Both me and Michael were pretty rusty, me having not played since my January 1st game versus Michael and him having not played in a similar amount of time. I also was significantly more limited in the fleets I could run since my divorce from Hubert and Daniel's collections. I unfortunately am still missing a whole slew of things, including my damage cards, objective deck, and all the upgrade cards that came with my LMC80. Still, I have enough ships to run a decent variety of Rebel MSU-adjacent fleets with my LMC80 as a centerpiece. I ended up settling on a modified fleet that I won a store tournament with in Jacksonville, AR last year.
Commander: General Rieekan
Assault: Most Wanted
Defense: Contested Outpost
Navigation: Solar Corona
MC80 Battle Cruiser
- General Rieekan
- Strategic Advisor
- Gunnery Team
- Leading Shots
- Quad Battery Turrets
- XI7 Turbolasers
Nebulon-B Escort Frigate
- Yavaris
CR90 Corvette A
- Turbolaser Reroute Circuits
GR-75 Medium Transports
- Leia Organa
GR-75 Medium transports
- Comms Net
Jan Ors
Biggs Darklighter
Dutch Vander
X-Wing (2)
Z-95 Headhunter
400 Points Total
This fleet distills a lot of my thinking about how to play Armada and in particular how to play Rebels, featuring a mix of stuff that is pretty in-meta (Yavaris, SA) and stuff I think is strong (Dutch, QBTs). I'm going to take a minute to unpack it some of it before getting into the game.
First off, Rieekan is just the best admiral Rebels have, full stop. Every other admiral needs to be built around to some extent, but Rieekan you can just slap on anything and he works. Critically, however, is that Rieekan allows you to care a lot less about going first or second. Obviously some builds will still want to go first, but you no longer have to worry about getting your ships first struck away. This means you get more mileage out of your 400 points as well so you can play with no or a small bid.
I really like LMC80s and think they're the clearly superior Rebel capital ship for one simple reason - their defense token set up. Given the ubiquity of XI7s, any ship that relies on redirects to survive will be at a competitive disadvantage in a capital ship vs. capital ship brawl. Double brace is just a great token set up, your risk being that the opponent finds a way to produce two accuracies. While not impossible, it usually takes a little bit of luck or building specifically for it (uncommon) to do this, and so you can dependably use one of your braces even without ECM. With a fat front arc and 5 shields, there is no need to unsuccessfully redirect away XI7 shots because your shields are already where you need them to be.
The three weaknesses of LMC80s are their move chart, getting bombed, or being out-tanked by an ISD. To that end, my build tries to rectify each of these weaknesses. A Comms Net GR-75 is a safe bet for any fleet, but here it helps especially - alternating throwing squadrons and tossing tokens at the LMC80. My squadron ball for this fleet is designed to either attack or defend, and combined with Yavaris providing flanking flak, squadrons aren't a huge threat. The final key to flying the LMC80 is knowing how to alternate well-timed engineering and navigation commands.
With its weaknesses rectified, you are left with a centerpiece ship that is deadly to MSUs, and can go toe-to-toe with any other capital ship in the game.
I like MFC builds, and this one distills a mix of offensive and defensive capabilities. This is definitely a non-meta build for squadrons though, and I think it might struggle against a well-played Sloane aces build - which I have not come across yet. Dutch is my favorite squadron in the game, and I have a soft spot for always including one headhunter where I can when it gets me to an even number of squadrons. When you have one or two headhunters accompanied by escort fighters, they are extremely efficient against generic squadrons for their cost. Jan, Biggs, and X-Wing are a classic Rebel configuration that allows for serious tanking if the situation requires.
Yavaris is essentially an auto-include in all Rebel lists at this point, and beefs up my squadron ball a little bit (especially juicy if I get the double-activation on Dutch). Rounding it all out is another GR-75 for squadron commands with Leia for dial fixing, and a TRC90 - one of the best price efficient ship/upgrade combos in the game.
The result is a well-rounded fleet that doesn't care if it goes first or second and deals decently well with all fleet archetypes. Against a squadron ball, I have flak and tanky squadrons. Against MSU, I have the LMC80. Against capital ships, I have squadrons and the TRC90. I continue to make improvements around the margins, but I think the core concept is fairly solid against everything except LFC fleets.
Without further ado, let's get into the game!
Michael brought an Imperial fleet, and one of the more unusual ones I've seen at that. It featured a VSD-1 as Sloane's flagship for a fleet that had double Quasars and a Torp Raider. The squadrons were 5 bombers, 2 Advanced, 4 Ties, all led by Dengar.
We both had no bid. After winning the flip, he elected to go first and took my Contested Outpost. We deployed as below, with him out-deploying me 10 to 8.
Notably, most of his stuff is going Speed 2, while all by my Corvette is going Speed 1. The plan here was pretty simple. His squadrons were a little daunting, but his ship-to-ship power was all packed into getting his VSD and Raider into close range with a target. If I could survive the bombing attack and keep his fleet at range, my LMC80 should be able to mop up.
He engaged at the top of turn 2.
An initial bombing run on Yavaris produced a frustrating number of hit-crits, but I thankfully didn't pull anything too debilitating and began fighting back. This was a sloppy game on my part, forgetting about SA on turns 1 and 2 (although I truthfully didn't really need him since I was going second and had 6 activations to his 4). My other big failing was playing the squadron game. In trying to engage his bombers while simultaneously knocking out the TIE Advanceds early by attempting to activate them with Dutch. In any event, I split my squadrons, preventing me from making good use of Biggs's ability and getting Dutch killed. For his part, he threw his bombers a little too deep (even with Boosted Comms, and critically had almost half a dozen squadrons between the double black flak of the LMC80 and the double blue flank of Yavaris. TIE Bombers are tough, but this proved a little much for them. He did get in a second bombing run on the Yavaris that killed it at the top of turn 3 (to be promptly Rieekan'd), but that was more or less it for his squadrons' contributions to the game. By the end, I had killed five of his squadrons and he killed three of mine.
Meanwhile, the Raider was jetting in at speed 4 from the left. However, he never got it into a position where he could dump black dice against the Endeavor-less LMC80 from his front arc. While he would later nuke a GR-75 with this Raider, it was largely ineffectual. My CR90 engaged it on the way in and I had a rare instance of using TRC to flip to a crit (to take advantage of the shieldless front arc) rather an a double-hit.
Here was the situation at the start of Turn 3.
You can see Dutch about to bite it towards the top right. Up to this point, the fighting had mostly been squadron to squadron, but by the bottom of Turn 3, his VSD and Quasar had drifted into range of the LMC80.
Being in blue range of a LMC80 when you have a single brace and no ECM is as good as a death sentence, and the Quasar evaporated under a volley from the LMC80 and CR90. The VSD-1 similarly lost all of its shields and took two damage on the hull.
Michael's counter-volley from black range with the VSD-1 next round rolled well, but with no accuracy the LMC80 simply braced it down to four damage and then finished his VSD off, at which point he conceded.
GG to Michael!
A few reflections:
- This game was more or less decided before we even began - my fleet had clear tools to deal with the bombing threat he posed. The only way Michael could have prevailed would have been by nuking the LMC80 with bombers and black dice ships, neither of which ended up happening allowing my LMC80 to run rampant over his fleet.
- Additionally, Sloane was an especially poor choice for this fleet, and basically anyone else would have been better. As novel as it was to see two Quasars on the table, for his money's worth I think he should have replaced one of them with two Gozantis.
- I'm considering swapping out one of the GR-75s and trying to cram in another CR90/HH/more squadrons for future incarnations of this build. I just often reach mid-game without much for one of them to do and it often ends up feeling like a waste of points. Similarly, I have liked having the Leia insurance, but not having to use it in three games makes me think I might just do without it.
- I've now won all three games I've played with this fleet, and each one followed a fairly similar pattern. Opponent targets and kills Yavaris which I Rieekan for the critical turn. In the meantime, my CR90 and Liberty wail on and eliminate an enemy capital ship for the win. Indeed, one reason I want to get another CR90 into this fleet is that in games that are overrun with evadeless large ships, they hit like trucks for the low low cost of 51 points.
As a final aside to my old group from LR as one of the few of us who has played against people outside the group, I think its worth noting our group is very good at this game even in our little fish bowl meta. Notable is that our fleet-building as a group is consistently extremely good and has lots of elements that punch above their weight. By comparison, lots of lists I see from other people and play have noticeable "chaff" in them (this one had Kallus and WAB in it for example, both of which ended up having no effect on the outcome of the game0).
Anyway, I'm really excited to get back into Armada especially since we're about to get a lot of new stuff. And I can't wait to see the reports from Hubert once he gets his SSD in two weeks. I'll probably go back to Springfield to play some of the other people who frequent Meta Games at some point before the school year starts, but the 80 minute drive and the fact its on a Tuesday night means once I get started in my new job I'm going to vastly prefer playing people in Joplin.
