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After looking over stuff purchased at Gen-Con, and getting a couple games in, I just thought i'd throw this out there.

An Imperial List like this, at 100pts is going to be EVERYWHERE for a while...

- Decimator (with Tactical Jammer, Intimidation, and Captain Oicunn)
- Tie Fighter x4 (three naked, one with Howl Runner)

Flying a tight "mini-swarm" behind Decimator gives them all, functionally, four defense dice (since Decimator obstructs shots with Tactical Jammer), and Intimidate and Oicunn means you'll just be ramming everything you can. The ships behind it then focus-fire it down thanks to already being hurt from the "crash" and now having reduced agility.

I'm sure a couple more games will find a relatively hard counter to this list, but it is hella strong, and made a dominant first showing.

It's not really cookie-cutter, but it will be the new popular thing. It won't dominate in the same manner that the Falcon and TIE Swarm have, as it is a one trick pony that people will eventually learn to counter, but it will be very cool to run and very potent in its own right.

If you ion that big bugger in front of the TIE mini swarm it's gonna be extremely hard to not end up with 5 ships with no action phase. And even if they take Dauntless, you've still got 4 TIEs that can't do anything making them much easier to pick off without their focus or evade.

Z95s with Assault missiles will break this PDQ. Shoot the Decimator (who has zero evade) and he takes several points of damage. But each Tie takes an unsavable hit.
2 more Z's shooting and all the Ties are dead and the Decimator has a serious amount of damage already on it.

Point is, all of your suggestions are 100% valid, but people have to build FOR this list. Thus it'll shake up the meta, which is always appreciated.

If folks take the list in decent numbers people have to opt to build a list which can handle it, which might be wasted points against a different opponent.

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
Point is, all of your suggestions are 100% valid, but people have to build FOR this list. Thus it'll shake up the meta, which is always appreciated.

If folks take the list in decent numbers people have to opt to build a list which can handle it, which might be wasted points against a different opponent.

Shaking the meta and being a cookie-cutter list are two entirely different things.

And as for the above statement in particular, not really. Z's with Missiles are common enough, multiple Ion is also common enough. It will stop there being a proliferation of Phantoms and TIE Swarms everywhere for sure, but it won't be making people think outside of the already established box in order to handle it. Even a TIE Swarm can deal with it by using superior flying to avoid collisions.

 Red_Starrise wrote:
If you ion that big bugger in front of the TIE mini swarm it's gonna be extremely hard to not end up with 5 ships with no action phase. And even if they take Dauntless, you've still got 4 TIEs that can't do anything making them much easier to pick off without their focus or evade.

Ion a large ship and small ships behind it moving 2 will not bump. A large ship 1 more is a small ship 2 move in distance covered.

Do you think armada will eclipse the ftr game?

Possible. I played in the qualifiers and then saw the previews of the new stuff and thought "begun, the power creep has" I think Armada will appeal to the players who liked the early days of x-wing will begin playing both, it will draw the hold outs that are waiting in the wings. But the complexity MIGHT prevent it from eclipsing the fighter version. But we'll see.

Armada will be too expensive to outsell X-Wing IMO. Part of the huge draw to X-Wing is how cheap it is.

That is true. Numerous times I have demo'd X-wing, or been playing it, and some interested observer will pick up a Core-set and a few starters. Even at FULL MSRP (which few people play) you can have a full, tournament ready list for under $100, which is insane in this hobby.

In Armada $100 puts you 1/3rd of the way to a legal tournament list.

IMO it's going to be decent, but not overpowered. The jammer isn't very useful because your big ship is an obvious target that your opponent will be happy to focus fire on, and offensively you're not doing all that much damage outside of the ramming gimmick. And TBH I'm not really sure what this list does that the typical Falcon + z-95 swarmlet list can't already do better.