Category Archives: What Makes It Tick

What Makes It Tick

What Makes It Tick: Lord of The Rings LCG Solo : Part I

The what makes it tick series has become one of the most viewed elements on my site and its also quickly become my favorite type of article to write.  Today we begin yet another What Makes It Tick series on Lord of the Rings the Living Card Game by Fantasy Flight Games.

Now this is a game I really struggle with and its because it is a brutally hard game, in a sense, anyone playing it is an eternal noob as there seems to be no good way to truly master it.  This is without question what draws me personally to this game and since like so many out there I too am always looking for any tid bit of information, advice or just tips, I thought why not pass on what little I have learned.

As with all the articles in this series I’m going to assume you are familiar with the game, this series has always been intended for existing players rather than “I want to learn what this is” type of thing.  We are going to start right in the middle with our first article and tackle a tough and common topic of discussion.  The already infamous Adventure Quest “Conflict At The Carrock”

This is one tough quest and I struggled with it for a very long time before not only beating it but figuring out what the hell your even supposed to do to succeed.  Let’s get right into it!

Very important note here.  This series is about SOLO play, unaltered, straight up solo play.  Much of this advice would probably be quite different if I was making the assessments for 2 or more players.

The Lay Of The Land

Possibly one of the toughest quests in the Shadows of Mirkwood Cycle. It’s all about bringing the beat down on some Trolls!

Conflict At The Carrock is a 2 stage quest, though this is incredibly deceiving because there is so much more to it then that.   The two stages are Grimbeorn’s Quest & Against the Trolls.   The first stage of the quest, Grimebeorn’s Quest is mostly benign and non-descript.  You set aside the 4 Trolls you will be facing later and to complete the quest you simply need to attain 7 progress.  In the second quest you basically need to defeat these 4 trolls.

The first quest (Grimbeorn’s Quest) is simple enough but this is where the bulk of the work to be successful in the quest must be completed.  Its not about what it says, but about what it does not say.

The clue is in the title of the first quest, you want this guy, you need this guy, this guy is your best friend in the Conflict At The Carrock!

Grimbeorn’s Quest 1
Setup: Add The Carrock to the staging area. Remove 4 unique Troll cards and 4 copies of the “Sacked!” card from the encounter deck and set them aside, out of play. Then shuffle 1 “Sacked!” card per player back into the encounter deck.

Forced: After placing the 7th progress token on Grimbeorn’s Quest, The Carrock becomes the active location. Discard the previous active location from play.

Against The Trolls Quest 2
When Revealed: Place the unique Troll cards previously set aside into the staging area.
Players cannot defeat this stage if there are any Troll enemies in play.

The core difficulty of Conflict At The Carrock is that the Trolls that drop into the staging area in the second quest, when faced simultaneously are all but impossible to defeat and because they have the same Engagement Cost, if your threat is above theres they will all drop on you simultaneously.  If this happens, In all but the most rarest circumstances, you are probably going to lose in the very round they drop on you.

Hence the obvious strategy here is to control your threat so that when stage two begins, they remain in the staging area.  While this is definitely part of the strategy, its far from the whole picture.

The Real Stages of Conflict At The Carrock

I mentioned that the first quest, Grimbeorn’s Quest, is all about what it doesn’t say though there are some clues given.

To truly defeat and control Conflict At The Carrock with any reliability you need to accomplish 4 things prior to completing the first stage of this quest.

First, you must find Grimbeorn the Old and claim him on your side.  He is your 4th hero, a powerful one, especially equipped to help you defeat the Trolls.  Without him, completing Conflict At The Carrock is very difficult to say the least.  Finding Grimebeorn however requires you to go through the Encounter deck and get Bee Pastures to the table.  This brings our second element.

This is the key to getting your best asset needed to defeat the trolls in stage 2, one of the many hidden “stages” of the first quest.

Secondly you must control the Encounter top deck.  Whatever deck you build, its vital that you know what the top card of the Encounter Deck is and have the ability to get rid of it.  This is because there are several really tough cards in the Encounter deck that can end your game rather abruptly.  There are various approaches here, the one I ultimately used was Denethor.  This is because he can both look at the top card and move it to the bottom deck if you don’t like it and then in later stages, help defend with his 3 defense.  There are plenty of other ways to do this, suffice to say you must have some encounter deck control.  If you leave it to chance, bad things will happen.

Kind of a bad guy in the original story, there is nothing bad about him in the game. He was the key to victory for me.

Cards like Muck Adder can surprise you and take out one of your heroes easily if you are not prepared.  A poorly timed A Frightened Beast can dramatically raise your threat, which is something you really need to control given that you must stay under 34 threat to ensure the Trolls can’t engage automatically when stage 2 arrives.  In fact its more reasonable to say you need to be well under 34 to be successful as you will gain threat during the big fight as well.  Finally you really need to avoid the Sacked & Roasted Slowly combo, its going to end your day in an instance.  Those are just the cards from Conflict At The Carrock to, there is all manor of death in the other decks that are part of the quest including Hill Troll who can do a lot of damage to your threat.

Instant effects like this would be a lot easier to control if you didn’t have to deal with shadow effect cards. One bad draw and things are going to die.

The third element needed for success is a good army.  You really need a lot of stuff on the table ready to fight and quest.  Some utility here is also a good idea to assist with all other elements.  You want the units to be cheap, so that you can get them to the table, but fighty so that they can put some damage on the board.  The choice here is wide open, though I personally found that the Leadership and Lore Spheres worked the best here.  You have lots of allies that are cheap enough (2 or 3 resources) and offer great utility like card draws and boosting effects.  The most important part though is getting a good solid force so that you have both some sacrificial lambs and can do sufficient damage to take out one Troll per round which typically means doing about 12-14 damage.  That’s a big damage requirement but between hero’s and Grimebeorn, you should be about 2/3rds of the way there, so your army needs to fill in the rest.

The final element is what I like to call “fishing for cards”.  This is usually done through different types of utility allies or cards, but you must find the threat control cards in your deck like Gandalf for example to keep that threat down.  Remember you MUST be under 34 threat when you go to stage 2, going there with a threat higher than that is pointless, odds of you getting wiped out in short order are almost 100%.    Hence getting threat control into your hand is a priority and that means drawing cards effects & other effects that allow you to pull cards or filter through them.

Spirit decks are also very good at controlling threat, I can see using the spirit sphere here with great success as well.

Ok so you can see why this particular quest is so difficult.  A lot has to come together in order to succeed.

The optimal position you should be in when going into stage 2 of this quest are as followed.

  1. Below 34 Threat (preferably 30 or bellow)
  2. Sufficient Allies & Heroes on the board to do 12-14 damage per round when attacking.
  3. Grimebeorn is a must in most cases, it helps with the above, but more importantly he can take a lot of damage for you without being sacraficed so your forces aren’t being diminished.

How I did It

I’m reluctant to simply post my deck.  I understand that this is a common practice in the community but as I was trying to defeat this quest, I didn’t want someone to just hand me the answer for the test.  This is a game of discovery, its part of the fun and I’m not going to spoil it for you.  I will however give you some tips on cards that where key in the success of this quest.

I used Leadership and Lore for my two spheres.  While I believe there are many hero’s that can successfully traverse this quest, I believe Denethor was the key to my success.  Really I think this is one of my favorite heroes to use for any tough quest because the truth is that if you can control the Encounter Top Deck, you have given yourself a massive advantage.  It requires him to exhaust however so I always make sure to put something in the deck that allows me to ready him in an emergency.

Gandalf is was also key to my success mainly for his threat control but he is expensive.  This is partially why I used Leadership, so that I could get Steward of Gondor and ultimately have enough resources to pay for Gandalf.  Its also an important card to get Grimbeorn the Old into play. One alternative is of course to use Sneak Attack to bring out Gandalf.  This is a dirt cheap way to leverage Gandalf but requires the drawing of two cards at the same time, not exactly a reliable way of doing it.  Steward of Gondor is a reliable card that helps with Gandalf and a lot of other things, so with Leadership to me its just an auto add most of the time anyway.

Finally I think Henamarth Riversong played an important roll, it was just that extra measure of control, Forest Snare can be helpful, though I didn’t use it for the Trolls, but more for controlling the board during the preparation portion of the quest in the first stage.  By the time your fighting the Trolls you shouldn’t need the snare, if you do, something has gone terribly wrong.  Burning Brand was also really important, the Trolls are tough enough without Shadow Effects.

The Victory

Beating this quest was not easy, my final score was 182, not exactly a massive victory, but the satisfaction of logging this quest was pure bliss.  It was a tough challenge, even with all the right moves the final stage is still tough.  Those Trolls are tough to beat and you still have to contend with the rising threat, questing and adds that can appear as you fight them.  In the end it was about keeping that threat under 34 and killing the Trolls one at a time.

As if Conflict At The Carrock was not tough enough, you can use these nightmare version of the Trolls!

The bet advice I can give when it comes to approaching any quest in Lord of the Rings but in particular this one, is that you have to pay close attention to your loses.  What is the root cause.  Is it threat, is it monsters, is it questing.  Identify it and then adapt your strategy to strengthen that portion of your deck.  I ultimately beat the quest because I didn’t “start over” with an entirely new deck each time I lost.  I simply went back to the deck and made small adaptions.  In the end it took over 15 attempts before I beat the quest, but now I’m certain I could beat it at least half the time which is about as good as it gets with a tough one like Conflict At The Carrock.

It was a fantastic experience, without question one of my favorite quests so far.  I hope you found this article helpful, good luck in your questing!

What Makes It Tick

What Makes It Tick: Twilight Imperium Part III

Twilight Imperium has a lot of intricacy, just learning the rules can take time but actually learning the subtle long term impact of the very wide range of potential strategies, racial benefits, technologies, strategy cards, political cards, different resources and positions, just to name a few things, takes many… many plays.

There are however some established, classic strategic and tactical concepts that can always be deployed and while I’m not going to get too deep with the specifics, I have constructed a short list lof some of the top tips & tricks.

Mecatol Rex For The Win

The importance of controlling and denying control of Mecatol Rex, the central planet of the game cannot be overstated.  While most players will prioritize “production” and “military” instinctively, the truth is that in TI3, all players will ultimately build up military forces that will be fairly evenly matched.  More than that, war is a poor path to victory and even when facing a much smaller force, you will be sacrificing resources to go to war, weakening your position whether you win or lose the war.  This is mainly because TI3 is in the scope of things, is actually a pretty short game in terms of rounds.  Most games with experienced players will end somewhere between round 6-8.

Most inexperienced players will question the value of Influence and skip Mecatol Rex as a target until they realize that controlling Mecatol Rex is about a whole lot more than that.

Hence production is really about creating a line of deterrents, its like investing in the future mutual destruction of anyone who decides to go to war with you, but usually that investment isn’t going to be turned into Victory Points through an act of war.

The true defining and usually deciding factor of a TI3 victory will be the player who diversifies the best.  You need to have technology, resources, influence, command token advantage, fleet supply advantage, military strength and political/diplomatic control.

To that end Mecatol Rex is an amazing contributor.  Its a single planet that provides 7 resources (1 production and a whopping 6 Influence).  More than that though a wide range of secret objectives are only possible to accomplish through the control of Mecatol Rex, not to mention that its a platform of control as you can project your force from the center of the galaxy at any player.  Of course having 6 influence each round is amazing as it gives you political control during voting, its a core resource in several public objectives and its used in the secondaries of several strategy cards.  There are a lot of benefits to be had just by controlling the planet.

More importantly however is that simply by controlling it, you are likely denying several players the opportunity to complete their secret objectives (2 points) which is key since in the vast majority of games, a player that completes his secret objective will win the game.

Mecatol Guardians is a variant introduced in Shattered Empire, effectively NPC units that protect the planet it to make it harder to take…. this however is just a cat in a box.

Mecatol Rex as a result is a key, strategic position and a worthy investment in most games for you.  In particular controlling it early can create a stacking effect of benefits, the longer you control the better position you will be in.

Controlling Mecatol Rex is however not about space combat, its about ground combat and as such its all about getting ground forces on the planet.  Its unlikely that should another player or more typically players decide to take it from you, that you will be able to stop them.   Its a central planet, everyone will be able to get to it.  Invading someone on Mecatol Rex with ground forces however is a considerably more difficult task thanks to the logistics of moving troops, in particular if a defending player has really built up his ground defenses.  Hence taking control of Mectol Rex and keeping it in your grasp is key, even if you only control the planet.

Command Token Management & Stalling

All the resources, military and planning in the world will fail if you do a poor job of managing your most vital resource in the game, Command Tokens.  Without question the most common thing you will hear at the end of a TI3 game is about how someone would have one if they had just one more Command Token.  It cannot be overstated how critical action economy is in TI3, every move you make will cost you command tokens, you must conserve them, spend them wisely and do everything in your power to create a reserve.  If you find yourself playing a game of TI3 two command tokens at a time that you earn in the status phase, or praying that someone will kick of the strategy card that earns you additional tokens you are not only going to lose, you are going to lose horribly.

There are a number of really important conservation methods when it comes to command tokens but the topic gets fairly complex.  I think the simplest and most direct advise I can give is to simply ask yourself “Why am I taking this action”?

One of several races with an ability to stall by spending command tokens. While they don’t help to conserve, at least you get something for your expenditure.

Simply put, you want to make sure every time you put down a command token that its with a very specific purpose in mind that garners a clear benefit, preferably one that will lead to a victory point.  You want to avoid dropping tokens just to “stall”.  Aka you don’t want to pass, but you have no worthy actions to take.  Often, in particular in early parts of the round it may be more prudent to pass.  More commonly however you are going to want to stall.

Knowing that at some point (likely all the time) you will be in that situation, you really want to find and hold on to anything that would allow you to stall.  Whether its a racial ability, an action card, a strategy card or something else.  You really want to have at least a couple of ways you can stall your turn each and every round of the game, barring perhaps the first round as this is largely for optimizing expansion.

You might at this point realize that some races are better equipped to do this then others, some even have an outright “pass” ability like the Yssaril Tribes.  Well, this is exactly why the tribes are often referred to as “the best” race in TI3.  The ability to stall, is very powerful and comes in handy throughout the game and it’s squarely because of this ability to conserve command tokens.  You will need to stall often with every race, but command token conservation is all about not stalling by spending command tokens.

Arguably a race with a terrible start, command token conversation and building up reserves is your priority in such a case.

Perhaps the best method of conserving command tokens is to simply build up a big reserve, so that you can spare command tokens to stall with. Some races benefit from this in one way or the other,  like Federation of Sol for example gets a direct benefit for simply spending a command token (get 2 free ground forces) while other races have absolutely no default way to do this, building a reserve is more important for these races.  In some cases it’s absolutely vital and a first priority.

Projecting Mutual Destruction

I have already mentioned several times in previous articles that TI3 is not a war game, but do not be fooled into thinking that means that there will not be war, nor that you can skimp on the projection of your military force.  In fact, this is not only a priority but constant.  You must always be building up a threatening, versatile force, ready to strike and bleed your enemies.

That said, the purpose of this build up is not a prelude to invasion or as a part of an ultimate plan to win a great war, its actually to project a military that is strong enough that anyone who attacks you would be assuring your mutual destruction.  It should be clear that to attack you, is to wage a war in which there will be two clear losers.  Its kind of like two world powers building up nuclear weapons, if the war ever does happen, its over for the both of you.

War is usually not a great move, but some races are much better equipped then others for conflict.

The reason is simple, you are here to earn victory points and carve a piece of the galaxy that offers enough resources that getting more from the control of other players in not necessary.  The galaxy however is far too small for everyone to get their fair share and as such, its inevitable that some players will have no choice but to fight for their claim.  You want to make sure that you make a poor target and that someone else appears to be a much better one.

Creating a proper military defense is not just about “more units”, its about creating nets of impossible odds and”stupid moves” that must be made to invade you.  You want to make it costly and that means DPS in a net protecting your key assets, lots of throw away fighters to use as cannon fodder and plenty of shooty units, preferably upgraded with technology.  Don’t skimp on ground forces either, you want to make sure that even if someone manages to take control of space, they are still not going to get your planets.  Finally you want to make sure that you can always counter-strike, so position your units in such a way as to ensure that if any spot is attacked, you have the means to make an immediate counter attack resulting in your opponent losing his units and gaining nothing for it.

Is this easy to do?  No its hard, it takes practice and there are insurmountable variables that can effect the decisions that must go into this.  This can only be learned through experience, but the important lesson you should take away here is that, the goal is always a threatening, costly defense that can only be overcome through a stupidly expensive engagement.  The goal here is to discourage attacks in the first place.

A Weak Mans War

One final piece of advice is regarding the relative starting strength and dynamic starting positions in the game.  TI3 is not a fair game, in each game there will always be players who have a clearly better and clearly worse start.  You might think that starting of in a position of strength is good, but its actually not.  Weakness leads to alliances and cooperation, strength leads to hostility and ultimately war.  Being in a weak position means you have just cause to agitate the fragile peace in the galaxy.  Out of a weak position you want to trigger wars, but you also want to make sure that your participation is just a gesture.

Play the wounded dog, in fact the longer you can maintain the illusion of being out of contention for the game the better (real or imagined).  Always remember that wars are not won on the battlefield, they are won through diplomacy, politics and manipulation with the your enemies enemy.  There is no better method to ensure victory than to draw in two players into a conflict between them with the illusion that you are taking sides.  When playing from a weak position your goal is to always create conflict between players.  Point out the possible moves, the possible threats to each other, theorize about how people will act, what actions they might take and never be afraid to make some shit up.  Put doubt in the minds of everyone and stir chaos, distract the shit out of them and push them to make mistakes.

If you ever find yourself playing the Xxcha, stirring the shit is your top priority, they are the definition of a weak starting hand.

Weak positions typically mean smaller military and fewer opportunities, as such you must create your own options, but often as it so happens it can be impossible to recover from a weak position.  Its in these cases you really learn the most about how TI3 is really played.  Its a mind game, a game of guesstimating about what people will, might or can do.  When you aren’t a threat, no one can accuse you and say “hey your trying to distract us so you can sneak in the win”, often identifying a weak position of a player is not hard to do.  Hence your weakness becomes your legitimacy, there is a sense of “he has no reason to lie” in the atmosphere that surrounds a player in a weak position.  Leverage the shit out of that, force everyone to play their hand in the open by being observant and vocal.

Its hard to play from a weak position, but it might surprise you to know that of all the victories I have ever had, starting from a weak position accounts for about 70% of my wins.  The truth is that there are no weak positions in TI3, there are just perceptions of that.  Winning from a weak position is all about the spin and to win you must be the spinster.

How that was all helpful, see you guys next time.

What Makes It Tick

What Makes It Tick: Twilight Imperium Part II

In our next TI3 article we are going to be talking about some theorycrafting surrounding this amazing epic.  We are going to talk about the meta game, table action, some do’s and don’ts and a few strategy tips to get you started all built around the theory of the Revenge Factor.

The Revenge Factor

The revenge factor is a concept that applies to a lot of games but no place is the theory more prevalent than in Twilight Imperium thanks to its rich political environment where everything is connected in one way or the other.

First lets talk about the theory itself, what is the “Revenge Factor”.  It basically breaks down like this.  In Twilight Imperium, almost every action you take is going to negatively effect someone at the table in some way.  Its a very confrontational game.  In a game of TI3 every player always has a general status of either being in contention or out of contention for the win.  While this status can change over the course of the game, the later the game becomes the less likely someone that is out of contention for the win will make a comeback and be back in contention.  This is important to understand because the revenge factor effectively kicks in when a players status changes from in contention to out of contention, whether imagined or real.

Lots of games have Revenge Factor elements, GoT The Card Game is another good example, in particular in multiplayer games. Be weary of injuring people in this game, if you put them out of contention, it doesn’t take much for someone to take you with them.

Another property of the Revenge factor is understanding that in Twilight Imperium, barring very unusual circumstances, you can always sacrifice yourself to take someone with you.  Basically if you realize that you are not going to win, you are likely still in a position to target someone and make sure they don’t win either through a wide range of actions, from playing cards, the way you vote in political rounds, using special abilities or just outright attacks, self-destructive or otherwise.

The Revenge Factor thus is the act of realizing that you are out of contention, identifying the person who caused you to be out of contention and then actively pursuing him/her and ensuring, while you won’t win, neither will they, aka, getting your revenge.

Anyone who has ever played a confrontational game like TI3 knows what this is, perhaps they call it something else but that element of “getting even” is always a prevalent force.  In TI3 this is amplified by the fact that there are so many ways to negatively effect someone at the table.

The phenomenon takes different shape depending on the player count, typically the higher the player count the more likely two players will find themselves in a pointless conflict that will put them both out of contention for the win.

The “Revenge Factor” is a very real thing and I find in almost every TI3 game I have ever lost, its been as a result of this table phenomenon.  In a lot of ways, its really not possible to win a game of TI3 entirely on your own in most circumstances, external events, alliances and political maneuvering in which you end up getting help, either willing or unwittingly is an absolute must to secure a win.  If someone is really gunning for you, willing to sacrifice their own potential victory,  victory for you is very unlikely.  Again, in most circumstances, their are obviously often exceptions but to really come to grips with this phenomenon you must both understand it, embrace it and vigilantly prepare for it.

There are many different ways to deal with the “Revenge Factor”.

First and foremost, be conservative in how you negatively impact people.  Simply lashing out randomly or negatively effecting someone just because you can, in particular if there is no benefit to you (no way to earn points for it yourself) is a sure fire way to become a target of someones revenge.  Avoid this.

A good way to do this is to always ask yourself a simple question.  How does this action help me.  If the answer is not “I will get a victory point as a result”, its usually not worth it, at least not during the early and mid game.  Things change a lot in late game where there might not be enough time to get revenge but we will talk about how to manage the end game very specifically in a later article.

This is a game about victory points, never forget this, this IS the only way to win. Swapping plastic in a war that does not yield VP’s out of spite is a sure fire way to lose the game.

The second way to avoid being the target of revenge is to anticipate and prepare for it.  Holding coveted cards like Sabotage, sitting on a Diplomacy Strategy card, creating neutral zones using military units, simply having a much larger military or even arranging a negative action through diplomatic talks with the player so he knows “ok he is going to do this so he can get a point, in trade for X or Y”.  All these things and much more can be done to anticipate or curve someone lashing out.  Understanding what a player could potentially do in response and being ready for it is important but be weary of screwing with a player who has a hand full of action cards, is within striking distance of a system you need, has more command tokens than you or is in position to help one of your other enemies at the table.  Action cards in particular can create a lot of chaos, you never want to be the target of someones action card wrath.  They can do a lot of damage and its a common strategy to stack your hand for just this purpose.

Finally and perhaps most importantly hold out negative actions for the end game.  A typical game of TI3 doesn’t end with a player getting that last and final point in the final round of the game.  It more often happens that a player scores 2, 3 or even 4 points in a single round.  Often referred to as “making  your play”, essentially the act of setting up a way to score multiple points in a single round so that players don’t have time to respond and are caught of guard.  If your sitting on 8 or 9 points in the final round, odds are you are about to play a round in which every person at the table is going to be trying to stop you, but if your sitting on 6 points people will assume there is plenty of time to deal with you.  Hence sitting on those big Fuck You actions until the right moment and then unloading to score big in a single round is the most effective way to ensure no one ever gets a chance to get revenge on you.

The golden rule in TI3 is that at 6 points you’re a threat in contention for the win. At 9 points, you’re just the guy about to get his ass handed to him by 5 other players.

Now that is not to say you should not make plays against people throughout the game, but remember the first part of this theory.  Players aren’t going to suicide it on you just because you play a Local Unrest on them in round one because they will still feel in contention for the win and won’t want to risk too much, but if you do something that really knocks them on their ass and they perceive that they are going to lose the game because of it, in particularly early or mid game, its a good chance you will have brought the wrath upon yourself and you will be dealing with a player taping your resources for the rest of the game on a suicide mission to take you with them,  making it difficult if not impossible to win.

Building political and economic power is a far better way to advance, then taking it away from someone else.

That is in a nutshell the revenge factor, know it, learn to love it and of course always be prepared to institute your own revenge should someone foolishly go after you.  Stack those action cards, arrange your military on the borders of your enemies and always be ready to pay them back 10 fold for their foolishness.  You really want to set this precedence at the table.  Everyone should know that, to screw with you is to unleash the demon, make them pay for coming after you and let them know that if they take you out of contention, your going to take them with you.

That’s it for today, hope you enjoyed the article and good luck!

What Makes It Tick

What Makes It Tick: Twilight Imperium Part I

One of my favorite games of all time, Twilight Imperium can only be described as a thematic epic, a game of galactic civilization building and management, dripping with intrigue, politics, diplomacy, trade, war, exploration and just all around 4x goodness.  I always say that if I was to be stuck on an island with 5 of my best friends and we could only bring one game with us, this is definitely the one I would choose.  With near infinite re-playbility,  mountains of strategic depth and an almost overwhelming set of variants and options this has to be one of the most dynamic board games in existence.

Starting this month I will be focusing in on Twilight Imperium both in this blog, on the pod cast and in my own personal gaming group.

Now I realize that Twilight Imperium is a rather niche thing.  We are talking about a pretty complex game that really requires 6 dedicated players and runs the better part of 6 hours.  Not to mention the science-fiction subject matter.  We are talking about a game here that eliminates a lot of people in a lot of ways.  For those of you who hear science-fiction, epic, six hours, six players and it brings a smile to your face, then this article series is definitely for you.

This is already a very long game when setup in the standard way, but fans being fans will do crazy setups like this that will take days as opposed to hours. There is a special place in hell for these people, I’m looking forward to meeting them.

In the course of this article series we are going to explore this game inside and out.  We are going to look at strategies, the races, tricks of the trade, pitfalls and most importantly how to win.  First however let’s just kick things off with a general overview, lets assume for a second you don’t own Twilight Imperium yet and you are considering picking it up.  Consider this a sort of list of important things to know about TI3.

It’s a game about a war but not a war game

Whenever I describe TI3 I always begin by telling people that despite appearances, while this game is definitely about a great galactic war, it is not mechanically speaking a game of war.  Now don’t get me wrong here, you will definitely be fighting.  You will build mighty space fleets and send them into grand battles, fighting over planets and resources, but these aspects of TI3 are really a distraction and perhaps better to say an extension of the treacherous intrigue, diplomacy and politics that are the true driving force of the game.

Looking at an image like this it’s not hard to imagine someone mistaking this for a war game.

To win Twilight Imperium you must score points and there is only one way to do that which is to complete public and secret objectives.  Waging war for war’s sake will not win you the game in all but the rarest circumstance, or when using some select variants and its very much more likely that simply going on a war path even when pursuing points will ultimately lead you to a crushing defeat.  So always keep in mind as you approach TI3 that while you must always build up your military and prepare for war, successful players will use their war machine with precision, as a means to an end and most commonly to distract their opponents from their real agenda which should always be kept hidden.

This is of course also important if you are buying this game because you think it’s a “war in space” game, it’s not and you definitely should not buy this game if that is what you are after.

This is more a hobby than a game

While I would never fault someone for giving TI3 a try, the truth is that TI3 is designed from the ground up for dedicated players, people who are interested in studying and learning about the ins and outs of this complex game.  This is an event game, something you plan an evening around, going into it knowing it’s going to take up the whole night.  It’s not a game you simply pull out on a random board game night.  It’s definitely not for casual gamers either and for best results it’s important that all participants prepare for the game by reading the rulebook on their own. In other words, it takes motivated, interested players who are eager to play to be successful.

There are a lot of mini mechanics built into the options and variants of TI3 like the political system for example. Its important everyone familiarize themselves with these else getting a good experience becomes very difficult if not impossible.

I note this here because if you are considering purchasing TI3 you must keep this in mind. You want a gaming group setup ready to dive in with interest and excitement, a group that is aware of what TI3 really is and be on board with it.  You don’t want to twist arms and convince reluctant people to play this game, it simply does not work out well and given the expense of the game, it would be a shame to shell out so much money for something that collects dust on your shelf.

Getting both expansions with the core game is really kind of a must. TI3 is kind of an all or nothing thing. The good news is you will never have trouble finding someone to sell it to if you take good care of your game.

So be sure you really have a gaming group ready to commit to the game before you buy, else you will find yourself like many do, on the forums posting “looking for TI3 games in X, Y area”.  You don’t want this big beautiful box on your shelf that never see’s the light of day.

It’s a game for 6 players, no more no less

This might be a controversial opinion and so I say this with full disclosure that this Is just that, my opinion.  To me, TI3 with anything more or less than 6 players changes the experience and in most cases considerably reduces it to the point where I would consider other games before I play a 3, 4 or 5 player game of TI3.  Here is how I see the breakdown.

3 Player Game
In a 3 player game the core problem is that intrigue, politics and diplomacy suffer greatly and since this is really the focus of the game, that is a real deal breaker for me.  You have a triad so any alliances or political coordination results in a 2 on 1 situation and this makes for a very poor TI3 experience in my humble opinion.  TI3 really shines in an environment of multiple political plays, diplomatic situations and intrigues motivated by a field of players, without it, it really just becomes a game of war rather than a game about a war.  It effectively devolves into an overly complicated game of RISK.

The 3 player setup is a triangle so at least the map is balanced, but without the intrigue, diplomacy and politics it makes for a very shallow experience.

4 Player Game
This is probably the only alternative I would consider to be “ok” in a pinch or when one is desperate to play, but still largely skip-able especially considering the wide range of awesome 4 player games available.  The main problem here is that each player gets 2 strategy cards which diminishes the game greatly because you know with 100% certainty every secondary ability of every strategy card will be played.  The dynamic becomes predictable and it really gives certain races a much bigger advantage then they would normally have throwing the balance off.  The map is even which is good and I don’t necessarily hate 4 player games, but generally speaking I think there are better options out there in the 4x genre for a 4 player game than TI3.  I think new players will hate it considerably less, but as you gain experience you will recognize the subtle differences.

5 Player Game
This to me is the worst of the bunch largely because the map is so uneven.  You end up with 3 players affected negatively by their home world position at the start of the game and this really makes it tough especially for the middle (5th player) who has 2 players only 2 hexes away.  While there are some modifications that can be made to the map as released in the expansions, or via the standard rules of handing out some added trade goods, these solutions are imperfect at best.  I have never cared for any of these solutions and personally avoid 5 player games to avoid the diminished experience.  You especially want to avoid a 5 player game as you are introducing it to new players, the game will immediately be accused of being horribly unbalanced and unfair.

7 & 8 Player Games
TI3 is already a big epic, very long game but at 7 & 8 players it gets too long even for the most dedicated veterans.  You are talking about a 8+ hour game here and while I imagine initially some might be attracted to the size of the game there is just too much down time and the game runs too slow to be worth it.  The experienced is diminished considerably and it becomes too messy to manage.

At the end of the day the perfect, sweet spot is a 6 player game and this is really what you should be shooting for with your gaming group.  I would argue that all player counts can be modified and house ruled to be improved, in fact in later articles I will be talking about some of those house rules and home brewed variants that improve the game for other player counts, but in as a whole, out of the box, 6 player games is where it’s really at its best.

The Shattered Empire Expansion Is a must

Twilight Imperiums greatest strength is its dynamic nature and unfortunately in the original game there is a strategy card called “Imperial”, the number 8 card, which really breaks the spirit of those dynamics.  This is corrected in the Shattered Empire Expansion (as well as Shards of the Throne) by introducing alternatives to this card.  This issue is lovingly referred to as the “Round Robin” effect.

Getting 2 Victory Points in TI3 is very difficult, only a fool would pass on a strategy card that just gives it to you for doing nothing.

The Round Robin Problem
The issue which most TI3 players are familiar with is the round robin effect of the imperial strategy card.  This card effectively gives you 2 free points simply for activating it and 2 victory points in TI3 is huge.  What ends up happening is that every player will quickly realize that whenever you can take the Imperial card you must take it.  Since the person with the speaker token picks strategy cards first, the obvious play if you are the second player during the strategy phase is to get the speaker token hence you will be taking the “Initiative” strategy card which does just that.  Another words the round robin effect is that the speaker takes the Imperial Card and the second player takes the initiative card so he can get the Imperial card next round.  This shuffles down the line and eventually all players will make this move at least once.

This happens every round resulting in most games with the first two picks of each strategy phase being the same.  This goes around the table resulting in each player eventually getting his 2 free points.  The idea here is to speed up the game but there is a negative effect that comes into play at the very end of the game, which creates the arguably game breaking impact.

If you can’t get the Imperial card you must take the Initiative card, making this the other culprit in the predictable round robin cycle.

What happens is that the average TI3 game takes about 7-8 rounds, which means that 1 or 2 players will end up getting the Imperial card twice, aka 4 free points.  This means that the player who gets the speaker token in the first round of the game, something determined randomly with dice at the start of the game, will end up getting 2 more points than everyone else in round 7.  Making him the most likely winner of the game as he only needs to produce 6 other points to win the game (you win at 10 victory points) by round 7.  Not an all to difficult task with most races under normal circumstances.  Any experienced player knows that you aren’t winning the game unless you score a point each round so scoring 6 points by the start of round 7 is something all good players learn to do well.

This round robin cycle is terrible for the game, in particular at a table with more experienced players but in general it is just bad. Fortunately the Shattered Empire Expansion resolves this by offering alternatives to the Imperial card (more on that later).

Now there are of course ways to house rule this so this is not the only reason to get the Shattered Empire expansion. The additional races, action cards, political cards, all of the alternative strategy cards not to mention the added variant options all improve the game dramatically. It’s my recommendation that if you purchase TI3 you automatically purchase Shattered Empire with it directly.  I would also recommend you pick up Shards of the Throne while you’re at it because frankly this game will not be in print forever and the print runs FFG does make are usually small so if you are going to get into TI3 you pretty much want to go all in.

The most commonly used solution to the round robin problem is the bureaucracy strategy card.

That’s just my opinion of course but these expansions add so much to the game, improving the experience so dramatically that if you end up loving TI3, you’re going to really hate yourself if you did not get the expansions along with it.  Besides, this game is always sought after so if you take good care of it you will not have any trouble selling it later if you end up not liking it and recouping your money.

Final Considerations

The final consideration I think anyone considering getting into TI3 should make is definitely to make sure you understand the design aspect of the game.  I think most people who look at this game would categorize it as “Ameri-trash”.  It’s packed full of miniatures, its thematically driven and it uses dice and lots and lots of cards.  The thing is that if you remove the miniatures and dice, pretty much every mechanic in this game is effectively a “Euro Game” mechanic.  In fact, I would consider this a kind of cross over game, but if you don’t like Euro games, if you don’t like Euro mechanics you will find a lot to dislike about TI3.

Prior to the Euro invasion you would never see “victory points” or “objectives” used in an American made game. Just one of the many good things to influence American designers..

TI3 makes heavy use of things like Role-Selection (works like Puerto Rico), command move and bidding just to name a couple.  There is a ton of Euro influence here mixed in with the Ameri-Trash luck/randomness.  I would argue it blends the best of both worlds but in the end this blending of design styles might not be for everyone so be sure you really read the rulebook and consider how you feel about this infrastructure that TI3 is build around.

Ok I think that is a good start to the series, keep an eye on the upcoming articles!

What Makes It Tick

Star Wars Armada: What Makes It Tick Part III

Wave 5 is here and what a fantastic wave it is. Not only did we get the usual new ships & new squads but this wave brings with it Corellian Conflict a new campaign mode for Armada that breathes new life to Star Wars Armada in an epic way.

In Todays What Makes It Tick I will be picking up Star Wars Armada about two waves since my last article and while I could bore you with the reasons why I haven’t been playing, the reality is that with the last couple of waves the game has been reborn and I’m excited about it again. Today I will be talking about some of the more controversial and interesting cards to come out in recent waves. Enjoy!

Bomber Command Center
Coming out of the Imperial Assault Carriers and Rebel Transports expansion packs Bomber Command Center has become the new hotness in competitive meta proving itself at the Star Wars Armada World Champion in 2016 in which both the 1st and 2nd place lists made heavy use of the card. If there is any card you must be prepared to deal with in the Meta in 2017 it’s definitely this one.

The debates over whether or not this cards effect should be stack-able have raged for a while, but officially at this moment the answer is, yes it does stack.

There are so many advantages and ways to leverage this card but the best, most common and perhaps most effective way is to simply spam the shit out of it. While it counts as a “Fleet Support Upgrade Card” limiting it to the Assault Carriers and Rebel Transports, truth is, even if it wasn’t it would still likely be the meta to put them on those ships anyway. These are some cheap, disposable ships that can actually be pretty hard to blow up and as such in most matches they are largely ignored ensuring that Bomber Command Centers remain in play and you are able to leverage them throughout the match.

The ability to re-roll black bomber squad dice is nothing short of overwhelmingly powerful thanks to the dices ability to roll hit/crit results. When running two or three of these ships, not only do you gain an activation advantage thanks to having more ships on the table then your opponent but the effect stacks allowing you to reroll your bomber squad attacks multiple times. Not to mention having disposable fleet blockers. The advantages here vs. the point cost to put them on the table can only be described as dirt cheap.

Cheap with a scatter and capable of some potent upgrades like Slicer Tools and Bomber Command Center, the new transports are a force multiplier that has changed the competitive meta in a big way.

We saw this effect in the world championship final bout this year and there is no question in how deadly this combination is. Flying 8 Y-Wings (80 points!) protected by Intel and some escorts with 3 bomber command centers and what you end up with is a fleet of squads that can practically guarantee 8 hits & 8 Crits every single bloody round. Sure there is the logistics of making sure everything is exactly where it should be during the course of a match. While the pro’s make that look easy, believe me that it’s not that simple, but suffice to say in the right hands this Bomber Command Center supported by a fleet of Bomber based squads is a deadly combination no capital ship can withstand.

Consider the base for the list.

3 Rebel Transports (GR-75 Medium)+ Bomber Command Centers = 78 Points
8 Y-Wings + 2 HWK – 290 = 104 Points

Your base list is effectively 182 with 218 points left to fill out the list.

That base combo is already deadly in its own right, but imagine now throwing in Commander Sato or as the world champion did General Dodonna. It really is brutality unleashed, the potential for damage from this very cheap base is staggering. You would be hard pressed to combine 182 points into something that could unleash that many dice with so many re-rolls and because the dice are scattered over 8 separate rolls, capital ship defense are rendered useless against them.

I would personally advise not spamming Transports, really, one command center is plenty.  The black die is pretty dependable, if you happen to roll a blank once, you aren’t likely to do it twice in a row.  Having a single command center, maybe two should be more than sufficient.  The pro’s might not agree with me, but I work under the assumption that we aren’t all pros, I’m certainly not.  For me, its better to get more effects, ships and squads on the board then it is to put all my eggs in one basket.

Now we could talk about how fantastic this combination is but the truth is that whether you are going to use it, or face it, you need to know how it unravels. How do you deal with such a list and combination of effects? Well that was a question many tried to answer and failed during the World Championship, but I do believe there are a couple of things that could ultimately challenge a list with this base.

One thing I can say upfront is that you can’t ignore the Y-Wings or really any bomber spam. That just simply won’t work, not unless you plan to stay out of the fight entirely. But unlike the classic Rhymer Ball, you can outmaneuver the slow moving Y-Wings and more importantly leverage the fact that the Transports themselves, while sturdy for their size and point cost can be rendered defenseless with a couple of new upgrades we got in recent waves as well as some old rarely used upgrades. Blowing them up early is the key as without the squadron support and re-rolls, Y-Wings are considerably less effective and can be rendered useless through some clever maneuvering. That however is easier said then that as typically the squads are placed up front so anything that wants to shoot at the transports is going to have to deal with the fighter/bombers leading the battle.

You’ll be seeing a lot more of this one, in particular on ships that are black die focused. Getting accuracies has become vital in the modern competitive meta post wave 4.

For the Rebels a good place to start is the MC30 (Torpedo Frigate) with  H9 Turbolasers. This all but assures that when firing at an Assault Carrier or Rebel Transport that you are going to be able to squash that Scatter and mop up those 3 points of hull in one swift round. Two would be even better. Strategies will naturally vary but you aren’t going to one to come up the front and you probably want to make your opponent split his attention. You definitely don’t want to do what the 2nd place holder did during the championship and go up the front in some vein hope that you can survive the bombings. You won’t, there isn’t a ship in the entire game no matter how you equip it that can withstand 8 bombers shooting at it especially when they can re-roll those black dice multiple times.

The same is true for the Imperials, though it’s worth pointing out that as deadly as this combination is in a rebel list, with a Rhymer ball and bomber based list, a similar list for the Imperials can be as deadly if not deadlier thanks to the range advantage not to mention that Imperial ships are cheaper. So of course while you could counter with Gladiators in a similar fashion as the MC30’s, one way to counter a bomber list like this would be to have your own.

The main strategy at the base of it is to get rid of those support ships with Bomber Command and the best way to do it is to ensure you have at least one accuracy to get rid of its main protection which is the scatter.  This probably explains are worlds champions reasoning behind using 3 Transports with bomber command, he knows that little 18 point transport is the key to his list so he tripled down to make sure he always has those re-rolls.

Suffice to say though this is all very theoretical, as the world champion proved during the competition this year, it is much easier said than done. It’s a very strong meta list and flown well it can put out considerable damage.

Many would argue that Bomber Command Centers are overpowered but keep in mind that they are 8 points which is on the high end in terms of upgrades and they currently must be placed on very soft ships that can quickly and easily be dispatched. Since the strategy is so heavily based on these support ships, you have a very obvious weak point to target.

The new expansion offers us a number of new options but the E-Wing with snipe is finally an answer to those annoying “Intel” based ships.

One other thing to keep in mind is that a heavy anti-squadron based list that can quickly overwhelm the Intel and escorts is also a good option.  Especially in the form of A-Wings and now with E-Wings.  Good anti-squadron is always a good choice in a list as has always been the case for facing heavy bomber lists, but Y-Wings in particular are quite tough and can often win squad based fights so it’s important that your anti-squad suppression is well thought out and preferably using the “Counter” keyword. Don’t presume Y-Wings in particular are easy to kill, they do pretty ok in dog fights in large numbers and have the hull points to outlast in big fights, in particular with an opponent who will be highly motivated to get them back on their bombing run making use of heavy anti-fighter fire from their capital ships.

A-Wings remain a very cheap anti-squadron solution, the ultimate in shutting down heavy bomber lists for the rebels.

 

Rapid Launch Bays

Another widely discussed card that just entered the frey in Wave 5, discussed not so much for its potential effects on the meta, but more in regards to what the card actually does. Arguably the most poorly worded card in Armada to date, it’s difficult to decipher how it actually works, but today we are going to try.

So let’s look at the wording here.

Poorly worded cards like this makes things difficult, in particular right after release when your trying to run competitive tournaments without the clarity of a FAQ.

The first part I think is quite clear. You effectively set ships aside so that you can deploy them during the match. This in its own right creates a lot of opportunity for exploiting interesting tactics, namely bringing slow moving ships into the fight. There are many slow squads in the game that often have trouble getting into position and this card addresses that issue by not only getting them to the battlefield but keeping them protected (un-targetable) while in the safety of their carrier ship.

The tricky wording in the second section of the card is where all the discussion comes from.

There are three points of contention here.

First is the “you would activate with this command”. The second is the word “Instead” and finally the last part “It cannot move this activation”.

There are really two ways you can read this. The first is that since the card says “For each squadron you would activate with this command you may instead.. do x and y”. This suggests that this is a special action, not governed by the rules of activation. Meaning that the squadron comes into play “not activated”. Allowing you to simply put it into play and set it up for future activation’s.

The card follows up with “It cannot move this activation” which is perhaps the most confusing element of the card. What activation is it talking about? The ship activation or the squad activation. If it’s the squad activation this suggests the exact opposite, that the ship is activated, but it simply cannot move, hence it can attack according to standard activation rules.  Keep in mind that standard rules always apply when their is no specific exception given on a card. If it’s a ship activation on the other hande, it suggest that its not activated but since its not, you should with another squad command point you be able activate the ship and attack, but still can’t move.

The general two questions here are, is it activated and if so while we know it can’t move, can it shoot? That’s the big debate. Activated or not and can it shoot or not.

The answer is at best inconclusive and it has been so far ruled in a number of different ways, though none of them official by FFG. While an explanation is sure to come at some point, for our house games and in particular if you are running a tournament we still need to answer this question.

My general sense of the card is that in the last part where it mentions “It cannot move this activation” is a reference to the ship activation, not squad activation. The logic here is that the spending of your squad command points during the activation can be split up, some of the points going to activating squads normally and others using Rapid Launch Bay.

I think it’s best to see it in action with an example.

Lets say you have an Assault Frigate with 3 squad points and a squad token that has 2 B-Wings stashed away using Rapid Launch Bays.

The slow moving B-Wing suffers greatly as a result of its slow speed, rapid launch bays addresses that problem.

You activate the ship and reveal a squad command. Now its time to spend the points. You spend the first two points to put out your B-Wings in distance 1 of the carrier. They are not activated, this is all you can do with those two points, however you of course have 2 points remaining (one from the command and one from the squad command token). You now activate your B-Wings using your remaining two points, now since it’s still the same ship activation you can’t move them, but you can attack, so if you had ships in range you can attack with the B-Wings.

I believe this is the intent of the card, now of course this is not official and some including myself would argue that in the last part of the wording of the card it could be referring to squad activation which would suggest that you could use a single squad point to put out a B-Wing, activate it and attack (but not move). However I would argue that if this was true, this card would be stupidity over powered at only 6 points. You could in this case have 4 B-Wings stashed away, put them all out and attack with all 4 of them in a single action, with Extended Hanger Bays and a squad token you could do this with 5 B-Wings. Throw in command centers and you’re talking about a card that would completely redefine how the game is played. Even in the first scenario this is a very powerful effect but in the second scenario it’s just way out of hand. While you might be able to argue the translation, it would be hard to justify the power of this card in the scope of the game and its ultimately because of the question of balance, I believe the card will likely be ruled as our first example not our second.

Currently in most tournaments, including local regionals the first scenario is being used, it’s what I would recommend you use until the official FAQ is released.

Rebel Pelta Class Command Ship

The Command version offers 3 squad command and a offensive retrofit, setting it up to be a focused support ship.

 

The Assault version gives us red/black dice with 2 anti-squadron fire and a ordinance slot, making this a more shooty support ship.

Ok so let’s talk a bit about the new ship, specifically the Pelta Class Command Ship which is definitely the one I’m personally most eager to try. Finally we have joining the world of Armada a proper pure support ship that can affect the battle field on a global level. Now we have had quasi support ships in the past like a Redemption, Projection Experts fitted Nebulon-B or the more recent Rebel Transport with Bomber Command Centers, but the Pelta is different. It has no range qualification for its Fleet Command slot as  these global effect driven cards simply require the spending of a token.  In that little slot a lot of magic can happen opening an entirely new world of options for list building. This however is just one small part of the Pelta.

The first thing you might miss, but is important to note is the 4 engineering on a small ship. This is important because this ship will largely want to stay out of big fights and given its slow speed and maneuverability, being able to take a licking and keep on ticking is important when those flankers show up. 4 engineering means 2 shields each round without any special tokens or support and given its 3 on the front, 2 on the side and 1 on the back configuration and the fact it has 3 defense tokens (Brace, Re-direct and Evade), this is a sturdy ship with good recovery for its class. No one is going to come around and just melt it like they would easily do with a Nebulon-B fitted the same way.

More importantly it has a Support Team slot which means it can make use of Projection Experts when it’s not being shot at, sharing the wealth and further qualifying it as a proper support ship.

The fact that is boasts an Offensive Retrofit might have you scratching your head but thanks to gear like Phylong Q7 Tractor Beams, Rapid Launch Bays and Engine Techs you have serious versatility in choosing this ships role and capabilities.

Now the cost on this ship can get crazy quickly and you probobly don’t want to try to combine too many effects on it.  Its best chose to serve a very specific role, though more than any other ship in the game, its role can very dramatically depending what upgrades you put on it.  I think its for this reason more than any other that I’m already in love with the ship.

This is largely an untested ship though and so its honeymoon period may be short but it’s not hard to see the benefits of cards like Shields to the Maximum, All fighters follow me and Entrapment Formation. With no range requirements you have what amounts to the first truly global effect on the battlefield able to reach everyone always. You can effectively build entire lists around these core concepts and that in its own right I believe will be well worth the investment but the truth is that unless a ship can fight or add something to a fight on its own its usually not worth putting into most lists.

Spending a engineering token to give every ship in your fleet one free shield for 6 points is a fantastic trade off, especially in a game where every shield point counts.

Thankfully for that purpose we have the Assault version of the ship, a far more shooty version that one can draw comparisons to the Gladiator.  In the assault version you gain an ordinance slot that can be leverage to throw in some additional fire power while still offering the core support features of the Pelta.  For the aggressive minded player this is a fantastic alternative to the more focused command version.

Some Musings

I truly believe that much of what has come out in Wave 5 is geared more towards the new campaign mode in mind than 400 vs. 400 point pitched matches and I believe the Pelta is one of those elements. Consider that Shields to the Maximum for example affects all “friendly” ships. That includes your allies when doing an all-out offensive during the campaign. So suddenly the impact of that command ship is even on a grander scale!

Its more than just the ship though.  In the campaign mode you are always thinking about the war, not just the individual battles.  You are also always thinking about the survival of your different ships and squads and as such you are likely going to be looking at upgrades and list selections very differently.  Equipment like Rapid Launch Bays can protect squadrons and offer you a choice as to when and even if you really want to risk them in a particular battle.    The choices and reasoning behind making them are going to change in the campaign and I believe a lot of what we got in wave 5 supports that.

My point is that I can’t say for certain that things like Rapid Launch Bays for example will be a thing in the competitive meta in 2017, but you can definitely expect to see them in the campaign as its clear the uses there are more defined.

That’s it for today’s article, hope you found something useful in it.  Fly Safe!