Wednesday, May 17, 2023

Four RR2 Squadrons!

Hooray, we got 4 new squadrons! Let me dump them all HERE before inserting them into their own posts. Hit the jump for some cool new stuff!

Start a fire!

Starting myself out with an easy one here.

So at its most basic, 14 points for a 2 brace bomber is great in GAR.  Your other aces are usually so expensive that he's well worth just being cheap for one of your token aces.  The OTHER cool thing is that if he's unengaged, he gives out Rogue.  If a squadron moves more than distance 1 away from him, however, he loses Rogue.  Which means (thanks FAQ page)!

1) If you want to give a lot of your bombers Rogue, Matchstick has to lead the charge.  Squads that start before him and move more than D1 away, they don't have Rogue anymore. If they stay within 1, they're fine, of course.

2) Shooting and killing whoever is engaging Matchstick (making him unengaged) immediately allows that bomber to move away, as that squad now has Rogue.

3) Any bomber that moves into D1 of Matchstick immediately gains Rogue, with all the moving and shooting that entails.  So Match runs in and bombs something first.  Then, anyone who follows him in a proverbial fire storm (OH I GET THE NICKNAME NOW) can follow after him and also shoot the ship he's near.

Think of Match as like a weird Jan Ors style aura, with an on/off switch of engagement.  If he's unengaged, and you're within distance 1 of him, you gain Rogue and are viewed as having always had it this whole phase (so it's fine to land near him and shoot).  If he's engaged, or you're not within distance 1 of him, you're a regular squadron.

If you're bringing bombers, bring Matchstick to pair with them, freeing up some of the ships commanding them to go do other things.  Especially fun is bringing Y-wing Anakin with him and Plo Commander.  What if a Rogue 2-dice bomber who can ignore engagement, gets to reroll both dice, AND adds a free accuracy? Hoof, mean.  And if you're not flying for the GAR, start thinking about taking SOME squadrons, for sure.

If you can name what he ever actually did in the EU WITHOUT going to Wookieepedia, I'll be impressed

Vult Skerris is.... a guy! Who flew for the Empire! And now he's in an Interceptor! I don't care enough to go look up what he did in THE LORRRRRE, because it doesn't really matter.  At 18 points, he's one of the more expensive Imperial options, tying him with Soontir.  He also can't "regular" attack in the squadron phase.  But he can make counter attacks, specifically, a strong counter-4 (boosted with Howlrunner, or Dengar, or whatever myriad other ways you've got).

His job is to alpha in and attack (again, Defender dice are solid!), and then be a real pain for your opponent with his counter-4.  However, he has... a scatter and an evade.  That is SIGNIFICANTLY squishier than a Scatter/Brace like every other scatter ace.  The evade could reroll that hit into a blank or crit! It could also do absolutely nothing, so when an X-wing or Flight Controllers boosted V19 or Vulture or or or rolls "DECENTLY", that's a dead Skerris.  He's fine, I guess? Maybe with like Valen or whatever over Cienna, because you want to spend more points or something? Give me a legitimate reason to take him over Cienna for a delaying screen or a reason to put him in 134? I've seen people try him, but I haven't seen any Imperial players SUPER excited about him, especially because he doesn't do anything significantly different for the faction that they already had.  Sorry you lost the squadron battle this Rapid Reinforcements, Impos.

Ah yes, when he flew that squadron in the movie. You know, like he did. I haven't seen Clone Wars

Wat Tambor! Belbullab! Can't take his officer! What WILL CIS players do now? He's also the first (and currently ONLY) way to get Escort in the CIS.  He also has Screen, which means those 3 Hyenas you're escorting are helping YOU by making me reroll attacks.  That's also, like PDIC, an "always on" ability, even if your defense tokens are gone.  Mathematically, screen should be reducing damage.  IF my friend Justin was doing the math right (notice how i have pawned this off on him), Screen-3 after a 4 dice (no Toryn, no Hera, etc, just 4 blue dice) shot should result in 0 damage 31% of the time and only 1 damage 41% of the time; this is of course a lot of hinky math that (again) didn't assume your opponent has ways of modifying his die rolls.  But hey, it's a great start!

Add on your defense tokens, and you can survive a lot longer than you would think.  The Relay-1 is a nice topping on the cake; may I suggest pairing him with Phlac-Arphocc Prototypes to help "protect" your bombers?  But you're taking him for the Escort and Screen.  Wat is good in small screens too; him and a few Vultures can make a solid dent, especially when he leads the charge and acts as a swarm node for them all.  The main obstacle to taking him as a squadron is that you can't take his officer card, which means you CIS players are going to need to fill that chair.  However, if you're going CIS134, he's your first squadron as you figure out the number of Hyenas to add after that.

Probably appearing in the Thrawn movie, because who isn't at this point?

Lastly, we have Fenn Rau. The Mandolorian! Well, not that one.  The one who fought against the Empire! Again, not that one.  His armor is blue! No, not her now. The one in Rebels!

Fenn has a few solid abilities going for him.  First, Escort and speed 4.  Pairs well with RR1 Hera and Biggs balls.  A lone Brace token isn't much, but with 7 health.... he also has Assault, which, again when paired with Hera and maybe even Toryn, can get that blue hit for a raid token, and then the black can be damage.  Nice if you need it, great if you can figure out how applying it helps you win the game.

The main bits about BEING a Gauntlet fighter haven't changed from the Imperial one or Gar Saxon, but you have 2 things in faction they do not: Toryn Farr, and Hera in an X-wing.  I can't stress enough how important they are to you doing ANYTHING with his stats; 2 blue and a red are really mediocre for 24 points, and even though his anti-ship has an 87.5% chance of 1+ hits.... I'd like higher, personally. I like Raid in Rebels, especially as you can hit someone with either a nav or an engineering mid-game and finish them off the next turn; Rebels excel at chipping into someone and not at one hit KOing them, so lean into that and make sure that you can finish them off next turn.

You're mainly taking him for his coolest ability, the long one that required like 3 FAQs.  When he activates, immediately afterwards you can grab 2 generic friends at distance 1 and activate them as well, just as if the ship itself was activating them.  Which means if Flight Controllers or Yavaris bombing for that second die against ships? The 2 generics can get that bonus as well, so long as Fenn was at D1 to activate them.  Imagine a 5 squadron 5 Yavaris attack, or 6 squadrons with Flight Controllers (3 base from an Assault Frigate or MC75, a token for a 4th, and Fenn's friends for a 5th and 6th) rolling into some Imperial pilots.  And not only was Fenn there, but Jan Ors, Hera, and Biggs decided they were all fighting the Empire today!

He also works if you use a token to only push him.  Which means that the Liberty title with a token pushes 2 squadrons, one of whom is Fenn, who pushes 2 on his own.  One squadron token, 4 squads pushed.  Now THAT'S efficient.

You're going to want to find ways of either rerolling his dice (the aforementioned Hera/Toryn, who can work to improve a LOT of his output), especially as he doesn't have Bomber. In practice, he's going to be very likely seen with either 2 Scurrg generic bombers as extra muscle into your opponent's ship, or 2-3 generic X-wings as part of a Biggs/Hera/Jan Ors ball.  Because he's speed 4, don't outfly your coverage unless you need to (as a Sato spotter, for example), because if you're not at D1, your friends don't get to activate and he's probably not worth 24 points then. Special mention, of course, to Rex, to REALLY get him and Raid going.

8 comments:

  1. "If you can name what he ever actually did in the EU WITHOUT going to Wookieepedia, I'll be impressed"

    He chased Hera into an obvious trap and died.

    "How unfortunate. Open fire."
    "But sir, Commander Skerris..."
    "Is playing into Syndula's hands. Now open... fire."

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  2. So when do you get to activate the extra squadrons from Fenn Rau? After his activation is finished right? So that means if you moved him there likely won't be any unactivated squadrons left at his new position. So Feen Rau basically does not work with Alphastrikes, but only from the round after it onwards and you STILL need to move his recipient squadrons next to him, arguably with another ships squadron command. So whats the point of having him again, except for Yavaris and Raid shenanigans?

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    Replies
    1. I mean, Gallant Haven to protect and then tossing out 6 squads possibly with flight controllers is pretty nice

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    2. But your are not "tossing out" those squadrons. For Fenn Rau to work you need have squadrons at distance 1 of him AFTER his activation, which basically means he is only good while attacking without moving. I don't think AMG thought about this when making him, the same way they probably didn't intend the weird way you have to play Matchstick or Anakins double salvo. They just wrote some badly worded ability texts and then, when the playerbase asked if all those implied weird ways to play those units were really intentional they just said with "Yes." to everything.

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  3. So if I activate Fenn with Tallon, can Fenn then reactivate two other already activated Squadrons?

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    Replies
    1. Nope. You can activate 2 with first Fenn, and then you can trigger 2 more when Fenn goes again, but you can't activate already activated squads

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    2. Gotcha. I'm also assuming I can't activate Fenn with Tallon, then activate Fenn with Yavaris in the same turn?

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    3. I mean, he's a Squadron. If Adar de-activates him, he's good to go under Yav, nothing stopping that

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