There's an upcoming non-championship tournament at my LGS this weekend. Our player base is small and, from what I've seen, is weighted to the Imperials. I realized that I haven't had my Rebels out in force yet, so it might be nice to bring them and maybe balance things out more. The core of my force is built around a kitted out MC80 Liberty class, so I'm obviously not going for a MSU list. I currently have two list ideas, as follows:

***** Fleet #1 *****

Points: 396/400

Commander: General Madine

Assault Objective: Advanced Gunnery
Defense Objective: Planetary Ion Cannon
Navigation Objective: Intel Sweep

[ flagship ] MC80 Battle Cruiser (103 points)
- General Madine ( 30 points)
- Mon Karren ( 8 points)
- Raymus Antilles ( 7 points)
- Gunnery Team ( 7 points)
- Engineering Team ( 5 points)
- Spinal Armament ( 9 points)
- XX-9 Turbolasers ( 5 points)
- Leading Shots ( 4 points)
= 178 total ship cost

Nebulon-B Support Refit (51 points)
- Salvation ( 7 points)
- Intel Officer ( 7 points)
- Dual Turbolaser Turrets ( 5 points)
= 70 total ship cost

CR90 Corvette A (44 points)
- Jainas Light ( 2 points)
- Intel Officer ( 7 points)
- Reinforced Blast Doors ( 5 points)
- Dual Turbolaser Turrets ( 5 points)
= 63 total ship cost

1 Hera Syndulla ( 28 points)
1 Corran Horn ( 22 points)
1 Wedge Antilles ( 19 points)
1 "Dutch" Vander ( 16 points)

***** Fleet #2 *****

Points: 399/400

Commander: General Madine

Assault Objective: Advanced Gunnery
Defense Objective: Planetary Ion Cannon
Navigation Objective: Intel Sweep

[ flagship ] MC80 Battle Cruiser (103 points)
- General Madine ( 30 points)
- Mon Karren ( 8 points)
- Raymus Antilles ( 7 points)
- Gunnery Team ( 7 points)
- Engineering Team ( 5 points)
- Spinal Armament ( 9 points)
- XX-9 Turbolasers ( 5 points)
- Leading Shots ( 4 points)
= 178 total ship cost

Nebulon-B Support Refit (51 points)
- Salvation ( 7 points)
- Intel Officer ( 7 points)
- Dual Turbolaser Turrets ( 5 points)
= 70 total ship cost

Nebulon-B Escort Frigate (57 points)
- Yavaris ( 5 points)
= 62 total ship cost

1 Hera Syndulla ( 28 points)
1 Wedge Antilles ( 19 points)
1 "Dutch" Vander ( 16 points)
2 X-Wing Squadrons ( 26 points)

Keep in mind I only have the Rebel Squadrons I & II packs, no Heros & Villains and I don't have time in the next few days to go pick them up. The first list has no ships really dedicated to squadron control, I went with the two Rogues (Horn & Hera), but Hera's ability will let me use still get some effective use from Wedge and Dutch though Wedge as the only Escort might get himself killed quickly. I feel this could use some improvement, but not sure what to do.

I prefer the 2nd list but that's because I love Nebulon Bs. It's also much stronger on the theme of maneuverable ships with forward firepower. Hera's got 2 more X-wings for Escort now so Wedge isn't alone and with Yavaris commanding some squadrons Wedge can put out more hurt. If I dropped the Battle Cruiser to a Star Cruiser I could fit Toryn onto the Yavaris, but I am doubtful as to if that'd be worth it.

So, thoughts?

[Edited for grammar and spelling]

I prefer list 2 . You can ditch the Engineering team as 7 repair points isn't that much better than 6 and it will probably be navigating some of the time.

Use the points for veteran captain for Yavaris or FCTs or both. Double tapping with 3 squadrons on crucial turns is great.

Thanks for the ideas. I did go ahead and ditch the Engineering Team. I don't own Fighter Coordination Team. For the moment I put Support Officer on Yavaris, as I feel he'd be more useful than Veteran Captain. I'd love to have Wing Commander but there isn't the points, and Skilled First Officer looked tempting but not as good as Support Officer.

I'm not sure either list is necessarily better or worse.

I've done Madine Liberty builds for a long time, with some pretty good results to show for it (highest placing Madine list at Worlds, 3rd/4th/5th in regionals, plus quite a few store tournament wins). Here are some thoughts:

1. Madine wants ships that really want to Nav most of the time. If you're not naving, you're not getting everything that you could be getting out of Madine. That could be in the form of a token, but then you have to have reliable ways to get tokens on your ships. Notice that in the lists above, I'm confused as to the command plan. Engineering team would seem to want to do Engineering commands, as that's the only thing that gets you good results out of that upgrade. So that outright conflicts with Madine. Engine Techs on the other hand is pretty much always useful, something you can do anytime you command dial nav or any time that you spend a token, which you're going to have in abundance with Raymus.

2. I find MK tends to want the right kind of build to thrive. The basic idea there is that you want to cede the opponent the right to use any token he wants, but you then use the title to limit him to exactly one. In that respect, it is a much more broadly flexible XI7 in most cases. But then you start thinking SC and SW-7 to count the accuracies as damage. You'd be better off in this build dropping it entirely and then either replacing XX-9 with XI7 or with H9.

3. Salvation is a good ship. One curious question I'd have is whether it would be possible to run it speed 2 or 3 as a flanker and then mostly Nav with it to keep the front arc turning and hitting as needed. When you start getting speed-3 Neb-Bs with Madine, there's quite the turn power. Normally with Salvation you want to CF to get the most out of the Salvation title, but the key with Madine is figuring out when your Nav commands might keep it alive longer and thus doing more damage over time. I've long thought to try ET on it with Madine, because a speed 3 plus ET might just yank it around wierdly and save it. I just haven't put it on the table yet and the ship becomes very expensive at that point.

4. Yavaris as a second Neb-B strikes me as inefficient. Ideally it wants to activate your squads, but then your squads all want to rogue around. So you're paying a little too much for one thing or the other.

I'd look at the ace squads and some of the upgrades (that's a really beefed out Jaina's), and see whether you can free up the points for a flotilla (the activation really starts to matter, 3 activations really hurts), and Bright Hope/Toryn could really buff the squadron game. A little more bid hurts, because lists like this really love going first, and when you start getting second plus activation disadvantage, it really hurts.

I don't want to make you to rebuild you're list completely, but these Neb don't really fit with your commander. So you if you want to upgrade your list and make it little bit more competitive I think you have three options:

1. Make changes towards utilising most from Madine. Listen to Vergilius, he knows what he's talking about, when it gets to Liberty & Madine.

2. Change your commander. You have mentioned that you love Nebulons. Fair enough, keep them, but change commander to one which works better with your fleet. Perhaps Garm Bel Iblis would be good with your high command ships? That would allow you to drop Raymus Antilles and take Intel Officer which I think would work good with X17 and Mon Karren (IO that brace, no redirects thanks to X17). And you can take Nav Teams to upgrade Liberty turns thanks to Garm tokens. Ashoka Tano would be great addition to ensure you have right token when you need it. You can save points by dropping Yavaris. Then you can slow roll and concentrate your attacks from all ships on 1 target. I didn't play like that, but it may work. Another option is General Dodonna, but it is different approach to the fleet again.

3. Perhaps drop Liberty and go with something else, but changing commander and your 150 points ship is basically going back to drawing board with your list.

Whatever you do, if you're not having a lot of activations, I would advise biding for first player. Last thing you want is giving your opponent last/first activation advantage. It is basically allowing him to do whatever he wants.

Both lists are viable.

I would pick the first one and rework the fighter screen using Shara and Tycho instead of Dutch and Hera and squeeze in another squadron, maybe by reducing Corran to a regular E-Wing.