I’ve run the following at a couple of local comps including the recent store championships and I just thought to share a few thoughts on the strengths and weaknesses of the build – use, comment or ignore as you like!
Zippy – Blasty Rebels(400pts)
MC30 Scout (Red dice) -Turbolaser Reroutes, gunnery teams, Intel officer, foresight.
Corvette A (Red dice) - Turbolaser Reroutes
Corvette A (Red dice) - Turbolaser Reroutes
Corvette A (Red dice) - Turbolaser Reroutes – Admiral Akbar
Han Solo
Jan
4x YT 2400’s
Objectives – Most Wanted/Superior Positions/Hyperspace Assault
Here’s some thoughts on strengths and weaknesses:
Strengths –
The MC30 is fantastic, I see lots of people emphasising the black dice with upgrades on these guys but I really love the Akbar/gunnery team broadside capacity of these things. It can do quite impressive damage to 1-2 ships a turn, is ideal to be the ambush ship during hyperspace assault and the black dice can be devastating if I end up going first. I find it dies very rarely and usually only when I bugger it’s positioning and it ends in short range. Spam the Nav commands, get your positioning right and It’s gold.
Akbar – Love him. IMO there’s only 3 rebel commanders worth considering and it’s Akbar, Mothma, Dodonna with Akbar being my fav for 3-4 ship lists, Mothma my fav for corvette swarming and Dodonna my go to for big bomber lists.
Han Solo – Expensive as anything but by far my MVP most games, his reliable damage output, resilience in general and ability to jump in and snipe someone at the right time makes him invaluable
Weaknesses?
Yt 2400’s – These sit interestingly in both areas depending on how you play them. They have great stats in general but are expensive and what you are paying for is rogue. In other words if you put them out the front and they get alpha struck by someone using squadron commands you’ve wasted their potential completely but if you can hold them back and be the alpha striker it’s a different ball game. With so much focus on squadrons in my Meta I’ve noticed these guys going from just dominating defensive balls and then bombing in the later turns to now struggling to survive against players more heavily invested.
Jan – Intel is great, Jan is not. IMO she is expensive for what she does and I’d take the imperial equivalent anytime. Yes she can give brace out, awesome. But she can only reliably do it twice a turn, she will turn your squadron tactic into ‘move the ball around’, needs to be supported by escorts constantly, doesn’t do anything against 1 or 3 damage rolls etc. I think next time I’ll save the points and go with the generic.
Corvettes – I love Akbar corvettes with turbo laser reroutes, think they are fantastic but they have serious limitations. I’ve watched a rhymer ball decimate one from full health in one volley, ouch. They basically die immediately to a good side volley from a big rebel ship, gunnery teams are twice as bad, a VSD with slaved turrets and concentrate fire one shotted Akbar at long range on the weekend basically wrecking my fleet that game….
I think that corvettes can be fantastic but the problem is always the same, you need 2-3 corvettes focussing on a single larger ship to do any real damage, probably over a number of turns whilst simultaneously keeping out of short/medium range because that’s basically insta death for a corvette and there’s really very little you can do against a demolisher controlled by a good general because it basically one shots a corvette on the odds.
Overall I think the biggest weakness of my list was that I was trying to be jack of all trades, rogue squadrons sound great until you run into swarms of flight controlled generics who have much better value to damage output ratios, the MC30 is great but found itself lacking support from the corvettes who weren’t hitting as hard as a whale would, and couldn’t take advantage of activation count because of the heavy investment in squadrons. Classic middle ground list.
I’m moving on now to one of three different builds for rebels
Max squadron with lots of generics and suitable support craft
Defensive (min) squadrons with 2 whales and an MC30 for straight up red dice death
Defensive (min) squadron corvette horde with 6 vettes
Should be interesting.