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Hey folks,

I'm wondering what you tend to do to counter some of the top lists you tend to run up against. I run Imperial aces lists generally, and I'm curious as to how you all counter some of the more common builds, like Decimator/Soontir (or Whisper), Palpatine aces or regeneration rebels.

Vs Palp aces, my guess is that I need to kinda ignore the shuttle (but also try to keep from giving it good shots) and try to use my 3-2 advantage.

Against rebel HWK lists, I've been pretty successful killing the support ship first. And I heard Paul Heaver say that you should never leave a regeneration Poe until the end.

But I'm a bit stymied by what to do against a Vader Decimator (especially with Gunner)... is it best to try to avoid it and deny shots? Or do so much damage to the Decimator that he can't use Vader?

What are your tactics against the lists you see most frequently?

Vs Regen always try to kill any regen ships first, the longer they are on the table the more their regen is worth and later in the game when you are getting less shots on them they become nigh invulnerable

Vs Palp Aces I tend to go against the Shuttle first if possible, Palp re-roll makes shooting 3 agility ships a major pain

Vs Decimators with Darth, shoot it, shoot it lots

Vs Triple Jumpmaster, got nothing, bring brobots maybe

Vs TLT lists, bring coffee, bring more coffee, helps you stay awake

Vs Crackswarm, range and arc-dodging as much as possible, kill Howlrunner first

Vs Fat YT's, try to block, no actions make Han/Dash sad Pandas

Vs Brobots, again got nothing, bring Jumpmasters !

The meta at the moment seems to be simplifying into triple jumpmaster or palp aces as competitive builds and everything else being left in their wake. I'd love to be a triple jumpmaster player but can't get the hang of co-ordinating the large bases, personally I'm going full rebel stress control at the moment and before that I was Rebel Regen,before that 4B1Z. So maybe I'll bring a slightly different approach to things, I'll give my advice but please taken it as a given that these are just general game plans that will get switched up if opponents make errors for me to exploit or I develop a sudden case of idiocy.

Triple Jumpmasters I've yet to play against. My game plan is mainly tank the alphastrike(ideally controlling approach to only fight them 2 at a time), then stress them to hell to limit their repositioning and shut down second strike capacity. Any ships with unspent munitions that I gun down in Guidance Chimps meta is a triumph.

Palp Ace's I've pretty consistently beaten with all my lists. The trick is flying right past the aces and ganking the shuttle. It's funnier with stress control where you can leave the aces stuck facing the wrong way for a turn whilst pummeling them with turrets, but same principle applies regardless of list.

Decimator plus Ace, 9 times out of 10 I'm gunning for the Decimator then the Ace. Killing the decimator is simple and acheivable, hunting an Ace is always easier once you've removed the complications of any support ship. As I play a control list I can say that my plan may vary from the normal rule in the sense that I've be trying to stress the ace on my intitial attack run to limit his attack options on my ships as they gun down the Decimator but thats just a variant play.

Rebel Regen,kill what you can kill- ignore what you can't. It sounds stupid, but the whole go for the regen ship first is normally a bad play. Obviously you don't want to end up dueling a rebel regen ace one on one in endgame, but loosing a few shields and then breaking off to regen is the whole gameplan. If you can satisfactorily overkill the regen ace and then keep him in arc whilst shrugging off the rest of his list then kudos to you, you are amazing! For the rest of us mere mortals focus on killing out his ships that can't regen to stop them shooting at you and then sweat the regen. Also learn your regen sources and how to game them. For rebels there are 4 sources- R2-D2 Astromech is most popular, do a green move=regen a shield is brilliant but locks people into predictable movement patterns. R5-P9 gives the ship back a shield if it has focus at the end of the turn, is only viable on Poe so make sure he doesn't get to focus!R2-D2 Crew is expensive, only works if you have no shields and has a chance of turning a damage card face up- If your opponents not Paul Heaver you have nothing to fear from this. Finally there is Miranda Doni, throw all my usual advice out the window and just kill her first as she has the best regen mechanic(-1 Dice when attacking to regen 1 shield once per turn) but is on a lumbering ship 1 green dice ships whose repositional ability stops her regenning.

Beating massed TLT requires artistry and a good eye. If its 4 TLT then you are facing HWK's or Y's then the ships are crap but the guns are great, outmanoeuvre them so you approach from behind, don't let your ships get caught in TLT crossfire and once you've killed the first its trivial to hide in the range band 1 blindspot and gun them down. 3 TLT's is probably a K-Wing or strange scum ace ship list, just apply the same principles but be more cautious of things like the K's primary weapon turret or Palob's pilot ability. All TLT list's you win or lose against in the approach, if you fly a small base ship into range of all 4 turrets then expect to lose it, so don't do that!

All Swarms are just a matter of breaking them up and defeating them in detail, really doesn't matter what ships they consist of. This is obviously harder than it sounds!

Brobots, block-arcdodge-kill. They are nasty on the first pass and if they get to play cat and mouse. So don't get caught out by their ability to engage turn one with ease, and work on blocking their movement path once the shooting starts.

 David Clarke wrote:


Brobots, block-arcdodge-kill. They are nasty on the first pass and if they get to play cat and mouse. So don't get caught out by their ability to engage turn one with ease, and work on blocking their movement path once the shooting starts.

If you're playing casual and you know you're playing against brobots, Oicunn feths with them pretty hard. I've beaten more than one good brobots player using the Orkiest Star Wars pilot.

 EmpNortonII wrote:
If you're playing casual and you know you're playing against brobots, Oicunn feths with them pretty hard. I've beaten more than one good brobots player using the Orkiest Star Wars pilot.

Very very true. This why I don't rate Brobots, they get tripped up by stupid Orky tactics. Sometimes high finesse is secret code for "when you make a single mistake this list will fall apart", and it's a lot easier to be making a mistake when something horrendous with a great big spiky ram is bearing down on you.