Since GenCon, a lot of debate has gone back and forth on the No-Squadron lists. People have theorized that lists fully devoted to Squadron support could be the hard counter, since none of the finalist no-squadron builds faced off against heavy bomber lists.

To test out the theory, a friend and I played a game where I fielded a fairly solid list of 3 Imperial ships against his 3 rebel ships, along with 4 squadrons of X-Wings, 2 of Y-wings, and 2 of B-Wings. Here's a better look at the lists themselves.

(We figured out midway through that his list didn't actually work, since he brought Expanded Hangers on his Nebulons, who he didn't realize can't take offensive retrofits. But, it worked alright for testing the theory of bombers vs. ships)

Imperials

Victory-II Star Destroyer

Leading Shots

Defense Liason

Grand Moff Tarkin

Victory-II Star Destroyer

Leading Shots

Defense Liason

Gladiator-I Star Destroyer

Assault Concussion Missiles

Defense Liason

Demolisher

Rebels

Nebulon-B Escort Frigate

Yavaris

General Dodanna

Expanded Hanger Bays

Nebulon-B Escort Frigate

Salvation

CR90 Corvette A

(4) X-Wing Squadrons

(2) Y-Wing Squadrons

(2) B-Wing Squadrons

Now, both of us are still relatively new to the game, so we both made some very noobish mistakes. I spread my ships out too far in deployment with my flagship at the edge of my ship line, and he counter-deployed heavily to the flagship's side. But, he overextended his squadron support ships and lost the ability to support his bombers with squadron commands. In the end, I believe our mistakes balanced out our overall experience with this match fairly well.

Here's a view of our game after the first round (forgot to take a picture at the start).

With the minefields set as they were, I realized I couldn't move my flagship up without him taking damage (I'm still getting used to the distance a Victory's fat rear can move, as I began this game playing the rebel side with nicely speedy and smaller Corvettes on my side). So, I slowed him to speed 0 at the very start of the game. I knew the danger in this was that I would lose my brace and redirects. However, moving forward would have let my flagship take 4 blues to the face, and put him within striking range of the enemy bombers without any support from the other two ships. Keeping him still bought time. I really, really should have deployed him closer to the space station, I realized later, with his front facing more towards the enemy fleet. Since I deployed him second though, and I didn't realize he was going to overload that side, it is sorta one of those "hindsight is 20/20 things".

My Victory and Gladiator turned and made all speed to intercept the Rebels. In hindsight, I wish I'd downgraded my flagship to a Victory-I and upgraded my Gladiator to a II in order to get some extra anti-squadron fire. It may have changed the outcome of the game. His fleet moved up in a semi-solid group, though as you can see, his ships were beginning to outpace his slower squadrons, especially the speed 2 B-wings (which he severely underestimated just how slow these were).

In the following turns, my flagship was able to tear apart his Salvation Nebulon-B, splashing it by turn 3. His surviving Yavaris and CR90 both made hard rights and went behind my Victory. Before the Salvation went down, it was able to activate 4 of the nearby bomber squadrons (token + command, and the "illegal" expanded hanger bays). These ships took the shields of the oncoming gladiator down dangerously low.

Unfortunately for me, the poor starting position of my fleet left my ships unable to help greatly against the enemy ships. That ended up being the theme of the game.

To my credit, my Reactive-Imperials build (which I described in another topic posted in the army builds sub-forum) worked very well. Tarkin's free tokens allowed my Defense Liasons to change commands whenever I needed them. The solo Victory flagship lasted six turns of combined fire from the smaller rebel ships, using repairs to replenish shields and hull points when needed.

This game also introduced me to an interesting tactic: The Demolisher's Anti-Squadron Tempest of Fire. Had I brought it as a Gladiator-II, I'm certain I would have won the game. As it was, we ended the game with him having lost a couple of squadrons, and most of the rest at 1 or 2 health. Basically, the Demolisher approached the large cluster of squadrons antagonizing my non-flagship Victory. On my opponent's initiative turn, he ended in position to fire at five of the enemy squadrons. The Salvation commanded the other squadrons to attack the front arc of the Demolisher, who took the hits to the face and suffered about half its shields down on each facing (B-wings hurt! D:). The Demolisher, on my initiative next turn, fired his anti-squadron fire from his front arc, moved forward directly to the other side of the squadrons, and fired out its rear arc at them all. I'm quite certain that, had I had a Gladiator-II, this one turn would have seen the end of all of his squadrons, apart from maybe a few of those beefy Y-Wings.

Lessons Learned:

1. Mines suck.

2. Demolisher can setup for a devastatingly awesome anti-squadron attack.

3. Squadron-Support ships need to slow down to be effective for their squadrons.

4. Mines really suck.

5. Reactive-Imperial build very effective, especially for denying kills on injured ships.

6. As effective as ship-concentration builds are, spending a few points to throw in a couple TIE-Fighters to weaken solid-bomber lists is definitely a prudent investment.

7. Oh yeah... deploy my flagship in the middle of my friggin' fleet! D:<

Let the comments (and the inevitable critiques) begin!

I don't understand. Was there an objective being played? Also, who won?

EDIT: Oh I see you played minefield. How did that go?

True that a ship can flak blast a whole ton of squads at once, but even then, i find it not enough to kill more than a few squadrons.

I don't understand. Was there an objective being played? Also, who won?

EDIT: Oh I see you played minefield. How did that go?

It suuuuucked! As a slow moving Imperial player, it majorly limited my deployment opportunities. I had to either take 2 blues to the face, or deploy in open areas. That's part of the reason things went the way they did.

As for who won... well, that's a matter of perspective. At one point, he'd miscalculated and his CR90 would have gone off the board. Had it done so, none of my ships would have gone down, and he'd have lost 2 of his 3. However, for the sake of continuing a good game, I let him change his command dial to a navigate, which let him barely skim the edge of the field. This let the CR90 get in behind my flagship and deal some solid damage, which ended up being what tipped the scales in the game.

So, I'd call it a technical victory for the Rebels, moral victory to the Imperials.

A full battle report would be interesting.

Which objectives where there to pick.

Why did you choose Minefields?

Deployment zone layout, etc

Hi Veratin

Thanks for being willing to put your gaming where your mouth is and actually try out a test game.

Don't worry too much about the inclusion of Expanded Hanger Bays. The effect is similar to if he had taken Raymus Antilles (gain a squadron token, send off 3 at a time exactly as if you had ExpHang).

The Gladiator DEFINITELY should not be "upgraded" to Gladiator II

Instead change this

• Gladiator-I Star Destroyer
• Assault Concussion Missiles
• Defense Liason
• Demolisher

to this

• Gladiator-I Star Destroyer
• Assault Concussion Missiles
• Wulf
• Engine Techs
• Demolisher

Then change Grand Moff Tarkin to Screed, and $$profit$$. The Gladiator is not supposed to be running around chasing squadrons; its job is to remove ships from the table. The Imperials are not intended to win this by a few points worth of squadrons, but by wiping out entire ships quickly and efficiently.

Were you running past the table when you took that picture?

Hi Veratin

Thanks for being willing to put your gaming where your mouth is and actually try out a test game.

Don't worry too much about the inclusion of Expanded Hanger Bays. The effect is similar to if he had taken Raymus Antilles (gain a squadron token, send off 3 at a time exactly as if you had ExpHang).

The Gladiator DEFINITELY should not be "upgraded" to Gladiator II

Instead change this

• Gladiator-I Star Destroyer
• Assault Concussion Missiles
• Defense Liason
• Demolisher

to this

• Gladiator-I Star Destroyer
• Assault Concussion Missiles
• Wulf
• Engine Techs
• Demolisher

Then change Grand Moff Tarkin to Screed, and $$profit$$. The Gladiator is not supposed to be running around chasing squadrons; its job is to remove ships from the table. The Imperials are not intended to win this by a few points worth of squadrons, but by wiping out entire ships quickly and efficiently.

The whole theme of his build though, is to use Tarkin's token generation to ease the management of the Vic's command dial. With no squadrons and defense liason/tarkin, you can literally just plug concentrate fire into each dial and simply change as needed.

That said, if you can find the points this is the optimal build for demolisher. I would suggest running at least one VSD-1 for the 12 points, and using that to either give Demolisher the aforementioned engine techs, or the VSD-2 Dominator. Of course, you would also take leading shots off that VSD-1 ship, so really you are getting 16 points. You could alternatively put H-9's and Warlord on the VSD-1. I like that setup on the 1, as it makes it deadly at long range, and its black dice make it deadly at close range.

@Madaghmire - It's... it's like you get me, man! Haha. Yeah, I could play around with downgrading one of the -II's to a -I to give me some more points.

@MattShadowlord - See Madagh's post. In addition to it: The Gladiator's job isn't normally to do anti-squadron damage, very true, but when you've got nothing else to shoot at and there's a huge clump of squadrons sitting right in front of you, it's best to be able to capitalize on that opportunity, especially if your opponent's primary hitting power is based around a bomber build.

@Rapscallion- Heh, an unfortunate side-effect of the playing field I made is that it's so busy and has enough solidarity to it that my iphone wants to focus on the mat. Makes it difficult to get all the ships in focus. Since I was playing the Imperial side, I did my best to focus in on my ships. The rebel ships were in an ugly blob anyway. xP

@Florianhess - The objectives I had to pick from were Hyperspace Ambush, Minefields, and then the red card that gives player 2 bonuses to his bombers. I was player 1, and obviously, I did not want to give him bonuses to his bomber-heavy list! xD I was also scared of Hyperspace Ambush, since that would let him put a couple of B-Wings and one of his ships right up my tailpipe when he wanted to do so. I didn't anticipate him deploying ALL of the friggin' mines around my deployment zone, though I totally should have. (re: see "lessons learned" section of original post )

Finally: I would definitely love to do some more in-depth battle reports as I learn the game more. To be honest, we're both so new to the game at this point that we're bound to make craptons of newbie mistakes, and we take forever checking the rules and whatnot. Once we're a bit more fluid at the game, I'll start taking notes during our games and then relaying more proper battle reports for you guys, if you really want them.

@Madaghmire - It's... it's like you get me, man! Haha. Yeah, I could play around with downgrading one of the -II's to a -I to give me some more points.

I run something very similar at 400. Its a little easier because tarkin is a lower percentage of your points while scaling better.

My friend and I were definitely considering that after our game. I think I may try this list again with Wave-II, and possibly plug a pair Raiders into it for anti-squadron firepower and some extra mobility. With Wave-II, I'll also play around with changing out the two VSDs for an Imperial and a Gladiator (depending on the points for the Imperial, of course).

Good write up, I still think though that we need more tests before we can come to a conclusion on the squadron debate, but this does give more info.

Going with this, it somewhat does give a little more weight to the no squadron list. Because, if I didnt miss anything in the writeup, the rebels lost one of their nebs and most of his fighters, while you still had all 3 of your ships.

Also a little confused, you talk about "my opponents initiative turn" and "my initiative turn", are you changing who has initiative each turn? Whoever gets initiative always has initiative.

I will read the rulebook and figure out the initiative thing I was thinking of when I get a chance.

To clarify, I did end up losing my Flagship on turn 6. In my original post I said that it lasted six turns, when I should have said "It lasted until turn six". Considering the Rebels only lost a Nebulon and a couple squadrons, they were the technical winners, though the entire game would have been different had I not allowed my friend to change his command on his CR90 to a navigate so his ship didn't go off the field. We agreed that it would be a more fun game if he didn't lose an entire, undamaged ship to a stupid mistake. Definitely one of the benefits to friendly games.

Ok, so I guess we will classify this as a draw in terms of the squadron debate lol.

As for initiative, in my first couple of games I got the initiative thing wrong too lol

From RRG pg 7

Initiative determines which player acts first during the Ship Phase and Squadron Phase. It is assigned to a player during the “Determine Initiative” step of setup. That player is the first player and takes the initiative token. His opponent is the second player.

The rebels deployed on the wrong side. Always go for the Demolisher, especially if your biggest ship is a Nebulon B. Even after deployment, they could have outrun the Victories.

As a rebel, you can bring Y-Wings or B-Wings, but not both. You have to concentrate fire, more so with squadrons, and with squadrons as different in speed as Y- and B-Wings, that's hard to do.

Just a note, Expanded Hangers can't go on a NebB, unless I'm totally having a serious mental lapse. The Rebels might think about dropping a few fighters, still keeping a nice sized flight wing, and adding in another CR90.

As for mixing B's and Y's, I'm actually fine with it myself, I like the added flexibility of having both types

Just a note, Expanded Hangers can't go on a NebB, unless I'm totally having a serious mental lapse. The Rebels might think about dropping a few fighters, still keeping a nice sized flight wing, and adding in another CR90.

As for mixing B's and Y's, I'm actually fine with it myself, I like the added flexibility of having both types

Read the third paragraph of original post.