So a change from my recent all ship builds, with low bids for player one, I am debating using this fleet this weekend coming, and would appreciate feedback/flaws etc pointing out.

The idea is to keep the raiders on the rear/flank quarters of the ISD, it can activate 6 squadrons at a time, use the superior speed of the Tie Interceptors to get in an alpha strike on the opposing squadrons, and keep them locked up, allowing the ISD to then activate the Tie Bombers en masse, alternatively I position the bombers in such a position as they don't need a ship activation for a round perhaps two, and keep activating the Tie Interceptors to get what ever they are engaged with off the table asap.

I would probably drop 2 of each squadron and throw in Howlrunner/Dengar to tie down any squadrons. That will give 5 blue on attack and a counter 4 which will knock out most basic squadrons. And the intel will help if your bombers do happen to get tied down. The downside is obvious that you're taking away 4 and getting 2. But it would also leave you with a little wiggle room on points at a 396/400.

I think without escorts Howlrunner, and Dengar would be getting shot till they were dead, and so I'd not be getting any bonus to counter, I mean why would you shoot at a counter 4 with a reroll Tie Interceptor, when you can shoot counter 0 Dengar, or counter 1 Howlrunner, unless I'd been super lucky with squadron placement, managing to lock the opposing squads with the 4 T/I, and keep them 2 outside engagement, but inside range to trigger their bonuses, would be tricky and lucky to pull off, and negated if they have a single Intel ship.

I usually run Vader/Mauler/Soontir/Dengar/Tie Advanced/Tie Advanced, for anti squadron purposes, but fancied trying something different, 6 T/I that get 5 dice, with a reroll in the alpha strike round, and then leave them to it, with counter 2, and reroll, like a fire and forget blob.

I'll run some tests and see how viable your suggestions are with my build concept.

Thanks for the feedback.

Be very careful with your positioning of the interceptors. That's a hell of a lot of firepower, but you will get absolutely shredded by AA fire from ships. You have enough interceptors to possibly not need Intel to keep the bombers free. However, if you are subjected to some of the heavier AA batteries (Neb-B Escort, Raider, MC80, ISD), that numerical advantage is going to disappear very quickly.

I'd be interested in hearing how it goes, I've been considering an ISD + 2 raiders + squadrons too. I've been hesitant to try it out due to all the raider naysayers. I know I'll have to play a lot more conservatively with them than I'm used to.

Maybe drop one interceptor, add hangers to both raiders? Otherwise im really interested in seeing how this lists plays out

Looks like I am going to get a couple of games in tomorrow evening with this fleet,

So game one I'll try it out as is, game two I'll drop one T/I and add the EH to each raider, which is a good idea, might save me some squadrons late game, and adds some more flexibility to the build.

I'll let you know how it performs, sadly my friend who I'll be playing has seen the build, and so it might perform very differently than it would against the usual fleets I see at Tournaments in my area, we'll see I guess.

Rather than buy expanded hangars for such small ships you could swap out 4 Bombers for 2 Firesprays. One raider can bank a squad token turn one and use a squadron command and token turn 2 to shift rhymer and the bomber. One turn 3 some of the interceptors will be locked in combat or dead so the ISD can pick up controlling the lot.

Rather than buy expanded hangars for such small ships you could swap out 4 Bombers for 2 Firesprays. One raider can bank a squad token turn one and use a squadron command and token turn 2 to shift rhymer and the bomber. One turn 3 the some of the interceptors will be locked in combat or dead so the ISD can pick up controlling the lot.

Also not a bad idea, depending on which side of the fence you fall on in the bomber/firespray debate.

I've got an ISD2 and VSD2 working with 10 squadrons. Tarkin Claus commands the Relentless with gunnery teams, eng captain, and boosted comms. VSD has expanded hangar bays. Squadrons are led by Fel, Rhymer, Dengar and Mithel with 3xbomber, 2xadvanced and an interceptor for 399 points.

They are generally run as an anti-fighter ball and a ship killer ball which is how they worked last night.

Went up against an ISD, GSD and two Raiders with 8 generic fighters. His fighters were able to get Rhymer before he could get in range (he was 1st player) but he paid dearly thanks to Dengar escorting the Rhymer ball. Fel, Mithel and his boys only had a couple of squadrons left to kill off after Dengar and the ISD's AA had a turn. In the end, the ISD worked with what was left of the bomber ball to whittle away at the ISD while the VSD hammered the others until he was gone. His ISD spent valuable attacks trying to knock out squadrons so it worked for that mission.

Ref your list: Interceptors are cool (I love them) but they don't last long due to 3 HP so like someone said earlier, keep them far away from enemy AA batteries. Bombers are a great choice as they are cost effective, good HP, pick away at ships and are fast. FS are good thanks to rogue+bomber and great HP but speed 3 might be limiting . . . but may not be. Look at the Advanced because they will screen the other "specialists" and are decent "jacks-of-all-trades" if they should survive the beatings they are destined to receive.

Off to play! I'll try make some notes of it all.

Wuluff! Bank a token, boom expanded hangers.

Also, alter the ratio, needs far more bombers. Everyone needs more bombers. Please more bombers. Gotta love bombers.

Ok, the fleet worked pretty well, sadly we only had time for one game.

My friend had 2x CR90A + TRC, 1 x CR90A, 3 xNebulon B Support Refit, 6 x A-Wing, he had a better initiative bid than me, but chose to be player 2, his Objectives were, Most Wanted, Fire Lanes, Superior Positions, of the 3 I felt Superior Positions would be best to pick.

I set up on the left side of the deployment zone, Imp I at the edge of the 3 line, the 2 Raiders offset behind the Imp I, My Bombers, in 2 rows of 3 at range 2 of the Imp I diagonally forwards right, the Interceptors same formation diagonally left of the Imp I, I set all 3 ships at speed 1.

He set his 3 Corvettes (all speed 4) in a staggered diagonal line facing my set up, pointing out towards the (his) left side of the table, his 6 A-Wings were in a line just in front of the Corvettes, the 3 Neb's were placed at the other side of his deployment zone in a line (all speed 3).

Turn one was fairly uneventful, lots of tokens being taken on both sides, he ended up getting 2 of his A-wings pinning my 6 T/I, while the other 4 were off to the side, in range of my Bombers the next round.

Round 2 I activated the ISD I first, with a Squadron command (plus the token from round 1) I activated my T/I, first roll...4 damage, dead-A Wing, freeing 3 of my T/I up(moved it to pin the 4 A-wings), activated the next one, rolled 3 damage, reroll got me 4, last one pinning me dead, (it moved to engage the 4 remaining) the next 4 T/i proceeded to kill 3 A-wings, and leave the last one with 2 hps, I had 2 T/I with 3 health, 3 with 2 health, and 1 had 1hp remaining. so all in all a devastating round, 5 dead outright, and the last one on 2 hps. He moved his Corvettes forwards into Rhymer and his Bomber buddies, but due to Mon Mothma and the T/I getting the good dice, I wasn't able to deal much damage to one of his Corvettes. (he killed 3 of my T/I with is A-wing, and 3 corvettes AA fire)

Round 3 I activated my Raider first which had one of the Corvettes in its front arc at close range, I rolled 1 Accuracy, 1 Damage (blue) and 3 hit/crits (black dice, inc conc fire and rerolls), needless to say the Raider finished the Corvette my bombers had been so ineffectual against, I then used its banked Nav token to jump up to speed 3 and got out of the other 2 Corvettes front arcs, into just the side Arc of one of them. He did a fair amount of damage to my ISD's shields with the dirty TRC's leaving it stripped on its side/front, and my ISD side arc 2r2blk rolled 2 damage against a corvette that had no shields and 2 health...it lived!(made me reroll red dice, and it came up blank), then front arc 3r2blu, did 3 damage...I sighed at this point. Both Corvettes managed to live. (killed the last A-wing in squadron phase, and got the hell out of dodge, so 3 T/I lived and didn't really take part in the battle from this point.)

Round 4 saw me finish both Corvettes off, Bombers started work on one of the Nebulons that had finally decided to join the party, but from the front, again I managed to strip its shields and deal 2 face down damage with all 6, nothing in the ISD I front arc, just side arc shots and bombers, luckily for me I managed to keep it out of his Neb's front arcs.

Round 5 Sailed my 2 raiders off in the the deep void, (they weren't in position to do much, and I didn't see the point of risking them at this stage) the bombers managed to rack up more vp tokens attacking the rear of a second Neb B, but not much more than that sadly, was another poor dice round. He got some more damage on my ISD (around 8 or 9 taken at this point.)

Round 6 I couldn't finish anything off of his remaining Neb's I got one down to 1 hp with the bombers, and he dealt another 2 damage to the ISD.

So end of game, I'd lost 3 Tie Interceptors, and he had 4 Vp tokens for rear shot damage, I had killed all 6 A-Wings, all 3 Corvettes, and had amassed 14 Vp tokens, game ended a 422 pts to 93pts win.

Mon Mothma kept it from being a total white wash, **** rerolls at close range, far too many times I had a hit crit, that became a big fat zero when rerolled, and I was fortunate he started the Neb's so far away, it allowed me to deal with the A-wings and Corvettes with my T/I T/B.

After running Screed & Ordnance Experts on my usual builds, no rerolls, and no way to change to a hit/crit, was a big change one I am not sure I enjoyed, I can honestly say I prefer the much higher average damage output, and relying on Bombers without the Superior Positions, it would have been a much closer game.

And I am not sure how well it would do against the Motti + 2 ISD II's with Rhymer+T/B+T/A that seemed to be the staple Imperial build last tournament, sure the T/I would maul the enemy squadrons fast, but after that I'd be left with 6 bombers to try and chew through 14hps ISD's, which should realistically take them 3 to 4 rounds of concerted efforts, eating 2 blue AA dice each round, not great odds.

So I'll either run this at the Tournament or my 5 ship no squadron build.

Off to play! I'll try make some notes of it all.

Take some notes? I'd hate to see your detailed report hahaha. So they worked out for you huh?

I have a game tomorrow and I think I'll use the fleet I listed above . . . I doubt my report will be so detailed hahahaha.

Off to play! I'll try make some notes of it all.

Take some notes? I'd hate to see your detailed report hahaha. So they worked out for you huh?

I have a game tomorrow and I think I'll use the fleet I listed above . . . I doubt my report will be so detailed hahahaha.

Hah, normally my brain is so fried from concentrating so hard, it's all a confused blur by the the end. This time I judiciously took some photos as I was going, and used them to recall the important parts.

Next time I'll just upload and use the pics, they do say a thousand words after all.

I'd be interested in how it works out for you, good hunting!

So I've played 3 games since I was last able to post, sorry for the delay. Of those 3, I won 2 and lost 1. I apologize but I didn't keep detailed reports.

Of the two I won, I played an ISD and VSD with 10 squadrons. The fighters were arranged in a Rhymer ball with Dengar and a fighter ball. My opponents were running 4-6 squadrons a piece. The fighter ball was more than capable of handling anything that came my way. The Rhymer ball did well but I think I'm committing it too early.

The one I lost, the fighters did well, I was running an ISD and GSD with 8 squadrons arranged in 2 groups again. Opponent had 7 A-wings. They never got within range of my capital ships and I only lost one TIE Adv and much later IG88 but I lost due to being outmaneuvered by 2 Mon Cals.

No worries, thanks for taking the time to give us an update,

So overall you feel it is a valid build / strat? it seems to have paid off for you.

Yes, but I've noticed the phrase, "everything in moderation" applies with this as well. Bottom line, if you pile up the squadrons (7 or more) you skimp on the ships and vice versa. "DUH" right?

What I found when I had a lot of squadrons is that my ships were lacking some of the "mandatory" upgrades to make them really effective (intel officer, NK-7, XI7, Eng Tech, etc.) and the fighters, while an effective nuisance to capital ships, weren't the killers I wanted them to be. When I looked at reducing squadrons to nil-3, I run a risk of not being able to manage your opponent's squadrons. So, at a minimum, I think 4 squadrons and they need to be interceptors. After that, you can add an anti-ship group. The more you try to mix 5 or fewer squadrons' tasks, the more you end up with jacks of all trades, masters of none.

Yeah, I understand what you are saying.

As with anything at some point you risk being too specialised, which reduces your overall tactical flexibility (outside of your chosen tactic), and like all ships, or heavy bomber builds, there are always weak points, the main one of this one are, points spread out, ships missing upgrades, and the risk of having points sat doing nothing if they have little to no squadrons, that being said I think this kind of build allows the greatest chance of meeting an opposing build and being capable of defeating it (by countering the tactics), and I mean that in the way of you are covering most of the bases, rather than for example, my all ship build that is just going to ignore your build, and table you as fast as possible(brute forcing past your tactics).

It is one of the things I love about this game, the many paths you can take to victory and/or defeat all depending on your build, and there is no X-build always wins so use it, I mean other than practicing a build for a tournament, it is very very rare either myself or my friends repeat a build, always trying something different.