Smart Play

 
This SECOND (yay me!) email this week is from Whitestorm:

Whitestorm here
I was wondering what the best ways to beat top line characters like Boba BH, Vader JH and Thrawn are

Thanks for the email, Whitestorm. As with all things, patience and practice are the best tools to use. Well, thanks for the letter, and…just kidding. Honestly they are the best things to use. The better player you become the easier it is to beat top squads by simply out playing them. At the same time, there is no way to ‘consistently’ win in this game by running squad X. I call it the rock, paper, scissors effect. You run squad A and wipe the floor with most squads (i.e.-B&B), but every squad has its ‘hate’ squad. There is a squad out there that will obliterate yours. Just as there is a squad out there that will obliterate that one even if it’s a squad that you beat regularly. It is what keeps this game remarkably balanced. No one can use one single squad to counter everything. All you can do is build to what you think the Meta will be, and then learn how to do your best against the hate squad for your team is.

A perfect example of this is a personal favorite squad of mine that uses Master Yoda, CS Qui-Gon, R2 and four wookiee commandos as bodyguards. It is a very powerful squad in the right hands. In my hands I feel I can beat every squad I play, but it has a hard time dealing with Black and Blue, one of the gatekeepers of the game. It can beat it, but it takes a bit of luck and a favorable map. Yet there are enough squads out there that routinely beat B&B, that my chances of running into B&B are much less now than they once were, making my squad better again. This is what metagame refers to for those that are not familiar with the term. It basically has to do with what is commonly run at your local area, and what best counters it. This can change from venue to venue and can even be much different on the national level.

To address your issues with individual characters, lets start with Boba Fett, Bounty Hunter. Believe it or not, he is actually quite easy to beat. He is expensive enough that he is usually the main threat in a squad, so if you overpower him, then you are usually in good shape. What really throws Boba Fett out of whack is that chance disintegration. That is game changing and is perhaps the most frustrating thing in the world to lose your main piece first shot of the game. About the only way to counter his disintegration is to use bodyguards, but that isn’t always the answer, as they usually do not bring in enough offense to be more than an anti-disintegration tool, and of course then you have to worry about flamethrowers and grenades. Without it, Boba can easily be beat by multi-attacking Jedi where he has to decide to run out of reach or keep trying to push the offense (also bad save rolls). Unfortunately, with the disintegration, he is just plain sick. I have had several games that have ended before they began because my main character was disintegrated, and games I no doubt would have won, change to a loss because of it. It’s just the nature of the beast.

Jedi-hunter Vader is also not so hard to beat. You simply don’t try to go toe-to-toe with him using Jedi. Jango, BH, Boba, BH and other shooters can usually handle Vader well enough. He is still tough. He is supposed to be. He is Vader after all. Just keep moving and run him down on force points.

Your last one, Thrawn, is a bit tougher to overcome, even though it can still be done. His auto init and swapping abilities are extremely tough to overcome. I am not a big fan of having Mas being a free imperial character. In my opinion, he should be tied to Sidious or something, but that is irrelevant. There are four ways to counter Thrawn and his swapping:

Speed: Use the swap against him to rush his own lines. This can be with another Thrawn, or Exar is also very good at this. Run a swoop out and then swap into it for a quick triple. Fast moving Jedi can also lead the push (r2, Gen Kenobi with master speed or Han in stormtrooper armor). If you can get Thrawn on the Defensive and make him respond to your moves, then you stand a good chance of winning.

Out activate him: Thrawn likes to have the last move of the round so he can swap in, do a ton of damage and then swap out. You have dead main characters and he just lost 5pts for the stormie swap. San Hill makes it so he can’t do that without a price. He WILL get smacked back. Also, swarms can do this a swell, but become much harder to play.

Opposing damage: This means that you cause damage on the opponent’s turn. This can be done through Riposte, Mon Mothma and Nom bombs. These can all do very well against B&B Thrawn, as well as other Thrawn builds, but they all have their own weaknesses.

Anti-CE effects: Take away Thrawn’s CE and you do a lot towards paralyzing his team. This can be done two ways. The first is disruptive. We have two very playable characters in Talon and R2-3PO (Nym not so much), that can shut down various parts of Thrawn’s CE, depending on who its acting against. If you can get within six of Thrawn himself, you shut down his CE board wide, but good luck holding it there. The second part of this is shutting down his auto-init. Han Rogue may leave something to be desired in the way of offense, but making Thrawn swap in and then not be able to swap out, can make him choose how badly he wants to risk his own piece should he lose the init roll.

In the end you just have to know your squad, know what it is that you face, and then learn how to play smart. I hope that helps somewhat. There is no blanket, “run this to beat everything“ type of squad. It’s all about how well you play and what kind of weaknesses your squad has. Next week’s questions has to do with gambit points and how they work.

If anyone has any questions or topics you would like me to cover, drop me a line at sithdragon13@yahoo.com. I will get to ALL emails, so if you have sent something be patient. I know I have a few stacked up right now. It’s coming ;)

May the Force Be With You.