Rapid launch bays is an interesting card. Finally, the ability to launch fighters with a hangar. Nifty, if worded a bit unclearly, but what’s the most you can make out of it? What is the upper-end extreme that you could do with this card if you really wanted to?
For me that immediate answer was sticking it on a rampaging ISD-I to drop five VT Decimators on a target and try to out-damage Demolisher.
ISD-I // Rapid Launch Bays / Expanded Hangars / Flight Commander
5x VT Decimators
...234 points.
I know by evoking the name of that card it will probably cause a lot of rules debate questions since I heard that was a thing. The way I’ve interpreted this card is thus: For your squadron value, when resolving a squadron command, you can place a squadron and activate it for one squadron command. In condensed terms, it means here activating your squadron command will let you drop all five VTs into place and then attack something with them.
I’ve only run this trick once and the results weren’t that spectacular (since for all of their dice, VTs lacking Bomber make the blue dice storm a little disappointing), but think of the potential. VTs are the most expensive Imperial fighter in the game, so any other fighter you want to take is only going to be cheaper in this configuration. Do you hate fighters? If the VTs aren’t working for you, switch to cheaper Tie Interceptors where you drop them into place and start tearing things up with swarm and counter. Or take TIE Defenders to be a little more well-rounded at the expense of battery dice volume. You could stuff six TIE Bombers in there, but why would you want to when you can instantly deliver five better fighters into a location and immediately attack with them at distance 1?
Moreover if you don’t have anything for your weapons teams to do, put Flight Controllers there. All of those fighters are activated by the carrier to benefit from the extra dice, and the Empire could love a few more blue dice when destroying things.
This configuration isn’t commander dependent, so if you want maximum potential out of it, take Sloane with six interceptors and start hurting things. You can take Motti to try surviving the inevitable counter-attack. Screed can come along for the ride while he’s really helping Demolisher, which you can tag-team with the hot-drop ISD to cause a lot of chaos at the end of your 3-speed movement.
An ISD with Expanded hangars is the only place to do this, as it’s the only place that can take both upgrades and do it at speed. The Rebels are forced to use it defensively, since many of their carriers with big fighter ratings are locked at speed 2, and can only activate squadrons if they aren’t pushing Engine Techs with their support teams. The Assault Frigate could probably do it, but only drop three squadrons, which isn’t as exciting as 5.
In the near future the Quasar Fire will be able to do this same trick for far less points, but with only two defense tokens it’ll be curious to see if it can survive long enough to make the attempt. On the other hand, a full-throttle Quasar Fire flying into the face of a Rebel attack force and dumping five TIE Interceptors (that all benefit from Stronghold on the counter attack), would be something to see. Just be sure to bring a battery-heavy ship somewhere because while Sloane can snipe defense tokens off something her fighters suddenly surround, you still need attack power to actually kill a ship.
Edited by Norsehound
For example: Dengar, Maarek, Jendon, Rhymer, Boba.
I'll actually do a check of specifics in a few minutes - its been Toddler and Tornado hell here...