E-Mine RAGE!

[honestchad]

Hi there,
Im relatively new to ACTA so sorry if this is something that has been brought up countless times...
How the hell do I get round Energy mines?! As soon as my nials are out they are lost to my Narn opponents mines. And when my nials are dead his frazi's swarm in a pick apart my big ships. there has to be some way to beat this but I cant seem to find one . How do you guys cope?
Cheers
(loving the game aside from this btw)

 

[Locutus9956]

Im afraid there isnt really a way other than 'dont launch your fighters until youve killed the ships carrying emines'.

My advice is to, vs. Narns, rely less on ships with higher stealth scores (Leshaths, Sharlins) and more on ships with higher hull values (like Neshatans, Tigaras). If any ships you choose come with fighters, great, but dont buy ships BECAUSE they have fighters vs Narns. Target his emine ships as much as possible early on and only launch fighters either after theyre all destroyed or once your ships are well out of emine fire arcs (ideally jump your fighter carriers in behind his lines if the scenario allows the use of hyperspace). If he launches alot of frazis then it may be worth actually targetting them with your main weapons at long range but otherwise just take the hits and kill them with your minibeams after their first strike. Keep you ships in range to cover each other if you try this though as a big Frazi swarm is quite capable of annihilating a Minbari ship outright (or at least critting out its weapons if its a larger one )

 

[Hash]

Fighter clearance is how player predominantly use of Narn e-mines and if you intend to fight a "fair" battle with Narn then you're going to lose with standard Nial tactics (i.e. rely on high dodge and stealth to save you )

I've seen players use fighters effectively against Narn before but they're careful about. The tactics are boiled down to this:

1. Wait for the window of opportunity - This one is pretty obvious but (assuming you are a Minbari player) you're likely to have the higher initiative so you usually have the advantage of electing to move your fighters first or after his fighters (and obviously all of his ship) have moved. Move the Nials just out of range of his e-mine heavy ships...and wait for a window of opportunity.
Windows of opportunity include:
a) When you can get close enough to an enemy ship or formation so as the Narn player electing to fire e-mines will damage his own ships or Frazi as well.
b) When the Nials themselves have a good chance of taking out an enemy ship of fighter swarm (remember that fighters fire first so even if he does take out your Nials you may be able to make that sacrifice worth it).

2. Distraction or Flanking:
Players often keep their ships and fighters together but there is no reason why you can't experiment - try coming in with fighters on the far flanks while your other ships make a tempting target for Frazi...with any luck he may ignore your fighters until you can get round e-mine firing arcs and come in from the flanks (as far as I know Narn e-mines are F arc only and slow sloading to boot...saving the G'Karith of course but it's Hull 4 which leads me to my next point...

3. Shoot the Bombardment Ships!
E-mines giving you real trouble? Shoot the ships that fire 'em! Not all Narn ships can fire 'em especially at standard 5pt Raid (admittedly the G'Karith is a skirmish level option and Dag'Kar is Raid not to mention G'Quan but...) usually an e-mine carrying ship is pretty frail and you should be able to keep fighters out of range just long enough to take out the main e-mine carrying ships with Neutron Lasers etc.

Short of it is....you can still use fighters but you have to time it right, don't charge into battle or you will just die - pick your moment and choose your target ships carefully. Good luck, I'm sure others willl have good advice too and let us know if any of this helps!

EDIT: Saying that I'm not sure if Burger's Minbo's have yet to beat the dreaded Narn bat squad...although that's a whole other can of worms with the PL system so won't go into that

 

[honestchad]

Cheers for the advice. Problem in killing his e-mine ships is that they happen to be a Bin'Tak and a G'Quan. Sucking up even my Sharlins firepower with stupid amounts of Damage. Hyperspace sounds like an option. Havent used the rule to any great degree to be honest....

 

[cordas]

Don't use fighters (or deploy them in well spread out formations), use your mini beam weapons at short range, remember that inside 4" they are AP - Anti Fighter, so allocating 1 die per flight will take out about half of them.

 

[thehod]

Play with stellar terrain and hide the fighters behind some of the terrain and force the Narn player to come to you.

Open Terrain boards are the perfect hunting grounds for Narn players and Narn are just built to kill the advanced races naturally. If the scenario allows for ships in Hyperspace keep the fighters in hyperspace and then open up an AJP and dump the fighters from behind. Minbari have mini-beams that chew up fighters so use them.

I play ISA and the typical Narn Bat Squad I face at 5 Raid will have 1 G'Quan, and 6 Ka'Tans.

Use the speed of your Nails to force most of his fleet to try and turn at their usual 1/45 and that would leave your capitalships able to decimate his emine ships. Speed will win the battle here as most weapons he has are boresights and if hes smart he will leave a few mines with ionics to prevent you from CAF. Infact do CAF to force him to use ionic mines on your ship instead of your fighters.

 

[honestchad]

You guys all play as standard 5 pt raid?
hmm been playing too high i think. My group started on 7pt battle but due to time constraints at our weekly club, had to reduce to 5 pt battle. Raid the tourny size game?

 

[Locutus9956]

Most Tourney games are 5 pt Raid, 5 pt Battle tends ti be most peoples 'biggish games'. Over that and you get a really quite huge game.

A word of warning though, Minbari have it somewhat tougher at lower PLs so if your struggling vs Narns in a 5pt battle dont expect an easier ride at Raid

The real trick vs Narns though as most of us have suggested is simply dont bother with fighters, theyre just debris waiting to happen, rely instead on Neutron lasering his ships to bits.

(ps, if hyperspace is allowed in a scenario, then as a Minbari player you should pretty much ALWAYS take advantage of it, you have advanced jump drives on all your ships, dont waste them, if you come in behind them it will take most narn ships at least 2 or 3 turns to come round and bring their guns to bear on you and 2 or 3 turns of neutron laser fire can put a severed dent in most peoples fleets!)

 

[Burger]

EDIT: Saying that I'm not sure if Burger's Minbo's have yet to beat the dreaded Narn bat squad...although that's a whole other can of worms with the PL system so won't go into that

I don't think any fleet has beaten the dreaded Narn Bat Squad!

 

[H]

The Minbari did up here, but that was something to do with my 17 failed stealth rolls from about 25 :-(
My dice rolling as usual ruins a great game, ggrrrrrr!

 

[Locutus9956]

Can't say as I've ever really played against the NBS much myself as our only Narn player locally doesnt like the idea, far preferring the 'Big Dreadnought' routine (even though this generally results in, well, dead Narns)

 

[Reaverman]

EDIT: Saying that I'm not sure if Burger's Minbo's have yet to beat the dreaded Narn bat squad...although that's a whole other can of worms with the PL system so won't go into that

I don't think any fleet has beaten the dreaded Narn Bat Squad!

Try an Abbai, mass swarm fleet.

 

[CZuschlag]

Targraths can and have. The Dilgar concept of defense is "dead ships can't fire" and the amount of damage necessary to kill a Ka'T** is just about the same as unCAFed Targrath's output. Just random coincidience.

In a smaller game with some terrain, the Drakh have done so as well, outsinking the Bat Squad (1 Carrier [2 Light Raiders, 2 Heavy Raiders], 2 Scouts, 1 Heavy Raider vs. 1 Sho'Kar, several bats, and I think 1 G'Karith). They've lost, too....

 

[Hash]

EDIT: Saying that I'm not sure if Burger's Minbo's have yet to beat the dreaded Narn bat squad...although that's a whole other can of worms with the PL system so won't go into that

I don't think any fleet has beaten the dreaded Narn Bat Squad!

Try an Abbai, mass swarm fleet.

Katadder's Centauri also beat your batsquad as I recall

More on point - I think you need to be careful with advocating the no fighter approach - Frazi's are lethal in numbers (4AD each - within 1inch ignoring stealth) - although if your ships do survive they should be picked off fairly easily with minibeams...

I agree though that tactics change in large games...again "window of opportunity" is my favoured tactic but can be very difficult to pull off as you are effectively waiting for your opponent to leave you an opening (meanwhile he is effectively denying you use of your fighters anyway achieving his objective.) -

No one said use of fighters against Narn isn't incredibly difficult! Its quite strange really though - only saw e-mines fired once on the show (I think?) vs. Shadows - you'd think the Narn would have sold their uber stealth beating weapon to the Earth Alliance during the Earth-Minbari war to say the least!

 

[Burger]

Its quite strange really though - only saw e-mines fired once on the show (I think?) vs. Shadows - you'd think the Narn would have sold their uber stealth beating weapon to the Earth Alliance during the Earth-Minbari war to say the least!

How effective were the e-mines you saw on the show? Maybe they did try to sell them, and the EA said "you want money for those?"

 

[angelus2000]

Sort of makes sense in a way. why would the EA, a force heavily dependent on its fighters, need an area antifighter denial weapon anyway? Thats what its own Starfuries are for. Narn actaully need it cause Frazis sucks balls at dogfihting

 

[Burger]

Sort of makes sense in a way. why would the EA, a force heavily dependent on its fighters, need an area antifighter denial weapon anyway? Thats what its own Starfuries are for. Narn actaully need it cause Frazis sucks balls at dogfihting

E-mines were never intended to be a fighter clearance weapon. Thats just what everyone uses them for, because they are so good at it!

 

[H]

and so bad at anything else! (unless you use the varients)

 

[CZuschlag]

The problem is that the AoG E-mine system, which was very distinctive, unique, and, if it went well, hideously damaging to ships (just as bad as 1/2 a Primus' Battle Laser suite) heavily relied on mechanics from a hex grid -- notably, the hex number location. That isn't easy to translate to a miniature setting --- although it could conceivably be done, it'd be a pain. The rule would go something like:

Before any movement, any eligible E-mine systems may fire. If using this type of Emine, write down the location, in inches from each table edge, of the targetted Emine system. Point must be in arc of the Emine at the time of firing.

After all movement, resolve Emines. Roll one die. On a 5, deviate the mine (write up deviation process). One a 6, the E-mine system fails to detonate. Ships within 3" of a location suffer damage as per the normal Emine traits, ships within 1" suffer damage as if the Emine system had the trait E-mine, AP, DD, but can score criticals.

A royal pain for this one system. But, it would be a lot scarier.

 

[H]

Origional e-mines were scary as hell it has to be said, then out came SFOS, and suddenly they were a heck of a lot less scary, the G'Quan and Dag'Kar became relatiovely underpowered for their priority, and that was that.

Now then, I Agree that pre sfos E-Mines were TOO good, although this could easily have been fixed by halving the number of dice, reducing the blast radius, limited ammo, unique crit list, etc, insted though they just nerfed em good and proper :-(. I suspect E-Mines will never crit again, and I am dreading hearing what second ed does to them. . .