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Hi all

I've got a few games under my belt now and it is becoming clear that I'm alright when things are getting mixed up and dogfighty, and I'm getting better at disengaging when needed, however I still have no clue whats best to do in the early stages of a game.

I tend to run 3 ship Imperial lists which can be punchy but are super fragile, especially compared to multiple B and Y wings or the damn Falcon. Should I split up and just evade for a few turns to try and get the drop on a handy target? Do I try and fiddle ranges to get a sneaky range 3 attack in? Should I just go all defensive and try and punch straight through the enemy formation and do a screeching turn on the other side? Or something else entirely?

As it stands I'm usually losing a ship before the other guy and its hard to come back from there.

I don't get much opportunity to play and try these things out myself, and I don't really have the time (or inclination) to watch lots of youtube videos of games.

Any thoughts welcome

Most of my friends who play imperial prefer 4 ships list.

Without knowing your prefered list, it's a bit harder to answer your question.

I've tried quite a few, but my favourite ones tend to be based around Fel and either another Interceptor or a Phantom.

Lets call it

Whisper, ACD, VI, FCS and Tactician or WEapons Enigneer

Fel with Autothrusters, Stealth Device, Title, and PTL

Howlrunner, Stealth Device and Wingman.

If I run them straight at the enemy I'm going to lose one of them because they're all made of paper, and I haven't quite got handle on if I should split them up and run away individually for a few turns before trying to ambush something, or if I should zoom them round as close together as possible and try to flank the enemy formation.

I would switch up Howlrunner if I were you. She's good, but she's best when managing to give her ability to generics who hang with her.

Whisper and Fel can't be bound to her range 1, otherwise those are dead ships.

Either use those points for a nice third ship like Omega Leader with Juke and Comms Relay (a single blister's purchase, incidentally) or Epsilon Ace for PS12 shenanigans.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Something like this:

Soontir Fel (27)
Push the Limit (3)
Autothrusters (2)
Stealth Device (3)
Royal Guard TIE (0)

"Whisper" (32)
Veteran Instincts (1)
Fire-Control System (2)
Rebel Captive (3)
Advanced Cloaking Device (4)

"Epsilon Ace" (17)
Comm Relay (3)
Stealth Device (3)

Total: 100

View in Yet Another Squad Builder


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Or like this:

Soontir Fel (27)
Push the Limit (3)
Autothrusters (2)
Stealth Device (3)
Royal Guard TIE (0)

"Whisper" (32)
Veteran Instincts (1)
Fire-Control System (2)
Intelligence Agent (1)
Advanced Cloaking Device (4)

"Omega Ace" (20)
Juke (2)
Comm Relay (3)

Total: 100

View in Yet Another Squad Builder

Now ideally, Fel and Whisper like a nice initiative bid, but within those point limits, you get what you can, or must.

Details of the list aside though, what should I be doing early doors in a game. Flanking, penetrating, evading, splitting up or sticking together?

Not to be facetious, but that really depends on the details of your list!

It does surprise me how many of my opponents just line up and fly straight forward so often though, after playing all this time.

One of my favorites is to take advantage of the fact that more often than not the obstacles are arranged in the middle of the map by counter deploying as much as I'm able, and then milling around so they have to fly through the obstacles to get at me.

Aiming a support ship (like a Palp shuttle) at one edge and deploying on the opposite can buy you a lot of turns out of range as you just fly along the back edge.

The one thing I never do is just fly straight at top speed towards the opposite side, unless that's what I suspect is what my opponent doesn't want me to do.

if I,m playing a big ship, I like to, like Azreal13 said, angle myself towards a board edge, just so slightly, so that I can take longer to cross the field and force my enemy to commit. If you have ships with Comms Relay, you want to take a green or short maneuver to stock up that evade, then a middle move to maybe get a target lock.

You'll rarely be able to completely flank because the ship count is usually low. Your opening moves should be made in order to facilitate your exit from your first joust. Will you regroup? Will you scatter? Position that exit strategy before you start the joust.

I typically split my forces into two "combat groups", one to engage the enemy directly and the other to attack my opponent's flank. I typically run around 4 ships, Imperial.

With a three-ace list you're almost always going to want to use some kind of split deployment and try to force your opponent to either split up their formation or chase one ship while it runs away and you come in behind them with the others. Your biggest vulnerability is focused fire from a whole formation, so you want to make sure that isn't going to happen. The main exception is if your opponent uses a split deployment of their own with lower-PS ships and there's an isolated target you can pick off immediately. Then you just deploy right across from your victim and open with maximum-speed moves directly at it, hopefully killing it before the rest of your opponent's ships can converge on you.

 Azreal13 wrote:
The one thing I never do is just fly straight at top speed towards the opposite side, unless that's what I suspect is what my opponent doesn't want me to do.

I've actually found flying straight at the edge to be a useful thing to do, as long as your opponent isn't deployed on that end of the table. Pushing a ship up the side of the table lets you flank from more directions. For example, say you deploy Fel and Whisper on the left side of the table, while your opponent deployed (at lower PS) on your right corner. Whisper cloaks and goes slow, Fel floors it up the edge. Your opponent has to turn to your left to engage you at all, but now they're caught between staying "high" to go after Fel or coming "low" to get at Whisper. You get a full 3" edge to split your ships along, but without having to deploy anything on your right, directly across from your opponent and vulnerable to early shots.

I saw the thread title on the main forum page and thought "Aha! That's exactly what Flinty was saying last time I played him! Wonder if there's any advice I can pass on!"

Oops.

Aaaaanyway... in one of our games, where we upped the points to 150, you had your Decimator and a nice group of TIEs on one side, while Fel was punting around on the other. That seemed to work well as I got split up trying to chase too many things, and over-obsessed with trying to kill the VT-49. So, yes, splitting up so you have two groups that appear to be individually dangerous does work - against me, at least!

Noooo.. Graphite, close your eyes... nothing to see here lalala

@Azrael - I do realise it's highly dependant on both lists. It's just that there are so many variables that with my limited opportunities to play I was really just looking to get some possibles discounted before I waste too much time on them

@peregrine - thanks. I think I was gradually getting there. I think to date ice pushed one of the ships too far into the board so only having half the board split. This would tend to bring my ships back too close together reducing the confusion in my opponent.

Right. So its not a dumb idea, I just need to concentrate more on really keeping the chased ship turtle up and running

My friend and I have been playing for 6 months now, multiple games a week, and he's thinking he needs to fine tune when to joust, and when to get away.

 Peregrine wrote:
With a three-ace list you're almost always going to want to use some kind of split deployment and try to force your opponent to either split up their formation or chase one ship while it runs away and you come in behind them with the others. Your biggest vulnerability is focused fire from a whole formation, so you want to make sure that isn't going to happen. The main exception is if your opponent uses a split deployment of their own with lower-PS ships and there's an isolated target you can pick off immediately. Then you just deploy right across from your victim and open with maximum-speed moves directly at it, hopefully killing it before the rest of your opponent's ships can converge on you.

 Azreal13 wrote:
The one thing I never do is just fly straight at top speed towards the opposite side, unless that's what I suspect is what my opponent doesn't want me to do.

I've actually found flying straight at the edge to be a useful thing to do, as long as your opponent isn't deployed on that end of the table. Pushing a ship up the side of the table lets you flank from more directions. For example, say you deploy Fel and Whisper on the left side of the table, while your opponent deployed (at lower PS) on your right corner. Whisper cloaks and goes slow, Fel floors it up the edge. Your opponent has to turn to your left to engage you at all, but now they're caught between staying "high" to go after Fel or coming "low" to get at Whisper. You get a full 3" edge to split your ships along, but without having to deploy anything on your right, directly across from your opponent and vulnerable to early shots.

This.

You have the advantage of last deployment, and superior manoeuvrability. The things you want to achieve are to force an opponent to split up his formation, and to pounce on and kill his ships one at a time.
Therefore:

1) Don't rush at him, let him come to you.

2) You want to place the rocks in a nice, dense field - large based ships and swarms have difficulty navigating such areas without either breaking formation or accepting stress and/or damage and occasionally losing shots. This prevents him concentrating firepower

3) Moving slowly along your board edge, as Peregrine suggests, forces him to pick one ace and go after them. Said ace can easily outpace anything without decloak or boost if so inclined, so if they don't like the odds they can leg it, whilst the other two pac-man it up the flanks. Being in a situation where he's got threats on each side of him, and needs to pull red moves to get a shot at you, is important.

4) Aces, as a rule, are vulnerable to concentrated fire. A mob of generics - especially tough stuff like Y-wings and B-wings, aren't. It's very unrealistic that 9-10 attack dice with a focus token at best is going to kill an 8-hit point ship with at least one green die in a single shooting phase. However, damage you do 'sticks' - whilst focus and evade tokens refresh every turn, Therefore, if you get a 'lousy' shot and do 1 damage, and in return he forces you to spend your evade token, you've come out on top - because that lost shield will still be there next turn.

5) Don't be too aggressive. Especially with B-wings, enemy heavies can actually out-dance you up close, and flying head on opens you up to stuff like Tacticians, R3-A2, and other stress mechanics, being blocked and losing actions, and even just a B-wing using barrel roll and darting into an unexpected spot. Unless facing massed cannons or torpedoes, you have the edge in a range 3 engagement (and even then, autothrusters are amazing!) - move into range 3, shoot, disengage and come back in.

6) Try to come in obliquely. It's easier to dance in and out of range 3 if you aren't pointing straight at someone - a hard turn will take you from broadly closing to broadly moving away, and then a boost/barrel roll can often put you out of arc altogether

7) Above all, never trade shots on an even basis. Given a choice between neither you nor your opponent getting a good shot, and both of you getting a good shot, take the former. If you break off, with your better dial and cloak/boost/barrel roll shenanigans the odds are good that you'll be in the better positon when you come back in again.

Thanks all. Really appreciate the advice.

locarno24 wrote:
6) Try to come in obliquely. It's easier to dance in and out of range 3 if you aren't pointing straight at someone - a hard turn will take you from broadly closing to broadly moving away, and then a boost/barrel roll can often put you out of arc altogether

This is a very important point. In addition, remember that the fastest non-straight maneuvers are speed 3 while straight maneuvers go up to speed 5. Forcing your opponent to turn to engage you, even if they manage to get a head-on pass after the turn, makes them come in significantly slower and buys you more time at range 3, more time for flanking ships to get into position and engage, etc. This is why the "run one ship up the edge as fast as possible" approach can work. Unlike deploying in the opposite corners of your deployment zone the "vertical" split allows you to make two widely-separated threats where both threats require your opponent to make bank/turn maneuvers to engage. A corner split is a lot more likely to allow your opponent to go straight at one corner and speed up the game.

I tend to run 3 Imperial ace (or ace-like -- ps 6 or 7) lists and while I haven't had a lot of success, some of my failure definitely comes from impatience and either letting high PS arc dodgers or rebel generic blockers in close (with 2 attack dice Imperials I want to get into R1 but I'm not convinced that's the right instinct).

My most successful games have usually come when I've been able to choose my own engagements -- once when a Brobots list deployed in a bumping holding pattern in a corner and other times when I deployed in a line up, letting my opponent think I was planning a head on rush, then either threw everything to one flank or switched up the order (moving the center ship to one side and that flanker back to the center)... that's usually allowed me to get some unexpected match ups, either 3 to 2, 2 to 1 or similar.

I'm definitely going to have to experiment with the non-forward facing deployment, though.

 Azreal13 wrote:

One of my favorites is to take advantage of the fact that more often than not the obstacles are arranged in the middle of the map by counter deploying as much as I'm able, and then milling around so they have to fly through the obstacles to get at me.

This is my favourite thing to against large ship's with my more nimble ties

 captain bloody fists wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:

One of my favorites is to take advantage of the fact that more often than not the obstacles are arranged in the middle of the map by counter deploying as much as I'm able, and then milling around so they have to fly through the obstacles to get at me.

This is my favourite thing to against large ship's with my more nimble ties

A counter-point to this: it's often to your advantage to do the opposite, and try to have your opponent flying into the rocks after they get to you. Ideally, in this case, you engage just as you're coming out of the rocks, leaving open space in front of you to maneuver for your next shots while your opponent has a bunch of rocks in front of them and limited options. If you try to set it up so they have to fly through too many obstacles to get to you then you'll often find that those same obstacles get in your way on the following turn.

So another game last night. I was running a tricked out fel, Kanos, Lt Lorton and a random academy pilot. Opponent had Han, Wedge and Hobbies, all bare bones.

I split my ships up with 2 in each of my corners, Lorre and the mood directly across from his squadron line and Fel and Kanos on the other side. Lorrir and Co ran like bunnies while Fel screeched across the board and Kanos took it a bit more slowly.

It worked really rather well. Han ended up chasing Lorrir and the Tie. 4 turns in a row, no damage By the time the falcon actually got into the fight, he was alone.

Opponent also made the mistake of splitting up Wedge and Hobbies so I could take them down one at a time.

End result was all of his ships gone for 3 points of damage to my ships. To be fair though he was rolling pretty badly and my dice were on fire, especially my greens.

Next game I need to concentrate on not lining Fel up with asteroids and a stress token :p