Tournaments and Jump point bombs

mollari_uk

Mongoose
I was just wondering if JPB's are used in tournaments or are they generally banned? Do they actually make much of a difference to results?
 
mollari_uk said:
I was just wondering if JPB's are used in tournaments or are they generally banned? Do they actually make much of a difference to results?

they do make a differance and as to banned Im not sure
 
Mmm ok.

Reason I'm asking is that I'm helping plan a tournament and at least one of the scenarios allows hyperspace entry. I'm probably in the opinion of banning them but I'm not sure if it's too heavy handed.
 
well only a couple of races can effectively pull them off with any regularity, primarily your already cheesey whitestars, under the new rules you should allow them, but stipulate that anyone using them gets attacked.

knoc knockk, ooh, who's that.. It's the narn bat Squad wham wham wham wham wham. ..
 
Watch out when using hyperspace in tournaments, it also gives Shadows a massive advantage. You might want to disallow Shadows from keeping all their ships in hyperspace as allowed under the Hyperspace Mastery rule.
 
Jump point bombs were banned because they were far too easy to leverage in 1st Edition. It was that edition's One Big Dumb Idea(TM). Most miniature gaming systems have one. (So far, in Second Edition, that honor seems to go to the Fleet Breakdown Chart).

Now they are harder, but still relative accessable. The issue is that it has to be difficult to pull off, and cost significant resources if you don't pull it off. For many ships, not being available for a turn or two is a big deal, but there are a few that don't care. One of them leverages the new Jump Point Bomb to a massive disproportion in relation to all others --- the Blue Star.

A little hunk of Brie on its own, the jump point bomb damage created by a tiny Patrol hull is spectacular in proportion to its value. It would even be fine except that it has the Rangers to make the bomb go off 33% of the time instead of 16%. I'd be fine with some bombs, maybe a few; but that it is this easy for a little Patrol hull to pull off is very, very problematic.

Too bad, too; normal hyperspace and counter-hyperspace deployments (both sides having access to it at the same time) is a tactically very interesting area of the game that I think has very little gaming theory behind it; the opening moves of this sort of thing are very open for creative play and may have the same sort of complexity as openings in Go.
 
Well I don't think the shadows will be played due to it being a 5pt skirmish tourny but I see your point Burger.

We've tried to balance the scenarios by giving advantages to different types of fleet. You could gain an advantage in one (by taking all Blue Stars for example) but then you'd fall short in another scenario (for reasons I won't disclose yet). We're trying to encourage fair fleet design.

JPB are just one of those things that I think are broken due to the limited number of ships that can perform them well and seem a bonus attack for those lucky few rather than costed in to the ship.
 
White Star scout x1 then the rest Blue Stars, tho you can only JPB with a scout on the table.

I presume this is your fleet idea for ultimo cheese? Well there are additional retrictions that I didn't mention cause that'll all be in the tourny pack but for everyones info you're limited to a max of 5 ships. Also there'll be a max of each type of ship. So you're well out of luck with this fleet.

Anyway, this isn't a discussion of the tourny in general (I'm sure you'll get your chance later).

Thanks for everyone's comments. I'll feed it back to my group. Feel free to keep adding comments about JPB though as the more comments the better.
 
5pts skirmish with 5 ship limit, thats going to hurt some races.

ISA would prob have to be 2xWS 2xBS cos who wants an ISA skirmish ship :D

although in that size game you could go 1xWS, 4xBS and 2xWS fighter wings.

my guess is the 5 demos fleet will win.
 
katadder said:
5pts skirmish with 5 ship limit, thats going to hurt some races.

ISA would prob have to be 2xWS 2xBS cos who wants an ISA skirmish ship :D

although in that size game you could go 1xWS, 4xBS and 2xWS fighter wings.

my guess is the 5 demos fleet will win.

You missed the bit about there being a cap on the number of each type of ship allowed. Although the specific number was not mentioned...
 
fortunately for the centauri they have plenty of good skirmish ships:
2 ship limit - 2 demos, 2 vorchan, 1 corvan/maximus/darkner
or one of each to be varied.
me i prefer vorchans anyway.
 
yup, problem with most tourneys is that they will always be more viable for certain fleets and selections, and of course adding in more restrictions makes them even better for some races.
 
yup, problem with most tourneys is that they will always be more viable for certain fleets and selections, and of course adding in more restrictions makes them even better for some races.

All too true, but until some fixes come our way the basic game isn't any better. Just picking certain priority levels takes out some races as being viable choices for the game.

We're just taking the existing tourney packs and taking what seems to have worked in the past to stop simple swarm fleets from winning and to speed up the games. Otherwise any breakdown from skirmish and above will be won by an "all Demos" fleet.

Anyway, we'll see what happens. Tourney pack will be posted once it's finished hope some of you can make it 'up north' for it.
 
oooh, define "oop north" as I may return from my retirement, and loose hideously with my fleet of badly chosen ships
 
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