I'm clearly an Imperial, because I have some reservations about the efficacy of bombers against Imperial capital ships. More broadly, I'm sure it's a balanced strategy and am not claiming any kind of imbalance, but I'll have to see it in action a few times before I really understand it. Fighters can't move and fire in the same turn without a support ship nearby to command them, which means if you intend to dedicate yourself to bombarding a Star Destroyer, you will need some Corvettes or Nebulons flanking it and issuing squadron commands, or the Star Destroyer will float quickly out of range, and your fighters will be left playing catch up. This means that such a strategy isn't inherently more durable than simply sending that many points worth of Corvette in their place: 40 points of Y-Wings deals an average of 4 damage per round, and a Corvette deals 2.25 damage out of its front arc, and 3.75 damage if it can catch the Destroyer in both of its arcs. Meanwhile, almost certainly one round of bombing at least will be forfeit to TIE fighter interference.

The result of this line of thought, wrong as it may be, is the desire to fall entirely into the same trap as the Imperial admiralty and try a list that completely ignores the threat posed by small, one-man fighters in favour of overwhelming firepower:

2x Victory II Star Destroyers (170), each outfitted with XX-9 Turbolasers (10)

1x Victory I Star Destroyer (73)

2x TIE Fighter squadrons (16)

Admiral Motti (24)

(293 total)

Fire Lanes, or Contested Station (Defence)

Precision Strike (Assault)

Dangerous Territory, or Intel Sweep (Navigation)

Is one of those Star Destroyers going down in flames versus an opponent who brings bombers? Absolutely. However, with so many redirect tokens, the angle of attack is basically irrelevant, an attacker has to more or less get through the Destroyer's entire shield array before hitting the hull, and if it performs a repair command every round, the Star Destroyer can gain back 10 shield points over the course of the game (since it's not likely taking damage on round 1), meaning it will take 26 damage to take down a single Destroyer. And that's before factoring in the brace token. That makes it incredibly resilient in the face of punishment, and capable of accomplishing its objectives before being destroyed. Objectives factor heavily into this fleet, since it assumes the loss of one of its Destroyers, and seeks to recoup those points either by controlling an objective worth a similar number. I think Precision Strike is the fleet's weakest objective, hence the inclusion of XX-9s, but between those and the opening concentrate fire tokens, the Star Destroyers ought to be able to quickly burn through any enemy ships that want to get into a slugging match.

Either defence objective ought to be almost impossible for the opponent to compete with, and represents a huge gain in points if the Destroyers can simply camp near them and retain control. The navigation objectives seem fairer, given the fleet's slow speed, but I'd imagine Dangerous Territory ends up being a wash, with the fact that the opponent now has to start the fight with 3 damaged ships, while Intel Sweep could be a nightmare with Victory-II classes sitting waiting on unclaimed objective tokens, or ganging up on the enemy objective ship. I'd envision claiming 2 tokens to my opponent's 1 before both ships were destroyed under concentrated fire...but it's possible the Destroyers would simply be too slow and clumsy for such an operation.

I'm curious about other people's thoughts on the extreme strategy of entirely ignoring enemy fighters, and hoping to recoup the points lost from it through targeted objectives.

Well Y-Wings are 10 points for a Black Dice. CR90s are 44pts for 2 Red and 1 Blue or 39 for 3 Blue. By simple math the CR90 is about 14pts per Dice, compared to 10 points on the Y-Wing. By ignoring the enemy fighters you are giving them a huge point advantage in terms of dice. Even X-Wings are 13 points for a Red Dice.

Caps get the range advantage and Bombers can be blocked by Fighters, that is how Bombers equal out. With no screen Caps can give Squadron commands to the bombers and the bombers can park in front of your Vics, forcing the Vic to move over them next turn, at which point your opponent gets to re-position them, giving about 3 turns of in range bomber shots.

Bombers also are super effective against Defense Tokens, since a halve damage token against a single damage does... nothing, and a redirect can only move a single damage.

And what if your opponent gives you initiative, forcing you to pick from their objectives, which negates your objective advantage?

It is an interesting strategy, but I don't think it will be all the effective in reality.

Your points spent on a capital ship like the corvette aren't just put into dice; squadrons by themselves can move or shoot, while capital ships can shoot twice, move, and benefit from a command. As I pointed out above, if a CR-90B can put a Destroyer in both its front and side arc, it is rolling 5 blue dice for the same point cost of 4 black dice, but with the added benefit of being able to keep pace with the destroyer. I'd imagine the biggest benefit squadrons have in this comparison is being far harder for the destroyer to damage. Y-Wings are likely to weather the entire game's worth of point defence from a single Destroyer, while a corvette could fold from two rounds of concentrated fire or good rolls.

However, 4 Y-Wings still need to be accompanied by two corvettes in order to be able to keep up. You're right that round 2 they park themselves in front of a Destroyer and fire, and round 3 they fire on the rear arc, but round 4 requires another squadron command, as will round 6. If three destroyers are concentrating firepower on two corvettes, they may not still be around to activate the Y-wings on turn 4; certainly not if the Destroyers can position themselves so that the Y-Wings are in their front guns (and thus also the corvette, if it wants to be in range to activate them).

As for defence tokens, bombers are effective against brace tokens (although they still represent preventing 1 damage a round, given the two faces of a black die that hit for 2), but it really makes no difference for redirect tokens. If 4 Y-Wings attack the same hull segment, 2 damage is redirected and 2 absorbed, resulting in 4 shields lost. Next round, 2 shields are brought back up, and another 2 redirect tokens redirect 2 more damage. It accomplishes the same effect: the Destroyer can distribute the damage it receives across all of its shields before taking hull damage. This is why I tried to break it down to base damage: with each Y-Wing dealing 1 damage a round, and the repairing, reinforced Destroyer (thanks to Motti) representing at least 26 shields/hull, then even a flight of 6 Y-Wings firing continuously over 4 rounds may not be enough to take down a single Destroyer. Not to mention the support ships needed to activate that many squadrons.

A Corvette, if it is able to continuously keep the Destroyer in both of its fire arcs, can roll 20 dice (average 15 damage) over 4 rounds, although that seems like a very generous assumption. It could easily roll half that many (not to mention the brace token is much better against the corvette). So it seems, from my understanding of the raw numbers, that a corvette and the two bomber squads it can command, doesn't have the average damage output needed to take down one of these defensive minded behemoths. So my assumption about the nature of bomber swarms is that they will be forced to focus on a single ship with overwhelming firepower. 2 corvettes and 4 bombers, for example, ought to guarantee the destruction of a Star Destroyer, but the other player can't field that force x3, and so you get a free Star Destroyer running around scoring points or obliterating enemy ships.

As for winning initiative, you are correct that that is very important to this list. I imagine 293 to be a reasonable initiative bid, but it may be proved to be overly conservative. I imagine that will end up being at least something of a meta call. I would consider also trading in the TIE fighters to upgrade the V-I to a V-II, which would put me at 289, which must surely be an aggressive bid.

In any case, I propose it not on the platform that fighters are actually bad, but that eschewing conventional wisdom regarding fighter screens and the deadly threat of bombers may be a tactic worth considering.

After all, maybe you end up facing an Imperial opponent who brought two Destroyers and a swarm of TIE fighters that pose very little threat to your capital ships. That seems like it would have to be pretty heavily in your favour; effectively blanking 80 points or so of their list.

FYI (direct quote from the Rules Reference):

The standard fleet point total is 300 points. If playing with just the core set the recommended fleet point total is 180.

Also:

A fleet must have one flagship and cannot have more than one flagship.

Flagship:

A flagship is a ship equipped with a commander card

I believe the 193 is just a typo, if you add up his suggested fleet it is 293. Also he only has one commander (Motti) as far as I can see.

As for this idea, I'll have to see when I actually get my hands on the game is this is a viable strategy. It seems like it could be a viable strategy. However I must point out one thing. In regards to your objectives, if any of your ships goes to speed 0 you loose the ability to use your defense tokens, which would affect your proposed strategy a lot.

Thanks for the correction Forensicus, I edited my typo, the fleet does indeed add up to 293. Although the 180 for base only is also good to know about. Motti would probably put his flag aboard the V-I to minimize the number of points lost for losing any one ship. Although, that might change depending on when a flagship has to be chosen. Is that something you have to state during fleet construction (I assume), or can you choose your flagship at a later point in the process? It might alter depending on the objective, if that was allowed.

As for not moving, two points. That is the reason that I favour Fire Lanes and Dangerous Territory, as they require less camping. If you do ditch the TIEs and upgrade to 3 V-IIs, then you have a full firing solution on an objective token at medium range, and at speed 1 can keep it under your main guns for 3 turns. However, the other factor is that this list is built on the assumption that you will lose a ship. If you deplete your shields in the first two rounds of combat, redirect tokens become useless anyway, and a brace token may only represent a few points of damage saved. Aggressively using it in the first couple of rounds, and discarding it, would mean your losses from coming to a halt would be minor. Furthermore, if by halting, you speed your ship's destruction by 1 turn, you're not likely leaving your opponent with the time needed to bring enough firepower to bear on your second ship for it to matter.

If you camp 3 Star Destroyers facing the firing lanes, they can be within range for three turns before coming to a full stop: probably long enough for their redirects to be used draining the shields not facing assault. Then, either your opponent focuses their forces on one Destroyer, in which case it is free to move as it likely no longer controls that lane anyway (but still gaining you a net 15 points a round from the other two controlled), or they separate their forces and try to take on multiple Destroyers at once. In which case it's easier for you to forgo the extra couple of points of soak the brace token would offer. And since they almost certainly don't have enough ships to evenly divide their force into 3 and still take on a Destroyer each, there is likely still one Star Destroyer that can rest near its lane and take ranged shots at the next fleet over.

Again, it will have to be played with, but I see a lot of conventional wisdom developing around what we know so far of the rules and tactics, and wanted to propose a strategy that causes people to re-evaluate some of those notions. Even if in doing so, they eventually end up re-affirmed.

I will check but coming from X-Wing my guess would be that you must place the commander in a ship in advance (before the game/deployment) and no shenanigans with crew swapping after the fleet have been build

This seems like a really interesting post, and the raw numbers about damage against the Imp ships would suggest that bombers aren't as effective as they first appear. But that's before you take into account which objective you are playing in the game, which would drastically change how the game is played. The Rebels could end up only needing to focus completely on a single Destroyer near to their own ships and then just stop any of theirs from being destroyed, or near to an objective marker in order to win overall. I think the suggested fleet would be incredibly hard to defeat, but very easy to outmanoeuvre

A much better 3 VSD list is:

Motti

3 VSD-1

7 Tie Fighters (or 6 with Howlrunner)

Or

Motti

1 VSD-2

2 VSD-1

5 Tie fighter

5 points left for an upgrade.

Even dropping the turbolasers from your list lets you get up to 4 Tie's

Tie's are super cost effective, and are capable of nullifying far more than their points worth of bombers. Without them, all of your opponents squadrons can attack your ships right off the bat and rack up an ugly number of crits that will cripple your VSD's

Keep in mind that enemy squadrons will get 3 turns of shooting with only a single squadron command.

1. your ship moves forward

2. squadron command puts them at max range in front of your ship and they fire

3. your ship moves forward, overlaps the squadrons, who are placed in front of your ship, and they fire later in the turn.

4. your ship moves forward, and the squadrons are still in range and fire at your back arc.

After that, they could get an extra 1-2 turns of shooting from a squadron command from a ship that has flown around behind the VSDs. Furthermore, this is only if the VSD is moving at speed 2, at speed 1 they could get in more shots without a squadron command.

Over the course of the game, a single Y-wing would be doing almost as much as a full bombardment from the front arc of a VSD-2. Even just the 7 ties in one of the above lists could put out 14 damage over 4 turns. Just 3 B-wings would put out 21 damage in 4 turns.

Also, I'm not sure if you understand how defense tokens work. If you use a VSD's Redirect tokens against 4 Y-wings, you have lost the tokens for the rest of the game.

Why be pretty much guaranteed to lose a VSD to bombers when you simply don't have to?

I think he was doing it properly. He kept saying, 2 redirected and 2 absorbed, with a total of 4 shields lost. That wouldn't require spending either redirect token more than once.

Of course, my main question is, why are you comparing the offense of 40 points of y-wings or a 40ish point corvette to the defense of an 80ish point midsized capital ship? I should hope that they would have a very tough time damaging that one VSD.

Also, remember how the commands work. For your strategy to work, you would need to put down nothing but engineering command dials. Which means your already slow and unmaneuverable VSDs are stuck at the same speed all game, and lose any firepower potential gained by the concentrate fire command.

A much better 3 VSD list is:

Motti

3 VSD-1

7 Tie Fighters (or 6 with Howlrunner)

Or

Motti

1 VSD-2

2 VSD-1

5 Tie fighter

5 points left for an upgrade.

Even dropping the turbolasers from your list lets you get up to 4 Tie's

Tie's are super cost effective, and are capable of nullifying far more than their points worth of bombers. Without them, all of your opponents squadrons can attack your ships right off the bat and rack up an ugly number of crits that will cripple your VSD's

I agree that that list is far more well-rounded. Only experience will show if more well-rounded means better.

This seems like a really interesting post, and the raw numbers about damage against the Imp ships would suggest that bombers aren't as effective as they first appear. But that's before you take into account which objective you are playing in the game, which would drastically change how the game is played. The Rebels could end up only needing to focus completely on a single Destroyer near to their own ships and then just stop any of theirs from being destroyed, or near to an objective marker in order to win overall. I think the suggested fleet would be incredibly hard to defeat, but very easy to outmanoeuvre

That is basically the territory this list is trying to explore: rather than build a balanced fleet, can we build an imbalanced fleet that aggressively bids for initiative to compensate for its weakness with its objectives? If all three objectives de-value manoeuvrability by focusing on a small area of the field with objective tokens, or reward pure firepower, can that be used to make up for the fleet's shortcomings?

If we battle over the Fire Lanes, is manoeuvrability important? Setting a Star Destroyer on a slow course towards the objective token, maybe even sacrificing defence to come to a halt, threatens to gain 45 points a round: to combat that, the enemy fleet has to come to you and stay there. If they are fast and manoeuvrable, they risk moving out of range and losing the points. My assumption is that they can split their force in two and have two reasonably fair fights against 2 Star Destroyers (tipped in their favour), while I have a 3rd Destroyer taking long-range shots and scoring 75 points. If that game ends with their bombers destroying both Star Destroyers, I only have to have destroyed 100ish points of ships to break even. Destroying 2 Nebulon-Bs or 3 Corvettes seems reasonable for this fleet, if the enemy is coming to them and confronting them on their terms. Alternately, they could keep their fleet together and focus fire on one Star Destroyer, in which case it will cave in a few rounds, they will control the objective token, and we'll still mostly have broken even on points (They gain 90 for the Destroyer, I gain 75 plus any ships I destroy).

With Precision Strike (the reason for including the Turbolasers over fighters: playing to my strengths, not trying to shore up weaknesses), the Star Destroyers can fly in formation and deal massive damage to anything that gets close, likely scoring more points from the objective than enemy ships with their superior dice and Turbolasers. Could they lose to a fast-retreating Rebel fleet and a few bombers that score some points, while everything else remains out of range? Seems like a possible weakness. In such a situation, I'd probably Concentrate Firepower from at least one ship and focus on point-defence dice from multiple Destroyers, but who knows how effective that would be? I also can't say how possible it will be for a Rebel fleet to entirely flee the engagement zone and leave only their fighters to harry Imperial ships.

With Dangerous Territory, I would imagine both fleets would manage to claim half the objectives each and the remainder of the match would be a fair fight, but with the enemy starting out damaged and with my ponderous ships unconcerned with navigational hazards, which seems like a boon. With Intel Sweep, the same theory as Fire Lanes applies: negate the enemy's speed advantage by tying them to specific locations I can dispatch my ships to and either force them to fight on my terms or keep them away from lucrative objectives. However, that one seems to carry more risks, because it's hard to tell what the likely outcome would be if their entire fleet descended on my objective ship, while theirs made a dash for it. Would they pick up 2 tokens before my other 2 Destroyers caught it and obliterated it, while mine only makes it to 1? Would a tie be feasible? I'd have to have a better feel for the game before running Intel Sweep with this list, or before running this list at all.

Bottom line: yes, I know this fleet would be slow like a Sarlacc in molasses, yes I know it's not well-rounded, yes I know it has glaring weaknesses and forces a very particular line of play to use. I'm certainly not suggesting that it is the best fleet build, or the most balanced. But I maintain that it may expose some critical differences between Armada and X-Wing, and that well-balanced fleets may not be necessary if you're willing to bid for initiative and force your opponent to play on your terms; making up for shortcomings with objective points. I certainly intend to run some variant of this list when Armada ends up in my hands (perhaps dropping all the TIEs to upgrade to 3 V-IIs and go down to 289), and we'll see how it performs. Maybe it turns out that balance is paramount, and one-trick ponies like this have no real place in the game, but I can't deny the appeal of trying to blank as much of my opponent's list as possible, and forcing them to fight on my terms. And don't forget, in tournament play, ~50% of your games will be against Imperial lists who likely share your speed limitations. Almost all of the comparison in this thread assumes you'll be fighting against Rebels: I'd much prefer to be the player playing this list against 2 VSD and a well-rounded fleet of TIE fighters and Interceptors meant to screen enemy fighters.

Honestly I think leading shots is a better upgrade, but this fleet seems reasonable.

I like the idea: build an extreme fleet and test the break points of the rules set.

This thread made me realize: I need to stop looking at a new, largely un-played game through the twin lenses of nostalgia and theory-hammer. In all honesty, my own love of bombers stems from playing them in past video games. The nostalgia will simply cause mistakes and frustration due to placing false expectations on the game. Theory-Hammer can give us a general idea of how things "ought-to" turn out: but does factor in the psychological impact of 3 freakin' Star Destroyers trundling menacingly across the board towards us? And if the game doesn't move us -- psychologically -- why in Vader's name are we playing

I am very curious to see how this fleet does. Ideally, over the course of a few games played against different Rebel fleets.