Tuesday, February 4, 2020

Turbolasers Updated!

I got this done earlier than expected, hooray!  Original article was updated, but here's Heavy Fire Zone below:
Dodge, duck, dip, dive, and.... something
Heavy Fire Zone is a very different turbolaser in that it's not modifying your attack against a ship but against squadrons.  The timing windows work, even though it may not look like it.  Lemme point you right to Eric's article about the attack sequence and wait for you to come back.

Alright, so you would pick your target and then you can change the blue dice you would be throwing at it into reds.  This is a nice way of forcing squadrons at LONG range to close with you, ensuring that you can hit them outside of your normal blue dice range (so yes, you can flak at long range with it).  When they close with you, you can use your blue dice (which provide more reliable damage and better ways of making it occur, Leading Shots and Toryn being the obvious examples).  The card does come with the downside that you don't usually have many great ways of rerolling red dice, but you're throwing them at least?  Add in a blue with Kallus or Draven and then reroll with Leading Shots?  They can't be engaged with any friendly squadrons of your own, of course, so it's there to force your opponent to move in towards you.  It also doesn't combine with Ruthless Strategists, because again: not engaged with your own squadrons.  But it's long range flak!

Who wants this? Maybe certain ISD-II builds, maybe Nebulons, maybe Assault Frigates?  They all have 2 blue flak, and one more turn of free flak isn't horrid if you weren't using the turbolaser.  You just have to be in red range, which generally then means you're moving towards the squadron ball you're shooting at.  Keep that fact in mind as you use it.

4 comments:

  1. Just looking at it, you can hit a normal squad ball with this, reliable damage no but a sure way to soften up before you sends squads in with Flight Commander.

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    1. That seems to be the purpose: you get to flak at long range if you otherwise wouldn't be able to. The downside being red dice are super unreliable against squads, especially without a way to further modify them (like LTTs do, but you've already spent your turbolaser slot on Heavy Fire Zone). That said, worse attacks you do get are better than better attacks you don't get.

      The main issue is the ship wants to have blue flak dice to upgrade to red (preferably more than one) and wants to not mind giving up its turbolaser slot to do so. There's not a lot of ships that meet both qualifications, unfortunately.

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    2. Yeah basically seems like Yavaris would like it, possibly ISD-IIs that don't expect to see a lot of redirect or who don't have the points for something like XI-7s

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  2. Going to try running a double nebulous and assault frigate list, all with heavy fire zone.

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