I've been giving Mon Mothma a lot of thought lately. I do like the idea off shrugging of damage.

One big aspect of the problem with why MM hasn't been field as much is that the meta always leaves a few fleet builds as highly desirable. These tend to come in waves and respond to dominant performances of certain key fleets. Clon's list really raised the bidding wars to a whole new level, and brought into focus the question of how exactly do we counter Demolisher, especially in an MSU list? Squadrons have always had a certain popularity, and Rhymer is at the center of that. The vast majority of the winning lists brought one of those two. As a big response to Demolisher, Rieekan has been a big answer. Demolisher drops so much damage so quickly that even if you plan to survive the damage, good follow-up shots from anything can kill one of your biggest ships. Rieekan gives you a lot of flexibility to block and get some use out of whatever Demolisher kills. I think Rieekan is the easy answer. He's a good one, and I'm glad he's received as much attention as he has, but remember when Wave 2 was in its infancy? Everyone was screaming about Ackbar. The word of the day with Rieekan was that he was sort of ok, but would only produce 5-5s and 6-4s. People just didn't know how to use him. I think MM is a bit of the same right now.

The game is ultimately a math game. If you can find some way to make the math favor you, you are bound to win. So that takes us to the math of the commanders. My sense is that players gravitate toward offense. It is really easy to see the extra damage from your shots that takes effect now, and less difficult to see how defense affects the game. That's because if you play Ackbar and he throws 2 extra red dice with Gunnery teams out of the side arc of an Assault Frigate, it is easy to see that you've got 9 damage and quite a kill zone that your opponent really must avoid or suffer death. Those red dice are quantifiable. You can sit down in a game and see how they have effected your movement, and how much extra damage you managed to get out of them. Rieekan is a bit more nebulous. If your SW-7 Corvette dies, but gets to throw 6 damage (5CF) that it would not have otherwise thrown, you can start calculating how much he has added to your fleet, and you can potentially add that to every ship in your fleet. He's also cheaper than Ackbar, which means he doesn't have to do quite as much to justify the points. Garm is captain flexible and I think one of the hardest to use effectively, but your extra tokens are probably worth around 18 damage points per game. Unlike Ackbar whose damage is done entirely on offense, Garm provides some damage or damage mitigation in the form of what the tokens do. Before we turn to MM, Dodonna is the cheapest, which means he doesn't have to have near the effect of the others. He's also the biggest wild card, since you don't know what crits you're actually going to pull. You've got to build around him extremely well. If you can pull good crits that represent the equivalent effect of 12 extra damage, then you've probably got your points worth.

That takes us to MM. She's a defensive admiral in her entirety, and the real question is in figuring out how much total effect she adds. Defense is not quite the same as evaluating offense. If Ackbar allows me to throw 18 extra damage in a game from his dice, that isn't the equivalent of 18 in defense. In fact, if I mitigate 18 damage, then at least some of the time, I'll have a ship that lives when it would have been destroyed, which means that I not only mitigated 18, but I also got to fire in response when I would not have otherwise have gotten to. It also isn't unreasonable to think that you could mitigate 18 damage with MM over the course of the game, and perhaps much more, especially if you're building directly to use the Evade tokens.

You might also try an MKIIA in an MM build. The IIB is more popular because most builds directly require it, and this has led to comments of the effect, "I don't know why anyone would ever take it." That's what they said about Rieekan before people experimented with him in answer to the Demolisher. MM really plays to its strengths: I'd rather go squadronless to leave more points for ships with Evades, yet you need something extra against squadrons. A second blue AS die is potent. You're also wanting to get a little closer and brawl. By itself, the MKIIA get pushed around by bigger ships in a brawl, but if you maneuver well, you should have a pretty potent concentrated layered attack where your MC30s are at black dice range of your primary target, your MKIIA is now in Blue dice range with a double-arc, and you've got a couple of Corvettes at an appropriate distance depending upon the build. Your opponent now has a lot of choices and cannot shoot everything. That's ideally what you want.

I'm less sold on the going first, in that if you move last, shoot, then move way, you can easily end up in a situation where your extra MM defense just isn't doing much. I'm currently leaning toward around an 8 point bid so that I have the clear choice most of the time, but I'm definitely conceding first player to anyone who really wants to go for it.

Food for thought.