I don't agree with most of the sentiments. One person says you can't have 3 ships and decent squadrons with an ISD. Hell, you can have TWO ISDs and a third ship and still have points for 4-8 ties. And that's with upgrades. For the vassal tournament I'm running a II with gunnery, ecms, xi7, and leading shots with a I with leading shots, a demo, plus howl, squints, and tie fighter support.

Against three vics? I'll take that any day. You really only need a few upgrades on the ISDs. If you want activations, take an ISD and 3 raiders/glads plus your fighters.

The problem is people are saying you cant have a large ship plus have all the activations plus fighter cover plus bombers...which is true. No list can. The isd is amazing at trimming down the activations of other lists by simply eating small ships. The side arcs are as good or better than the main arcs of almost all small/med ships as well.

Play some games with it. Or against it. They are worth the points. And without ackbar, they are far superior to an mc80.

I hate to derail this thread fgd but I have a question and comment.

First, love the list. Looking at getting a bunch of games in this weekend with all the toys. Dano is inbound, and I'm all about experimenting with the rogue/bombers. That said, how are you finding pairing one ISD with two VSD? I can't get the VSD to work in comparison to GSD/ISD. Thoughts?

Tractor beams, man. They're the new face of the VSD

kinda funny how unimpressive they are next to the big guy, though. Somehow, rolling "only" 6 dice isn't so great

biggest problem remaining with the VSD is just crap luck, sometimes. When that big close range shot rolls around, and with beams it will, it can (and has) crapped out really badly. Unlike the ISD, those shots only come a few times per game.

the above list is Motti, 2 VSDs, Bossk + 3 Sprays intended to free up the VSDs so they can spam navigate around their crap chart.

the alternative is Vader and reducing the squadron compliment to 6 Ties, Mauler + 5 generics for a hefty bid, which has the benefit of allowing you to stretch out deployment but will require commands to use

it's fun and impressive to see on the table, but I need to see it in action more

What the heck are all those command dials doing on the table? I could get behind having the speed dials out, but there's no reason the command dials should be there - isn't the table cluttered enough?

Having played many many games of Wave 2 already with BOTH sides, I find the ISD to be the most no-brainer choice for the Imperial faction. It's just SUCH a good ship. It's incredibly forgiving both in play and placement because of its combination of speed, hull and frontal arc.

I said it once and I'll say it again, this ship single-handily changes the meta. You can't out-gun it, you can't out-run it, and it pretty much doesn't care about your damage with 11 hull stock and 4/3/3 and an front arc that covers ~120 degrees. Just push it forward, scream blood for the blood god and collect skulls. Oops, wrong game.

The MC80 though, is pretty much a POS unless you slap some good upgrades on it. It does not have Gunnery Teams or a wide front arc, so you need to get it into a firing position where it can utilize both broadsides consistently. If not, then you're just playing with half a ship but paying a premium for it.

I definitely wouldn't be that enthusiastic for the ISD. I love the thing to death, but for me it's auto-include due to it being the freaking ISD; not that the faction can't function without it being the best choice

as for the Mon Cal, while I largely agree it isn't nearly as impressive, I have to say the Akbar slash is about the dumbest thing you could do with it. At that point, you're just feeding it to the enemy.

From my experience, the first thing you do is not to take it with Akbar except in the case of Home One (**** be bonkers). Lack of gunnery team and damage inefficiency makes the Afmk2 a more effective mainstay, imo and Home One is the only thing it can truly boast over the medium ship

Second thing you do, if you want to use it as a legit combat ship, is Defiance it immediately and forget about it being a broadside ship. It'll broadside hard with redredredblueblueblueblack + black (concetrate fire), of course, but then you're forgetting about the front and the fact that Defiance is not round limited. This baby will double-arc harder than Paragon.

Basically, you end up with the punch of an ISD-1 with the range of an ISD-2, but cheaper. The weakness, as mentioned, is no gunnery team Setting up double-arc with Defiance takes a bit of getting used to, but it's best thought of as covering fire. Allign the arc-line right where you don't want the enemy and deny him that space

Third thing you do is just purpose it as a carrier. 4 Squadron, Boosted Comms, Independence etc. Bit expensive, but it's the only way you're going to apply B-wings against rebels

Not sure if your ISDs are great because ISD or because that Rebel player can't drive.

CR90? Speed 1? Landed on space rocks? In the front arc of every single Star Destroyer on the field?!?!

Might as well just have a 44 point bid for initiative.

If they're a newcomer, excellent teachable moment. If they're experienced, excellent wedgie-able moment.

that cr-90 is me. its speed has nothing to do with me putting it there, but because of a little something called Tractor Beams. The Rock is due to the Dangerous Terrain objective advantage (though it could have also been a Jaina's Light)

so yeah, assumptions suck

but seriously, why are people picking at the pictures when we're trying to talk about the ISD?

keep it on topic folks

I think Home One is borderline auto-include. Having tested Defiance and Home One, the ability to hand off free accuracies on every attack is deity-level good whereas Defiance's trigger makes it situational at best. It almost wants to be second player most of the time and if you're facing off across the table against an ISD, going second might be a death sentence.

I would only look at the MC80 Defiance with someone that's NOT Ackbar, so like Mon Monthma or even Garm, but those lists will typically run MC30s or Mon or squadrons for Garm, and even then they would like to go first.

The ISD however, just doesn't care who you're running with as an admiral. It's going to be pushed forward face first into the enemy and say: Hi, I'm here. Deal with me or die. Very Imperial? Absolutely. But infinitely more linear in gameplay and much easier to fly.

I don't agree with most of the sentiments. One person says you can't have 3 ships and decent squadrons with an ISD. Hell, you can have TWO ISDs and a third ship and still have points for 4-8 ties. And that's with upgrades. For the vassal tournament I'm running a II with gunnery, ecms, xi7, and leading shots with a I with leading shots, a demo, plus howl, squints, and tie fighter support.

Against three vics? I'll take that any day. You really only need a few upgrades on the ISDs. If you want activations, take an ISD and 3 raiders/glads plus your fighters.

The problem is people are saying you cant have a large ship plus have all the activations plus fighter cover plus bombers...which is true. No list can. The isd is amazing at trimming down the activations of other lists by simply eating small ships. The side arcs are as good or better than the main arcs of almost all small/med ships as well.

Play some games with it. Or against it. They are worth the points. And without ackbar, they are far superior to an mc80.

Exactly right. I played my 2 ISD + full bomber list (tbh I wouldn't take this list competitively) against a 5 activation Ackbar list (2 CR90, 2 AF, 1 MC80). Just so you activation junkies get this: I had 2 activations, he had FIVE. Thing is, Im pretty good at setup and deployment. After round 2 it was 4 v 2 thanks to a squadron activation (you know, with the upgraded ISD I carrier people think isn't worth it) taking out a slightly over-extended CR90, after round 3 it was 3v2 when my upgraded ISD II (again, supposedly not worth it) shredded an AF and with the help of the closely supporting ISDI sent the other cr90 running for its life. I lost the ISD II in round 4 but not before it had done its work and the Bombers finished off the MC80 handily in round 5 with the aid of a medium range front arc from the last ISD

I hate to derail this thread fgd but I have a question and comment.

First, love the list. Looking at getting a bunch of games in this weekend with all the toys. Dano is inbound, and I'm all about experimenting with the rogue/bombers. That said, how are you finding pairing one ISD with two VSD? I can't get the VSD to work in comparison to GSD/ISD. Thoughts?

I've been using an ISD-II - VSDII - VSDII list since winning at Sullust. With screed, gave my VSDs overload pulse and the ISD-II is the Avenger.

What VSDs do in my formation is provide protection for the flanks of the ISDs. If all my ships are at the same speed, activating the VSDs first allows me to overload pulse targets and perhaps intercept flanking ships before the Avenger fires at them with a gunnery team. Then if I lose a VSD there's a good chance the target is still in range of the flank guns on the Star Destroyer.

If I ever decide to run an ISD-I for squadrons I'm going to have to find something to patch the flanks. GSDs or VSDs to have some staying power.

My ISD has gone roughly unopposed by large ships up till now... a couple of run-ins with an MC80 and one clash against an ISD-I that I ended up destroying. With Wave 2 actually released, I want to start considering strategies on how to kill other Star Destroyers, since now thats a thing.

I am pleased to see they are the queens of the battlefield though, as they should be for this spaceship in a tabletop minis game.

that cr-90 is me. its speed has nothing to do with me putting it there, but because of a little something called Tractor Beams. The Rock is due to the Dangerous Terrain objective advantage (though it could have also been a Jaina's Light)

so yeah, assumptions suck

but seriously, why are people picking at the pictures when we're trying to talk about the ISD?

keep it on topic folks

Jania's Light is the best title. Was hoping that was the case but Dangerous Terrain also counts.

Haven't had the misfortune of throwing my CR90's against a Tractor Beam list yet, not looking forward to that.

I think Home One is borderline auto-include. Having tested Defiance and Home One, the ability to hand off free accuracies on every attack is deity-level good whereas Defiance's trigger makes it situational at best. It almost wants to be second player most of the time and if you're facing off across the table against an ISD, going second might be a death sentence.

I would only look at the MC80 Defiance with someone that's NOT Ackbar, so like Mon Monthma or even Garm, but those lists will typically run MC30s or Mon or squadrons for Garm, and even then they would like to go first.

The ISD however, just doesn't care who you're running with as an admiral. It's going to be pushed forward face first into the enemy and say: Hi, I'm here. Deal with me or die. Very Imperial? Absolutely. But infinitely more linear in gameplay and much easier to fly.

Rebel ships are on the whole cheaper and so Rebel lists tend to have more activations than Imperials. You can build a pretty good list around ensuring you activate what you want, when you want. The meta (at least here) for the Rebels has shifted to playing like the Imps, few big ships, so such a list would achieve that objective pretty handily.

I have to strongly disagree with the assertion that you can just force-jam an ISD into a fight and do well. Every ISD I've seen destroyed without having much impact has followed this ideology.

Also I'm not a huge fan of the tractor beams anymore for a competitive list. Not because they don't have a ton of situational potential, but because a rebel (or now with the raider imperial) high activation list full of small ships run by good players tend to spam a lot of navigate commands even at max speed (because what else would you plot if you aren't damaged). When I first saw them I thought "finally, something to nail down those **** CR90s" but in practice vs good players that understand how to stay mobile they were doing as close to nothing as you can come. my biggest success with tractor beams has come playing against other imperial players actually, to slow down the already slow victory or against rebel players with AF. The fact is, if you have a tall command stack with not a lot of nav in it, tractor beams can be the devil, single command dial and they are barely a nuisance.

They should have made tractor beams effect scale with delta of base size, so a Large base tractoring a small base does up to 3 speeds and large to medium does 2 and large to large does 1 with 1 speeds worth of mitigation from token. Maybe they will release a pricier version of a tractor beam like that in the future...

the trick with tractor beam is to take multiples in your fleet, across your ships. Then, you "concentrate fire"

The situation you describe occurs when you get a lone tractor beam. With multiples, however, it doesn't matter how "good" a player is, unless freaking Raymus is on that thing it's going from speed 1 up to speed 2 at most (Ozzel from the imps bypass it entirely, as does Tarkin if he dedicates himself to only nav tokens). Suddenly, nothing can out-run a VSD and the trundling behemoth can finally keep pace.

it does next to nothing to other VSDs and the Mon Cal, but you don't need helping catching those I hope.

agree about the ISD, though. A reckless admiral is a dead admiral, no matter how big the ship

I have to strongly disagree with the assertion that you can just force-jam an ISD into a fight and do well. Every ISD I've seen destroyed without having much impact has followed this ideology.

Also I'm not a huge fan of the tractor beams anymore for a competitive list. Not because they don't have a ton of situational potential, but because a rebel (or now with the raider imperial) high activation list full of small ships run by good players tend to spam a lot of navigate commands even at max speed (because what else would you plot if you aren't damaged). When I first saw them I thought "finally, something to nail down those **** CR90s" but in practice vs good players that understand how to stay mobile they were doing as close to nothing as you can come. my biggest success with tractor beams has come playing against other imperial players actually, to slow down the already slow victory or against rebel players with AF. The fact is, if you have a tall command stack with not a lot of nav in it, tractor beams can be the devil, single command dial and they are barely a nuisance.

They should have made tractor beams effect scale with delta of base size, so a Large base tractoring a small base does up to 3 speeds and large to medium does 2 and large to large does 1 with 1 speeds worth of mitigation from token. Maybe they will release a pricier version of a tractor beam like that in the future...

I hope you're not under the assumption that I'm saying that ISDs should be flown like an idiot. I'm merely stating the fact that ISDs have the speed, hull and arc to apply pressure when needed and cannot be ignored once they engage the battle.

the trick with tractor beam is to take multiples in your fleet, across your ships. Then, you "concentrate fire"

The situation you describe occurs when you get a lone tractor beam. With multiples, however, it doesn't matter how "good" a player is, unless freaking Raymus is on that thing it's going from speed 1 up to speed 2 at most (Ozzel from the imps bypass it entirely, as does Tarkin if he dedicates himself to only nav tokens). Suddenly, nothing can out-run a VSD and the trundling behemoth can finally keep pace.

it does next to nothing to other VSDs and the Mon Cal, but you don't need helping catching those I hope.

agree about the ISD, though. A reckless admiral is a dead admiral, no matter how big the ship

I see, it's true, I have only ever run with one tractor beam having only just gotten my second ISD and 2 MC80s on Friday. I will try a 2 or 3 tractor list next chance I get.

I totally agree - the ISD is so iconic as well as such a good ship it's now an auto-include for me just for those reasons (and I prefer the II over the I).

I have never been one for use of black dice, so ISD-2 is what I prefer. In the games I have run, I usually have it pretty tricked out. Around 180-185 points or so, SW-7 Ion batteries are amazing with Avenger and I never leave port without the Engineering Captain. That card has saved my bacon in both games I played with it. I also find that Heavy Turbolaser Turrets are just as good if not better than Xi-7's. Though, I have been tempted to try XX-9's with Avenger and I never run my ship without significant FIGHTER protection. It drives me nuts watching all these Imperial players running with zero, or to few Squadrons. IMO zero fighters might have worked out ok in wave-1, but in wave-2 it's fighter screen or you die. I'v also been running my ISD with Redundant shield, but want to see if ECM would be a better choice.

dang, 180-185 points ?

you, sir, are a braver man than I

I tip my imperial cap

I have never been one for use of black dice, so ISD-2 is what I prefer. In the games I have run, I usually have it pretty tricked out. Around 180-185 points or so, SW-7 Ion batteries are amazing with Avenger and I never leave port without the Engineering Captain. That card has saved my bacon in both games I played with it. I also find that Heavy Turbolaser Turrets are just as good if not better than Xi-7's. Though, I have been tempted to try XX-9's with Avenger and I never run my ship without significant FIGHTER protection. It drives me nuts watching all these Imperial players running with zero, or to few Squadrons. IMO zero fighters might have worked out ok in wave-1, but in wave-2 it's fighter screen or you die. I'v also been running my ISD with Redundant shield, but want to see if ECM would be a better choice.

Redundant shield is a trap upgrade. I don't see why a savy player would take it.

When you consider the alternatives: Enh Projectors may not mitigate damage but it can maximize effective shields in a well-supported ISD (in other words if you make sure it wont get flanked or surrounded you only need shields from 1 or 2 arcs) and work well with 2 redirects, ECM is probably much better as well as it can ensure you actually get to use defense tokens (a locked down brace across 3 rounds of battle can cost you a LOT of damage) while redundant shileds' maximum contribution will only ever be 5 shields (if that), at 1 per round but you never take damage on round 1. 5 damage vs the other 2 options seems like a no brainer to me.

Redundant shield is a trap upgrade. I don't see why a savy player would take it.

When you consider the alternatives: Enh Projectors may not mitigate damage but it can maximize effective shields in a well-supported ISD (in other words if you make sure it wont get flanked or surrounded you only need shields from 1 or 2 arcs) and work well with 2 redirects, ECM is probably much better as well as it can ensure you actually get to use defense tokens (a locked down brace across 3 rounds of battle can cost you a LOT of damage) while redundant shileds' maximum contribution will only ever be 5 shields (if that), at 1 per round but you never take damage on round 1. 5 damage vs the other 2 options seems like a no brainer to me.

While I don't dispute your reasoning, I feel like Redundant Shields may have a use on ships with Projection Experts or as the second Defensive Retrofit slot on an Assault MC80. Otherwise, I agree.

you can get Redundant Shielding at a 1 point discount using Wulf with a banked engineering token

Yeah, it's usually around 180 points counting the Admiral, in team games when I am not the "command" ship it's around 160 or so. it's usually this:

ISD-2 120

Engineering Captain 6

Gunnery team 7

boosted comms 4

Redundant shield 8 ( But I am going to try ECM, so 7)

SW-7 Ions 5

Heavy Turbolaser turret 6

Avenger 5

Yeah, it's usually around 180 points counting the Admiral, in team games when I am not the "command" ship it's around 160 or so. it's usually this:

ISD-2 120

Engineering Captain 6

Gunnery team 7

boosted comms 4

Redundant shield 8 ( But I am going to try ECM, so 7)

SW-7 Ions 5

Heavy Turbolaser turret 6

Avenger 5

Try? Do, or do not. There is no try.

Seriously though, in this new meta where people are easily throwing out 8+ dice, if you can't brace you might as well don't play.

oh right, a commander on an ISD will easily catapult it to the 180 realm

I rarely count the commander since you can't not take him

until he dies, at least. Then you sorta have to

the easy solution is to fling him on over to a lesser ship

sadly, it just feels wrong. You never saw Vader staring off into the darkness of space whilst aboard a dinky little Raider or something.

the ISD-2s range and defensive retrofit do offer some degree of safety, at least. I'd feel pretty suicidal if I stuck my commander on an ISD-1.

lol, Vader no. Issard however...