General Tagge the only time I can recall seeing him is when I ran him, he seems really good but his timing is really weird. He seems really good and on paper he is he can easily save a ship more damage than Motti if it gets to use his ability and if is the big part and why he is not hardly ever seen on the table, let's take a look.
So Tagge gives us the ability to regain discarded defense tokens, that can save you a lot of damage, however its only on turns 3 and 5, and that is what makes him limited. In order to gain back tokens at the start of round 3 you would have have to lost tokens in round two and well that is just not very likely.
Armada is broken up into 3 phases in my opinion played over 6 rounds first is the approach phase this part of the game is all about correctly positioning your ships and initial engagement with maybe a shot fired here and there, but nothing to crazy. The next phase is what I call the engagement phase this is generally rounds 3 and 4 and this is where the big shots generally hit home. The last phase is disengagement generally rounds 5 and 6 this is where you take your last few shots (generally not from “primary” batteries) as ships break away from engagement.
So with this lay out do you see the problem with Tagge? It is going to be very hard to lose tokens on turn 2 and even then your opponent can slow roll and simply reject your aggressive play, meaning you still won't get Tagge to go off. In addition in order to discard defense tokens you need to be able to spend them, and a well timed accuracy on a ship with no ECMs is really going to hamper your ability to do just that.
Now with all that said we should give him another look I think, A few things have changed namely expert shield techs, and salvo, seen I have last seen him. Expert shield techs is a great way to mitigate small amounts of damage, like squadron attacks however it can quickly overheat your tokens and if you are going to be taking damage on turn 2 it's likely going to be small amounts of damage and this plays perfectly into expert shield techs. With salvo on turn 4 you can spend it till it's gone and get it back turn 5 and your opponent will be thinking twice before taking disengagement shots at you.
ISD Kuat Refit (112)
• General Tagge (25)
• Expert Shield Tech (5)
• Local Fire Control (4)
• Reserve Hangar Deck (3)
• Electronic Countermeasures (7)
• Leading Shots (4)
• External Racks (3)
• Seventh Fleet Star Destroyer (5)
= 168 Points
ISD Kuat Refit (112)
• Expert Shield Tech (5)
• Local Fire Control (4)
• Reserve Hangar Deck (3)
• Electronic Countermeasures (7)
• Leading Shots (4)
• External Racks (3)
• Seventh Fleet Star Destroyer (5)
= 143 Points
Gozanti Cruisers (23)
• Comms Net (2)
• Reserve Hangar Deck (3)
= 28 Points
Gozanti Cruisers (23)
• Comms Net (2)
• Reserve Hangar Deck (3)
= 28 Points
Squadrons:
• 4 x TIE Fighter Squadron (32)
= 32 Points
Total Points: 399
you obviously get the most value out of Tagge from getting back a brace or a scatter, but this list gives you a lot of ways to spend tokens and with ECM we don't have to worry about accuracies too much. However we still have the issue of someone refusing the early engagement and we get left with half a commander ability.
The issue really boils down to that start of turn 3 part of his ability if his ability triggered on turns 4 and 5 he would be a solid commander, but as is it's just to easy for him to really only give you tokens on turn 5, and its just not enough, even a points cost reduction would not get Tagge back on the table, (unless it was reduced below 20, so the big SSD could hit the table, but that would likely never happen) Tagge Really needs a rework really all it would take is changing round 3 to 4 and then he would be back in business, unfortunately as is the natural flow of the game works against Tagge and that is why he never really sees table time. With expert shield techs and salvo out now maybe he can find the right list to work in, but I think it might be a stretch. Until next time have a great week!
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