Boom Chit Piñata discussion

[James]

As requested, starting a new thread for this discussion.

Played 3 games yesterday at the 1000 point level. None of which lasted longer than 25 minutes due to the ability of any group to use a boom chit piñata. Flying, and tailing don’t really seem to make much difference. In fact, I have now found it most efficient to use rapid roll, tight turn, or any additional movement to simply line up deflection shot after deflection shot on the aforementioned piñata. You don’t want him falling in the drink until you farm as many chits off him as you can 🙂

Anyone else seeing this issue?

We haven’t yet done any ground target scenarios to see if this problem persists, but the discussion was, if you can simply see the interceptors off by boom chits, why bother with objectives?

If I seem flip or snarky it’s only because I was, until 2 days ago, absolutely in love with this game. Now it seems the efficient play is to remove clouds, use radar support to be fully advantaged, fly at them, put an ace or 4s up front, outmaneuver one or two planes, and then the rest of the group shoots them until the game is done.

[Nat]

Intresting conundrum here…. I suppose because I’ve only played the game against beer & preztel gamers or historical gamers we’ve always tried lone wolf or pairs … we’ve also not played at above 600 points .. so 4 -5 planes with a mix of pilot skills

Now I’d think about dropping the points but not the board size… also play around with what theater, weather and tactic cards .. time periods /years people can use etc

 

Also do you have Air Strike or just the starter box rules?

 

• This reply was modified 4 years, 6 months ago by Nat.

[James]

Yeah we have Air Strike, and have tried at the 500pt level. Not constrained, though, to historical theaters/cards. At the 500pt level, a swarm of 6 spitfires with tight turns at the ready and the aforementioned theater cards just crushes in one turn of engagement. Getting those 2 theater cards out during deployment ensures that what you get in your hand will be Tight Turns.

Maybe we are just running into the fact that the game just wasn’t made for “tournament style” points-based play. A more historical build and scenario might be required to keep it fun.

[Renko]

It regularly comes up on the Ready Room from new members – if you don’t mind I’ll just c&p my response from there:

“I’m not sure it is such a big problem as it sort of relies on your opponent being cooperative – both in getting into the situation and allowing you to concentrate, and also not getting shot down! I know it regularly came up in the early days, but my impression is that there is a lot of noise out there but not necessarily that much real energy. That being said there are several ways you can mitigate if you think it is a problem. That Douglas Glover bloke went out of his way on the Lead Pursuit Podcast to stress why grabbing the early shot or putting yourself in a position that will lead you to problems if your cunning plan doesn’t come off is unwise . I summarised it here but there is also a link to the mans actual wordage, spoke by an actor 🙂 https://twtrb.blogspot.com/…/close-your-ears-blood-red…”

Personally I am happy if my opponent is concentrating all his planes in one place to try and pull a pinata as it means if I can get a pair in behind them, well they’re all dead. This is particularly devastating if you have Great Dive as you can often do it from a long way off.

However if you still think it is a problem there is a way you can deal with it easily. Just amend the deflection shot rule so that you need a critical hit – ie 2 results. This has 2 good effects and one slightly less good one. On the plus side it deals with the pinata, and secondly immediately nerfs the swarms as they rely on poor pilot skills, and you wont get crits using them.  Slightly less welcome is it makes Heavy Hitters more valuable – but I can live with that.

 

btw I really would recommend that Lead Pursuit episode

 

 

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