IN BFG

[Demoulius]

Had a simular problem when the combined fire of my escorts basicly blew my opponents fleet away in 750 points :) i had like 1 SC which had to disengage after 1 turn....the rest of my fleet opend fire and tore his IN fleet a new one :D

 

nothing so fun as reducing a cruiser to a crippled wreck in 1 turn of shooting and a few failed brace tests B)

 

that said they are among the priority targets now. everything with lances target my cruisers and everything else (i.e. batteries and torpedoes) try to take out my escorts first....and generally succeed at it to much to my annoyance ^_^ i find them to be worth their weight in gold though! high mobility and very good firepower for a reasonable pointcost :P just make sure they arent fired at to badly though :)

[Vaaish]

You really need to distinguish MARINE escorts from regular. They have all the good points of the IN escorts but are faster and harder to kill. Much harder actually with the 2010 FAQ. ^_^

[Demoulius]

how are they harder to kill? :D

[Vaaish]

Pre-faq 2010 any time an assault boat survived the turret fire after touching the base of an escort, the escort died on a d6 roll of a 2+ for the hit and run result (you could BFI but then your squadron wasn't doing much and the escort still died 50% of the time). Marines, as part of their rules, gain a +1 to their hit and run rolls and any hit and run attacks against their ships take a -1 penalty. The net result was that marine escorts died on a 3+ and instakilled any escort they touched since they could never fail to cause a critical with their +1. That made marine escorts harder to kill and any escort marines attacked dead unless they braced.

 

Now, under the FAQ2010 rules, escorts die on a 4+ when attacked by assault boats. Marines still get their modifier so their escorts now die on a 5+ while they kill enemy escorts on a 3+.

 

In terms of shooting, marine escorts are just about a durable although the hunter has better armor compared to the cobra. The fact is that's beside the points as the most efficient means of killing them has always been to tag them with assault boats.