbar didn't even place. * Despite being a lot of ships and our thoughts of it being mostly ships this was a squadron heavy tournament. I still like the flexibility of H9/Warlord because it gets to effect both squads and ships despite the frequent criticism of expense.

Agree. I wrote in your "Squadron Maxing" but the results were as follows. 1st x3 Glad, ISD II Motti, no squad!, 2nd Vic/ISD Motti/134 Squads (no fireball), 3rd (me) Vic/Raider/Glad/Ozzel/133 Squads (fireball), 4th Yavaris/Guppy/MC30/122 points Squads (scurgg bombers). Look out for the SpaceCon Report i'm doing! It was such an awesome event. The turnout (23) was bigger/as big as the nationals last year i'm told. This points to the expontional growth of the game in our area. Squadrons dominated the top spots and non squadron lists...with one exception...first place(1) which was the Gencon Spacecon Special. That list 10-0 a Squadron list. 3 even 2 ship lists with max squads are frequently top placing well above Akbar and 3 ship/squad mixed. I'll try find out what the highest Akbar was as there were at least 4 maybe 5 Akbar lists.

Not only do you want X squadrons to meet X Squadron Command Value I beleive you want those squadrons to be the best they can be for bombing purposes. I started with generic bombers Wave 2. I don't think I will ever go down that path again. My main carrier right now is Wulf/VSD 1/Bossted Comms. Thats for 4. Rhymer/Bobba/x2 Firesprays is what I hope to use each time. The double dice is way more consistent that single Black. You pay for it but there is no other way I will approach bombers anymore. Same for Rebels, Scrugg x3/Jan. These are my default Bomber balls if I'm thinking of taking bombers. The top 4 from yesterday CanCon 23 (attendance) was 2nd Imp 134 squad (no fireball) 3rd Imp 133 (fireball), 4th Reb Scrugg/Jan. 1st interstingly was all ship 3 Glad/ISD. Call it the SapceCon Special

Concerning the above comments. Just played in a 23 person tourney yesterday. First game went 9-1 vs Akbar (x2 Gup, Cr90, Mc80), objective DT. List was VSD I, Raider I, Glad I, 133 points Squads and Ozzel. Killed Cr90, Gup, Mc80. Lost nothing. Akbar is easy with VSD carrier. They have to fly formation, it makes interception and avoidance simple. You put Rhymer, Bobba, x2 Firespray in the front arc of any ship wtf are they going to do. Shoot my Bombers and not Akbar. If they go three ship + squadrons (they won't have many) then Dengar, Advanced, Bossk Bobba and x2 Firesprays, Raider cut them down instantly. Their mistake was no squadrons but even if they cut a something they would have had little. If they cut an Mc80 they have no significant tanking/firepower. Akbar didn't make the top 4. (Don't know what the highest placing was)

Reeikan Nebs are pretty devastating to face. Yavaris, Salvation is where it's at. Nebs are flown to die, they punch abone their weight in damage if they can be brought to bear. Salvation is really good at softening up large targets.

Seconded. Armada appears to be pretty big in Aus, at least in NSW/East Coast. There are mutilple events per month, averaging 1 tourment a week since last Novemeber, in a realativey close area. There are 3 tournments in the next 5 days. One has twenty people expected. So far there are 3 Store Champs next month alone, on top of a house rules doubles (two headed dragon style event). Active players are recruiting people from every other table top be it 40k, XWing, on the strength of demo games and the amazing aesthetic of Armada ...Stock is sold out in most stores besides large warehouses. Slow shipping, prize pack delays. The active tournment community isn't feeling the love!

Scruggs are devastating. They need no support (to get into position) like B-Wings. And i know what i would rather have with Jan Ors. Jan, 2/3 Scrugg, 1 Xwing. That will push a lot of battery damage through. Don't look to Grit to help you, but don't overlook it it really helps against token fighter screens. Look for 6 Hull, Blue/Black battery, Speed 3. That is what you are paying for. Grit is nice when it works. Grit should not be a consideration for fleet building but it can be a massive part of target consideration. You'll only be able to fit 2-3 in a balanced list but that is all you need. Yavaris/Reekian + Scruggs can be a devastating combo. Because the speed three actually lets them get position. Although that player went away from Reeikan they still use them with Mon Mothma. They are still brutal. I have seen one Rebel player come 2nd in three separate tournaments, at three different LGS. I don't think anyone can be sold until they see how quickly it can pound an ISD to dust. Numbers and and comparisons are to abstract.

There is no optimal number or mix. Two rules I stick by: * If I'm bombing I want to activate X bombers/black dice where X=Squadron Value. * A fighter screen has to be resilient enough (through numbers, abilities) to actually impact/trade with bombers (jan/rhymer/rouges) or there is no value running it.

Correct. You can, as player one, shoot from the same arc twice as long as you target two different hullzones. This is precisely why I dropped Advanced Gunnery unless I'm running a fully upgraded ISD II or MC80 Defiance around Objectives, Fire Lanes, Advanced Gunnery or Intel Sweep triangle.