I was looking at the options available for the Victory Class Star Destroyer, where I spotted due to Titles and Admirals it can host a respectful seven upgrades. With that in mind I was thinking of trying out a Victory Star Destroyer that is fully loaded, it will support the fleet instead of being supported by the fleet.

Here it is.

Victory I-Class Star Destroyer.

Admiral Motti

Flight Controller

Intel Officer

XX-9 Turbolasers

Expanded Hanger Bay

Assault Concussion Missiles

Warlord

135pts.

The rest of the fleet.

Gladiator I Class Star Destroyer

Expanded Launchers

Gunnery Team

Demolisher

86pts.

5 TIE Fighter Squadron 40pts.

2 TIE Interceptor Squadron 22pts

Mauler Mithel 15pts

Grand Total 298pts.

Mithel loves working with Admiral Chiraneau.

It **MIGHT** work but there's the problem with putting all your eggs in one basket. The VSD might seem tough but 2-3 ships concentrating fire on it or getting caught by a good number of enemy squadrons and it'll go down quick.

There's also the problem of it's very low mobility. Depending on the scenario, the enemy might just opt to blow past you and kill the rest of your fleet or collect objectives/victory tokens. As it takes the VSD a minimum of 3 rounds to do a 180-turn (and that's if you've stocked Navigate commands), having all of that firepower rendered void for 3 turns is a big boon to your enemy.

In Armada it really is Skill over List, so yes it will work. Synergy is important to get some very nice combos to go off but if your ships are not in the right position you're kind of screwed no matter what the list is.

Now your VSD is going to be your crutch as it will slow your whole fleet down if you want to keep your fleet in formation, which you do. The number of fliers is good so they can keep those dreaded Bombers off your Commanders Ship. (Honestly I love the Rebels so I would say the Great Bombers.)

What you will have to do is pick one solid target to focus on and put your VSD to task to get it. You will have ships coming up to flank its rear and that is where you have to get creative with the GSD.

Well also take into consideration that as I have been verbally jousting with Bitharne, I realized that the speed of the VSD is actually an asset. Beatty should remember how using that slow speed can shake up a game.

Remember that they have to come to you at their speed. This means you can hold the demolisher back as a flank guard and then unleash it when they get in range (great tactic for all GSD's.

I think Having ACMs on the VSD is a bit pointless personally. In almost the games where I have seem or used a VSD 1, I have only seen black dice rolled twice or so.

You may also be suffering from UH (Upgrade Happy), what I mean by that is that you are adding in everything you think is good but since you don't have much game experience you are not sure what will matter. It's normal. You will learn so test things out. Don't expect to win your first game

In Armada it really is Skill over List, so yes it will work. Synergy is important to get some very nice combos to go off but if your ships are not in the right position you're kind of screwed no matter what the list is.

While I would agree that it is Skill over List, I would say this build would take a LOT of skill. Some lists are easier to work with, some aren't. Personally, I would flank his VSD from the start, make him pick one direction then punish him from the other side. Sure, he might kill one of my ships but then he's got a pesky GSD or two (mine, not his) on his back for the rest of the game. Another option would just to blow past the VSD, take out his GSD, and done. His 8 squadrons can't do much once outside the close-medium range of his VSD.

As for synergy, I don't see anything specific here. Sure, there are synergies but he's trying to be too many things at once. Nothing wrong with that but unfortunately, not all goodies fit in the points.

In the end, I think it would be very hard to make this build work. I would love to fly against it and be proven wrong though!!

For comparison, the other end of this "Upgrade Happy" spectrum is a CR90 swarm --- as many CR90s as you can fit in 300 points along with Mon Motha. No tricks at all up the sleeve (except for Mon Motha, of course) but easier to fly.

How are you putting Dominator on a Gladiator? Hmm?

He likely meant Demolisher and got autocorrected.

In both X-Wing and Armada I tend to run with as few upgrades as I can. I'm a big fan of the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) approach to gaming.

So this is a radical detour to my usual list, I haven't had that many games of Armada under my belt, so I am still at the stage of experimenting to see what can work. All being well I should be able to get a game in soon enough, and I intend to use the above fleet, this will give me good scope to see what parts of it do work and what parts don't.

The Victory Star Destroyer I built is there to strip enemy ships of their Shields, Defence Tokens, or sometimes destroy the enemy ship. Most of it's Commands will be Squadron based, this is to maximise on using the squadrons to neutralise the enemy Squadrons. The natural speed coupled with the extra fire power of the Squadrons should be able to deal with enemy squadrons. They may also be used to attack enemy ships that have had their shields depleted if the opportunity arises.

The Gladiator will be kept close to the Victory where it will be able to capitalise on the damage caused by the Victory, which will be activated before the Gladiator in most cases.

Motti helps provide extra staying power to the ships, who I am under no illusion will be outnumbered, I may adopt a refused flack tactic, in this way I force the enemy fleet to come to me, or at the very least hinder their numerical advantage.

Thanks for the feedback, once I have used it I shall report back on how it performed.

You might prefer Nav Team on Demolisher with expanded launchers: helps to ensure that forward arc gets pointed correctly.

xx-9?

that's a funny way to misspell "h9"

I look forward to your battle report!

I just think you are trying to do too much with your VSD. Is it a squadron support ship? If so, then why does it have XX-9 or ACMs? I've lost my VSD so many times it no longer feels as invincible as I once thought it was and with just 2 ships, your firepower output is very limited.