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The current meta has shifted back (locally) to Palp Aces (variations exist between Whisper + Soonitr or Vader and OLeader, Wampa and something else) after the fall of triple jumpmasters. A lot of players enjoy the ShadowCaster expansion, though we haven't found anything that didn't require skill to be effective. The newest list to impose itself are the Palp Defenders.

My friend runs this variation:

Omicron Group Pilot (21)
Emperor Palpatine (8)

Countess Ryad (34)
Push the Limit (3)
Twin Ion Engine Mk. II (1)
TIE/x7 (-2)

Colonel Vessery (35)
Juke (2)
TIE/x7 (-2)

Total: 100

View in Yet Another Squad Builder

And I can see its apparent weaknesses: low PS leaves you without arc on his Defenders so they won't get to shoot that often. He usually "steps/countersteps" them so you always have at least one firing at you. The obvious first target is Palpatine, but you'll get some 3 red dice aplenty while that happens. My loadout was fairly efficient and I was able to leverage my advantages throughout the game, Rey with the new title/Finn/Kanan/VI/Glitterstim and Norra w/title/Kyle/R2-D2/EU/PTL. I kept getting rid of the shuttle early on, but the sheer amount of red dice+tokens that those ships generate was sobering. I would need, I would say, about 8 hits per round for a single point of damage to go through. Per Defender.

So I'm thinking I want to go to my other liste du jour: Asajj and Dengar, to deal out stress, use BMST, and use Dengar to retaliate as much as possible or stop him from firing at me.

Any thoughts? Be as brutal as you want. Peregrine, I need you at your sharpest.

I have played alot with;

Dengar.
Title.
Predator.
Zuckuss.
'Stim.

Ventress.
Title.
Gyro.
Push.
K4.
BMST.

Its okay but very variable, still prefer the bus...

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
Peregrine, I need you at your sharpest.

Few thoughts:

1) Palp defenders is a popular list for a reason. Anything but the top tournament ships/lists will struggle, and even the best lists often have a hard fight with it. If you're getting advantages to leverage you're probably doing pretty well.

2) You almost always have to kill the shuttle before you can start getting damage on the defenders, unless you have bombs/buffed homing missiles/etc that can laugh at Palpatine. Unlike Fel the TIE defender has enough HP to survive a bad roll or two, so trying to get damage through while your opponent still has full dice modification is a serious uphill battle. Obviously you take shots if you can and don't get tunnel vision on the shuttle, but you need to bring it down as soon as reasonably possible.

3) Bombs (preferably with Sabine) and homing missiles wreck defenders. Miranda with conner nets can almost solo Palp defenders, one bomb is a third of a defender's HP that ignores all defense dice/tokens and leaves it crippled for a kill shot. And homing missiles, especially with extra dice, are near-guaranteed damage. It's a reliable 4-5 hits if you stack focus + TL, especially with chips, and the defender can't spend evade tokens. So even if they dice hack their way to three automatic evades they still take damage. This is why that silly Corran/Miranda list took second at worlds.

4) TLTs wreck defenders. They don't have enough tokens to stop massed TLT fire, so eventually damage is going to get through. And two defenders can't reliably kill a y-wing in one turn, so they're facing a lot of red dice. It's a matchup that often comes down to who gets fluky dice, as one turn of hot green dice from the defenders can end the game, but it's really a list that defenders don't want to see on the other side of the table.

5) Stress and BMST are actually not that effective. BMST costs an action (IOW, weaker attack dice) and you need an average of six BMST activations against a defender to kill it. And even while stressed they can still k-turn, still get their evade tokens, still get Palpatine, and still get a free target lock. And Dengar without Zuckuss isn't nearly as scary as the standard Dengaroo list, since your 3-dice gun can't reliably get damage through. Against Palp defenders IMO Asajj/Dengar is just a weaker version of Dengaroo.

Mostly wot Peregrine done said (and a gold star to him for mentioning Sabine and Bombs !)

I'm also thinking that it might time to dust off the TLT's, maybe double HWK double Y-Wing Scum version, as although the HWK's are less bricky than the Y's both Palob and Mux abilitys make Defenders very grumpy

But mostly bring the bombs and hope nobody VCX's you

I'll add that I've been struggling somewhat in matches recently against a TLT Ghost/ Biggs list. The Ghost's zero evade dice negates some of the advantages of the Defender list (Vessery juke doesn't help except for r3 or obstructed shots).

And anything running countermeasures (esp w/ g-stim) can ruin Vessery's attack plans for a crucial round

In regards to Dengar with Zuckuss, I played a few test games with Wired as the EPT, and I'm sold. At the very least, if I am not bringing Manaroo. Especially on the attack dice. I can see the case for green dice being a bit iffier, but when you can reroll all those eyes on two attacks is just golden.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:
IMO Asajj/Dengar is just a weaker version of Dengaroo.

It is. But should Dengar fail to deliver, at least Asajj can somewhat do her thang. Maybe I just ought to go back to Dengaroo for a bit.

I'll give 4 Scum TLTs a shot as well, it's been a long while. And truth be told, I tend to find the list boring to play. Effective, but boring to play.

Now I love bombs... that might be my personal in.

Defenders are strong jousters. When fighting them, you want to avoid mutual attacking as much as possible - they are going to win on dice efficiency. Turrets are one of the strongest mechanics you can use against this. They get no bonuses when defending against out-of-arc shots, and they have mid-range PS and predictable maneuvers. At the top table of Worlds 2016 we saw high PS turret ships which could dodge their arcs (Dengar, Miranda, Han, Ketsu, Assaj), as well as lots of more general turret ships (Y-Wings, Jumpmasters). In this pack, we also saw quite a few non-turret arc-dodgers (Jake, Fenn, Jax, Whisper). It's not a coincidence that we're seeing these choices at high levels.

Defenders rely primarily on token stacks, and secondarily on evade dice and a moderately high health pool for that jousting efficiency. Any time you can ignore one of these mechanics when shooting at them, you're bringing them down to the sub-100% jousting efficiency that they suffered from in the past. Like Peregrine mentioned, massed TLT's grind through tokens and pluck away health. But also mechanics like bombs, homing missiles, bumping, Wes and Jax's pilot abilities - Defenders hate not being able to avoid damage.

As kind of an aside: Dengaroo and some of these mindlink swarms are also great at jousting, and you can kinda just overpower Defenders with them. Just make sure you have a plan of action to deal with those 4k's,

The thing that got me was that even though I was a large base turret ship, they could barrel roll to cover more grounds to follow me down the most likely path. Unless I try to really hug the map sides. I think the Falcon isn't such a great idea because it only a single 3 dice attack for all those points. Although a gunner would have made a mess of things.

Regular Palp Aces, Vader+Fel should wreck defenders if you make reasonable moves. The problem then is being weaker against control lists, though Vader is pretty robust, and Fel can still be good.

So I asked my friend to bring his Palp Defenders again this week as our first games of the year (I know, we're late).

I tried my favourite combo at the moment, Dengar and Asajj... and got tabled in under 30 minutes. 5 turns, maybe.

Then I brought out the big guns: 4 TLT Y-Wings. It was the most boring game ever. For realz. I won handily, never lost a ship. But I derived no joy from that game, at all. It was a grind, pure and simple.

I'm not convinced bombs are the way to go. You have to have at least 9 HP in order to "cross the threshold" and be able to lay a bomb that will potentially do a few damage points on a pair of defenders, and that's for a ship carrying a single bomb, because it'll die the following turn. It's hard to get efficiency out of a list like that.

The sheer tedium of TLT's can be a thing, although after my terrible showing with Brobots at my not-so-local store is making me consider it for my regional on the basis of 'never play lists that are better than you are'

Also remember Sabine does add to the bomb clock quite a bit, also C-Nets make defenders really quite grumpy

Brobots do require a bit of skill to be good. True dat.

Yeah, I know about Sabine. And C-nets are all fine and dandy, but they don't prevent the attack.

X7s get their evade token regardless, and Palpatine can ride herd on them to get through one turn of less actions. Asajj was piling on stress tokens on the Countess and because the Shuttle was kiting just on the extreme edge of range 3, Vessery couldn't have cared less. I'm of half a mind to even try BBBBZ, see if it'll spruce up the fun factor a little bit.

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
I'm not convinced bombs are the way to go. You have to have at least 9 HP in order to "cross the threshold" and be able to lay a bomb that will potentially do a few damage points on a pair of defenders, and that's for a ship carrying a single bomb, because it'll die the following turn. It's hard to get efficiency out of a list like that.

SLAM solves this. If they don't let you drop the bombs you do a 7-straight, fly past them and out of range, and try again next turn.

And C-nets are all fine and dandy, but they don't prevent the attack.

Not immediately, but they do stop it next turn because a 1-straight isn't getting you a shot.

So would it be looking into TIE Bombers with something like Lightweight Frame and Extra Munitions as an Imperial counter to a Palpatine Defenders list?

Which Bomber(s) would you run and what would you run them with?

None. Bombers can't SLAM. The K-Wing at least has that going for it.

Come to think of it, SLAM solves the action-bombs problem too, provided you add the Advanced SLAM upgrade.

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
Come to think of it, SLAM solves the action-bombs problem too, provided you add the Advanced SLAM upgrade.

Correct. That's why conner net k-wings with Sabine are so terrifying, ASLAM gives you so much flexibility in placing the bomb that it's very difficult to escape even a single k-wing.

Thinking of trying this:

Warden Squadron Pilot (23)
Extra Munitions (2)
Proximity Mines (3)
Conner Net (4)
Advanced SLAM (2)

Warden Squadron Pilot (23)
Extra Munitions (2)
Proximity Mines (3)
Conner Net (4)
Advanced SLAM (2)

Blue Squadron Pilot (22)
Electronic Baffle (1)
Extra Munitions (2)
Sabine Wren (2)
Proximity Mines (3)
B-Wing/E2 (1)

Total: 99

View in Yet Another Squad Builder

Or this one, next game against Palp Defenders:

Warden Squadron Pilot (23)
Extra Munitions (2)
Sabine Wren (2)
Proximity Mines (3)
Conner Net (4)
Advanced SLAM (2)

Warden Squadron Pilot (23)
Extra Munitions (2)
Proximity Mines (3)
Conner Net (4)
Advanced SLAM (2)

Braylen Stramm (25)
Ezra Bridger (3)
R3-A2 (2)
Alliance Overhaul (0)

Total: 100

View in Yet Another Squad Builder

Suggestions? Braylen Stramm is iffy, I'm thinking maybe a Stresshog would be less gimmicky.

If you can find the points maybe upgrade one of the K's to Miranda or Tukuwotsit, having 1 high PS and 1 low PS bomber in theory make it even harder to dodge bombs

Like this?

Miranda Doni (29)
Extra Munitions (2)
Proximity Mines (3)
Conner Net (4)
Advanced SLAM (2)

Warden Squadron Pilot (23)
Extra Munitions (2)
Sabine Wren (2)
Proximity Mines (3)
Conner Net (4)
Advanced SLAM (2)

Gold Squadron Pilot (18)
Twin Laser Turret (6)

Total: 100

View in Yet Another Squad Builder

That is a bare bones TLT...

Tried a double Warden and Stresshog (with 2 seismic charges). I've been having very limited success with the Wardens, but the Stresshog's seismic charges have been surprisingly effective. Which compensates for cold dice.

1 week until the tourney, I'm still without a squad. Meh.

I decided to say a big feth off to trying to beat the Commonwealth Defenders list. I can't do it.

So with that in mind, I might as well gun down the Lambda Shuttle as quickly as possible:

Rey (45)
Veteran Instincts (1)
Finn (5)
Kanan Jarrus (3)
Glitterstim (2)
Smuggling Compartment (0)
Millennium Falcon (TFA) (1)

Lothal Rebel (35)
Fire-Control System (2)
Autoblaster Turret (2)
Hera Syndulla (1)
Ezra Bridger (3)

Total: 100

View in Yet Another Squad Builder

Rey is very action dependent, but the first joust ought to see her have reasonable dice. Especially if I pop Glitterstims. The trick with the Ghost is to rack up a couple of stress tokens early on to make sure I have Ezra activating in the clutch. After that.... actions don't matter as much. You have Juke on Vessery? That's cute.

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
The trick with the Ghost is to rack up a couple of stress tokens early on to make sure I have Ezra activating in the clutch.

This is actually a bad idea. Ezra's ability is worse than having a focus token, and should be seen as a consolation prize for losing your actions to stress, not a goal you're trying to achieve. And this is especially true with autoblaster turrets, where turning eyes into crits is worse than making them hits. Ezra + Hera should make you a lot more willing to take red maneuvers if that's the maneuver that gives you an advantage, but you should never be deliberately taking multiple stress tokens if you don't need a red maneuver.

Had my Palp-Defending ass handed to me by a Manaroo / Fen / Old T list.
Damn mindlink shenanigans...

So, what would be a good Imperial list that isn't Palp Defenders, to run against it.

With no access to their natural enemy (spamable TLTs), Imperials don't really have a counter to Defenders, apart from more Defenders, do they?

 skoffs wrote:
With no access to their natural enemy (spamable TLTs), Imperials don't really have a counter to Defenders, apart from more Defenders, do they?

I think the Imperial counter is top-end PS aces like Vader and Fel, a Crack Swarm might also be an idea but I think the dice might be quite swingy factor in that match-up

You can't rely on dice, not until Palpatine is gone. Well-built Defenders will have access to a full suite of tokens on most turns, so even the occasional blank doesn't bother them too much.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
The trick with the Ghost is to rack up a couple of stress tokens early on to make sure I have Ezra activating in the clutch.

This is actually a bad idea. Ezra's ability is worse than having a focus token, and should be seen as a consolation prize for losing your actions to stress, not a goal you're trying to achieve. And this is especially true with autoblaster turrets, where turning eyes into crits is worse than making them hits. Ezra + Hera should make you a lot more willing to take red maneuvers if that's the maneuver that gives you an advantage, but you should never be deliberately taking multiple stress tokens if you don't need a red maneuver.

I see what you're saying, but I noticed you didn't use your go to word "terrible." With that hopeful note in mind, do you have any idea on how to rejig the points to make it all fit and remain rather efficient on the offensive? I had first started with only a TLT and Hera. That gave me a 1pt bid, but at PS 10 I feel confident Rey can handle her own. Unless I let go of Glitterstim to fit the FCS, a TLT and Hera, and give Rey at least an ID, both maneuvers she could pull are white with a stress, so stress free with Kanan.

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
I see what you're saying, but I noticed you didn't use your go to word "terrible." With that hopeful note in mind, do you have any idea on how to rejig the points to make it all fit and remain rather efficient on the offensive? I had first started with only a TLT and Hera. That gave me a 1pt bid, but at PS 10 I feel confident Rey can handle her own. Unless I let go of Glitterstim to fit the FCS, a TLT and Hera, and give Rey at least an ID, both maneuvers she could pull are white with a stress, so stress free with Kanan.

The combination isn't terrible, the Ghost has a lot of red maneuvers for both upgrades to be relevant. The problem is with the strategy of "get stressed asap to activate Ezra". The right way to do it is to take stress when it's necessary to do so, and take advantage of the additional options you have when you do it. For example, you should be perfectly happy doing that red 5-k because you'll have "focus" and target lock on offense, and the option to do another red maneuver next turn if you need it. But if a green maneuver works fine you take the green maneuver, clear stress, and have a full action instead of Ezra's partial focus. What you don't want to do is open the game with consecutive 1-turns just so you can pick up stress, that limits your ship's effectiveness for no benefit in return.

I see what you're saying. I guess I had over simplified things. Of course, if I am not stressed, I would rather have a real focus.

Someone mentionned that at high PS, an Engine Upgrade is always, always a good thing.

I figured, if my main focus is Commonwealth Defenders, maybe Ps8 is good enough. If I strip the Ghost to its bare components (Hera, FCS, AB turret), I'd have enough spare points for an EU.... and Expert Handling on Rey.

I could finesse my position a lot more with three options to reposition, the title, the EU and a BR albeit in exchange of a stress. But a TL slides off my hull.