Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Dancing with Dash and Rhymer - The Combat Air Patrol (CAP)

One thing that we have been seeing lately pop up in major tournaments is a sudden strong showing from Rhymerballs (Imperial) and YT-2400 spam (Rebel).  Today we are going to take a look at both of these archetypes for fighter cover, and discuss how to deal with them.



The Rhymerball


Let's start by taking a look at a traditional "Vanilla" Rhymerball, and also the "Fireball" variant.  The traditional Rhymerball was around in some fashion as far back as Wave 1, when a Rhymer lead swarm of bombers was widely thought of to be the only thing that could make squadrons "Viable".

The Rhymerball archetype will typically see about 43 - 70 points of dedicated bombers, with the remainder of the 134 available points being anti-fighter cover, Escorts, and Intel ships.  By its very nature, the Rhymerball is a squadron heavy list, so you won't find more than 300 points of capital ships on the board, though with Gozantis now as a cheap squadron activation filler, you are no longer able to expect a 2 or 3 activation list.

The big threat of the Rhymerball is in the damage against your ships that you won't be able to properly screen for, as well as the assorted nasty tricks the Imperials can use to punish you for trying to break through the TIE Advanced screen.  In addition, because of the expanded range of Rhymer, the Imperial bombers can stay at Blue range of their target, and probably in Black range of their escorts, swinging the anti-squadron fire advantage squarely in their favor.

Ironically, the way to shut it down isn't to take out Rhymer, but the Intel ships letting him and his bombers have free reign over the battle field.  Which admittedly is easier said then done with TIE Advanced Escorts keeping your own fighters pinned in place.  So what can we do to help remove Intel from the equation?

#1 - Split your squadrons:

One way to accomplish this is to have a second wave of fighters in reserve, unengaged, to deal with the bombers once they clear your initial fighters.  Then your opponent has to chose to either disengage with the first group with his escorts, potentially giving you local superiority, or abandon the escorts with his Intel ships, giving you local superiority against them.

Consider the following squadron makeup:

X-Wing x3
Jan Orrs
YT-2400
Dash Rendar
Total Point Cost:  98 points

The X-Wings and Jan Ors move forward to engage the initial Bomber group.  Your opponent uses the Intel ships to free up Rhymer and the bombers from the scrum, and sends them on their bombing run.  Now your YT-2400s are free and clear to engage.  Wherever the Intel ships decide to go, Jan will allow the X-Wings to pop out and follow.


The Combat Air Patrol:


Now, obviously you can't build your list specifically to counter just one archetype, but this rebel Combat Air Patrol can do double duty as an anti-ship list with a minimal investment of Bomber Command Center, boosting the Red anti-ship battery from 0.75 average damage to 0.92.  Dash also improves his numbers, from 1.25 with his first reroll to 1.33 average damage.  Averaging it up, you will be able to deal nearly 6 points of damage per turn with your fighter cover.

Having seen our Rebel CAP, let's look at an Imperial variation:

IG-88
Mauler Mithel
Boba Fett
Jumpmaster
TIE Advanced x2
Total Point Cost:  98 points

The Imperials have a different look to dealing with Rhymer and his Intel ships.  Instead of splitting their forces, they have the ability to do guaranteed damage to specific ships.  Mauler Mithel can crash in dealing 1 point the very first turn.  Boba Fett, once engaged, can activate and deal another.  And IG-88 can crash in and attack whatever he wants, regardless of escort.  Between the three, you have the ability to get rid of essentially any Intel ship early in the engagement.

In addition, against a squadron light list, you still have a decent potential damage from Boba Fett (the only Bomber in the list, admittedly), as well as the TIE Advanced and IG-88 providing Black non-bomber dice.


YT-2400 Spam


But if the Rhymerball has been around forever, the new contender to the throne is the YT-2400 spam list.  Essentially, the list boils down to packing it full of as many YT-2400s as possible, and not caring about squadron commands.  It arrived in popularity near the end of Wave 2, originating in the NOVA meta and helping Q win his US Nationals Championship.

It essentially looks like one of two things:

YT-2400 x8
Total Points:  128

YT-2400 x6
Dash Rendar
Total Points:  120

From personal experience, it is a pain to deal with.  You can expect an alpha strike of up to 16 points of damage at your fighters on the first turn, and you need to deal 6 damage to remove just one fighter from that group - a lot of hull to chew through.

For Rebels, again, the counter to this is X-Wings and Jan Ors.  Jan or elite X-Wings can help you soak the initial damage, and the X-Wings if they can pounce on the enemy YT-2400s can do a considerable amount of damage.  Add Toryn Farr to the mix, and they each do 2.5 damage on average, meaning you can rely on 3 of them to be able to drop a YT-2400.  Anti-squadron fire is also key for this, as being able to drop a whole mess of YTs down to 4 or 5 hull means that your X-Wings can mop up.

Take our original CAP and consider increasing the number of X-Wings if you are expecting to run into this:

X-Wing x 5
Jan Orrs
YT-2400
Dash Rendar
Total Point Cost:  124

With Toryn Farr on the table as well, you should be able to take out 3 YT-2400s in the first round of engagement, and that could, if played right, translate into about 6 less damage coming at your squadrons.  Again, Bomber Command Center and 2 expanded hanger transports can keep your X-Wings activating and firing on ships long after fighter cover is removed.

For Imperials things get a bit trickier.  Guaranteed damage from Boba Fett or attacks from IG-88 are less effective against the 6 hull squadrons.  So an alternative might need to be considered if you expect to go up against a list like this.  Consider the following:

Howlrunner
Mauler Mithel
TIE Advanced x2
Jumpmaster x2
TIE Fighter x4
Total Point Cost:  111 points

Commanded by an ISD and 2 expanded hanger Gozantis, this swarm of cheap ships are custom built to counter YT-2400 spam.  Mauler Mithel drops the hull by 1 for everything he engages.  Howlrunner ups the damage of the Fighters (and Jumpmasters).

TIE Advanced:  1.5 damage / attack
Howlrunner:  2.0 damage / attack
TIE Fighters:  2.5 damage / attack
Jumpmaster: 2.0 damage / attack

Squadrons should be split as follows:

Squadron 1 - ISD
Howlrunner
TIE Advanced
Jumpmaster
TIE Fighter

Squadron 2 - Goz #1
Mauler Mithel
TIE Advanced
Jumpmaster

Squadron 3 - Goz #2
TIE Fighter x3

Keep everyone fairly close to pounce on the YTs.  Engage with a TIE Advanced first to give Swarm to the rest of your squadrons, then crash in with Howlrunner.  If possible, engage with just enough average damage to kill the YT-2400, if you roll hot, great, if you roll cold, Mauler Mithel can pop in right at the end to mop everything else up.

While this squadron build is also good for dealing with Rhymer, it is less ideal for anti-ship work.  You can mitigate the 3 hull nature of your squadrons by keeping them close to your ships, and putting them between your ships and the enemy ships forcing a choice of shooting your ships, or your fighter cover.


That's it for this article.  Hopefully it gives you some ideas for dealing with enemy squadrons, specifically the most prevalent ones.

14 comments:

  1. What's really scary about the YT spam is Rogue, combined with speed 4 and consistent damage from a black die. This give the YTs the ability to reposition and hit your ships where they will do the most damage.

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    1. Agreed. The ability to delay activation until squadron phase is a big advantage of the Rogue keyword, because it lets them begin a lot of engagements. Holding your own squadrons back to bait them out, or just having faster squadrons, is necessary to counter them.

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  2. The basic anti squadron of:
    - Tycho + 3 A-Wing (for the rebels)
    - Soontir + 2 interceptor + Howlrunner (for the impérials)

    Is nothing to laugh at. They both have a good mobility and counter. The reb version is a bit more resilient (and in my book 4 or 5 hull is not such a differance given the fact that most fighter hit with 3 dice => 3 attack average for the kill) and do black dies against capital. While the imp got an alpha strike that will get clear of lots of squadron (5 die + swarm per interceptor) and force the opponent to either counter on Mittel and let it use his evade or take one more damage.
    Not speeking of the counter (3 + swarm for the imp) and a right ace positionning to get the maximum of the evade tocken.

    BIg advantage is that they are both cheap.

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    1. Agreed - I like my fighter screen cheap. I am trialling 2 A-wings and YT2400s for my CAP.

      I think the Rebels have the advantage here because their fighters are multi-role, so I can normally justify spending a few more points as they won't be redundant!

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    2. I have a bit of trouble justifying a small 4 ship CAP these days, after watching Q obliterate my 3 A's, Tycho, Dash, YT-2400 squadron use in US Nationals. The A's counter and Speed 5 helps, but 4 hull and no tokens can die painfully fast.

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    3. Well they surely are not mean a insurance against everything. And they are subject to do nothing but die if you get outsmarted. And in some case of strong escort build they may look be a bit light. However with the eventual help of some AA from capital ship and a good timing/positioning they are able to delay/kill enough of the opponent to make the investment of your oponnent not worth it's point.
      The thing is that they realy rely on a good timing and positioning to be able to handle the situation but with speed 5 they have an advantage here.
      I don't say they are by no mean flawless and will save you all the time. The build you gave are very good and more resilient. But someone who don't want to invest that much in bomber squadron screen mai find a real utility on a more lighweight build that can still with practice be efficient enought to do the trick (and I'm waiting for the corelian conflict for even better build that go in this direction)

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    4. Believe me, I cannot wait for CorCon to be revealed, because I am legitimately excited for what could be in there for Wave 1 fighters.

      Specifically a certain mustachioed gentleman for whom I have named myself on the FFG forums.

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  3. You wanted to write about Fireball version of Rhymerball, but I guess you got distracted by many thoughts about the topic while writing the article:)

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    1. There were many things to think about, like: "why did I start writing this article 2 weeks ago, and then finish it Tuesday?"

      To clarify:

      Vanilla Rhymerballs involve lots of TIE Bombers
      Fireballs or Cinnamon Rhymerballs involve Firesprays as their bomber of choice.

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    2. Firesprays as bombers can be really evil. I like it. :D

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  4. Do you have a different strategy for them? For example, a corruptor+flight controllers--> speed 4 with 4 Blue anti fighter dice can make them quite viable anti-fighters, so They can fill 2 roles. Does this worth the points, or lets just forget it quickly?

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    1. My thought is that at 18 points per squadron, they aren't really that scary for anti-squadron if they are doing the same average damage as an un-Howl'd TIE Fighter (with swarm), and require a squadron activation to do even that.

      What I would be more worried about is them being escorted in by a flight controller VSD that is launching interceptors to pin down my squadrons, and then letting them activate and bomb in the squadron phase.

      I am not saying that they can't perform the anti-fighter role, but if that is what you are counting on them to do, you'd be better served taking a TIE Bomber and a TIE Fighter instead.

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  5. If you have an assault frigate, stick toryn farr on it and paragon. With 8 awings, 1 damage protection, and reroll on attack and counter, its vicious in the defensive and offensive roles. Especially with the AF lending antisquad support.

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  6. So basically the only counter for heavy squadron lists are major investments into squadrons in your own lists.. Squadrons = OP. For a game that is about Capitol ships they seem to be taking a back seat. Ships should at least have better upgrade cards to deal with defending against squads.

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