I'm trying to build a list for Sullest (my first tournament) and trying to decide whether its better to run a two ship fleet (say two Vics and Rhymer) or to run a three ship fleet (either two Vics and a gladiator or two glads and one victory).

My main concern with a three ship fleet is getting devastated by bombers without any fighter support, I fell like the first Rebel fleet with Luke and bombers or a mirror match against Rhymer and I'm sunk.

On the flip side, a two ship fleet could get demolished by multiple activations of an enemy with more ships than you. So the question stands, how popular are fighters for 300 point tournaments?

You can easily run a three ship fleet with a few fighters to screen if you're willing to skimp on upgrades. I plan on running a three ship list with a few fighters myself (two victorys and a glad).

I'll probably be in the minority here, but I prefer a two ship fleet, with lots of upgrades and a decent fighter screen over a 3 ships with far fewer upgrades and less fighters. I'm not much of a fan of Gladiators, so I stick with a pair of heavily upgraded Victories. It seems to work for me, but we'll see how it works at Massing at Sullust.

Tossing my chit into the possible minority hat.

I have been running permutations of a 2 Vic list with around 80/100 pts in squadrons for over a month now. I win fairly regularly, even tabling VGG lists, and won a tournament with one of the early versions.

Whatever you Choose, Be Prepared.

All Jokes aside - That's the core rule of it. If you're going to play a 2-Ship Imperial Build, then you need to look at your opponent and capitalise on deployments. For example - One Ship will go down first, and then you deploy squadrons around that deployment, waiting for them to put their main target down, and then deploy the second ship to hunt that, so you are not out of position.

Yes, Activations are an issue... But your 2 Ship build needs to be built to utilise taht problem - Focus on survivability and distraction. Yes, you're going to be Moving into the LIne of Fire first... Be prepared for that to happen, Survive it, and then realise you're hitting HARD in return. Make them Pay for daring to get close to you.

Set your Objectives up so the enemy comes to you... If you get to be player 2, then loooooove contested Outpost... First turn, move 1, decelerate to 0, and hang there until the Enemy gets into Range - because you're not moving, they will have to move into Range, or you win... Leverage your Objectives.

Whatever you Choose, Be Prepared.

All Jokes aside - That's the core rule of it. If you're going to play a 2-Ship Imperial Build, then you need to look at your opponent and capitalise on deployments. For example - One Ship will go down first, and then you deploy squadrons around that deployment, waiting for them to put their main target down, and then deploy the second ship to hunt that, so you are not out of position.

Yes, Activations are an issue... But your 2 Ship build needs to be built to utilise taht problem - Focus on survivability and distraction. Yes, you're going to be Moving into the LIne of Fire first... Be prepared for that to happen, Survive it, and then realise you're hitting HARD in return. Make them Pay for daring to get close to you.

Set your Objectives up so the enemy comes to you... If you get to be player 2, then loooooove contested Outpost... First turn, move 1, decelerate to 0, and hang there until the Enemy gets into Range - because you're not moving, they will have to move into Range, or you win... Leverage your Objectives.

I see what you mean and totally agree, it was the threat of a spread out deployment that was worrying me.

I've been refining a two victory list (one vic 1 and one vic 2) both upgraded with screed as my commander, rhymer, two bombers and two tie advanced as extra firepower/escort. Total list is 295 I believe so that I can try to bid for initiative. I've had success with it playing against friends mainly because those bombers do a hell of a job softening up a target with a squadron command right before I fire with one of my victories in the second or so round, but the last game I played my brother fielded one Mk. II frigate, to nebs and a corvette all with one or two upgrades. I ended up loosing my vic 1 under the combined fire of all except the Mk. II which amazingly went down in one round with one rhymer activation and a frontal assault from my vic 1 before it ever fired a shot. The Vic 2 was untouched

Whatever you Choose, Be Prepared.

All Jokes aside - That's the core rule of it. If you're going to play a 2-Ship Imperial Build, then you need to look at your opponent and capitalise on deployments. For example - One Ship will go down first, and then you deploy squadrons around that deployment, waiting for them to put their main target down, and then deploy the second ship to hunt that, so you are not out of position.

Yes, Activations are an issue... But your 2 Ship build needs to be built to utilise taht problem - Focus on survivability and distraction. Yes, you're going to be Moving into the LIne of Fire first... Be prepared for that to happen, Survive it, and then realise you're hitting HARD in return. Make them Pay for daring to get close to you.

Set your Objectives up so the enemy comes to you... If you get to be player 2, then loooooove contested Outpost... First turn, move 1, decelerate to 0, and hang there until the Enemy gets into Range - because you're not moving, they will have to move into Range, or you win... Leverage your Objectives.

I see what you mean and totally agree, it was the threat of a spread out deployment that was worrying me.

I've been refining a two victory list (one vic 1 and one vic 2) both upgraded with screed as my commander, rhymer, two bombers and two tie advanced as extra firepower/escort. Total list is 295 I believe so that I can try to bid for initiative. I've had success with it playing against friends mainly because those bombers do a hell of a job softening up a target with a squadron command right before I fire with one of my victories in the second or so round, but the last game I played my brother fielded one Mk. II frigate, to nebs and a corvette all with one or two upgrades. I ended up loosing my vic 1 under the combined fire of all except the Mk. II which amazingly went down in one round with one rhymer activation and a frontal assault from my vic 1 before it ever fired a shot. The Vic 2 was untouched

Why Screed and not Motti?

Whatever you Choose, Be Prepared.

All Jokes aside - That's the core rule of it. If you're going to play a 2-Ship Imperial Build, then you need to look at your opponent and capitalise on deployments. For example - One Ship will go down first, and then you deploy squadrons around that deployment, waiting for them to put their main target down, and then deploy the second ship to hunt that, so you are not out of position.

Yes, Activations are an issue... But your 2 Ship build needs to be built to utilise taht problem - Focus on survivability and distraction. Yes, you're going to be Moving into the LIne of Fire first... Be prepared for that to happen, Survive it, and then realise you're hitting HARD in return. Make them Pay for daring to get close to you.

Set your Objectives up so the enemy comes to you... If you get to be player 2, then loooooove contested Outpost... First turn, move 1, decelerate to 0, and hang there until the Enemy gets into Range - because you're not moving, they will have to move into Range, or you win... Leverage your Objectives.

I see what you mean and totally agree, it was the threat of a spread out deployment that was worrying me.

I've been refining a two victory list (one vic 1 and one vic 2) both upgraded with screed as my commander, rhymer, two bombers and two tie advanced as extra firepower/escort. Total list is 295 I believe so that I can try to bid for initiative. I've had success with it playing against friends mainly because those bombers do a hell of a job softening up a target with a squadron command right before I fire with one of my victories in the second or so round, but the last game I played my brother fielded one Mk. II frigate, to nebs and a corvette all with one or two upgrades. I ended up loosing my vic 1 under the combined fire of all except the Mk. II which amazingly went down in one round with one rhymer activation and a frontal assault from my vic 1 before it ever fired a shot. The Vic 2 was untouched

Why Screed and not Motti?

That's what I was thinking. I've had a lot of luck with Motti. Haven't needed him all that often, but he does give the enemy 4 more hull value to chew through with Vics, and that's almost worth another ship.

Whatever you Choose, Be Prepared.

All Jokes aside - That's the core rule of it. If you're going to play a 2-Ship Imperial Build, then you need to look at your opponent and capitalise on deployments. For example - One Ship will go down first, and then you deploy squadrons around that deployment, waiting for them to put their main target down, and then deploy the second ship to hunt that, so you are not out of position.

Yes, Activations are an issue... But your 2 Ship build needs to be built to utilise taht problem - Focus on survivability and distraction. Yes, you're going to be Moving into the LIne of Fire first... Be prepared for that to happen, Survive it, and then realise you're hitting HARD in return. Make them Pay for daring to get close to you.

Set your Objectives up so the enemy comes to you... If you get to be player 2, then loooooove contested Outpost... First turn, move 1, decelerate to 0, and hang there until the Enemy gets into Range - because you're not moving, they will have to move into Range, or you win... Leverage your Objectives.

I see what you mean and totally agree, it was the threat of a spread out deployment that was worrying me.

I've been refining a two victory list (one vic 1 and one vic 2) both upgraded with screed as my commander, rhymer, two bombers and two tie advanced as extra firepower/escort. Total list is 295 I believe so that I can try to bid for initiative. I've had success with it playing against friends mainly because those bombers do a hell of a job softening up a target with a squadron command right before I fire with one of my victories in the second or so round, but the last game I played my brother fielded one Mk. II frigate, to nebs and a corvette all with one or two upgrades. I ended up loosing my vic 1 under the combined fire of all except the Mk. II which amazingly went down in one round with one rhymer activation and a frontal assault from my vic 1 before it ever fired a shot. The Vic 2 was untouched

Why Screed and not Motti?

That's what I was thinking. I've had a lot of luck with Motti. Haven't needed him all that often, but he does give the enemy 4 more hull value to chew through with Vics, and that's almost worth another ship.

I like screed combined with H9 Turbolasers and Warlord for those (mostly) guaranteed double hits on red and black dice, especially with ACMs. Though I definitely recognize the advantage in survivability with Motti, especially meaning it's that much harder to bring a ship down in 6 rounds. I did just make a 3 ship list that combines rhymer with three ships:

Glad I (ACMs, Demolisher)

Vic 1 (Motti, Enhanced Armament)

Vic 1 (Flight Controllers, Weapons Liason)

Rhymer

Tie Bomber x2

Total: 296

Trying to figure out if flight controllers is worth it, or if I should drop it for some other offensive upgrade. I could possibly put screed and overload pulse in if a drop an upgrade or two and switch one to a Vic 2

Running vsd and three gsd for Sullust.

Believe me, Flight Controllers won't do a thing for you unless the enemy brings ONE TIE fighter (I ran two Advanced and Rhymer and I couldn't take down Tycho for two turns before an X-wing came in and destroyed my Advanced). Dump that and Enhanced Armament and put H9s on both Vics. I've done something similar and those H9s were a godsend against ships with only one brace token (because six damage from a full barrage doesn't look nearly as good when it gets bumped down to three and then redirected). Throw Screed on there too.

I like the H9's a lot but am trying to juggle what I would need to drop for them, as well as screed. I thought of two possibilities:

Fleet 1:

-Gladiator I (Demolisher, ACM's)

-Victory I

-Victory II (Motti, Gunnery Team)

-Rhymer

-Tie Bomber x2

296pts

Objectives: Advanced Gunnery, Contested Outpost, Minefields

Fleet 2:

-Gladiator I (Demolished, ACM's)

-Victory I (XI7's)

-Victory II (Screed, Gunnery Team)

-Rhymer

-Tie Bomber x1

Same objectives

295pts

The decision to be made is if three or two bombers is the right number. Without escort they'll be tied down but I can probably get one or two rounds of sniping before they're tied up, and I don't know if I really want to drop more upgrades for an escort who may not even see any action if they don't field fighters (plus one escort really won't do much good for long). With three bombers that's enough for one Victory to Potentially have a max 6 damage before the Victory even shoots if the die are perfect.

I originally wanted to take two Victory's with rhymer, bombers and advanced but I feel like three ships is really critical against ship heavy builds. I could just have two Victory I's but I feel like that felt is way two reliant on hoping the enemy gets in close, but it would allow for a couple of upgrades possibly.