Mech The Dane, on 12 March 2016 - 11:49 PM, said:
Excellent news, thanks to the ample efforts of the 2323 Reggies we have our first 12 players with a Stormtrooper deck. If other faithful members of the RKA keep this up we'll soon be able to do some Stormtrooper drops and put our mechs to the test.
So I got a chance in my travels to drop against a 2323 group that was mostly Stormtrooper deck -
Yeah. Fast and rock solid. The mixed Clan team I was on was defending Emerald Taiga and tried to hold up between the gates. However the Stormtrooper deck didn't smash into us (the general assault-heavy IS deck approach) so we could draw them back into the buildings and flank, they just went past and down the side to circle back in behind the Omega.
It was a big change and problematic - they got to Omega the same time we did, a little before so they spread out into a line. Normally a Clan team can get back, set a line behind Omega and receive the push. The lack of any discernible mobility advantage was telling. The couple of people who dropped Dires lost them quickly because they could not catch up with the rest of the team between drops and were isolated and killed.
Also the similar paint setup was a genuine problem. While trying to XL check a white Black Knight, he would twist back into cover and when 'he' came up again and I popped my lasers into that ST again..... he shrugged it off because it was actually a different Black Knight. That got me killed as I'd expected to kill the guy but overheat, power up and scoot back before his buddies caught up. Oh no. I got to stand there steaming with my **** in my hand and get smote cuz NOT THE SAME WHITE PAINTED BLACK KNIGHT.
That was a similar issue, repeatedly. BLKs and QDs are not visually distinctive between variants. It takes a few seconds for a paperdoll to load and you can't just wait. Having everyone go white/white/white isn't a bad idea at all as it makes it tougher to exploit knowing they all have XLs. I was surprised at the amount of trouble it gave. You don't always even get letter designation fast enough; you see someone coming around the corner and have to pop them before they're totally into view if you want to win the trade (which is tough against IS LPLs as it is). When the other team is largely identical it was a problem.
While my TBRs still held a firepower advantage 1 on 1 I had neither range nor mobility and most of my team (largely pugs though they were) died out of position. This killed most of the Clan stats like chasing the tail, a fast push through and past the enemy team and I was completely unable to just say 'Oh ****, my bad, wrong corner' and disengage. They just chased me down before I was around the corner.
QDs are fragile and focus-fire would be a must to make it work well, also getting good at the shuffle but it eliminated the bulk of solid strats available to a Clan team. Especially on defense. Too fast to keep under ERLLs at long range, too fast and mobile to be able to flank and chase down, too fast and mobile to pin in a brawl, too fast to hit and run on. QDs won trades if they were quick but I won all the slugging matches if I could keep them in the open.
It was a strong deck to play against.