Hello guys !

So, last time I played, Wave 2 had not yet hit the shores of France and I did have the chance to play against someone who scored a Massing at Sullust MC80. I don't know the meta now that Wave 2 is available, but from what I remember from that game against Ackbar it's quite the up in power level !

Now, I'm drooling over the ISD model literally and figuratively, and I really, really want to field Vader, but people in my area who have fielded him seem a bit concerned about his ability as a fleet commander (mainly tested him with ISD/2 VSDs and I saw them get mauled by Ackbar and his AF companions).

I'd love if you guys would give some spontaneous advice, as well as comment on my (inexperienced as of now) analysis about Vader !

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So, from the looks of Vader and his abilities, he is not a subtle man and highly favours ships that hit like trucks, with plenty of defense tokens and make each shot count to mitigate failed rolls, over more subtle strategies.

Right off the bat, I would tend to go with 2 ISDs in a fleet led by Vader with a token anti-fighter screen,but I'm afraid that only 2 ships at 400 points will not be tactically flexible enough...

Do you think a Vader build with 1 ISD and 2 VSD can be workable ? Even if it means using one of the VSDs as a carrier. I'm just that scared of Ackbar !

Honestly Vader is not very good...

In stead I would use old Grand Moff Token to add flexibility to your fleet

Honestly Vader is not very good...

In stead I would use old Grand Moff Token to add flexibility to your fleet

I take your point, but that's not the point of my thread I'm pretty sure Vader has its uses, just looking to see them

Vader wants to have Large Die Pools, but little other Die-changing phenomena... These usually come on ships that have the requisite Defense tokens to be ready to spend...

... A redundant Redirect or Contain on an Imperial Class....

... An Evade now that your Gladiator is at Black Die range of its opponent...

... A Victory Class that's able to bring its front arc to Bear...

That's what Vader Wants.

When is Vader not so good?

When you don't have the above.

Vader does nothing for Squadrons.

Vader does very little for Ships with numerous small attacks.

Vader does nothing positive for the defense of your ships, other than attempt to assure the destruction of your enemies quicker.

Vader does very little when you have ships that are able to regulate their own Dice Modification, through Leading Shots / Ordnance Teams, etc.

Have more of above the line than you do below the line, as it may, and Vader may be useful...

It is more that you are debating the two activation concept moreso than Darth Vader as an Admiral...

Vader does very well when rolling large numbers of red-black dice on several ships where he can stand in for the cost of 3-4 Leading Shots or Ordnance Experts and free those slots up.

Thanks Dras for a well laid summary of the strengths of Vader, I couldn't agree more.

Indeed, it was the 2 ships activation that was bugging me. Besides, it just feels like a bigger and more brutal variation of the 300 points double VSD package with fighters (which I'm sure works quite better due to better speed and maneuvrability, but tried and tested ).

The bane of Vader will probably be defense tokens (because he ensures strong attacks which will be mitigated by defense tokens obviously)

Out of the blue, would you think a list in the vein of the following would work :

ISD 1 - Devastator, Vader, Intel Officer, Tractor Beam, Heavy Turbolaser Turrets

VSD 2 - Enhanced Armaments, NK7

VSD 1 - Chiraneau

Major Rhymer

Bomber

Advanced

Objectives (Advanced Gunnery, Fleet Ambush, Superior Positions)

General tactics : The VSD2 is actually the centerpiece of the list, positioning in the middle while the ISD and VSD and surprisingly found on each flank. The VSD 1 having Rhymer hopping around and fleeing engagements from fighters and popping shots at medium range on ships to damage defense tokens in preparation for the VSD 1's attacks. Vader's flagship flushing the rest of the enemy fleet towards the VSDs on the other flank.

I know I just agreed to your comment about the nothing to fighters bit, but I was looking for a way to force the enemy to expend defense tokens on top of NK and Intel (and I also wrote this before you posted ).

@CactusMan : Good point too, I'll look at it in terms of what the ships free up in the slots and see how to take advantage of that !

I love Vader because it takes care of my "horror roll" situations really well and often lets me eek out above average damage across the board from my arcs (especially with those fickle reds), you do pay for it though but for me it's well worth it, too many times I've rolled up a bunch of accuracies and blanks when taking Motti. He also lets you fish for that elusive accuracy single accuracy for their brace that seems to disappear when you need it most.

Tip don't roll bad ;-p

Vader is absolutely amazing. Given how dangerous some of the rogues are, I would argue that a Rhymer Ball composed of Vader + Soontir Fel + Rhymer + Firesprays is lethal, as you only need 3 squadron worth of command to boss them around, Vader has escort and brace tokens, Fel will be damaging anything that tries to engage with the ball, and Rhymer is kept safer. Then the Firesprays can come in and bat cleanup if anything is still alive, before the whole thing re-commences bombing runs the next round.

I think Wave 2 has made Vader better than ever. I would totally be fielding him as an imperial.

Never used vader.. i keep meaning to..

Anyways double ISDs are viable. I definitely suggest version II equipped with ECMs. One ISD will get picked on until it pops.

My latest tactic: charge in and blow up a ship or two then cut and run like a bandit! If you are playing vs ackbar park in front of their ships if you can. Play the objectives!

My dual ISD 2 lists LOVE Vader. He consistently helps me get about 8 damage while in Blue range.

Sure he does nothing for squadrons but in all honesty, only Tarkin has any direct use with squadrons and Ozzel has a partial use.

Hey welcome back Moffzen!

I've had great experiences with Vader. I'd say you can expect a 50% damage increase across your firepower. He is also a safeguard against those completely terrible rolls you can get at crucial moments.

He's also a lot of fun thematically. Especially with gunnery teams, theres been plenty of times my thirst for MORE DAMAGE!!! has led me to spend or even discard tokens I really should have hung onto. Great fun.

Hey welcome back Moffzen!

I've had great experiences with Vader. I'd say you can expect a 50% damage increase across your firepower. He is also a safeguard against those completely terrible rolls you can get at crucial moments.

He's also a lot of fun thematically. Especially with gunnery teams, theres been plenty of times my thirst for MORE DAMAGE!!! has led me to spend or even discard tokens I really should have hung onto. Great fun.

Hey welcome back Moffzen!

I've had great experiences with Vader. I'd say you can expect a 50% damage increase across your firepower. He is also a safeguard against those completely terrible rolls you can get at crucial moments.

He's also a lot of fun thematically. Especially with gunnery teams, theres been plenty of times my thirst for MORE DAMAGE!!! has led me to spend or even discard tokens I really should have hung onto. Great fun.

Haha yeah, that's exactly what I was hoping in terms of performance. Buffing out massive ships with a low number of attacks but large pools of dice that you don't want to whiff.

I guess I'll try him out in a few games to check the feel and build up the fleet around that. I'm a bit concerned of the crazy combos out there that I wonder whether he'll be able to live through the day

I will say that my 2x ISD 2 tests with a small amount of squadrons and Commander Vader have borne amazing fruits.

I am really surprised that one can annihilate ships so throughly with the assistance of XI7 Turbolasers and Gunnery Teams (XI7's are huge!)

I will say that my 2x ISD 2 tests with a small amount of squadrons and Commander Vader have borne amazing fruits.

I am really surprised that one can annihilate ships so throughly with the assistance of XI7 Turbolasers and Gunnery Teams (XI7's are huge!)

Yeah, 2 ISDs really feel like it's Vader's hometown ! The reason I'm not going for it right off the bat is sadly purely a monetary one I mean, even with these 2 ships, you can throw a bajillion cheap fighters to pin any enemy bomber wing down.

Even though I saw how it looks like on the table and it gives me such a hard on

Yeah Vader loves ISDs because those Contain tokens are easily spent.

For ships with Ordnance upgrades, the upgrades that provide additional dice (Expanded Launchers, Rapid Reload) are superior to the crit-dependent upgrades simply because more dice means rerolls are more impactful usually.

The only Imperial ship he doesn't seem to do much for is the VSD because it's rarely in a situation where spending a defense token is safe for it. The ISDs can eat their Contains and Raiders and Gladiators can munch on their short-range-useless Evade tokens, but the VSD doesn't have such an easy choice of it.

The main problem for Vader is you want him in a fleet where his ability does work for you but where other commanders aren't superior. In a black dice spam list, Screed or Ozzel (as Ozzel is amazing with Gladiators/Raiders) are likely better and in a big ship spam list, Motti is a better bet usually. Vader wants more variety to really shine.

... a bunch of smart stuff ...

Is the ideal Vader list a single ISD + VSDs list? Likely all of the blue dice variety?

... a bunch of smart stuff ...

Is the ideal Vader list a single ISD + VSDs list? Likely all of the blue dice variety?

I'd actually discourage people from running Vader with VSDs (as I mentioned above). Motti would be better for a fleet like that (point-for-point you get the most Motti bang for your buck on VSDs, actually). I'm also really not sold on VSD-IIs (so many points for that upgrade from black to blue dice) in general.

For Vader I think you should default to at least one ISD as your flagship and then add Raiders and Gladiators to taste. I actually find Vader is great with ISD-Is because all of those dice want to be rerolled:

• Black and red dice: reroll blanks for more damage
• Blue dice: reroll everything hunting for an accuracy result to lock down Brace

That's not to say Vader is bad with ISD-IIs, but I've been impressed with him on ISD-Is, and the ISD-Is fit in better with the short-ranged Raiders and Gladiators Vader wants to be running.

Very good points you make man, especially about variety. Screed is better for critical effects, Vader is better for straight up overwhelming and making it count, but when you spam a single type of stuff you have less tactical tools that the opponent can't defend against. And since you're playing for the offense and ideally want several turns of large Vader dice to work, being able to strategically funnel the opponent where you want is interesting. So, after all, Vader might be more about being strategic than I thought

I've review my tryout list and working with the following now (I know you don't believe Vader is good with VSDs, but I still think that they can work as a second line ship, so I did leave only one !

ISD 1 : Vader, Devastator, Intel Officer, Tractor Beam, Heavy Turbolaser Turrets

VSD 2 : Warlord, Enhanced Armaments, HK7

GSD1 : Insidious, Chiraneau, Expanded Launchers

Rhymer + 1 TIE Bomber

(Advanced Gunnery, Fleet Ambush, Superior Positions)

Still once again the idea is to play the VSD 2 as a centerpiece and get the flanks with the ISD 1 and GSD 1 to make it hard for the enemy to kite the entire fleet (so, either they'll run into Vader if they try to flee the Insidious, either they'll run into the Insidious if they try to flee from Vader). Naturally, I'm pretty sure they'll go towards the Insidious to prevent the medium range on black dice with rerolls on a potential of 12 black dice. Rhymer + Bomber + Chiraneau are just there to annoy more, and the VSD 2 coming from the Center acts as a tactical reserve and a means to deter slashing, probably spamming engineering dials so it can burn his defense tokens for the rerolls.

I suppose the difference is that I believe the ISD-I to be a genuinely inferior ship given what you encounter in the wilds of space. I'm far more worried about an ISD-II with gun teams than I ever will be about an ISD-I. As a primarily rebel player who tends to play fast moving ships, keeping the ISD-I pointed at me and getting into range to use the black dice is going to be a dicey proposition¹. I suspect the ISD-I will turn out to be a very weak ship overall, not because there is anything wrong with the ship itself, but because many of the situations the ISD-I will encounter in the average game / board state will not allow it to operate at maximum efficiency (so there are times when it will be great). This is in contrast to the Neb B, which I believe is simply an inferior ship² (barring two titles which dramatically alter its profile) and should not be used because it is inferior in most game states.

To that end, I've also been a bigger fan of the VSD-II than most, as being able to rock a gun team and reach out and touch people effectively at medium range means that the very slow pace of those ships movement wise turns from being a disadvantage/neutral to neutral/advantage. You can slow the game down and when the critical engagement occurs, the VSD is essentially going in guns blazing for the remainder of the game.

1 - As a general statement, when I evaluate a ship in a vacuum (not as in "How do I beat this specific list one of my tremendous jerk friends is running"), I ask myself the following questions and I would encourage people to always do the same:

• If I were building a list to counter this, what would it be?
• How will this list fare in blue on blue / red on red engagements as well as cross faction?
• How will this list fare against the general archetypes existing in the meta (Ackbar Line, Gencon Special, etc.)
• How will this list fare playing each individual objective?

The list which can maximize these is the best list. I will now remind people I predicted that a Frigate + A-Wing list was one of the things that could win worlds. This is why, to make my prediction method transparent.

2 - Thought experiment: if the cheaper Neb B were 44 points, would it be worth taking over a CR90A? Or would the CR90A still be the superior choice? If that's even a real question, does this not indicate the Neb B is pretty severely overcosted for what it is?

@Reinholt : Good points, I'd take them into consideration While I understand that keeping the black dice in the front arc is going to be an issue, I've never had much trouble doing that with Victory Is, and most of my Victory 2 ended up in Black Dice range eventually.

Due to its ability to tank, the ISD 2 will be a better ship for operating on its own for longer than the ISD I. The idea with the ISD I in that list was to force people to avoid him, pushing them towards the arcs of the VSD and GSD that will box them until the ISD comes to finish them off, rather than having it act on its own as a hunter/killer.

Regarding the Neb B, I have to disagree with your statements however. It's only a bad/overcosted ship when people try to put it in a role it's not good at : it's base stats are not these of a line ship (weaker sides and no ability to redirect and spread damage) and it's stuck on a forward course against the enemy if it wants to do damage to ships, in a fleet where mobility and positioning is the trick to both win and stay alive (the AFMK2 and the CR90 for sure, to an extent the Mon Calamari because she will be the most punishing when he manages to slip in the enemy fleet which it can do, and when the enemy counter deploys to that she's still a serious flanker).

The Neb B however is a very decent support ship for what it brings, and things will only go wrong when you want to make it the mainstay of a fleet (as in it outnumbers your line ships more than 1:1). The 2 ways it can provide support are obviously either an anti-fighter escort to coordinate a more than decent wing of fighter/bombers so that you can either defend a potent bomber wing, break through a fighter or go on the offensive against no squadron builds (I did try once a Mothma 2 AFMK2 B build with 2 Neb Bs Escort with 2 X-Wings, Luke and Wedge and it's a pretty balanced list), the other is as a wide flanker artillery platform thanks to speed three and cool upgrades like the Salvation/XI7 build.

As a line ship it plainly sucks though, mainly due to 1 shield on the flank and the lack of a redirect (because let's face it, line ships are often hit on a hull zone you don't want and redirect helps to mitigate that).

Given this thread is about using Vader and not about ISD variants or Nebulon-B point costs, I'm not really going to delve too deeply into either of those topics.

I will note that I absolutely understand why most people prefer using ISD-IIs over ISD-Is. The ISD-II offers a defensive retrofit slot and an artillery platform for Imperials who normally don't really get access to those types of things. As a singular flagship, it's very upgradable. The ISD-I is basically more of the same kind of thing you already get access to with Imperials in that it wants to be at short range ASAP.

When it comes to Vader specifically, I feel his rerolls are of the most benefit for the ISD-I (for the reasons I gave earlier; I'll add that rerolling a lot of blue dice can be helpful for fishing for specific results on the ISD-II, rerolling dice that can turn up blank is more powerful) and the ISD-I fits well into a fleet built more around Vader. The ISD-I also has the benefit of being more easily spammable - the only real upgrade an ISD-I strongly wants in a Vader fleet is the Phylon Q7 Tractor Beams. ISD-IIs are often far more upgrade-hungry and so end up being a lot more expensive. You could get two ISD-Is in a Vader fleet plus a Raider/Gladiator or two without too much trouble at all.

To your credit, I will say that I think the one way I would run a Neb B in wave 2 is salvation with TRC. That looks kind of stupidly good, but unfortunately it's a one-off because the synergy is between an upgrade and a title.

Back on the topic of Vader, because I think synergy is the key to unlocking his real value:

• The more often you throw red dice or black dice (given that blue dice have no blanks, and so the re-roll value there probably doesn't change your expected damage as much), the more value Vader has.
• The more defense tokens you have, the better Vader is:
  • Specifically, if you have redundant defense tokens where you might not need to use them all, or you have a token that is itself useless (evade up close, contain when you are at full shields and unlikely to get massively sucker punched, etc.)
• So what ships do the Imperials have which have these characteristics?

The ISD: tons of dice, of any color really, and contain plus redirects to burn.

The GSD: surprise, it's still here! That evade is pointless up close, which is where it wants to be, and it throws bucketloads of black dice. The lone question here is if ACMs + Screed is still a better combo, but if you have an ISD / GSD combo fleet, Vader may be a better choice.

The VSD: two redirects, though the raw firepower is less than the ISD and the one that can bring it to bear most consistently is the II, which has blue dice.

The Raider: black dice, yes, but getting in close and staying alive to fire more than once is going to be a problem.

To that end, I wonder if the ideal Vader fleet is now an ISDII / GSD combo platter. If anyone is interested, I'd also be glad to throw together a spreadsheet to figure out what the real expected value of Vader is.

Blue dice are also good for rerolls. I have on several times picked up all the bulk dice to try and get that one accuracy I needed.