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So, I had a tourney game and lost to 1st place who ran 3 Bounty Hunters.

How do you beat this list? Which ships match-ups put it at a disadvantage?

The real question here is how do you not beat the list. It's not the worst list ever, but it has mediocre jousting efficiency and can't really escape a joust with only PS 3 and no maneuvering actions. Focus fire, dodge their arcs if you have boost/BR, and force those large bases to maneuver through the asteroids as much as possible.

It's not as bad as it's made out to be.
Escaping a joust is relatively easy if you want to - because you don't have to koiogran and come back at the enemy, just continue running.

Your aft guns are just as good as your front guns, and if your opponent chases you, he's now stuck having to guess if you're going to break with a hard turn.

For that matter, you can break a joust mid-joust. Instead of a slow straight or a K-turn, do a fast (speed 3) turn - that may get you clear of an enemy and still lay your auxiliary firing arc over the area they are jousting through. It's essentially a stress-free segnor's loop...

As far as beating them - tightly clustered asteroids and forcing them to change course a lot. Four small bases in a tight(ish) box can fly formation. Two large base ships have real difficulty keeping formation with one another, and are very easy to block/make collide with one another.

The ships are tough - a combination of ten hit points and agility two takes some killing - but their firepower is so-so. With 3 bounty hunters, you've no points left for upgrades, so no gunners, or cannons, or similar - result, 3 focus-only attack dice - which isn't bad but definitely isn't great for range 3 shots.

They also have a decent size blind spot due to their big bases. Interceptors with autothrusters should do well. It may also be worth checking whether the auxiliary firing arc counts as a true firing arc for autothrusters: if it doesn't, then upgraded squints should eat them alive.

locarno24 wrote:
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They also have a decent size blind spot due to their big bases. Interceptors with autothrusters should do well. It may also be worth checking whether the auxiliary firing arc counts as a true firing arc for autothrusters: if it doesn't, then upgraded squints should eat them alive.

The auxiliary firing arc counts as a firing arc for everything except secondary weapons, which I believe explicitly state they must be used in your primary firing arc, to avoid abuse by turret ships.

For everything else, including autothrusters, tacticians, outmaneuvers, the auxiliary arc is treated the same as the forward facing arc

What was your list EmpNortonII ? and we can see what you may have been able to do?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, some games, the dice just go cold or you opponent maked every evade needed and suffers little damage, compared to my poor poor evade rolling.

 BigRedStandingBy wrote:
What was your list EmpNortonII ? and we can see what you may have been able to do?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, some games, the dice just go cold or you opponent maked every evade needed and suffers little damage, compared to my poor poor evade rolling.

It was a double Deci list I'm no longer using. Kath Scarlett's proved a better buddy for Oicunn.

I'm currently running Oicunn with Determination, Moff Jer, Rebel Captive, and (probably to be replaced) Ysard, alongside Kath Scarlett with Predator, Mangler, and a Recon Spec. My meta has a number of big ships/Phantoms, and this combo eats those things alive.

I suppose Interceptors or BBBBZ would work, but I'm not great with Interceptors (little practice) and BBBBZ seems like the most unfun list in the world to play.

 EmpNortonII wrote:
It was a double Deci list I'm no longer using.

This is probably a big part of why you lost. Three Firesprays is a really bad matchup for double Decimator. The Firesprays have a huge advantage in durability (30 HP vs. 32 HP, two green dice vs. zero, and a better shield:hull ratio), better firepower (3x3 dice vs. 2x3 dice, though the upgrades on the Decimator make up for some of it), and don't really care about the turret all that much. Essentially you're playing a list designed to win by removing maneuvering from the game as much as possible, and they're playing a list that is built to win without maneuvering tricks. All those points you spent on turrets went into buying a third ship in their list, giving them a better version of what you have.

 Peregrine wrote:

 EmpNortonII wrote:
It was a double Deci list I'm no longer using.

This is probably a big part of why you lost. Three Firesprays is a really bad matchup for double Decimator. The Firesprays have a huge advantage in durability (30 HP vs. 32 HP, two green dice vs. zero, and a better shield:hull ratio), better firepower (3x3 dice vs. 2x3 dice, though the upgrades on the Decimator make up for some of it), and don't really care about the turret all that much. Essentially you're playing a list designed to win by removing maneuvering from the game as much as possible, and they're playing a list that is built to win without maneuvering tricks. All those points you spent on turrets went into buying a third ship in their list, giving them a better version of what you have.

I've posted what I'm running now (a Firespray instead of the Patrol Leader). I've gotten pretty good at using asteroids/debris and Brave Sir Robin -ing the Deci while Kath flanks against swarms. Large ships/expensive ships get ripped up by the effects of multiple stress.

If you were flying my list, how would you approach a trio of Firesprays? It's the worst match-up I've had.

 EmpNortonII wrote:
I've posted what I'm running now (a Firespray instead of the Patrol Leader).

I know. The point is to change how you're looking at the game where you had problems with the 3x Firespray list. You seem to think that it's a much stronger list than it really is, when in reality the main reason you lost was that it was a bad matchup for your particular list.

If you were flying my list, how would you approach a trio of Firesprays?

Well, I wouldn't be flying your list since I don't like dual big ship lists and really don't like the Decimator, but I'll try:

The most important thing to figure out is where you have an advantage over your opponent. You obviously can't beat them with raw dice and HP (since they have a major advantage over you in that area), so what else do you have? Your stress gimmicks also aren't all that impressive since the Firespray is often going to take the mangler crit thanks to only having two evade dice, and the rebel captive is much weaker when your opponent's ships all have the same PS and can choose freely who takes the stress (and the Decimator won't be alive long enough to hand out much stress anyway). Your mangler cannon could in theory be nice against all that hull HP, but you're probably going to be spending a lot of time running away and taking rear-arc shots. And you don't have any boost or barrel roll options to take advantage of your higher PS. So that leaves two possibilities:

1) You have a turret and they don't. Unfortunately they have three ships and you don't. So you need to reduce the situation to a 1v1 between your Decimator and one surviving Firespray, prevent them from overlapping arcs, and do your best to avoid them. If this is your plan then you should probably spend the Firespray aggressively and force your opponent to deal with it first, hopefully doing enough damage to get your 1v1 endgame before your Decimator runs out of HP.

2) You have better force concentration. Your opponent has better total jousting efficiency, but it's spread across three separate large bases compared to only two bases for your list. And one of your ships has a 360* turret, giving it a lot more positioning options. If you can use the asteroids/table edges/etc to break up your opponent's formation and isolate 1-2 ships you suddenly have the advantage in jousting math. Set a tight asteroid field, force them to fly through it, and make sure that there isn't enough room for everyone to fit through the gaps. And of course any stress you can inflict helps, as the stressed ship suddenly has to choose between breaking formation and giving up its actions.

3) You care less about bumping. One of your ships does automatic damage (granted, not much against a HP tank like the Firespray), the other has a re-roll from predator that doesn't require an action. And if you bump a ship that ship can't shoot back. So let's say it's late in the game, with two Firesprays (one damaged) against one of your ships. Deliberately ram one and now it's 1v1 while one Firespray is effectively out of the fight for a turn.

Now, how do you turn that into a complete plan for winning the game? I'm not sure, because I hate the Decimator and therefore I haven't wasted time playtesting a list like yours to develop strategies for it. And TBH I'm not sure it's even possible. You've still got the same bad matchup problem as the dual Decimator list, so you probably need to accept that your emphasis on winning other matchups (like the big ship + Whisper lists that are popular in your area) has made you weak against this kind of list, and decide if that's an acceptable tradeoff to make.