Hey all! I'm going up against a friend tomorrow using the following list. He will be playing rebels. Were only using two core sets and have chosen to limit ourselves to the ships and cards available at the moment, even though a lot of good information exists on what is coming in wave 1. My fleet features two VSD Is with a heavy tie screen.

VSD I

-Grand Moff Tarkin

-Enhanced Armament

VSD I

-Enhanced Armament

-Expanded Hangar Bay

-Weapons Liaison

7 x Tie Fighter Squadrons

1 x Howlrunner Sqauadron

Objectives

-Advanced Gunnery

-Hyperspace Assault

-Minefields

Total: 284 points

I built my list with two key assumptions in mind. First, my opponent will attempt to flank me rather than alpha striking a VSD. As such, I decided to save points by buying VSD Is and simply enhancing their armament. Second, I predict my heavy bid will win me the initiative. Therefore, I should have more opportunities to make use of the VSD I's short range dice through maneuvering, the hyperspace assault objective, or minefields. I plan to dominate the fighter game through my use of seven tie fighters, howlrunner, weapons liaison, and command tokens. I want my opponent to have as few options as possible when attempting to answer the problems posed by the VSD in the core set.

I would drop the weapons liason and expanded hanger for the dominator title

Imperials - 288

Victory I-class Star Destroyer - 121

- Grand Moff Tarkin

- Enhanced Armament

Victory I-class Star Destroyer - 95

- Dominator

- Enhanced Armament

7 Tie Fighter Squadrons - 56

Howlrunner Tie Fighter Squadron - 16

I got absolutely wrecked today. Won initiative as I planned and my opponent chose minefields. The minefields didn't really do a good job of funneling my opponent, who just deployed on the other side of the map as my star destroyers and passed through the minefield anyways. He kept out of distance until turn 5, when he ganked one of my VSD Is, taking it down with the first shot of turn 6. My other VSD was just out of supporting range, so I couldn't really direct any effective fire against the rebels. Felt really bad. I'm very disillusioned with the idea that rebels are underpowered at the moment.

Do you have an idea of this list to show? So where the black dice of the victory I to short? How did your fighters go?

Sure, my opponent played the following:

Neb B Escort

-General Dodana

Neb B Escort

-Weapons Liaison

Corvette A

-Leia

Corvette A

-Dodana's Pride

5 x X-Wings

The black dice of the VSD I were far too short. We played six turns and I never rolled a single black die. I'm tempted to go with VSD IIs next time, but if I keep the enhanced armament, they'll get really expensive. The fighter game went reasonably well, but became irrelevant when a VSD I went down. Although I only killed one x-wing in exchange for two ties, I attribute a lot of that to using my first squadron command to send 5 tie squadrons at a corvette. It didn't really pay off when they only scored a single hit. Really gotta rethink my approach to the next game. I'm going to switch to VSD IIs and keep them even closer together. It's just far too easy for the rebels to get on the rear quarter and line up two arcs against the VSD.

He has alot of long range shooting making the victory II a good upgrade, and his list is a strong one so I wouldn't feel to bad, but so is yours its just bad luck, also rebels have never been under powered they can pull off many strong builds, even when only using the core set lucky armada is balanced in that both sides are good.