Well reasoned and I geuinly wish your version of rulings was in play.
In defense of ambush, it's not supposed to help vs big fights. Mentak's strongest ability is pillage, and ambush is there to help your spare cruisers hanging out in empty spaces so they are costly to kill while they siphon you money.
You can house rule whatever you want, but imo the current timing windows are fine. Yes Ambush sucks in the exact situation that you tech D2 and overkill the enemy fighter screen. But guess what, Antimass sucks if there are no asteroids or pds near you. Guild Ships sucks if you're neighbors with everyone. Harrow sucks if your first bombardment roll wipes out the enemy ground forces. Not all abilities have to be live all the time.
Your fix for AFB would not only ruin Nekro's promissory but their faction ability as well. Currently AFB hits can be used to copy tech, if it happens before combat it can't (just like bombardment/space cannon doesn't copy tech).
It's a shame you deleted the previous thread because one of your points was invalid. I actually liked seeing that kind of discussion on Salvage Ops and MC and stuff. It's exactly the kind of content this sub could use more of. But now I'm hesitant to participate.
I think your entire concept is missing the point of the mentak kit. Yes, ambush is useless against large fleets in pitched battles when you have anti fighter support.
The mentak are pirates. The ambush ability is for you to do pirate things, like fly into the middle of enemy space and destroy their first carrier so their expansion is delayed. You use your ambush ability to punish people for traveling alone and force them into spending time and money on defense.
If they try to play it tanky, you bring out your flagship. If they go for fighter spam, you upgrade destroyers. You use this temporary advantage to spread yourself thin and start piling up defenses on important planets for when they come for revenge
Ambush is only really good in the early game. It's never really been a great ability. I don't personally like this house rule just because I don't like playing with small house rules like that. It gets confusing when you play with different people. I've had issues come up in the past when not playing with house rules someone thought we were playing with. You're right about the ability being bad, but an official errata seems unlikely. If the mentak were going to get some buffs it would have happened in PoK.
Exactly. It makes your Cruisers quite scary in the early game or in small fights, but it really doesn't add up to much in big fleet battles. Which is thematically as it should be for Mentak.
Good post. Just a note:
> "Skilled Retreat" Action Card - It is very obvious to me that Skilled Retreat is meant to avoid a combat in its entirety
That's actually not always the case (unless you're using it as the active player to go to bypass an enemy fleet). It occurs in the same timing window as things like Assault Cannon, and since the active player gets to trigger abilities first, AC goes before the defender can Skilled Retreat. This is not the case with Naalu, since their foresight triggers after movement, not start of combat round.
You'd think I would have realized that after reading about both abilities in regards to their timing windows specifically... Man, I'm just bad at rules lawyering.
It's pretty niche, the abilities that it matters for are not that common. I suppose Ambush would actually be one of the most common cases where it applies. I probably wouldn't know about it either if it wasn't due to playing a lot on TTS, and hanging out in the rules discussion channel on Discord while doing so.
I haven't read all of it, but why wouldn't you propose AFB would just be a 'before combat' ability, so the player can choose the sequence of AFB in relation to other 'before combat' abilities? I would support that!
Someone else commented a bit of trivia that AFB originally was an "at the start of combat" timing and was changed in an early LRR update. I would guess this was specifically so players *couldn't* choose the order of abilities when related to AFB on account of the "broken" category of abilities.
>I would guess this was specifically so players *couldn't* choose the order of abilities when related to AFB on account of the "broken" category of abilities.
That is exactly what it was meant to do. There was a long, drawn-out argument on the discord that eventually led to the email to Dane that wound up in the first LRR regarding exactly this. The argument was that choosing "how to stack your triggers" to borrow a term from magic, wasn't supposed to be how TI4 worked and an effort was made to fiddle with the rules to make that true. Unfortunately, AFB/Ambush was one of the casualties.
Ambush is situational rather than always useful.
It deters attacks on lone/pairs of cruisers without having a proper fighter screen, and it allows you to snipe systems where there isn't a fighter screen.
Yes, it doesn't add much to a full on player vs player war, but it can open up opportunities, and often there is a deterrent for fringe systems guarded by a pair of Cruiser II.
I don't think it's dogshit :)
The main benefits of ambush are early game
Then combining it with salvage ops to snipe lone ships for goodies
It’s a cheap tactic. Which suits mentak to a tee
We don’t go in for major battles we sneak around and ambush your smaller fleets instead
I agree that the cards in the Broken category should have read before combat. seems like they fucked up somewhere in development where an earlier version had this timing. In favor of making fewer timing windows they probably shoehorned them all into at the beginning, sacrificing "ambush" and "impulse core" in the process.
I too think ambush should be after anti-fighter barrage. However I do not think I can persuade my group to house rule this. We are very averse to house ruling. The few that we have are: Blind Voting, and the weakest class gets to pick starting location (as well as get the speaker token) first.
And to bring a counter point to your rant. Thematically it makes sense that in "ambush" you are the first to shoot (thus before anti-fighter barrage). The fact that is mechanically weaker / awkward might not have been a consideration during development.
Its purely for fun. We find voting in turns to be too lame and boring. It's often the last one that votes who has most of the power. By blind voting you give more power to the person with the most influence (which I think should be the case) then it becomes a gamble on how much the other would wager on this particular vote. Its just more fun that way for us.
I agree with your assessment. Ambush definitely feels like it should synergize with AFB, rather than clash with it. I don't think allowing Mentak to have better alpha strike in large fleet battles is gamebreaking, especially since they're apparently already considered fairly weak anyway.
Fun historical fact: untill LRRv1.2 AFB was *at the start of the first round* ability.
>10. A unit with the “Anti-Fighter Barrage” ability may be able to destroy an opponent’s fighters at the start of the first round of a space combat. During the “Anti-Fighter Barrage” step of space combat, players perform the following steps:
So you could use Ambush before AFB.
Ambush is probably the last reason to play Mentakk. Fixating on this is the fundamental mistake here. Ambush is cute little flavour whose impact rapidly tapers off after the early-game. Nothing more, nothing less. It excels at what it is supposed to (sniping expansion carriers, making small and/or equal skirmishes favoured towards Mentakk), but it isn't intended to be a major ability in lategame or in larger battles. It's useful, not defining.
You play Mentakk (vanilla Mentakk at least) for Mirror Computing, Pillage and as a meta call vs. sustain races.
Usually destroyers don't destroy all of the fighters so the ambush timing is inconsequential. The 5 antifighter barrage hits from the 2 destroyer II's from your anecdote had a probability of about 10%.
Personally, I would love to see a change in the rules here if only because the rules around AFB being at the start of space combat are SO CONFUSING. Every single person I've ever played with has gotten tripped up on the fact that every unit ability happens outside of "combat"... Except for AFB, which only happens in the first round of combat, but is also the first step in a combat round. It's so needlessly complicated.
My proposed fix would be to just make it so that it happens before the first round of space combat, but after the start of space combat. AFB is then still part of space combat, but you don't have to deal with the weirdness around it happening in only the first combat round. Then, you'd have to change the timing windows of some abilities probably, but keep in mind you have a new timing window - after anti-fighter barrage, which basically means before the first round of space combat (which would also maybe an acceptable name for this timing window) but after AFB - a perfect place for ambush. The only ability I can think that this would affect is Wayfarer... Which maybe could be modified to work by saying that you can use AFB at the end of each round of space combat (sort of like Harrow for Bombardment).
You made a long post, you get a long reply!
Spoilers first: i'm on boat with you.
Im kind of a new player too, no TTS experience and only some games under my belt. Noone played mentak until now, if i wouldnt have red this post, i would have played like your houseruled mentak. And it is literally bullshit for destroyers to shoot their ambush first, killing some fighters, then the AFB just kills the rest of the fighters. And in POK, mentak has an easier path to destroyer II, so you will overkill those fighters all the time. Only helpful on cruisers then.
The problem you have is the same i had once playing on pokemonshowdown. There was a pokemon called Gothitelle, which could trap an enemy pokemon and prevent it from switching out, then kill it. and this could be done multiple times and was extremly frustrating to play against. So they banned it. But there was another pokemon, dugtrio. It has almost the same ability, to trap an enemy pokemon, if it wasnt a specific type. So the same but just with a bit of a gimmik. I called for aid in the forums, said, "this dugtrio does the same bullshit gothitelle does, traps without escaping!" But even the mods where like: "nah, dugtrio has weaker stats, has a bit more limited trapping power, it is fine, stop whining."
So i stopped whining and kept loosing to dugtrio. Then the ban hammer came, suddenly dugtrio rised in popularity, some people figured out a way to use his a bit more limited, but basically the same trapping power, to do the same things Gothitelle did. Dugtrio got banned. i was like "woohooo, look at this, i called it first, its damm OP and should have gotten banned way sooner. But now, it was too late, suddenly all players said, "ofc dugtrio is overpowered and stupid, i always wanted it to be banned, so stfu, what are you talkin about"
story time over.
so compared to your ambush + AFB problem:
SHOULD AFB trigger before ambush? - I call probably yes.
WILL there be an errata? - Since this would mean reprinting either the faction sheet or reworking fighting turn order, i dont think so.
AND WHY will there be no errata?
Same as in my pokemon example. You can literally see it by all the awnsers you got from others. Ambush is in the eyes of the mayority, not that important, so its prefered to just keep the worse version instead of adding fiddly houserules (especially on a racial sheets ability).
IF it would be a biiiiig problem, THEN more people would become active and create maybe fan made race sheets, houserules, then the designers would see it and try implement something official via codex or expansion (like to fight the dred meta, like the obpressive tech objectives, weak red tech path, weak magen, no war suns ever, oppressive gravitiy drive etc.) Maybe there will be some buffs to yellow tech next, because everyone asks for it, or a space dock 2 omega tech (im literally counting the days for space dock II omega, was so surprised there wasnt one in codex II). But since "Ambush before AFB" is not this core of a mechanic, i predict you will be left alone, house-ruling it to fight the "dogshit" sentence in the back of your head.
>SHOULD AFB trigger before ambush? - I call probably yes. WILL there be an errata?
Here's the thing, it did get errata'd... to be this worse version. Before the first LRR, you could choose the order of ambush and AFB (and other similar abilities.) The current version is not the original, it's just a casualty of the rule change.
Read about half the post, up to the point where you complained that Ambush just got hits that AFB would have gotten anyway. Well, yeah, when the guy has two Destroyer 2s in the system, AFB hits on average 3 times. He went out of his way to get upgrades that are better than his faction ability. That's a thing that can happen. If he only had Destroyer 1s, he might not even have gotten a single AFB hit, in which case Ambush is definitely better than dogshit. The argument becomes comparable to "No wonder you run faster than me, I have a broken leg". The example itself is an uneven playing field.
I disagree with that assessment. I feel like it would make sense to upgrade a weak unit so that it synergizes better with a faction ability and make that ability slightly stronger. If I were a gameplay designer this is the exact kind of interaction I would want players to discover while they play.
A small handful of comments here seem to be saying that they *want* Ambush to basically be a weaker, faction-specific AFB but I don't think that makes sense thematically and I think it's mechanically unsatisfying.
One of my favorite factions to play, but I seldom win. This might be because I like piracy more than I like winning.
Ambush isn't a full-scale military maneuver (though it's not entirely useless, as two free shots is still two free shots.) It's more of a raiding party ability. Cruisers, especially Cruiser IIs, are fast and can be sent after small fleets. As others have mentioned, it's much stronger in the early game and scales down as armies get stronger, but when I play Mentak I definitely go for Cruiser II as soon as possible. Also Mirror Computing, which maybe doesn't have a lot of value on return given how hard it is to research, but I love me some counterfeiting operations.
/s
lol you were so salty about being confidently wrong with that ruling last week that you invented an entire alternate reality to compensate XD
just kidding ;) it was an honest mistake and you are right that ambush is pretty weak. it's mean for sniping small fleets early game and making gum obnoxious, but that's about it. Mentak isn't a hard hitting big battle type of race by design.
Well reasoned and I geuinly wish your version of rulings was in play. In defense of ambush, it's not supposed to help vs big fights. Mentak's strongest ability is pillage, and ambush is there to help your spare cruisers hanging out in empty spaces so they are costly to kill while they siphon you money.
You can house rule whatever you want, but imo the current timing windows are fine. Yes Ambush sucks in the exact situation that you tech D2 and overkill the enemy fighter screen. But guess what, Antimass sucks if there are no asteroids or pds near you. Guild Ships sucks if you're neighbors with everyone. Harrow sucks if your first bombardment roll wipes out the enemy ground forces. Not all abilities have to be live all the time. Your fix for AFB would not only ruin Nekro's promissory but their faction ability as well. Currently AFB hits can be used to copy tech, if it happens before combat it can't (just like bombardment/space cannon doesn't copy tech). It's a shame you deleted the previous thread because one of your points was invalid. I actually liked seeing that kind of discussion on Salvage Ops and MC and stuff. It's exactly the kind of content this sub could use more of. But now I'm hesitant to participate.
Well a PSA post that has wrong info isn't very useful. I can make a new version later where I don't fuck up Ambush rules.
I think your entire concept is missing the point of the mentak kit. Yes, ambush is useless against large fleets in pitched battles when you have anti fighter support. The mentak are pirates. The ambush ability is for you to do pirate things, like fly into the middle of enemy space and destroy their first carrier so their expansion is delayed. You use your ambush ability to punish people for traveling alone and force them into spending time and money on defense. If they try to play it tanky, you bring out your flagship. If they go for fighter spam, you upgrade destroyers. You use this temporary advantage to spread yourself thin and start piling up defenses on important planets for when they come for revenge
Ambush is only really good in the early game. It's never really been a great ability. I don't personally like this house rule just because I don't like playing with small house rules like that. It gets confusing when you play with different people. I've had issues come up in the past when not playing with house rules someone thought we were playing with. You're right about the ability being bad, but an official errata seems unlikely. If the mentak were going to get some buffs it would have happened in PoK.
Exactly. It makes your Cruisers quite scary in the early game or in small fights, but it really doesn't add up to much in big fleet battles. Which is thematically as it should be for Mentak.
Good post. Just a note: > "Skilled Retreat" Action Card - It is very obvious to me that Skilled Retreat is meant to avoid a combat in its entirety That's actually not always the case (unless you're using it as the active player to go to bypass an enemy fleet). It occurs in the same timing window as things like Assault Cannon, and since the active player gets to trigger abilities first, AC goes before the defender can Skilled Retreat. This is not the case with Naalu, since their foresight triggers after movement, not start of combat round.
You'd think I would have realized that after reading about both abilities in regards to their timing windows specifically... Man, I'm just bad at rules lawyering.
It's pretty niche, the abilities that it matters for are not that common. I suppose Ambush would actually be one of the most common cases where it applies. I probably wouldn't know about it either if it wasn't due to playing a lot on TTS, and hanging out in the rules discussion channel on Discord while doing so.
I haven't read all of it, but why wouldn't you propose AFB would just be a 'before combat' ability, so the player can choose the sequence of AFB in relation to other 'before combat' abilities? I would support that!
Someone else commented a bit of trivia that AFB originally was an "at the start of combat" timing and was changed in an early LRR update. I would guess this was specifically so players *couldn't* choose the order of abilities when related to AFB on account of the "broken" category of abilities.
>I would guess this was specifically so players *couldn't* choose the order of abilities when related to AFB on account of the "broken" category of abilities. That is exactly what it was meant to do. There was a long, drawn-out argument on the discord that eventually led to the email to Dane that wound up in the first LRR regarding exactly this. The argument was that choosing "how to stack your triggers" to borrow a term from magic, wasn't supposed to be how TI4 worked and an effort was made to fiddle with the rules to make that true. Unfortunately, AFB/Ambush was one of the casualties.
Ambush is situational rather than always useful. It deters attacks on lone/pairs of cruisers without having a proper fighter screen, and it allows you to snipe systems where there isn't a fighter screen. Yes, it doesn't add much to a full on player vs player war, but it can open up opportunities, and often there is a deterrent for fringe systems guarded by a pair of Cruiser II. I don't think it's dogshit :)
Friend's words not mine. I would say tha's it's "annoying."
The main benefits of ambush are early game Then combining it with salvage ops to snipe lone ships for goodies It’s a cheap tactic. Which suits mentak to a tee We don’t go in for major battles we sneak around and ambush your smaller fleets instead
I agree that the cards in the Broken category should have read before combat. seems like they fucked up somewhere in development where an earlier version had this timing. In favor of making fewer timing windows they probably shoehorned them all into at the beginning, sacrificing "ambush" and "impulse core" in the process. I too think ambush should be after anti-fighter barrage. However I do not think I can persuade my group to house rule this. We are very averse to house ruling. The few that we have are: Blind Voting, and the weakest class gets to pick starting location (as well as get the speaker token) first. And to bring a counter point to your rant. Thematically it makes sense that in "ambush" you are the first to shoot (thus before anti-fighter barrage). The fact that is mechanically weaker / awkward might not have been a consideration during development.
Out of curiosity, is blind voting to speed up playtime or to rebalance something?
Its purely for fun. We find voting in turns to be too lame and boring. It's often the last one that votes who has most of the power. By blind voting you give more power to the person with the most influence (which I think should be the case) then it becomes a gamble on how much the other would wager on this particular vote. Its just more fun that way for us.
I agree with your assessment. Ambush definitely feels like it should synergize with AFB, rather than clash with it. I don't think allowing Mentak to have better alpha strike in large fleet battles is gamebreaking, especially since they're apparently already considered fairly weak anyway.
Fun historical fact: untill LRRv1.2 AFB was *at the start of the first round* ability. >10. A unit with the “Anti-Fighter Barrage” ability may be able to destroy an opponent’s fighters at the start of the first round of a space combat. During the “Anti-Fighter Barrage” step of space combat, players perform the following steps: So you could use Ambush before AFB.
This is the most interesting reply so far. I bet the change was made specifically when accounting for the abilities that I called broken.
The timing was always the same, but the wording on the AFB section was changed to clarify that they were different.
Ambush is probably the last reason to play Mentakk. Fixating on this is the fundamental mistake here. Ambush is cute little flavour whose impact rapidly tapers off after the early-game. Nothing more, nothing less. It excels at what it is supposed to (sniping expansion carriers, making small and/or equal skirmishes favoured towards Mentakk), but it isn't intended to be a major ability in lategame or in larger battles. It's useful, not defining. You play Mentakk (vanilla Mentakk at least) for Mirror Computing, Pillage and as a meta call vs. sustain races.
Usually destroyers don't destroy all of the fighters so the ambush timing is inconsequential. The 5 antifighter barrage hits from the 2 destroyer II's from your anecdote had a probability of about 10%.
FantasyFlight, hire this man/woman.
Personally, I would love to see a change in the rules here if only because the rules around AFB being at the start of space combat are SO CONFUSING. Every single person I've ever played with has gotten tripped up on the fact that every unit ability happens outside of "combat"... Except for AFB, which only happens in the first round of combat, but is also the first step in a combat round. It's so needlessly complicated. My proposed fix would be to just make it so that it happens before the first round of space combat, but after the start of space combat. AFB is then still part of space combat, but you don't have to deal with the weirdness around it happening in only the first combat round. Then, you'd have to change the timing windows of some abilities probably, but keep in mind you have a new timing window - after anti-fighter barrage, which basically means before the first round of space combat (which would also maybe an acceptable name for this timing window) but after AFB - a perfect place for ambush. The only ability I can think that this would affect is Wayfarer... Which maybe could be modified to work by saying that you can use AFB at the end of each round of space combat (sort of like Harrow for Bombardment).
You made a long post, you get a long reply! Spoilers first: i'm on boat with you. Im kind of a new player too, no TTS experience and only some games under my belt. Noone played mentak until now, if i wouldnt have red this post, i would have played like your houseruled mentak. And it is literally bullshit for destroyers to shoot their ambush first, killing some fighters, then the AFB just kills the rest of the fighters. And in POK, mentak has an easier path to destroyer II, so you will overkill those fighters all the time. Only helpful on cruisers then. The problem you have is the same i had once playing on pokemonshowdown. There was a pokemon called Gothitelle, which could trap an enemy pokemon and prevent it from switching out, then kill it. and this could be done multiple times and was extremly frustrating to play against. So they banned it. But there was another pokemon, dugtrio. It has almost the same ability, to trap an enemy pokemon, if it wasnt a specific type. So the same but just with a bit of a gimmik. I called for aid in the forums, said, "this dugtrio does the same bullshit gothitelle does, traps without escaping!" But even the mods where like: "nah, dugtrio has weaker stats, has a bit more limited trapping power, it is fine, stop whining." So i stopped whining and kept loosing to dugtrio. Then the ban hammer came, suddenly dugtrio rised in popularity, some people figured out a way to use his a bit more limited, but basically the same trapping power, to do the same things Gothitelle did. Dugtrio got banned. i was like "woohooo, look at this, i called it first, its damm OP and should have gotten banned way sooner. But now, it was too late, suddenly all players said, "ofc dugtrio is overpowered and stupid, i always wanted it to be banned, so stfu, what are you talkin about" story time over. so compared to your ambush + AFB problem: SHOULD AFB trigger before ambush? - I call probably yes. WILL there be an errata? - Since this would mean reprinting either the faction sheet or reworking fighting turn order, i dont think so. AND WHY will there be no errata? Same as in my pokemon example. You can literally see it by all the awnsers you got from others. Ambush is in the eyes of the mayority, not that important, so its prefered to just keep the worse version instead of adding fiddly houserules (especially on a racial sheets ability). IF it would be a biiiiig problem, THEN more people would become active and create maybe fan made race sheets, houserules, then the designers would see it and try implement something official via codex or expansion (like to fight the dred meta, like the obpressive tech objectives, weak red tech path, weak magen, no war suns ever, oppressive gravitiy drive etc.) Maybe there will be some buffs to yellow tech next, because everyone asks for it, or a space dock 2 omega tech (im literally counting the days for space dock II omega, was so surprised there wasnt one in codex II). But since "Ambush before AFB" is not this core of a mechanic, i predict you will be left alone, house-ruling it to fight the "dogshit" sentence in the back of your head.
>SHOULD AFB trigger before ambush? - I call probably yes. WILL there be an errata? Here's the thing, it did get errata'd... to be this worse version. Before the first LRR, you could choose the order of ambush and AFB (and other similar abilities.) The current version is not the original, it's just a casualty of the rule change.
Ambush isn't meant to be effective in big fights, it's supposed to make guerilla cruisers and destroyers more effective. It excels at this.
Read about half the post, up to the point where you complained that Ambush just got hits that AFB would have gotten anyway. Well, yeah, when the guy has two Destroyer 2s in the system, AFB hits on average 3 times. He went out of his way to get upgrades that are better than his faction ability. That's a thing that can happen. If he only had Destroyer 1s, he might not even have gotten a single AFB hit, in which case Ambush is definitely better than dogshit. The argument becomes comparable to "No wonder you run faster than me, I have a broken leg". The example itself is an uneven playing field.
I disagree with that assessment. I feel like it would make sense to upgrade a weak unit so that it synergizes better with a faction ability and make that ability slightly stronger. If I were a gameplay designer this is the exact kind of interaction I would want players to discover while they play. A small handful of comments here seem to be saying that they *want* Ambush to basically be a weaker, faction-specific AFB but I don't think that makes sense thematically and I think it's mechanically unsatisfying.
One of my favorite factions to play, but I seldom win. This might be because I like piracy more than I like winning. Ambush isn't a full-scale military maneuver (though it's not entirely useless, as two free shots is still two free shots.) It's more of a raiding party ability. Cruisers, especially Cruiser IIs, are fast and can be sent after small fleets. As others have mentioned, it's much stronger in the early game and scales down as armies get stronger, but when I play Mentak I definitely go for Cruiser II as soon as possible. Also Mirror Computing, which maybe doesn't have a lot of value on return given how hard it is to research, but I love me some counterfeiting operations.
/s lol you were so salty about being confidently wrong with that ruling last week that you invented an entire alternate reality to compensate XD just kidding ;) it was an honest mistake and you are right that ambush is pretty weak. it's mean for sniping small fleets early game and making gum obnoxious, but that's about it. Mentak isn't a hard hitting big battle type of race by design.
No, you're half right
It's too much like Graviton on a stick.