For competitive Armada the last year has been dominated by just a handful of archetypes. It began with Rieekan Aces basically taking every top spot at World's n 2016. That began the 2+3 meta, a list building structure that emphasized a pair of combat ships and three flotillas with lot of squadrons. The typical build featured Yavaris and Gallant Haven to back a bunch of rebel heroes to just shred enemy ships and squadrons that approached. This list was countered on the Imperial side by going to an extra activation by eschewing a second combat ship in the more popular 1+4 Boarding Trooper Avenger lists. BTAvenger could survive the initial encounter with Gallant Haven, and typically one shot it and scoot before the Yavris B wings could activate and open up the ISD. We've seen some further explorations as players continue to drop combat cable hips and squadrons to ramp up activations via flotillas.
This leads us to the current menace, the Fish Farm. Several variations have popped up, the first at Worlds last year and later in an obscene showing at the Indianapolis Regionals, and finally with Intel Officer Luke of the Intel Sweep Blog racking up an impressive day. The list specifics can vary, but it typically takes 5+Flotilla,s and MC80 HO variant with the Defiance title, and at least 3 VCXs. THe list aims to out activate, outdeploy, and then out objective all opponents. The list aims to go second, and then drag every Fire Lanes and Sensor Net token in, or just absurdly punish a target with Advanced Gunnery. The obvious counter play is make them go first, and play an objective that would be hard for the list to compete in (like Contested Outpost, Most Wanted, or Solar Corona). This has proven to be tough though as many lists have a good high bid (The Indianapolis list I believe was double digits) to ensure going second. Its a well thought out list that its easy to see how it can easily pick up a ton of points.
The reason why I have a dilemma about the Fish Farm is that it breaks the game in a way that I really hate, but on the other hand it emphasizes Objective play. On the brokenness first. Flotilla Spam and Activation hi-jinks I think reduce a game that is excellent to a much more boring and un-thematic set of stand off shots. Activation advatage has always been a key in Armada. The first last Demolisher and Admonition torpedo boat lists (the first being the Clonisher build in the games first releases) relied heavily on having the First-Last combo. Roll your havy hitter in, hit the enemy and get out before it could get destroyed. I believe the reason that there is such umbrage now with this list, is the simple fact before the ships adding activations were combat capable. The Raider and CR-90 are both ships able to fight and in spam lists are expected to. The Flotillas now just are not combat ships. At best they are getting used for blocking, but for the most part they hover around the edges of the game and simply exist. The payoff as well for killing a flotilla is low. 18-25 points typically, on one of your roughly 12-14 attacks during a game is not going to allow you to close the gap fast enough. Especially with the necessity of generating potentially multiple accuracies at range to harm them. A majority of ships in this game feature three red dice at long, meaning a lot of the time you are leaving that flotilla with 0 hull damage. Its a poor game design that made them far too point efficient in both activation padding and squadron activation that makes the a scourge I think for most lists.
On the other hand, this list emphasizes one of the things that I truly love about Armada. Objective play. I think far too many lists are built only to try and kill off other fleets, rather than to use the unique objective system in the game. Part of that I think is that the objectives do not typically generate enough points to justify trying to play them vs building a more lethal fleet. Fire Lanes and Sensor Net though, now with Strategic available, make these objectives potentially worth well over half you fleet cost. This list nails down exactly how to use them to generate alternative win conditions. So I want to applaud this list for doing that. And hence the dilemma for the Fish Farm. Its a list that is just not much fun to play against, but it wins in ways that might just not be fun for the game. I think honestly if instead of 90 points of flotillas it featured hammerheads noone would have an issue with it. But as it stands now, the calls intensify for FFG to do something about the continuing Flotilla spam.
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