I've been spending far too much time making variants of list ideas for the upcoming Store Championship season. In Wave 1, I was very successful going no squadron in our meta (plus, I sort of like playing that kind of game). With Wave 2, I'm not sure if NO squadron is a smart idea to climb to the top of the ladders. After spending some time on these forums, I came up with a concept that sounds pretty entertaining. Here's my thought:

Imperial-II Class Star Destroyer - Admiral Ozzel, Gunnery Team, Electronic Countermeasures

Gladiator-II Class Star Destroyer - Ruthless Strategists

Gladiator-II Class Star Destroyer - Ruthless Strategists

Major Rhymer

2 x TIE Advanced

8 x TIE Bomber

The concept is simple, use an obscene amount of Bombers and use their hull to obtain air superiority. The Glads are "escorting" the Rhymerball, and anything that engages them get's hit with 2 blues and an automatic damage. If all goes well, I can chew through fighter escorts quickly. Then I use what Bombers are left to crush the opposing ships. Obviously the key is keeping Rhymer alive, which is why there are 2 Advanced to Escort him.

Mostly I was trying to avoid just taking TIE Fighters, they have been disappointing to me lately. Bombers were my favorite ship in X-Wing, might as well try my hand with them in Armada. What do you think?

I love it. Looks like a hilarious amount of fun. Let us know how it actually ends up playing out.

I recently faced a 2-ISD build, both with RS, along with a Rhymerball. I had a squadron-heavy list as well.

The Rhymerball backed with RS was very effective at chewing through my pilots, even my named pilots.

I was very similar in my design - only I threw the RSs on Victorys, so they could escort instead...

Well, One Ruthless Strategist, one Flight Controllers... Because Bombers with Blue-Black Anti-Squadron are actually really effective...

Nicknamed it the Shredderball.

Here is what I suggest as changes.

Reasons for set up listed at end.

EMPIRE FLEET (400 points)

1 • Imperial II-class Star Destroyer - Admiral Ozzel - Boosted Comms - Electronic Countermeasures - Relentless (154)

2 • Gladiator II-class Star Destroyer - Ruthless Strategists (66)

3 • Gladiator II-class Star Destroyer - Ruthless Strategists (66)

4 • Major Rhymer TIE Bomber Squadron (16)

5 • Dengar Punishing One (20)

6 • Firespray-31 (18)

7 • Firespray-31 (18)

8 • Firespray-31 (18)

9 • TIE Advanced Squadron (12)

10 • TIE Advanced Squadron (12)

11 • Objectives - Advanced Gunnery - Contested Outpost - Superior Positions (0)

http://armada.fabpsb.net/permalink.php?sq=e14c10g3d1f16e6w4e6w4e8e22e17e17e17e12e12e0a1a5a12

Fly everything close together and directly at them fast!

This will give you options like targeting there squadrens with your crazy amount of anti air attacks. This makes the Ruthless Strategists less important but, nice to have.

Advanced Gunnery wasn't helpful to me except when the opponent picked that objective. So I replaced it with Boosted Comms and Relentless. Your fighters will be driving then opponents crazy and I found then at medium to long range all the time and with less fighters using them before your opponent even has a chance to react helped greatly. Then to add relentless dropping command dies from 3 to 2! You are now reacting faster as speed 3+ is crazy fast and I found it hard to slow down when I really needed it most.

With the changes to Major Rhymer I found that I got more damage out of the firesprays in both fighter to fighter attacks and fighter to ship hits. Then adding Dengar Punishing One made hitting my fighters with his even less appealing as counter 1 really hurts when you also have all your ships hitting his fighters too.

Over all a very nice build!

So would the Rebel counter be an AFM2 with RS with a bunch of X-wings?

So would the Rebel counter be an AFM2 with RS with a bunch of X-wings?

Xs and Ys...

Xs to take up damage from Squadrons, Y's to take your Ruthless Strat damage.

And if you want to spend some more points, but really annoy your opponents, add Gallant Haven to make their return anti-squadron attacks even more futile...

But they get expensive... An AFMK-IIA with Ruthless, Gallant and perhaps Point Defense Reroute is designed to plough straight into an enemy Rhymerball and start shooting.

This is one of the two lists I'm testing for my first Store Championship, had my first chance to see it in action last night. I actually had my friend run it, with a 5 minute rundown of how I expected it to work. Here's what I was using:

AFM2 - Ackbar, Gunnery Team, ECM, Tractor Beam

AFM2 - Gunnery Team, ECM, Tractor Beam

AFM2 - Gunnery Team, ECM, Tractor Beam

Jan Ors

3 x X-Wing

2 x B-Wing

He gave me first turn (smart move) and I had to select from a lot of bad choices for objectives. I don't see anyone taking Precision Strike against that many Bombers, and Contested Outpost is always tough against an ISD. Went with Minefields, knowing he could use it to shut down a flank, which is precisely what he did.

Long story short, after losing 3 Bombers, all of his X-Wings and Jan Ors were dead. Then the Bombers killed on AFM2 while the ships killed another. He lost one Glad and 3 Bombers, an 8-2 victory in tournament scoring. Going to get one more test game in before Saturday, with me behind the helm. Going to make one tweak, one Advanced get's traded out for a JumpMaster.

Going to have another go with this list tonight, think I'm going to try out the following changes:

Drop a Bomber (leaving me with Rhymer + 7 standard)

Upgrade JumpMaster to Dengar

Add Relentless to the ISD

I very much dislike the idea of losing a Bomber, but there are some serious benefits. Having Counter on my Rhymerball should make even shorter work of opposing squadrons, or more importantly, should make my anti-squadron game more consistent. Dengar improves upon the survivability of my Intel platform, hopefully keeping my Bombers swinging turn after turn. Finally, I'm comfortable going first or second with this list (the Objectives are ball-busting, so second player isn't so bad), and that frees up the single extra point I needed to sneak in Relentless on my ISD. Having more command flexibility is never a bad thing...

This past weekend I played in a tournament. Instead of gladiators I used a Raider I with Ruthless Strategist and Impetuous title. In the 3 games it was a decisive factor in the first three turns in obtaining squadron superiority. I was running Rhymer, 3 bombers, Boba Fett, Vader, and another advanced. The third game was the only instance where my opponent had squadrons after round 4. Mostly because I overlapped Rhymer in round 2 putting him out of position.

I would like to see how it flies against a rebel fleet as all my opponents were imperials.