I confess, I used to be like you, once before I took an arrow to the knee. I thought that Ruthless was the worst upgrade in the game, a bad joke played upon the players by the dev team. At the very least, it was clear evidence of the very well-known-and-definitely-a-real-thing anti-Empire bias exhibited by FFG (aside from those times when the Empire is dominant, which I can only assume are just momentary lapses in their ability to suppress the one faction that they want to produce product for but also not sell).
Then, I looked at Ruthless more. And I tried it a few times. And I realised that it’s perhaps not the worst upgrade. Not great, perhaps. But not the worst!
So how do we use Ruthless in such a way that our opponent does not ridicule us? How can we even, dare I be bold, win a game with Ruthless?
So, we have an upgrade that can give us die mods on blanks and damages our own ships. How do we take advantage of this?
For the former, we look at ships that struggle to modify blanks on the attack. In the Empire, that’s basically anything that doesn’t have target lock. We also want 3+ attack ships, as we really don’t want to be wasting our friendly ships’ health pools on small attacks. When looking at Ruthless, we want fewer, bigger attacks and not multiple, smaller attacks. Your Ruthless TIE swarm is going to have some real sustainability problems.
Given the above, your best candidates are the following ships:
Let's look at each of these ships in turn.
The Lambda might be a usable Ruthless carrier. It does have a few flaws in that regard, however, and the biggest one to come to mind (and the only one I'm going to bring up here) is that none of its pilots have a Talent slot. Let's move on.
What does a good Ruthless ship look like? Ideally, it's some combination of cheap, bulky, weak, and low-agility. What we're looking for is ships with a lot of hit points, but that isn't paying a lot to give you those hit points.
One quick and dirty way to look at this is just to divide the points you're spending by the number of hit points the ship is bringing. This at least gives you a very basic idea of how many points you're potentially spending for each Ruthless use. This is very imperfect, of course; the health of a ship with 2 or 3 agility is inherently more valuable than the health of a ship with 1 or 0 agility, since the latter ship is expected to give up those hit points easily (and therefore is paying less for them).
Using the above metric, you're generally looking to use ships that are 5 points per health or less to fuel your Ruthless attacks. This definitely rules out ships like the TIE Defender (which pays at least 10 points per hit point) or the TIE Fighter (which is cheap and disposable in general, but still pays over 7 points per hit point for its 3 agility protected hull).
Again, to be clear, this is a very broad methodology and is certainly more refinable (such as by using a more holistic metric that captures overall durability per point, rather than the brute force approach used here that ignores agility value or shields vs. hull). However, you can do this math very quickly and it's easy to update as points adjustments happen, and overall it's a fine back-of-the-envelope way to point yourself towards good Ruthless fodder.
Let's quickly look at the best Ruthless fuel, including a range of Points per Health (PPH) for each ship.
Basically, when you choose to trigger Ruthless, it should be with the reasonable expectation that you are doing 1 more damage as a result, based on your die mods and your target's die mods. And further, for the most part, that 1 damage should be worth more than the 1 damage you're giving up. Hurting your generic Cutlass Squadron TIE Punisher feels a bit bad, but it doesn't sting nearly so much when it means you're taking off a quarter of the hull of your opponent's Fenn Rau.
Because this is the crux of Ruthless. It is Selfless in reverse. We want to trade our easy damage, our cheap health points, for our opponents hard-to-get, pricey health. We are sacrificing pawns to win a Queen. We are getting rid of expendable hull on expendable ships in the hopes of removing much more valuable threats from our opponent's list.
It's not a card (or, more accurately, a strategy) that works for every list, and you shouldn't try to shoehorn Ruthless into lists where it's not optimal, or worse, where it's actually detrimental. And if you do use Ruthless, you should be comfortable with the idea of going several games without using it, whether because you're never able or because the damage trade just isn't justified. But for lists in which it fits, Ruthless is a perfectly acceptable alternative to the other 1- or 2-point Talents, and you should keep it in mind when list building with the Empire.
Then, I looked at Ruthless more. And I tried it a few times. And I realised that it’s perhaps not the worst upgrade. Not great, perhaps. But not the worst!
So how do we use Ruthless in such a way that our opponent does not ridicule us? How can we even, dare I be bold, win a game with Ruthless?
The art of living ruthlessly
At it’s core, Ruthless is offensive dice modification. The positive effect is powerful in that it can convert any die result, not just an eyeball, into a hit. Comparable abilities, such as Major Vermeil or the Fearless talent, tend to be pretty powerful and see decent play where priced fairly. At only 1 point, Ruthless would appear to meet that requirement as well.
The cost of the ability itself is the real problem, of course. Ruthless requires you to not only have a ship at range 0-1 of your intended target, but also to damage that friendly ship as well. This is significant, obviously. Since the game is essentially a competition to see who can deal more damage to their opponent’s ships first, doing damage to yourself is a very questionable move. Ruthless is the sacrifice bunt of X-Wing.
The silver lining of that, however, is that when you’re not actively using the ability, you aren’t typically setting doing anything you didn’t already want to do. Vermeil players sometimes sacrifice their action to Jam to set up their shot (but they shouldn’t), and if a Fearless user whiffs on their attack, they’re now sitting in arc at range 1 of their opponent waiting for a nasty counterattack. With Ruthless, if your attack roll comes up empty, you can safely pass on the trigger, and all it cost you was something you likely wanted to do anyway: get ships at range 1 of your target.
Better yet, those ships don’t need to have your target in arc. This means a ship that might have been arc dodged and could even be woefully out of position might still be able to serve a purpose by fuelling a Ruthless attack. This is a really important and easily overlooked aspect of Ruthless! In addition to being attackers and doing whatever else your other ships usually do, each of your ships is now threatening a potential die mod for your Ruthless attacker(s), and all they have to do is be there.
The cost of the ability itself is the real problem, of course. Ruthless requires you to not only have a ship at range 0-1 of your intended target, but also to damage that friendly ship as well. This is significant, obviously. Since the game is essentially a competition to see who can deal more damage to their opponent’s ships first, doing damage to yourself is a very questionable move. Ruthless is the sacrifice bunt of X-Wing.
The silver lining of that, however, is that when you’re not actively using the ability, you aren’t typically setting doing anything you didn’t already want to do. Vermeil players sometimes sacrifice their action to Jam to set up their shot (but they shouldn’t), and if a Fearless user whiffs on their attack, they’re now sitting in arc at range 1 of their opponent waiting for a nasty counterattack. With Ruthless, if your attack roll comes up empty, you can safely pass on the trigger, and all it cost you was something you likely wanted to do anyway: get ships at range 1 of your target.
Better yet, those ships don’t need to have your target in arc. This means a ship that might have been arc dodged and could even be woefully out of position might still be able to serve a purpose by fuelling a Ruthless attack. This is a really important and easily overlooked aspect of Ruthless! In addition to being attackers and doing whatever else your other ships usually do, each of your ships is now threatening a potential die mod for your Ruthless attacker(s), and all they have to do is be there.
When to be ruthless
The important thing to get clear right away is that Ruthless has a time and a place. This isn’t a Crack Shot or a Trick Shot, where you can generally put it on just about any ship in any list and hope to see at least some value. Moreso than even the other faction-specific talents, this is a niche upgrade with a very limited range of usefulness. Within that small range, however, Ruthless can be pretty decent.So, we have an upgrade that can give us die mods on blanks and damages our own ships. How do we take advantage of this?
For the former, we look at ships that struggle to modify blanks on the attack. In the Empire, that’s basically anything that doesn’t have target lock. We also want 3+ attack ships, as we really don’t want to be wasting our friendly ships’ health pools on small attacks. When looking at Ruthless, we want fewer, bigger attacks and not multiple, smaller attacks. Your Ruthless TIE swarm is going to have some real sustainability problems.
Given the above, your best candidates are the following ships:
- TIE Interceptor
- TIE Reaper
- TIE/sk Striker
- TIE/ph Phantom
- Lambda-class T-4a Shuttle
Let's look at each of these ships in turn.
Lambda Shuttle
TIE Phantom
The TIE Phantom has an interesting dilemma, as Juke is such a great fit for that ship. That said, Ruthless is still worth considering if you can't afford Juke; this is occasionally true now, and would certainly become more true if the cost of Juke were to be increased in the future. Basically, if your Phantoms can afford Juke, you should probably be taking it, but if you're not, then Ruthless is a pretty good way of raising the offensive output of the Phantom.TIE Reaper
I think this is the wrong end of the Ruthless equation for the Reaper (as we'll discuss below), but it's not awful. The Reaper (when used for combat) does tend to bump or sloop a lot, which leaves it short on dice mods. Also note that this is not the only solution the Reaper currently has to modify blanks, with Director Krennic an option to give one Reaper the Lock action (albeit with a much more significant points cost).
Ruthless is somewhat redundant with Vermeil, given the similarities in the two effects, but it does give you a very good chance at 3 hit attacks even without a focus token. If you expect to be making a lot of attacks with focus, however, Ruthless only provides a minimal increase in offense and is probably too marginal to bother with.
Captain Feroph with Ruthless is actually very interesting, as it's a tanky ship that now has pretty meaningful offense, since your Ruthless focused attacks are going to be 3-hit shots the majority of the time. The key here is making sure Feroph has good uptime on her attacks, since the Reaper is a bit more dodgeable and a bit more cumbersome to keep pointed at a specific target.
TIE Interceptor
Now we're getting into what I feel are the good Ruthless users! All but the cheapest Alpha Squadron Interceptors can legally take Ruthless, and any of them can make pretty decent use of it. TIE Interceptors have maneuverability to keep their arcs on a Ruthless-eligible target, and all of the Talent-eligible Interceptors are I4 or higher, giving you enough board knowledge to typically succeed at that goal. Ruthless also gives them an offensive mod on turns where they have been force do use both repositioning actions instead of grabbing a focus token.
Ruthless Sabers are fine. Paying 4 points to upgrade to Turr Phennir is tricky; Turr probably lives longer with his ability to reposition away from the counterattacks, but sometimes I4 Interceptors just die. That said, either of these make a fine third or fourth ship in a list that can support Ruthless. Neither are "build around" ships, and listbuilding should be handled accordingly. It is probably a poor list that puts most or all of its hopes on the shoulders of Turr Phennir.
Soontir, as discussed above, is a ship that can get a lot of great use out of Ruthless, but might just be better off with Predator. That said, Ruthless gives Soontir a pretty consistent 3-hit attack, even on turns that he's performed both repositions. He will also probably make your opponent's target priority a bit more straightforward, as most players would likely prefer to kill Soontir's Ruthless fuel quickly rather than try to chase Soontir around while he lays on Vader-like damage all the while.
TIE Striker
Like the Interceptor, the Striker is a would-be slippery attacker that often lacks the ability to actually make meaningful attacks. Viable lists use the Striker as an important source of damage output, and when those Strikers fail to roll much paint, those lists simply lose.
Any of the non-baseline Strikers can take Ruthless, but only the named pilots should be considered, as the Black Squadron Scout is currently too overpriced to be competitive. Ruthless makes Countdown far more annoying for your opponent, since now they are even more inclined to deal with him. However, Countdown is still vulnerable to focused fire, and he also can lack the attack frequency of the other Strikers since he is more likely to end a turn stressed and therefore be stuck resetting with blue maneuvers.
Ruthless Duchess is appealing. Duchess can often be fairly safely ignored, as she only has dice mods some of the time, and even when she does, she can (and does) still blank out. With Ruthless, Duchess becomes an ongoing threat that your opponent really shouldn't ignore.
Ruthless Pure Sabacc is my favourite Ruthless ship. While his ability is live, a focused Pure Sabacc has a 74% chance of getting 4 hits, and a 63% chance of getting 5 hits at range 1. This is an absolute ton of potential damage, comparable damage to something like Fenn Rau, but at two-thirds the price. This is double-modded Proton Torpedo territory we've wandered into.
Fodder for your cannons
No upgrade gets taken in a vacuum, and this is true even more so than usual with Ruthless. Not only do you need to carefully consider who you're putting Ruthless on, you also need to ensure that Ruthless is being taken with the right ships in the list to fuel your Ruthless attacks.What does a good Ruthless ship look like? Ideally, it's some combination of cheap, bulky, weak, and low-agility. What we're looking for is ships with a lot of hit points, but that isn't paying a lot to give you those hit points.
One quick and dirty way to look at this is just to divide the points you're spending by the number of hit points the ship is bringing. This at least gives you a very basic idea of how many points you're potentially spending for each Ruthless use. This is very imperfect, of course; the health of a ship with 2 or 3 agility is inherently more valuable than the health of a ship with 1 or 0 agility, since the latter ship is expected to give up those hit points easily (and therefore is paying less for them).
Using the above metric, you're generally looking to use ships that are 5 points per health or less to fuel your Ruthless attacks. This definitely rules out ships like the TIE Defender (which pays at least 10 points per hit point) or the TIE Fighter (which is cheap and disposable in general, but still pays over 7 points per hit point for its 3 agility protected hull).
Again, to be clear, this is a very broad methodology and is certainly more refinable (such as by using a more holistic metric that captures overall durability per point, rather than the brute force approach used here that ignores agility value or shields vs. hull). However, you can do this math very quickly and it's easy to update as points adjustments happen, and overall it's a fine back-of-the-envelope way to point yourself towards good Ruthless fodder.
Let's quickly look at the best Ruthless fuel, including a range of Points per Health (PPH) for each ship.
Good options
TIE Reaper (5.1 to 6.1 PPH)
Probably my preferred source of Ruthless damage, despite being higher on the PPH scale than I said you should look for just a couple paragraphs higher. This is one of the more offensively-independent ships on this list, and its unique maneuvering options (and thicc medium base) let the Scarif Base Pilot function is an annoying blocker (while still feeding Ruthless hits). As an attacker on its own, it's a 3-die attack, which is meaningful in general. Putting Death Troopers on an SBP makes it even more disruptive (but also means you're now Ruthlessing your own Death Troopers). Tactical Officer on an SBP isn't investing too much more heavily in your Ruthless fuel, and it gives it more value for your other ships on turns where you're likely to be at R1 of an enemy but not have a shot. I've run Ruthless with Vermeil to fuel it before, but that's absolutely not ideal (and is basically a once- or twice-per-game emergency kill shot, not a standard game plan), although I did manage to get Ruthless into a Hyperspace Trial cut this way. Never use Feroph as Ruthless-fuel.
Lambda (4.3 to 4.8 PPH)
Sort of a weird way to use Lambda shuttles, since they're usually brought for their abilities or the crew they're carrying. That said, even the named Lambdas aren't crazy options to plink a health or two away from, assuming you haven't sunk a lot of points into their crew. The bigger struggle here is getting them to range 1 of your target.
TIE Punisher (4.2 to 5.8 PPH)
The absolute cheapest way to get hit points in a list, but it's a bit of a mirage, as you're often taking at least an ordnance upgrade, like Barrage Rockets, to make the Punisher a bit more of a threat on its own. That said, even with Barrage Rockets, the baseline Cutlass Squadron is still a reasonably cheap source of Ruthless fodder that can do damage on its own. The dial makes it a bit more difficult to get into range 0-1, and that's also counterproductive to using Barrage Rockets, but it does make Ruthless a sort of "plan B" for the Punisher's contribution to your squad's damage.
Questionable options
TIE Bomber (5.0 to 7.1 PPH)
Similar issue to the TIE Punisher above: it's cheap on paper, but in practice, the chances are that you're bringing Bombers with Stuff, not naked Bombers, and then they cost more and are therefore less attractive to hurt with Ruthless. However, naked Bombers are more viable than you might think, even if typically you'd be seeing that in something like a Sloane swarm. The hard turn + barrel roll makes them decent blockers, although not quite as good as if they'd had a 1-speed hard turn, and they require less of an investment than the Punisher in general. However, using a 2-agility ship to fuel Ruthless is not ideal by any means. An edge use case here might be extracting a bit more value from a Bomber that brought something like Proton Torpedos, shot them both, and doesn't want to reload, but still wants to contribute. Of course, if that's the situation you're in, you probably don't need Ruthless to win that game!Decimator (4.5 to 5.0 PPH)
This is probably a bad idea, but there's something to be said for just slamming 16 hit points on the table on a large base. The Decimator is already on the clock the moment it shows up, and taking one damage off of it in order to score a hit something that presumably actually has green dice and therefore doesn't always plan on losing those hull points is appealing. However, it's hard to get a Decimator to range 1 of your target consistently, and harder still to keep it alive for more than a turn or two once it's there. It's also a lot of points to sink into one very dubious basket. If the Decimator gets cheaper, this might be worth a look, but as it stands, this is probably a much better idea on paper than it is in practice (and it's not a great idea on paper).
Gunboats (4.6 to 5.6 PPH)
Take everything I said about Punishers and Bombers and add more emphasis. You're not taking naked Gunboats. You're mostly paying for an ordnance platform that isn't particularly capable in combat when it doesn't have a torpedo or a cannon, and anything bigger than a jamming beam is probably pushing this into the range where blowing it up yourself is wasting your own points badly.
Bad options
Everything else
Don't damage your own TIE Advanced (7.60+ PPH) with Ruthless. Don't willingly give up a quarter of your TIE Adv v1's (8.25+ PPH) very limited lifespan for one extra hit. Treasure and protect all seven of your TIE Defender's (10+ PPH!) hit points as if they were your own children. Outside of absolute emergencies (i.e. a guaranteed kill shot on your opponent's last ship, or an initiative kill that will prevent you from otherwise outright losing the game), if it's not one of the ships listed above, you shouldn't be tapping it for Ruthless.
The garbage will do
Even when it finds its way into one of your lists, you need to choose your moments on when to use Ruthless carefully. As we touched on way back at the top of this post, if you've just rolled a bunch of blanks with your red dice, that's probably a bad time to Ruthless a damage from one of your friends (since it's likely going to bounce off of green dice anyway).Basically, when you choose to trigger Ruthless, it should be with the reasonable expectation that you are doing 1 more damage as a result, based on your die mods and your target's die mods. And further, for the most part, that 1 damage should be worth more than the 1 damage you're giving up. Hurting your generic Cutlass Squadron TIE Punisher feels a bit bad, but it doesn't sting nearly so much when it means you're taking off a quarter of the hull of your opponent's Fenn Rau.
Because this is the crux of Ruthless. It is Selfless in reverse. We want to trade our easy damage, our cheap health points, for our opponents hard-to-get, pricey health. We are sacrificing pawns to win a Queen. We are getting rid of expendable hull on expendable ships in the hopes of removing much more valuable threats from our opponent's list.
It's not a card (or, more accurately, a strategy) that works for every list, and you shouldn't try to shoehorn Ruthless into lists where it's not optimal, or worse, where it's actually detrimental. And if you do use Ruthless, you should be comfortable with the idea of going several games without using it, whether because you're never able or because the damage trade just isn't justified. But for lists in which it fits, Ruthless is a perfectly acceptable alternative to the other 1- or 2-point Talents, and you should keep it in mind when list building with the Empire.
Just found this blog by way of the FFG forums.
ReplyDeleteFor the past couple of games, I have been running 2 Scarif Base Reapers and 3 Ruthless Black Scout Strikers.
Currently 3W1L with it (loss to Braylen, Cassian/Leia, Dutch/Proton Torps and Wedge...).
Ramming in two Reapers to clog lanes/actions really helps a lot. Ruthless is what makes it tick though, especially as the target of Ruthless doesn't have to be anywhere near the arc of the ship with Ruthless. A ship that jumps over the top of your Ruthless target is still taking additional damage whilst you sit in relative safety (of the opponent, anyway).
I have used it to Initiative Eliminate several lower Initiative ships and that was absolutely worth it. The sheer speed of the Reapers makes for some good blocking opportunities.
I was previously running 5 Predator Black Scout Strikers, but they tend to be a bit fragile.
Ruthless outstrips Predator easily as long as you don't mind damaging yourself (which is where the Reapers come in). If you can keep a Reaper from dying for a turn, then you force the opponent to have to deal with it the next turn. Losing to self-inflicted damage is good only for ensuring the kill (I would happily do it if an opponent showed a Hull Breach or Structural Damage, for example)
Hoping that Black Scouts Strikers come down in points.... really liking flying the Strikers at the moment.
After trying it out, I think I am of the same mind as you:
Not bad, just needs careful thought. The list probably has to be built around it or at least have multiple good targets for it. It is actually interesting.