Sorry this is up so late long story short I had this about half way done, on Friday night, Saturday me and my wife had a wedding to go to, even though we really did not want to go, you know one of thoughts, but she is my wife's cousin and her family is really close so we were obligated to go and it took up all the day. At the reception my wife wanted to dance so we did and she blew out her knee, and was unable to climb 3 flights of stairs to get into our apartment so I have been at my in-laws for the past few days waiting for her to recover enough to take her home and she kinda took priority, but with out any further ado lest dive into it.
This is an new series I might do from time to time when I see something super "Trendy" in armada, and ask myself why is this so popular, and if it should be reconsidered, so lets get to it. Lets face it ECM's is one of if not the most prevalent upgrade in the game, but why is that and should it be? Well lets look at why this card is so popular and if there is any card that could take its place.
So ECM has the ability to in essence cancel one accuracy effect per round, when said like that it does not seam to powerful, but when you have a high impact defense token like a brace or a scatter, it can be really impactful, and even decisive. so lets say you have 8 damage being able to brace/scatter that is really nice, and is game changing, however how many ships can up an amount of damage that can do that damage and get the accuracy, well MC80's have the potential, ISD's, the blue dice MC-30's, and MC-75's, and VSD-II, and thats all I would really put in this category. You normally see one of these ships you see at least one of these in every list so that contributes to the prevalence of ECMs.
However There have been games where I never even used ECMs and it was just a dead upgrade, lets talk about a few examples. A list that was fairly popular was a gladiator with a black dice ISD Avenger, so the gladiator is almost never going to get an accuracy, and well Avenger is not going to let me use my brace anyway, its just a dead card in this case. When you play against MSU you generally are not taking large hits and other defensive upgrades would just do more for you, and the same goes for when playing against heavy squadrons its just really not going to do much of anything, its really only good against heavy hitters that will get the accuracy, however almost every list comes with some ship like that, however I really believe that there is another defensive upgrade that is highly worth consideration EWS.
So there was a lot of rave about EWS when it first came out then it fell off the map, because you really needed to counter the raddus bomb that would just hit you for so much damage you needed to be able to brace that down, but then when you ran into a squadron list you would just get eaten alive, by the little buggers. So it really seams like the call for what defensive upgrade you take is biased on your meta, and it is to some degree, but what upgrade is the safest bet, espeshally when we have lists that can deal a large damage burst from ships, and have squadrons to add in more damage like the Imperial 2 ship list, well let look at this and compare.
So lets say we are facing Imperal two ship and they have the unholy trinity (Morna Maarek, Jendon) and ISD activating, and lets give them a lights out rolls, and lets face it the ISD is the Avenger, so we cant spend our brace on any squadron attacks if we want to use our brace against the ISDs attack. so Moran will do 3 damage then Jendon will let her do another 3 damage, and then Maarek will do 2 damage, and the ISD can push one more squadron so lets say it's a tie bomber and it deals 2 more damage, okay so with just the squadron attacks we are looking at 10 total damage so far, the ISD-II rolls lights out 11 damage with an accuracy, you can brace that to 6, so you have taken a total of 16 damage in this one activation (hopefully this helps you see why the 2 ship list is so powerful.) So lets look at this case with EWS equipped.
So we have the same thing happen but with EWS in the defending hull zone. Morna will get 2 damage with an additional 2 damage from Jendon, then Maarek will do 1 damage, and the bomber will be unable to attack so we have a total of 5 damage that is half what we took when we had ECMs. Moving on the the ship attack, well the ship has to drop one dice and if we did not spend our brace on the fighter attack it knows it has to roll an accuracy to lock the brace down so it will drop a red, to have a very slightly higher statistical edge in getting that accuracy so we would get 9 damage and an accuracy this ship took a total of 14 damage, 2 less damage than the ship with ECMs, interesting.
We could talk about how EWS is harder to use and squadrons in particular faster ones can play around it, but if used correctly it can prevent more damage over the course of the game then ECMs, and when the player has to drop a die, they lower their chances of getting that accuracy even if it is only slightly, and if you remember back to my wright up about flak we can use this upgrade to make squadrons move out of our "ship killer" hull zone into a hull zone we don't mind using to flak them, but something to consider no matter what you play against EWS will not be a dead card, it will always do something, so it might be worth considering, and if your an MC-80 Assault Cruiser, just take both, you will be the toughest cookie on the block.
MC80 Assault Cruiser (114) • Major Derlin (7) • Engine Techs (8) • Early Warning System (7) • Electronic Countermeasures (7) • Leading Shots (4) • Quad Battery Turrets (5) • Defiance (5) = 157 Points
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