I've been playing many Rebel lists that use Yavaris and Raymus with B-Wings, and it hit me that I should look at some other fleet combinations. I found a previous thread that talked about the Yavaris and Raymus combo, but I thought it was time for a new one with Rogues & Villains available.

Bomber variations

• B-Wings plus Jan or HWK and an X-Wing
  • Can be difficult to position because of slow B-Wings
  • There's a lot of black dice hidden in this, doesn't look like 4+ blacks and 2+ blues
  • My own experience is that this single-turn destroys small ships that end up in range
• Y-Wings plus Jan or HWK and an X-Wing
  • Dutch possibly locks down two enemy squadrons, could make X-Wing unnecessary
  • Possibly not as good at countering enemy Bombers if needed in that role due to Heavy
  • Haven't played this, but seems like Dutch would be a great counter to Rhymer balls using Firesprays for Rogue.
• Scurrgs plus Jan or HWK and an X-Wing
  • Faster than B-Wings but more expensive
  • Grit makes positioning less critical for Jan/HWK
  • Anti-squadron potential is really bad except against TIE fighters

Anti-squadron variations

• X-Wings
  • Still have Bomber so aren't wasted against lists that lack squadrons
  • Escort is a waste if every squadron has it
• A-Wings
  • Black ship batteries make them reasonable against lists that lack squadrons

What have people been doing? Any mixing and matching of the above Yavaris and Raymus strategies?

you don't need Raymus, essentially an overpriced Expanded Hangars, to make Yavaris incredibly effective. Just two Yavarised Bs will give you more damage than an ISD

Without Raymus, you have less flexibility with the support parts of the group, specifically Intel. With Raymus, I have had several activations where I moved Jan/HWK into a group of squadrons to free up the B-Wings to shoot at ships. With the B-Wings being so slow, you need as many shots as possible when they are in range.

Garm as admiral?

May as well take yt1300 with bwkngs instead of xwings as escorts. Dont need the extra speed

Raymus is much more than an overpriced Hangar upgrade. He helps considerably with maneuver as well, which is critical to Yavaris use. That said, I personally prefer Garm, and love to pair him with a Veteran Captain where possible. Raymus and Garm do not get along unfortunately.

My buddy flew a Rieekan list last night with 130 points in unique squadrons. His primary Yavaris force was Luke, Keyan, Nym (he also has Han, Jan, and Dash.)

It was a very effective list overall, if it wasn't for my Demolisher throwing 4 hit+crits, I would've gotten 107 fewer points, and he would've won (as it was we tied exactly, he was second player, so he won.)

How was Nym in your game? I ran him once with Yavaris and his ability never went off in 3 rounds of double shooting. Kind of made me never want to take him again.

Garm as admiral?

Garm is probably the worst to take with Raymus on anything with less than Command 3. The ship with Raymus has a high likelihood of not being able to benefit much from Garm since you won't be able to take a token on Turn 1. Specifically the Raymus on Yavaris with Garm combination could actually hurt your ability to do 3 squadrons.

His ability didn't trigger at all, but with Rieekan he's worth taking over a regular Scurgg. Not sure exactly how much value my friend feels like he got overall, but he did throw too many dice, that's for sure.

I've been wondering about Nym's Havoc as well as compared to a generic Scurrg. Basically you're paying for that ability and 2 Braces. If you've set them up with Jan and an X-Wing Escort then the braces probly wont get used. And the odds of that ability going off dont seem great. If you can get 3 Scurrgs all bombing the same ship chances are most defense tokens will get exhausted and a follow-up volley from one of your capital ships will cause one or some to get burnt thereby achieving the same effect. Although Nym's ability prevents the defense token from being used at all so its pretty tempting.

Nym's ability seems like the highest risk/reward ability in the game right now. It likely will do nothing but if you get it off on an ISD with a turn 2 alpha he might just win you the game.

It really plays into what I see as one of the faction dynamics where the imperials have a lot more ways to guarantee damage (Screed, Mithel, Fel, Vader as commander) but the rebels have higher risk but greater reward (Dodonna, Nym, Luke, Salvation).

Nym is out there for the true gamblers.

BTW his ability does not prevent use of the token on his attack. The defender spends tokens before crit effects resolve. Not that you will care that much if the ISD braces Nym's damage. Once it does, bye bye brace.

I am DerErlkoneig's friend who ran the 130 points of unique squads with one of each Neb title. We played my Precision Strike. I wasn't running Nym for his crit or the braces. I ran him over the stock model because I was experimenting with Rieekan and going full-on with unique squadrons. I didn't get a Nym crit, and that didn't bother me. He is still a strong bomber without it, and having Jan there to make sure your bombers can do what they want means you don't have to worry about using his wimpy AA instead of bombing. I think that Yavaris with Raymus is still a very strong combo, especially when you can ensure the bombers get where they need to go.

The squadrons I ran were Dash, Han, Jan, Nym, Keyan, and Luke. It was a pretty potent combo. Very strong bombers, strong AA, and the ability for destroyed unique squadrons to live until the status phase was super great. It allowed me to protect my ships at a few key situations.

That said, I personally prefer Garm, and love to pair him with a Veteran Captain where possible.

If you can delay the squadron clash until turn 3, you can use your squadron Garm Bucks on round 3, burn Vet Cap on round 4 for another, use your Garm Bucks on round 5. Even if you can't and it happens on round 2, you're going to lose out on one extra activation on either round 3 or 4, whichever you decide is less critical.

After that, it doesn't matter: if Yavaris is still alive on round 6, 1) you've already won, or 2) you have no squadrons left anyway. I don't think I have ever used Yavaris on round 6, and certainly not to any significant effect.

On top of that, Vet Cap gives you that oh-**** flexibility if you misjudged your speed or really need one shield right now or whatever.

Also, I plan for Yavaris to die, always. Part of that is keeping her cost down as much as I can to give up as few points as possible when she does. Vet Cap reduces the ship's cost by 4 points, or some 7%. That's a good deal for marginally and situationally less throughput, but significantly increased flexibility.

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This

Rieekan.

Your Nebulons are flown to die. They punch well above their weight in damage but pay for that in shields. Look to activate 2-3 three Scruggs/Jan Ors. You want to fly at a speed and range that will give you at least two full Yavaris turns for 12 dice rolls.

Forget about Nim. To much setup.

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This

This also. It's worth pointing out that this setup is not only useful on Yavaris, but on any carrier ship. I've been running Garm+vet captains on my 2xAF's because it allows me to use Boosted Comms. Imperials can achieve something similar with Tarkin. At this point I'd only use Raymus/expanded hangars if I were running Raider mini-carriers.

I will say this: I think Yavaris is worse in wave 2.

Ships have gotten significantly more lethal, and without the ability to take boosted comms on a Neb B, Yavaris is an obvious "kill this first" target for most fleets. So to use the ability, they have to get in close, but getting in close is harder and more lethal than ever before.

On the flip side, Salvation is better with slaved turrets or TRC.

I will say this: I think Yavaris is worse in wave 2.

Ships have gotten significantly more lethal, and without the ability to take boosted comms on a Neb B, Yavaris is an obvious "kill this first" target for most fleets. So to use the ability, they have to get in close, but getting in close is harder and more lethal than ever before.

On the flip side, Salvation is better with slaved turrets or TRC.

The impact of losing Yavaris in a fleet of Yavaris and an AF2 or Yavaris and two CR90's is dramatic. Your activations are halved, you can't possibly have enough squadron commands to keep your fighters going and effective, and you probably don't have the firepower on that single AF2 to take down much of anything quickly.

In 400 points, on the other hand, rather than Yavaris being the enabling heart and soul of your fleet, she's a tool, supplemental to your ability to prosecute the battle but not the entirety of that ability. Sure, she'll die after she does her job (if you fly her well). She always did in Wave 1, too--at least for me. But now the impact of losing her hurts a lot less.

So, I don't think Yavaris is worse in Wave 2. I think it's not the central enabling unit of the fleet anymore, but if anything I think that's a good thing.