Those pesky Minbari

[Pauly_D]

and Abbai are just bait with tons and tons of interceptors

..and against the Minbari, interceptors would help...how?

Just kidding, good point.

well not quite all the minbo weaps have beam/mini-beam and theres gotta be a ship that moves before the minbari have all moved and the abbai ships have good Damage/Crew and so are good as bait

 

[Mecha]

We need more damage and crew points to keep our ships alive little longer.

 

[Tal Hawkins]

and Abbai are just bait with tons and tons of interceptors

..and against the Minbari, interceptors would help...how?

Just kidding, good point.

well not quite all the minbo weaps have beam/mini-beam and theres gotta be a ship that moves before the minbari have all moved and the abbai ships have good Damage/Crew and so are good as bait

The number of Minbari ships without beams is very small. The only true use Interceptors are against the Minbari is to offset Nials.

 

[Dywnarc]

I poll answered Minbari too hard.

And in my gaming group I am the Minbari player... and I am feeling guilty playing them and am proxying them as Drasni... no really.

First point I want to make.

I greatly commend Mongoose for being so involved in this discussion, although some peopl may not be getting the answrs they WANT to hear. I am happy that I bought into a gaming system were the "masters" pay attention to the players and stay involved with the tactical evolution.


Here is the problem I see with the Minbari. And its not about the tactics.

Weather you are trying to create a true to cannon wargame or not, you need to have a reasonable balance so that people can feely pick a race when they start playing and feel they have a reasobale chance of winning agaist other fleets and players.

I have introducted many of my friends tot he game and they all liek it. I was playing Minbari with the old CTA states. I won most of the games, but everyone was cool with it cause the ships were so soft. (Tigara with 16 hull on a raid level ship!) that when they got a lock and hit, they saw results. The Minabri player had to manuver carefull to avoid exposing his ships to too much at a time and take the occasional riska nd pray for the stealth. Now with more hull points they can be a lot more sloppy and get away with it. The Minbari are less of a finesse race now and more of a.... ha ha on;y a 1/3 of your ships can hit me... A lot of tatcial play was taken out of the Minbari game with the better ship states.

As I post this everyone remeber I AM THE ONLY MINBARI PLAYER IN MY GROUP.

So I am not whinning that I can;t beat them... I am conserned that no one wants to agaist them.


The other day I got another friend to play.. he was just learning.. I let another player use the Minbari fleet to fight the new player witht he narn. I figued narn was good for the new player as the E-Mines were so no brainer. But the Narn fleet was not overly mine heavy.

As the game was played the new player was getting more and more frustrated that he could never get hit the Minbari ships. And witht eh new hull and crew levels... when he hit it had little impact.

H elost all his ships and didn;t kill one Minbari.. in fact they were barley damaged.

Now I know bad luck can happen to anyone at anytime, but this guy left vowing to never playt he game again and that it is totaly dumb. And this guy is a long tiem experiecne wargammer, who dosn;t mind lossing or having to come up with new tactics, and he was longing to learn and get into a space combat game. Playing a game vs the Minbari turned him off the game 100%.

I like that each race has there "thing" and I agree that stealth is it for the Minbari, as it should be. But i liked the Minbari fleet being fragil in hull and crew, it made he feel not so bad about playing them.

But I don;t want to be the guy playing with a "broken fleet"

And with the new rules I think it is.

 

[Locutus9956]

Nice post, thats pretty close to my position.

From what ive seen, though I did think the Tinashi and peraps the sharlin needed a small boost I think the sharlin in particular has gone too far. Stealth is a powerful ability and I think the extra toughness and weaponry for the Minbari may prove to be overcompensating for a small decrease in the effectiveness of stealth in SFoS.

Im reserving my final judgement till Ive had a chance to play with SFoS lists a bit but the fragility of the Minbari previously was what made stealth a fair rule in my oppinion, yes its hard to beat, but when you DO make your rolls, things die. Now it seems that when you make your rolls, things get a bit damaged, and then turn around and blow you to pieces with vast numbers of neutron lasers. I will add here that most of my comments here are mainly based on the sharlin in particular, but since the Sharlin is in my oppinion THE iconic Minbari ship I think its important to get it 'right'. If the Troligan was useless or horribly overpowered for example that wouldnt bother me much as me and my local club would probably just agree not to use it, but not being able to use the Sharlin for fear of unbalancing the game would be like banning EA players from using Omegas and Starfuries, it wouldnt feel like B5 any more.

Aditionally Id just like to say the despite all this I think Mongoose are doing a great job and the fact that they ARE releasing rules updates and tweaking fleets Im very happy with, and of course theyre not going to get it all right straight away but thats the way of the world folks!

Finally, I havent actually GOT Sky Full of Stars yet so my oppinions here are just based on the ship stats ive seen online. I fully intend to play with the new rules and lists before I decide if I think theres a problem or not and I stongly urge others to do the same. You can quote statistics till youre blue in the face but thats no substitute for playtesting. And no matter how good the Minbari are, theyre not invincible, to quote a certain Captain in earth force:

"Ive never believed in the idea of an undefeatable enemy, ANY ship can be destroyed"

 

[lastbesthope]

Weather you are trying to create a true to cannon wargame or not, you need to have a reasonable balance so that people can feely pick a race when they start playing and feel they have a reasobale chance of winning agaist other fleets and players.

I would disagree with that in principle. Sometimes cannon flies in the face of all sense of balance. not overly in B5 I feel, but often in other fiction.

I mean, only one human captain has ever defeated the Minbari in combat, so strictly speaking to be in keeping with canon, only EA fleets with Sheridan should be able to defeat the Minbari, but that hardly bodes well for balance.

i personally have no problem with the balance aspect of ACTA, I'm just debating the point you made.

LBH

 

[B5freak]

SFoS arrived at our store on Friday, so we got some people together today to play a few games. One of our local guys finished painting his Minbari in time, so we ran several games of Fleet X vs the Minbari.

Several of the games were 1 Sharlin vs 1 War point worth of the challenger. We used Scouts, Scanners to Full!, mass numbers, splitting fire between as many Minbari as possible to maximize Stealth rolls, closing the distance to under 10", and even jumping in a Warlock.

In every single game, the Minbari wiped the floor with the opposition. White Stars, WS-2's, a Victory, a Warlock, Apollo Bombardment cruisers, Hermes transports, Oracle scouts, you name it. Admittedly, we didn't get a chance to try E-mines, but I think Dywnarc's story covers that pretty well.

The Minbari player made a point of going light on Neutron Lasers. He always had one Sharlin, but that was his only ship equipped with Neutron Lasers. He also used pretty straightforward tactics, just move forward and shoot.

At this piont I'm very curious as to what tactics will be revealed in the upcoming S&P. We've discussed a lot of the possibilities on this thread, but I'm frankly at a loss after today's scenarios. I've been playing various miniature games for about 15 years now, and I know the accumulated knowledge on this board goes well beyond that, so I have to ask myself, "what is this amazing tactic?"

Please understand that I, like Locutus and Dywnarc, have greatly enjoyed this game and appreciate the effort and responsiveness Mongoose has shown, but the Minbari are a problem. I want to run a tournament, but I'm seriously considering banning Minbari so that other players can at least have a chance of enjoying the tournament.

 

[Dywnarc]

Yes thats an interesting problem. Tournements... Cause players are almost forced to take lots of scouts and build there fleets to face Minbari, cause they are clearly the favorites.

I have given some though as to how to run a toruney though.

Make players bring a "fleet rooster" of 10 battle points.

BUT none of the players know the priority of the battles nor the number of fleet points.

This forces players to build a balanced list that they can picka nd choose from depoending on sceanrio and enemy.

This rewards players with good fleet balance.

Also its not a gimmie for the Minbari either.. cause I do feelt eh Minbari suffer at the lower priority levels.


PS Message to LBH

I actually feel the CTA Minbari were fairly balanced, they were soft enough that when they were hit, they really hurt, but I dissagreed with better Hul and crew points... I just felt they balance was slightly favoring the Minbari.


Again I remind people that in my gaming group I am the Minbari player..... and I have only lost one game at raid level with the Minbari, and thats with the CTA rules and states. Its hard to get other players to get into the games when it seams stealth is so heavy an advantage.

I think its fair to make this point as well.

The camp that claims the Minabri are balanced raise many good points, but the fact remains that you do not see any posts claiming the EA or the Drazni or Centari etc are unbalanced.. soem have irratations and frustratiuons with E:mines, but envent hat is not as compained about.

I am not really companing or crying for the Minbari to be toned down. As A minbari player I just feel that those that have frustrations beating them have some very valid points that need to be looked it.

 

[Zee Zee]

I have been having a quick read of the thread of this topic, although I have not had chance to play the updated rules, I feel I can safely say the Minbari look a lot tougher,though the rest now have chance with scouts. One of the answers that come to mind as it stands is Shadow scouts,they automatically get +1 against stealth roles through superior technology and +1 for Scout therefore you can beat the Sharlins stealth role at range 50% of the time and at close 2/3rds of the time.
with everyone elses it is 1 in 3 and 50% respectively with scouts on the table.
Given that you only have 6 sided dice to play giving anymore than a +1 to the sout ability would make the Sharlin generally to easy to hit and destroy.
My only major gripe about the Sharlin is that it is actually underpointed.
It is considered as equal points to the Warlock and the Victory, prior to its uprate I may have accepted the Victory but now its very debatable and as for the Warlock forget it!
One option would be to is that the Nials and flyer it contains should be paid for as per the rule with Shadow ships and fighters ,or make it cost the equivelent of a WAR and Skirmish ship.This ship should be damned tought but should also be bloody expensive to buy.
I must admit partly because I cant work out fractions(more like cannot be botherd) we change the point system by making a War class vessel 120 points for games at war level.For us if we decide to do it ,it would be fairly easy to raise the cost of a Sharlin to say 150 points to try and balance it out.

 

[Jhary]

We had on frieday a little test game ISA vs Minbary.

Tactic number One the use of scout never made the number to lower the stealth every time it was close but no didn´t worked. Wast of points

Tactic number two jump into the Minbary Jep thats it! blown away the minbary scout and damaged the warship heavy.

Tactic number three use ships with dodge score worked perfect Minbary hits and the ships went unscratched

This day left an happy ISA Player and a minbary Player who is now rebuilding his fleet.

But i still think that the Minbarys are Cloaked Tank´s

 

[Pauly_D]

ISA ships can only jump in on Minbari ships because they have AJP
most races dont get that option and attempting that with most ships is just pointless it just makes them sitting ducks for a turn

 

[lastbesthope]

AJP is a good weapon, JP is not so good.

LBH

 

[Pauly_D]

AJP is a good weapon, JP is not so good.

LBH

its worth less than not so good, its almost pointless, there is just too many disadvantages to jumping in with JP's

 

[Tredrick]

I'll say again that I would limit AJP o being used to attack ships that are stationary for any reason.

The ships on the map are actually always in motion, unless immobilized.

I'd also require a ship on the board, maybe a scout. You need to know the exact position of the enemy, not a best guess.

 

[Digger]

I totally agree with Tredrick, dropping an AJP on a stationary ship without prior identification of position is very unfair.

How would they know where to open the JP to start with?

Yeah - I have heard the one about scanners but in that case what about the ship in real space having time to move before the JP opened, surely if the ship in J-Space can scan ahead, why can't the guy in real space?

Also, if you jump on a ship, how come the ship doing the jumping doesn't get damaged as well? If the JP is disruptive enough to damage a ship, surely the backwash or whatever will damage the ship doing th jump as well.

Personally, I would like to see this rule modified so that either there has to be a Scout on the board already from the same side or that ships that do the jumping can suffer serious damage if they mess it up.

That would stop the WS jockeys from using it all the time.

Apologies for the rant, bit of a raw one this having lost numerous ships this way. :evil:

 

[B5freak]

Working from memory here, but I'm pretty sure all the scenarios limit you to no more than one half of your fleet starting the game in hyperspace, and only those ships equipped with AJP could effectively pull off that tactic.

Given that Minbari are one of the few races that have AJP on all of their ships, it's one more weapon in their over-stuffed arsenal.

Has anyone played Minbari vs Centauri yet? I played a 5 Battle point game last night and it was actually a good match. I took a pretty simple force of one Sharlin and 3 Tinashi. The Centauri took two Primus, two Prefects, two Sulust, and four Corvan.

The Centauri player used all of the tactics previously mentioned (outnumbering, StF!, Scouts, etc) and they worked like a charm. One note however was that the Centauri admiral missed only 3 Stealth rolls during the entire game, even when he needed 5+'s to get through.

After the game, we sat down and compared notes on how the Minbari and Centauri fared against oneanother as opposed to all the other fleets.

Here's some of the relevant findings:

Overcoming Stealth - Centauri will have to roll like anyone else, but are bolstered by a combination of two factors. First, they have a Patrol level Scout. For one Battle point the Centauri can buy four Scouts, guaranteeing the +1 against at least one ship, probably two. Second are their fighters. If the Centauri take nothing but Razik's, they can match the Minbari Nials one for one in a dogfight. Since each Corvan carries one flight, you get access to both Scout and StF! in one Battle point.

Offensive Power - The Centauri can field an entire battle line of Raid level ships that, ship-for-ship, match the Minbari's Battle level ships in both range, fire arc (full forward as opposed to Boresight) and AD of Beam weapons. This means that even if half the Centauri's ships fail the Stealth roll, they can still put an equal (or near equal) number of Beam, DD, Super AP AD against the Minbari as the Minbari can put against them. In essence, half the Centauri fleet can throw as much firepower as the entire Minbari fleet. There's also the issue of Concentrate Firepower!. Because of the outnumbering, Minbari ships can't really afford to go on CF!. They have to leave open the option of using their full F/P/S/A firepower. The Centauri have no such restriction, and given their range, can spend at least the first several turns on CF!

Defensive Power - Centauri Raid ships have almost as much Damage and Crew as the Minbari Battle ships. The Sulust and Prefect both have 35/38 (Dam/Crew) compared to the Tinashi's 38/42. The Centauri Raid ships also have equivalent or better Hull (Sulust 5+, Prefect 6+).

Long post, I know. The point is, a Centauri vs Minbari fight, given the tactics available, is a fair fight. The Centauri have the tools to weaken the Minbari Stealth, and the firepower to make the most of those shots that get past the Stealth.

 

[Pauly_D]

I'll say again that I would limit AJP o being used to attack ships that are stationary for any reason.

The ships on the map are actually always in motion, unless immobilized.

I'd also require a ship on the board, maybe a scout. You need to know the exact position of the enemy, not a best guess.

yeah having to have a scout would seem fair, if no scout on board then it should use normal jump point rules, its not like they used it THAT often in the show (In the Beginning and i think thats it) so it cant be that common if we only see it ONCE

 

[Tal Hawkins]

Working from memory here, but I'm pretty sure all the scenarios limit you to no more than one half of your fleet starting the game in hyperspace, and only those ships equipped with AJP could effectively pull off that tactic.

Given that Minbari are one of the few races that have AJP on all of their ships, it's one more weapon in their over-stuffed arsenal.

Has anyone played Minbari vs Centauri yet? I played a 5 Battle point game last night and it was actually a good match. I took a pretty simple force of one Sharlin and 3 Tinashi. The Centauri took two Primus, two Prefects, two Sulust, and four Corvan.

The Centauri player used all of the tactics previously mentioned (outnumbering, StF!, Scouts, etc) and they worked like a charm. One note however was that the Centauri admiral missed only 3 Stealth rolls during the entire game, even when he needed 5+'s to get through.

After the game, we sat down and compared notes on how the Minbari and Centauri fared against oneanother as opposed to all the other fleets.

Here's some of the relevant findings:

Overcoming Stealth - Centauri will have to roll like anyone else, but are bolstered by a combination of two factors. First, they have a Patrol level Scout. For one Battle point the Centauri can buy four Scouts, guaranteeing the +1 against at least one ship, probably two. Second are their fighters. If the Centauri take nothing but Razik's, they can match the Minbari Nials one for one in a dogfight. Since each Corvan carries one flight, you get access to both Scout and StF! in one Battle point.

Offensive Power - The Centauri can field an entire battle line of Raid level ships that, ship-for-ship, match the Minbari's Battle level ships in both range, fire arc (full forward as opposed to Boresight) and AD of Beam weapons. This means that even if half the Centauri's ships fail the Stealth roll, they can still put an equal (or near equal) number of Beam, DD, Super AP AD against the Minbari as the Minbari can put against them. In essence, half the Centauri fleet can throw as much firepower as the entire Minbari fleet. There's also the issue of Concentrate Firepower!. Because of the outnumbering, Minbari ships can't really afford to go on CF!. They have to leave open the option of using their full F/P/S/A firepower. The Centauri have no such restriction, and given their range, can spend at least the first several turns on CF!

Defensive Power - Centauri Raid ships have almost as much Damage and Crew as the Minbari Battle ships. The Sulust and Prefect both have 35/38 (Dam/Crew) compared to the Tinashi's 38/42. The Centauri Raid ships also have equivalent or better Hull (Sulust 5+, Prefect 6+).

Long post, I know. The point is, a Centauri vs Minbari fight, given the tactics available, is a fair fight. The Centauri have the tools to weaken the Minbari Stealth, and the firepower to make the most of those shots that get past the Stealth.

How do you think the battle would have gone if the Centauri player had rolled exactly average on his stealth rolls. If it was a fair fight when he got lucky and only failed 3 rolls then how would it have been if he had failed as many times as the statistics say he should have.

BTW. Doesnt using Concentrate all Fire Contradict the strategy of shooting at as many Minbari as possible with each ship to maximise the chance you will make a stealth roll against one of them?

 

[philogara]

AJPing on ships is far too gamey for my liking. As commented it isn't used that often and maybe could be considered more fluke than anything else. The scouts a good idea, the other is to have scatter, perhap less than a normal JP, but scatter nethertheless.

RE: cost of a Sharlin

Zee zee, one of the beauties of the game is that there isn't a points system. However, I agree the Sharlin is too cheap for what it is. If we want a balanced game AND one that has the B5 feel, then a Sharlin must be able to cane any non-ancient ship. SO to balance it there must be more flexibility in the PL system.

I know I posted this recently, but I'm going to repeat myself. Bring in two more levels, one for the Sharlin (and Neshatan?), and perhaps another for the big Shadow and Vorlon ships.

 

[B5freak]

Tal,

With the Centauri making so many Stealth rolls, the Centauri were actually crushing the Minbari. My comments were based more on what average rolling would have been. In post-game analysis we went through the odds and how the game played out and decided that the Centauri could pull off a win about 50% of the time against the Minbari (assuming average rolls, admirals of equal ability, etc).

Yes, CF! does violate that a bit, but the sheer number of ships the Centauri were able to take, combined with their firepower, made CF! the better option.

Make no mistake, I'm not saying the Minbari aren't an issue, just that the Centauri have what it takes to put them in their place. Of course, the Centauri Raid ships are as ugly, if not uglier, than most of the other races' Battle level ships. Granted, their firepower is almost entirely in the Forward arc, but when you've got a Raid ship with better Fore firepower than a Vorlon ship of the same level, you've probably got nothing to complain about.

Interestingly, when we went through all of the other races, EA, Narn, Abbai, Drazi, Brakiri, Vree, even ISA, Shadows, and Vorlons, they were all pretty evenly matched. Big, hard-hitting weapons like missiles or beams were all restricted by range, boresight, or slow-loading, and Hull and Damage were pretty equivalent. The two exceptions were Minbari and Centauri.