Hey guys, so I played a small LGS tournament this weekend and tried my trusted Sato list with Norra and the Y-Babes and a juiced up Liberty + Pelta + Cr90 + Flotilla.

The Liberty and the Pelta have both been a bit disappointing.

First off, the Liberty, holy hell do you need to spam navigates for it to remain relevant throughout a match. I made the mistake of doing other commands in my 2nd match and it only ended up firing 3 times from its side arc, not a single front arc shot as I underestimated how little maneuverable it is at speed 2.

Secondly, man the Lib is squishy. It dies when something looks at it funny. Even an Interdictor was starting to bring some pain with 2 double arc shots. And again, you can't speed too much on engineering commands to heal it.

Mind you, it did an excellent job at destroying 2 Rieekan MC30s (I played my friend with the cancer list again), but it still died on the 3rd turn.

So, what are your tips on the Lib? Do as I just realized and spam navigates in hopes of getting behind your opponents? (without Madine it's a bit harder to do)?

Now, the Pelta...

I don't know what to do with it. Speed 2 means it can't escape anything, 5 hull means it can die pretty quick from a good roll. In 3 games, it exploded twice on the 3rd turn, meaning I couldn't do much with my squadrons afterwards. Can it equip boosted comms?

Hey guys, so I played a small LGS tournament this weekend and tried my trusted Sato list with Norra and the Y-Babes and a juiced up Liberty + Pelta + Cr90 + Flotilla.

The Liberty and the Pelta have both been a bit disappointing.

First off, the Liberty, holy hell do you need to spam navigates for it to remain relevant throughout a match. I made the mistake of doing other commands in my 2nd match and it only ended up firing 3 times from its side arc, not a single front arc shot as I underestimated how little maneuverable it is at speed 2.

Secondly, man the Lib is squishy. It dies when something looks at it funny. Even an Interdictor was starting to bring some pain with 2 double arc shots. And again, you can't speed too much on engineering commands to heal it.

Mind you, it did an excellent job at destroying 2 Rieekan MC30s (I played my friend with the cancer list again), but it still died on the 3rd turn.

So, what are your tips on the Lib? Do as I just realized and spam navigates in hopes of getting behind your opponents? (without Madine it's a bit harder to do)?

Now, the Pelta...

I don't know what to do with it. Speed 2 means it can't escape anything, 5 hull means it can die pretty quick from a good roll. In 3 games, it exploded twice on the 3rd turn, meaning I couldn't do much with my squadrons afterwards. Can it equip boosted comms?

On the Pelta

It can, but I still prefer Hangar Bays. It makes Norra and the Y-Babes (it stuck!) to be 4 in number, and really put the hurt on something 3-4 times its size. At which point, realise you are punching well above your weight... It has a decent set of Navs, so its able to turn around and turn away , spreading over shields. if you feed it Tokens, it can also Engine Techs to be surprisingly speedy.

And the Liberty - well, again, its a matter of preference. I do find good speed control to be worthwhile - my Liberties rarely stay at the one speed for more than 2 turns in a row. Because then its Naving to Turn tighter, dropping speed, turning tight, jumping back up to speed to run over distance...

Secondly, man the Lib is squishy. It dies when something looks at it funny. Even an Interdictor was starting to bring some pain with 2 double arc shots. And again, you can't speed too much on engineering commands to heal it.

Mind you, it did an excellent job at destroying 2 Rieekan MC30s (I played my friend with the cancer list again), but it still died on the 3rd turn.

did its job, then

this is Armada, after all, things tend to do pretty quickly regardless of what they are. Trick is to get the right value out of them first

remember, our cruisers can't repel firepower of that magnitude!

I've had good luck with the Liberty at speed one and nav commands of course. On the Pelta I'm trying hard to make the modified assault version work, the best tip is Engine Techs are a must. From there keep in mind it's a black die ship with lol I'm sorry no ordnance experts and pretty mediocre everything else. I have been flying a 5 to 6 ship list so the shields to maximum have not been all bad. Overall the assault version of the Pelta is challenging to use successfully.

I played a Liberty throughout most of the wave 4 regional season, so I'll comment specifically on that ship.

First, there is a night and day difference between whether you're running Madine in your list or not. I've almost exclusively run Madine, and he make a world of difference in what you can do with a Liberty. He's pretty essential if you really want to swing behind things, but then you really want to be able to stack Nav tokens with the nav dial and have Engine Techs. That creates an absolutely huge threat range and yes, you will finally be able to turn in behind your opponent if they're not careful, and you can continue to make threats throughout the entirety of the game.

Second, if you're not running Madine, you really need to have a list that has a plan to hit hard ahead of the Liberty, because you really need to destroy key units before the opponent reaches your Liberty. Some combination of Nav and Eng might be in order here so that you ensure that your Liberty sticks around.

Third, Nav Team is a poor man's Madine. You won't have near as much flexibility as you would with Madine, but being able to turn that token into a key point of yaw might be all you need, or a token+dial into 2 click. This does come at the expense of all the Madine/Raymus/ET threat range that I like to pull, but its going to do a lot to keep that front arc focused, and speed-1 with token for 2 yaw or speed-2 with token/dial are going to keep you focused when you need to be.

Fourth, dials. Nav is still probably more important than the other commands, but you want to figure out a good sequence. In my Madine list, I'd think that Nav-CF-Nav was the most usual setting. I found that I had a nav token most of the time on turn-2 and could either spend it for yaw or a speed change as needed on turn-2, which also left ET a possibility. I was usually deployed so that I didn't need to spend it on turn-1, and by the end of turn-1, I was usually at the speed I needed to have and still had a shot on turn-3 without needing to nav, so the nav on turn-3 set up both escape hatches and position for any turn-4 shots. Depending upon match-up, sometimes Eng was useful on turn-3 perhaps while slow-rolling a bit against a list where I expected to have my turn-4 shot anyway and expected my opponent to focus his primary attention on my Liberty. The real trick is in turns 4-5-6. That just requires experience.

From experience, I find the Liberty has a steeper learning curve than most of the other Rebel ships, but once you get it down, it is effective. Just don't expect to slug things out. In fact, if we look at the term "Battlecruiser," the basic idea back when BCs were invented going into WWII was that the ship could outgun anything smaller than it but could run away from anything larger. That's really the key to playing it well in game. If you're slugging it out with something, you're likely to be on the loosing end of that. If you're taking clear shots of opportunity and then making your escape you've got. In my list, I knew exactly what I needed to do with my list to kill every unit in the game, so rather than having a LIberty slug it out, there was usually a key shot or two followed by an escape. Once you get the concept of escape down, your Liberty will stop dying just because something looks at it funny.

Well, thx for the tips. I guess the Pelta is really the one I struggle with, as what Vergilius said is what I experienced as well. Madine makes the MC80 shine, but he's less useful with other ships honestly (let's just say I still have not found his niche).

In the tournament, I still ended up 3rd over 8 players with 20 points after 3 games (9-2, 7-4, 4-7), with my first game going 263-0 against a guy who brought a no squadron, no Konstantine list... the Interdictor, the raider and the flotilla melted to the Y-Wings. The other guy had 2 ISDs and 10 Tie Fighters, but a maneuver I did with the MC80 forced him to correct his trajectory with one of his ISDs in such a way that he went over the board on turn 4. Unfortunately, that's the game I also stacked engineering and CF commands on the Lib, so it did basically nothing that game (still won the match thx to that ISD that left the board).

Still, the Command Pelta is a weird carrier to me. It's good at sending squadrons, but you can't rely on it on being your main carrier as it dies too easily. I still prefer the MC80 Command for that role and heck, even Yavaris because Yavaris can escape at speed 3 if needed...

commenting only on the Liberty:

1. there is a huge difference between Battlecruiser and Star Cruiser.

Star Cruiser is all about Engine Techs, Nav Commands, and maneuvrability. it is best used with Madine and the best use for "conventional" lists.

Battlecruiser is a Red Dice monster, used in lists with lots of red dice. it is basicaly a part of some Nebulon Phalanx or something similar, where you go speed 1 all game and wage a war of attrition, stick your units packed super tightly together and start firing with red dice and Intel Officers. in this list, you are supposed to use concentrate fire for two turns and engineering for all the rest of the game.

Very much agree with Vergillius. I think its a bit of a waste to not take Engine Techs on the Lib - its the only big ship that can get to (effective) speed four, so use it.

With the pelta, ive paired the assault with Libs in my last couple of games armed with ET and Expanded Launchers, making it a very manouverable speed 3 with a lot of dice out of the front. It compliments the Lib well. I also added Major Derlin to reduce squishyness slightly.

I'll second (third?) everything Vergilius said.

I've run a nav team Battlecruiser as a speed 3 flanker with moderate success. I find the key is using it in a high-deployment list. If you can deploy the Liberty last, you'll have a better idea of how exactly to place it so its course trajectory keeps it out of dangerous enemy arcs, but keeps them within its own front arc. It is definitely squishy, so stay out of those enemy danger zones!

Walex Blissex also helps - allows you to burn that lone redirect and not feel so bad about it.