Abbi??

Ripple said:
Have you tried it out yet?

I flew a similar list and found that I could not afford to wait to launch all the Kotha, so figure 15 launched, and that even with them launch they could not keep up with the fleet and were not even an issue until turn four.

Second issue was my opponent, wise fellow that he is, decided to destroy my Milanis with the range twenty-five beams before beginning to swat Tiraca. Admitedly I did not make extensive use of squadroning, and the new squadron rules may make it even more effective, but still found that I was short two Milani's before my first fire on turn three.

Let us know how it goes if you can. Would love to see some battle reports on Abbai in action. So far our local experience is that good captains eat them for lunch but that may just be our local bias. We are also very reluctant to use large numbers of the same model, mainly due to not wanting to own ten of anything.

ripple
I tried basically that fleet vs the all Ka'Tan (plus two scouts) Narn fleet last week, all in counters just trying a few things out. Basically the Abbai have enough initiative sinks (yes, even against a ten ship Narn fleet) to keep only just out of range at the crucial turn, then pile on in the turn after, moving flanking ships first to pull the Narn fleet apart. The next turn the Tiracas all surged forwards and denied the Narn a minimum move and keeping their boresights, with only six Ka'Tan's being able to line up and even then, they could only focus on two ships (one being immobilised). The Abbai did marginally more damage in the first pass then the Narn realised they would have to fly away at full pelt just to come about with room to spare and the game was ended there (due to running out of turns if this would have happened). The Narn had lost four ships and the Abbai two Milanis and two Tiracas. Notes from the game are that the Abbai need to be very careful about the order they move their ships but can play havoc with enemy plans due to the sheer number of ships. Also, unless you have a chance of taking out the enemy fighters, simply don't bother unloading the Kothas if they are going to cost you victory points (tourney rules). Otherwise, get them out but only if it's before you have to be careful on the edge of the enemy's maximum range.
 
I play the abbai in campaigns. Highly amusing with that they can do. Sure a beam heavy fleet can rip past intercetpors but you still should have more ships than they do for beams (cept for drazi). A narn emine fleet can rip the abbai piecemeal, I have seen it done. In campaigns, the abilities they pull off have made all the opposing players unite against me simply because the Abbai could get the Shadows, Vorlons, ISA, Narn, EA, and the Drakh all in the same room and have a peace summit for several turns. (All targets cept for the trade had been claimed, and I was rolling in with resoruces, 31+6d6 if I dont fight).

If you guys feel that they are too weak against beams you can use a house rule that 1/3 of their interceptors rounded up can be used to block beams in addition. In B5 wars, abbai could intercept beams with full comeplement of interceptors
 
Congrats are in order...though I think you pulled great races to fight for the Abbai in the Drahk and the Early EA. The Minbari win surprised me but he did have a fairly mixed fleet, so neede to get as close as you wanted him to there. Good job keeping the ladies spirits up.

The down side of course is that now I will have to consider my little blue babies cursed.

Ripple
 
Ripple said:
Congrats are in order...though I think you pulled great races to fight for the Abbai in the Drahk and the Early EA. The Minbari win surprised me but he did have a fairly mixed fleet, so neede to get as close as you wanted him to there. Good job keeping the ladies spirits up.

The down side of course is that now I will have to consider my little blue babies cursed.

Ripple
Thanks for the congratulations

Drakh are possibly the toughest race in general for Abbai to face with their Light Cruisers as 50% of the time your ships do absolutely no damage to them and the rest of the time most of the damage going through is only from criticals.

The EA game was by far the toughest game of the tournament for me, he had enough firepower to take down a majority of the Tiracas before the Milanis could really engage and heavy/flash missiles combined with enough pulse weapons to take down interceptors really make a mess of hull 4 ships. Of course, much of my return fire was effective against the weak hulls but twin-linked is at its best against high hull values, not low. Once you start losing your initiative sinks to a fleet that can outrange you with ships powerful enough to finish the job you are in a little trouble with the Abbai.
 
That game against you Triggy is probably the most ridiculous one I have played in, the sheer number of ships you brought was extremely funny but the number of dice was almost horrific!

It was tho a good game and I am glad that I used FA minis otherwise there would have been no space for my ships :lol:

Congrats on your success, well earned I'd say!
 
We really do seem to live at opposite ends of the spectrum Triggy. I have found twin linked is always at its best against low hull values, the big reason I thought the Drahk would be a good pull. Lots of hits good number of chances for crits. Mind you that would be against the more typical local raider heavy fleets, not so much against the LC fleets. Geg is a big limiter, but you had beam heavy fleet for the Abbai so I thought that would work in your favor.

The EA seemed interceptable heavy, so again I am looking at a failry good match here. Your heavy spread out as far as number of ships so will not lose much to a single good crit, though weaker crits are proportionally more damaging to the smaller ships. Still with the 19 damage on the tiraca it is almost as large as most folks skirmish ships so should be able to take a couple of the less damaging crits. Course I am thinking old tourney list not the flash equipped, that may turn the balance against the tiracas.

The Minbari I have had a hard time getting range on, but you did have enough sinks in your fleet to force position.

Was not in any way implying that the victory was not earned! Far from it I think you did a great job with an a fleet choice that had some great strengths and only a weakness or two to beams. Milani is a fabulous hull, and the Tiraca is strong for the Patrol catagory...I just do not own the numbers you do so have not seen so many in action. (Bimith we will have to disagree on until I can have mine de-hexed or whatever.)

Cheers again on the victory,

Ripple
 
Ripple said:
We really do seem to live at opposite ends of the spectrum Triggy. I have found twin linked is always at its best against low hull values, the big reason I thought the Drahk would be a good pull. Lots of hits good number of chances for crits. Mind you that would be against the more typical local raider heavy fleets, not so much against the LC fleets. Geg is a big limiter, but you had beam heavy fleet for the Abbai so I thought that would work in your favor.

The EA seemed interceptable heavy, so again I am looking at a failry good match here. Your heavy spread out as far as number of ships so will not lose much to a single good crit, though weaker crits are proportionally more damaging to the smaller ships. Still with the 19 damage on the tiraca it is almost as large as most folks skirmish ships so should be able to take a couple of the less damaging crits. Course I am thinking old tourney list not the flash equipped, that may turn the balance against the tiracas.

The Minbari I have had a hard time getting range on, but you did have enough sinks in your fleet to force position.

Was not in any way implying that the victory was not earned! Far from it I think you did a great job with an a fleet choice that had some great strengths and only a weakness or two to beams. Milani is a fabulous hull, and the Tiraca is strong for the Patrol catagory...I just do not own the numbers you do so have not seen so many in action. (Bimith we will have to disagree on until I can have mine de-hexed or whatever.)

Cheers again on the victory,

Ripple
I know you weren't implying my victory was hard earned :)

I tend to find twin-linked is at its best against hull 5 where you get maximum benefit from the reroll (the re-roll part against hull 4 gets an additional 50% hits per shot, against hull 5 gets an extra 67% hits per shot and against hull 6 gets an additional 83% hits per shot). I think tourney conditions force this fleet into one or two manoeuvres that mean the Tiracas tend to engage first and leave the Milanis behind for a turn. That's where the beams tend not to work so well as they don't get so many chances to fire. That and in the EA game I fired 10 beam shots vs a single Sagittarius and scored zero hits!!!! On average that should have been 12 hits!

The Minbari had the core of their fleet (Tigara and two Torothas) jump into my lines and needles to say, this is a bad thing vs Abbai. I took out the Torothas fairly easily and as I pushed forward the Teshlan went quite quickly. The Morshin and Tigara suffered heavy damage but managed to get away as they split their escape and the only way I could get more tournament points was to finish them both off so had to split my persuit too. The fighters did some damge but died far too quickly as a result of the obvious barrage from the Abbai hit home. It didn't help that Alex rolled a 4 (needing a 5+) to recover his fighters on at least half of his rolls and all of the last 6!

The Narn were tough because I could only get to grips with half of his fleet due to an asteroid field and him having sufficient initiative sinks to get boresights on me. I did enough damage though in a pretty low-scoring game to get a minor victory.

The Drakh were just a push up the centre for me, getting a good immobilised critical in the first major round of firing and destroying the Heavy Raider in the turn before as he pushed it too far. After that, I just had to hope sheer weight of fire would see me inflict enough criticals to do enough damage. I never rolled the big ones but rolled enough to destroy two Light Cruisers and cripple a third. I'd agree that normally the Drakh aren't too bad to face but this fleet was (nearly) all hull 5 and GEG2, thus making a lot of the Tiraca fire almost meaningless (the sheer number of "only" two hits I got was astonishing).
 
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