I'm just starting out with Armada (play mostly X-wing) and trying to stick to a fairly reasonable budget. I've ended up with three VSDs (a core set swap and found an outrageously cheap expansion pack). What's the best way to make use of them in a list? (I know I'm going to have to buy some more stuff). I realise it's not going to be a world beater but I'm keen to start getting some games in while I find my feet. Any advice is greatly appreciated

I haven't played with 3 VSDs myself, so I haven't any tested advice to give. That aside, work with their strengths. Perhaps a VSD-I fleet with lots of Red dice and good squadrons would make up for their slow speed. Vader could help with re-rolls, and each VSD has a good squadron value. Pick objectives to highlight their advantages (or at least mitigate their disadvantages), such as: Opening Salvo, and Fleet Ambush.

Practice deployment and maneuvering the 3 VSDs, so they don't crash into each other.

If I had 3 VSDs, I'd experiment with something like this:

VSD-I, Vader, Spinal, Tua, ECM

VSD-I, Spinal

VSD-I Spinal

Rhymer, Stele, Jendon, Tempest, Strom, Dengar

Opening Salvo, Fleet Ambush, Dangerous Territory

Way to go dude, Victories are fun.

They need some help maneuvering though. If you are running three as carriers think about using Tarkin to hand out tokens and add a bomber wing for the extra threat.

For VSD gunships consider getting an Arquitens Cruiser with Moff Jerjerrod, he adds the extra maneuverability to keep the ships pointed towards the enemy. Personally I like Dual Turbolaser Turrets and Ordnance Experts on the VSD1, but you can make a lot of builds work. Veteran Gunners are popular, too.

Play casual games and proxy some cards to test what suits you best before you commit to buy a set justo to get upgrade cards. For tournaments you will need those eventually.

You can also try a combination of both to gethe started (395 points):

VSD1 - Moff Jerjerrod - Dual Turbolaser Turrets - Ordnance Experts

VSD1 - Admiral Chiraneau - Boosted Comms

VSD1 - Boosted Comms

Arquitens Light Cruiser - Centicore Title

Mauler Mithel - Major Rhymer - TIE Fighter - TIE Advanced - 2x TIE Bomber

Objectives: Advanced Gunnery - Contested Outpost - Dangerous Territory

Not absolutely sure at the moment (it's late), but you should get all you need for this fleet with just a fighter pack and an Arquitens.

I would start with an Admiral that supports your ships if you have one.Jerr Jerrod has been mentioned, but there is also Konstantine, or Motti.

Though I would take Jerr Jerrod in this case.

A fleet of VICs turning on a dime would give anyone fits. Especially if they have gunnery teams.

Awesome advice guys, thanks for taking the time

My Triple VIC II list that I enjoy flying::::::

VIC II

Motti, Intel Officer, Gunnery Team, XI-7

VIC II

Intel Officer, Gunnery Team, XI-7

VIC II

Intel Officer, Gunnery Team, XI-7

TIE Interceptor X5

Opening Salvo, Contested Outpost, Minefields

Just want to throw out there that VSD's are a tough ship to play. They are slow, not very agile, and get torn apart by both bombers and large ship batteries because of those two characteristics. I know a lot of players look at VDS's and think they look tough only to lose a bunch and think it must be the games fault. For Armada, the VSD is a support ship. It works best when you have a bigger, juicier, or more dangerous target for it to shadow and provide either fighter or gunship support to it. This typically comes in the form of an Interdictor or less often an ISD. I would hesitate to call Interdictor + 2x VSD an established fleet, but it is one that when flown to capitalize on objectives that can score massive points, can be an effective turtle fleet.

For the Victory itself:

As far as Carriers go, currently they are effective in that role if you run them as close to naked as possible. Flight Controllers and/or Expanded Hangers are the only upgrades you should consider.

As gunships go they are ok, but again the closer to naked you run them the better. I would run them with only Veteran Gunners (the upgrade looks underwhelming, until you realize you get to lock in as many accuracies as you want before the reroll, so if you blank your reds but have 2 blue acc's you can lock them and reroll the rest of the pool). That said, they make a mediocre keystone gunship in a combat fleet. If you are good with them, you are going to get one full battery front arc shot on the target you want to shoot per game. If you aren't good, you are going to get a long range shot against that target and then it will dodge you. Disposable Capacitors coming in the next wave (circa June/July) will solve the latter problem by letting you use those blue dice at long range.

Essentially, the more you upgrade a VSD and get towards ISD cost the less reason you have to run them. There is hardly any scenario where 30 additional points on top of the VSD wouldn't be better spend upgrading to an ISD I because it just does everything better. If you keep them lean and mean, however, they have a lot of hull for the points and can bring a fair amount of damage to bear.

And example of that Interdictor turtle fleet I mentioned would be something like this. Just note that while I would say variants on this fleet (often subbing the victory gunship for multiple flotillas and bombers or a Gladiator I with Demolisher) this is not an "easy" fleet to fly. It is low on activations and requires second player to win, (thus the 9 point bid which should nab you choice of second in a fair amount of matches) so you are giving your enemy first AND last activation which means it will fly in a fast missile boat like an MC30 last part of turn 3, then activate it first in turn 4 for crippling damage and then scoot it safely out of range. That is what targeting scramblers is there to mitigate. Additionally, it leans heavily on a super-powered Tie alpha strike to eliminate enemy bombers. The ship damage will be consistent, but not enough to table an opponent. If you play Victories aggressively for the table you are going to lose every time. The objective setup pretty much guarantees most players will pick Station Assault, which you can Grav Shift them side by side into your deployment and essentially camp on at speed 1 while they hard charge toward them.

Interdictor Victories

Faction: Galactic Empire
Points: 391/400

Commander: Admiral Motti

Assault Objective: Station Assault
Defense Objective: Fire Lanes
Navigation Objective: Sensor Net

Victory II-Class Star Destroyer (85 points)
- Veteran Gunners ( 5 points)
= 90 total ship cost

Victory I-Class Star Destroyer (73 points)
- Flight Controllers ( 6 points)
- Expanded Hangar Bay ( 5 points)
= 84 total ship cost

[ flagship ] Interdictor-class Suppression Refit (90 points)
- Admiral Motti ( 24 points)
- Interdictor ( 3 points)
- Wulff Yularen ( 7 points)
- Projection Experts ( 6 points)
- Ion Cannon Batteries ( 5 points)
- Grav Shift Reroute ( 2 points)
- Targeting Scrambler ( 5 points)
= 142 total ship cost

1 "Howlrunner" ( 16 points)
1 Lambda-class Shuttle ( 15 points)
4 TIE Interceptor Squadrons ( 44 points)

Alternatively you could take a ton of shuttles with Valen as your fighter contingent. You have a lot of strategic push, and a lot of hull to chew through before Valen can be engaged.

For a time I was trying 3x VSDs with Vader to try making the best of thier damage output. Why it doesn't work comes down, still, to two things: Speed and protection. Without the former you can't contest the second player's objectives really well I think, and in the latter it makes you highly vulnerable to things like rampaging Devastators, or being plinked to death by repeated red dice attacks at range.

The VSD is supposed to be a cheaper mass-produced Star Destroyer but it's ended up with a lot of shortcomings as the game has evolved. The suggestion of "going light as possible" means the VSD can never be the star of the show in any list, a fact I find highly disappointing.

Another newbie here, slowly building up my collection. I came up with a list using two VSDs, basically using them as heavily armed carriers. The list is copied from my other thread: New Imp Player looking for guidance

Commander: Moff Tarkin

Victory II Star Destroyer (115pts)

• Corrupter
• Damage Control Officer
• Gunnery Team
• Expanded Hanger Bay
• Overload Pulse

Victory II Star Destroyer (118pts)

• Warlord
• Damage Control Officer
• Gunnery Team
• Expanded Hanger Bay
• Overload Pulse

Squadrons (128pts)

• 8x Tie Defender Squadrons

Total: 399 pts

I would encourage you to think about escort ships for your Victories. having 1-2 ships like Gladiators or Arquitens to protect the vulnerable flanks & rear of your VSDs would be really helpful.

For staying $ cheap, Motti with 3 VSD I-Class, gunnery teams on 2 and flight controllers on one (with expanded hangar bays on the one), and whatever turbolaser upgrades you have that cost 6 or less should work fine. Fill in the rest of your points with generic ties and Howlrunner. You shouldn't need to buy anything else with this makeup.

The way to fly it is to keep your ships together so they can concentrate fire. Another thing is to learn how to stagger speeds so that they can turn as a unit. Use lots of Nav commands on everything but the VSD with flight controllers. Use Squad commands on that.

For relatively cheap, buying the arquittens for Jerjerrod can work very well with the Vics, and either imperial squad pack would greatly help as well. Specifically the lamda.

Recently threw together a Victory list I thought might be interesting, so I will throw it in here, have not tried it yet so can't speak to its efficiency though. Should not be too expensive either, think it would only require you to buy two packs of Fighter I, though I can't recall where to get the cards.

Imperial fleet- 397/400 pts

Commander- Moff Jerjerrod (23 pts)

Flagship- Victory I, Corrupter, Admiral Chiraneau, Boosted comms, Spinal armaments (101 pts)

Ship 1: Victory I, Flight controllers, expanded hangar bays, Spinal armaments (93 pts)

Ship 2: Victory I, Spinal armaments (82 pts)

Squadrons: (98 pts)
Major Rhymer Tie Bomber (16 pts)
x3 Tie Bomber squadron (36 pts)
Soontir fel Tie interceptor (18 pts)
x2 Tie Advanced (24 pts)
Tempest squadron Tie Advanced (13 pts)

10 hours ago, Dameon13 said:

Another newbie here, slowly building up my collection. I came up with a list using two VSDs, basically using them as heavily armed carriers. The list is copied from my other thread: New Imp Player looking for guidance

Commander: Moff Tarkin

Victory II Star Destroyer (115pts)

• Corrupter
• Damage Control Officer
• Gunnery Team
• Expanded Hanger Bay
• Overload Pulse

Victory II Star Destroyer (118pts)

• Warlord
• Damage Control Officer
• Gunnery Team
• Expanded Hanger Bay
• Overload Pulse

Squadrons (128pts)

• 8x Tie Defender Squadrons

Total: 399 pts

Ok, let's say you really want to have a 2 big activation fleet, and that's it. It's not an optimized fleet, because you are going to be giving away tactical advantage and be very susceptible to missile boats like Demolisher.

But just comparing apples to apples, if that fleet (or any of the 3 Victory fleets posted here for that matter) fought the fleet I posted below who would win? The VSD's do not have the manueverability to prevent the ISD from outflanking it, and there is simply no way the VSD's will outpace the ISD's on damage ship to ship or in the squadron fight.

I think the issue is that people are continually trying to force the VSD to be something it isn't. They want it to be a cheaper ISD, but it isn't. It's an escort ship, a support ship. It is not the centerpiece gunship of your fleet. It works best when it can get in the way of the thing your enemy WANTS to attack and force them to make hard decisions about whether they want to race through it's danger zone and let it plink away at them to get to the prime target or fire at the VSD which has a lot of hull and (if not heavily upgraded) probably isn't worth the points for the time it will take to remove from the board. If you put a 120 point VSD on the board I will kill it, disengage, and take the 7/4 win and you will get frustrated that you can't win games.

Faction: Galactic Empire
Points: 400/400

Commander: Admiral Motti

Assault Objective: Precision Strike
Defense Objective: Contested Outpost
Navigation Objective: Superior Positions

Imperial I-Class Star Destroyer (110 points)
- Skilled First Officer ( 1 points)
- Flight Controllers ( 6 points)
- Expanded Hangar Bay ( 5 points)
= 122 total ship cost

[ flagship ] Imperial I-Class Star Destroyer (110 points)
- Admiral Motti ( 24 points)
- Relentless ( 3 points)
- Skilled First Officer ( 1 points)
- Gunnery Team ( 7 points)
- Dual Turbolaser Turrets ( 5 points)
= 150 total ship cost

8 TIE Defender Squadrons ( 128 points)