Been a lurker for a while, but I finally made an account to get feedback on a list.

The core concept was to see if I could make the Liberty title work. I'd love some feedback (though instead of saying "drop Liberty," it would be nice to see alternate concepts for making the title work.)

Hope for Liberty
Author: Onidsen

Faction: Rebel Alliance
Points: 400/400

Commander: General Madine

Assault Objective: Most Wanted
Defense Objective: Contested Outpost
Navigation Objective: Dangerous Territory

MC80 Battle Cruiser (103 points)
- Liberty ( 3 points)
- Intel Officer ( 7 points)
- Gunnery Team ( 7 points)
- X17 Turbolasers ( 6 points)
- XX-9 Turbolasers ( 5 points)
= 131 total ship cost

Nebulon-B Escort Frigate (57 points)
- Salvation ( 7 points)
- X17 Turbolasers ( 6 points)
= 70 total ship cost

[ flagship ] CR90 Corvette A (44 points)
- General Madine ( 30 points)
- Turbolaser Reroute Circuits ( 7 points)
= 81 total ship cost

GR-75 Medium Transports (18 points)
- Toryn Farr ( 7 points)
- Comms Net ( 2 points)
= 27 total ship cost

GR-75 Medium Transports (18 points)
- Comms Net ( 2 points)
= 20 total ship cost

1 Tycho Celchu ( 16 points)
5 A-Wing Squadrons ( 55 points)

After a couple of iterations, I've come to the conclusion that Liberty isn't meant to be a dedicated carrier - at least in the sense of squadron commands every round. It can - and can be effective at that - but the real power in Liberty is flexibility. You can get an engineering or a maneuver while still activating 2 squadrons with just a token. The idea is to aggressively use anti-squadron fire to clear the way for a-wings to do anti-ship runs. If I face a max bomber list, the idea is to tarpit as well as possible with the A-wings while using gunnery teams to hit the enemy bombers with double blacks, along-side the escort frigate and both transports. The Comms Nets keep Liberty in squadron tokens and Salvation in concentrate fire tokens. The TRC90 is, of course, long-range fire or a good flanker. Madine sits on it because I plan to use the transports aggressively enough to risk losing them.

The XX-9 turbolasers are placeholders for the dual turbolaser turrets from the Arquitens, when they come out.

Downgrade Salvation to a support Frigate. Move intel officer here and think about DTT or Spinal armament.

Put Raymus on the Liberty to give 4 squadrons a turn. Flight controllers might be fun but this stops the front double shot using gunnery teams so makes the turbolasers less valuable.

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Put Raymus on the Liberty to give 4 squadrons a turn.

I'm not sure if I'm missing something but how will Raymus give 4 squadron activations a turn if OP is planning not to use squadron commands on the Lib but to feed it tokens from Comms Net instead?

I think Garm could work well with Liberty, as opposed to Madine. Free 2 Squadron activation at the beginning and late rounds, but then I'd also consider trading 2 of the smaller ships for another Neb, just for the sake of Garm.

But definitely follow Mad Cats advice and downgrade salvation to a Support Neb.

The theory here with liberty makes some sense, however what is the benefit in Liberty getting two squads activated via a token that the flotilla could have activated with a dial?

Now if one of the flotillas was your flagship I could see why it wouldnt want to be near the enemy. In this case they are not.

With lib activating squads, the squad attacks will be redirected with the knowledge that x17 is about to follow up. If you went for brace blocking h9 instead it might work out better for a mass damage approach.

Subsequently, slaved turrets or spinal armanent on salvation to fit into the mass damage approach.

So, based on the feedback here, it seems that the universal sentiment is to downgrade Salvation to a Support Refit. Which is disappointing, because I really like the Escort Frigate, but if it's more effective, it's more effective.

That leaves me 6 points to work with. Ginkapo made an excellent point about the anti-synergy of xi7s with squadrons that I hadn't considered. I do think that h9s are a better fit with the list. The automatic accuracy means that the intel officer is less useful at eliminating braces (not useless, certainly, but less useful), and so I think it would be a better fit on Salvation. The 2 points spent upgrading xi7s to h9s leave 4 left. Since Xi7s tend to be an upgrade that is most useful if the majority of offensive ships are using them, as otherwise the redirects can be saved for the attacks that don't have them, Salvation's turbolasers ought to change as well. One solution is to swap out for Slaved Turrets - an extra dice is powerful. Since the frigate doesn't have the heavy anti-squadron fire of the Escort variant, losing the second attack isn't as big of a deal. The 4 leftover points can go towards upgrading the DTTs on Liberty (proxied by XX-9s in Warlords) to Spinal Armaments. If Intel Officer on the Liberty is important enough, we can downgrade to a Star Cruiser, using the 7 points saved to replace the intel officer. I don't much like that idea off the top of my head though.

I feel much less comfortable with this fleet's ability against squadrons. 6 A-Wings and the black anti-squadron dice from the flotillas (and maybe the double blacks from the Liberty, if I don't downgrade it for the sake of Intel Officers) are a thin line to hold up against a Rhymerball or a Y-Wing swarm like the one JJ ran at Worlds. That's why I had the Escort Frigate in the first place. On the other hand, we are much more deadly against flotillas.

Another option would be to upgrade the xi7s on Salvation to Spinal Armaments. That would leave Liberty with only 4 red dice out the front instead of 5, meaning that flotillas are more likely to survive a front arc shot. DTTs still help with that, though. At some point, a rerolled (not quite the mechanic, I know, but it works out to very close to this - it's more like roll 2, pick the highest) red dice is statistically similar to just adding another one. And the points savings can't be argued with. With the last point, a Medical Team or Skilled First Officers on Liberty is likely better than a 1-point bid. Since Liberty can effectively use any command effectively, Slicer Tools is less of a threat, meaning that Medical Team is likely the better investment.

I like this version better, as it leaves me the option to do flak fire with Salvation if I need to - and Toryn Farr means that one blue dice is still nasty. There's a little more anti-ship punch here. I'm still nervous about my anti-squadron coverage, but it might just be paranoia on my part.

Here's the updated list - do you think it's an improvement?

Hope for Liberty v3
Author: Onidsen

Faction: Rebel Alliance
Points: 400/400

Commander: General Madine

Assault Objective: Most Wanted
Defense Objective: Contested Outpost
Navigation Objective: Dangerous Territory

MC80 Battle Cruiser (103 points)
- Liberty ( 3 points)
- Gunnery Team ( 7 points)
- Medical Team ( 1 points)
- H9 Turbolasers ( 8 points)
- Dual Turbolaser Turrets ( 5 points)
= 127 total ship cost

[ flagship ] CR90 Corvette A (44 points)
- General Madine ( 30 points)
- Turbolaser Reroute Circuits ( 7 points)
= 81 total ship cost

GR-75 Medium Transports (18 points)
- Toryn Farr ( 7 points)
- Comms Net ( 2 points)
= 27 total ship cost

GR-75 Medium Transports (18 points)
- Comms Net ( 2 points)
= 20 total ship cost

Nebulon-B Support Refit (51 points)
- Salvation ( 7 points)
- Intel Officer ( 7 points)
- Spinal Armament ( 9 points)
= 74 total ship cost

1 Tycho Celchu ( 16 points)
5 A-Wing Squadrons ( 55 points)

Card view link

Fleet created with Armada Warlords

Six A-wings + Flak fire from ships + Toryn should be enough anti-squadron. Honestly, even if you had the Escort Frigate, squadron battles will still often be a close run affair that hinge on your ability to maneuver in the squadron game more-so than your set-up. Given the A-wing flexibility, it might be possible to hit an Intel ship early in the engagement and kill it. If there's only one Intel ship, you've tied up the whole bomber ball, hopefully for the turns needed to kill their ships, which you hopefully outgun at this point. If there are two, then getting one of them can make it difficult for them to unlock the movement and attacks of all their ships at once. Generally speaking, you can't count on getting all of the bombers locked down, but if you're only taking shots from about half of them, that can often be the difference that decides the game.