Hello Everyone!

My name is Nick Griffiths and I took 2nd at GenCon this last weekend. I figured I would post a little bit about my list, strategies, and findings during this year's NA Champs.

Now that all the hustling and and bustling of GenCon is over, I can finally sit down and put to paper some of the awesome stuff I saw this year and my journey through it. Ultimately I am also hoping that I can convince some of the general populace that play this game that few ship activation lists are not garbage :).

My List:

-Captain's Crew-

points: 379

Ships:

-ISD 1 "Calypso" (White colored ship)

--Flight Controllers, Boosted Comms, Motti

-ISD 1 "Domino" (Black colored ship)

--Flight Controllers, Boosted Comms

Fighters:

- Maarek Steele

-Mauler Mithil

-Morna Kee

-Darth Vader

-Major Rhymer

-Zertik Strom

I already know what many of you are thinking. OMZMGOMGMZOMG TWO ACTIVATIONS?! HOW CAN THAT BE! YOU DON'T HAVE 73 FLOTILLAS? HOW DID YOU EVEN REMOTELY DO WELL?! Well my caps lock oriented friend, I will hopefully shed some light on that. The main thing to note about less activations is that yes, you do need to be generally smarter with them. Since you don't have the ability to activate as strategically as you want, the main thing to focus on is making sure your activation are big and important. As a carrier player since the game's initial release, few ships rival the activation economy that is the Imperial Class Star Destroyer. I LOVE THIS SHIP. I feel it is one of the best, if not the best imperial carrier ship for many reasons. The biggest is that in one activation you can scramble a good chunk of fighters, move fast, arc dodge really well (you read that right), tank like a beast, and fire a big big gun. Other ships tend to be more specialist in their execution. The ISD is meant to be more generalist with a focus on being a tank and hitting hard. Going back to my point about powerful activations, if you are going to capitalize on doing a lot with one ship, you need to make sure the ship is capable of performing multiple roles. I can talk about this waaaaaay more but instead I will leave it at that and focus on the upgrades and general use of each ship and squadron.

Why ISD 1? To be quite honest, its about the points. For a low activation list like this you need to go first. You NEED initiative. Now, that doesn't mean you can't win by going second, but you definitely should try to snag it if you can. 385 point lists will cover about 3 standard deviations of players bids and pretty much assuring you going first if you want. I wanted to cover the outliers that may have bid super high just in case. Otherwise, the ISD 1 is a perfectly capable carrier and while going speed 3 you can assure that anything that gets within close distance is going to take some punishment. More on that in a bit.

Why Motti? The golden question. Simply put, I didn't have enough time to practice with Sloane, but I do feel Motti is very very very good for low activation lists. Especially the kinds that bring bigger ships for that tasty 6 extra HP. He provides comfort when the heat is on and you don't have ECMs or other ways to shrug off damage. Also is he pretty darn cheap.

Why...

-Steele: He hits really hard, can manipulate his attack pool, super fast, and always land a crit when needed. his utility is hard to match and his presence on the board is strong

-Mithil: I honest to god think he is the best squadron in the game. Especially now that Rhymer got readjusted. His damage throughout the game tends to be higher than most other squadrons due to his ability alone. Even if it doesn't hit everyone, the opponent tends to be on edge with their squadrons and more than likely puts them in disadvantages positions in an effort to avoid his ability. He is control + damage. Few match that capability.

-Morna: This woman is my hero. She fulfills so many roles and provides support everywhere I need it. She is rogue so even when I lose an ISD and I have full squads I can activate her. She throws 3 DICE AT SHIPS. and her ability allows her to manipulate them really well. Free rerolls and she gets back her defense tokens. In addition she is a bullet sponge and she can take damage from Strom for rerolls. She is a slow fatty at speed 3 but that flaw is easily overlooked considering her other capabilities.

-Vader: One of my all time favorite squadrons. I have seen this guy kill x-wings from full HP to 0 on MULTIPLE occasions. He is my ace cracker, normie killer, and pseudo-bomber. He has escort (which often times I find a liability but not always.), speed 4, and is kind of control due to people either immediately wanting him dead or running from him.

-Rhymer: Mainly for obvious reasons, but he still plays a pretty important role, despite his nerf. He helps squadrons catch fleeing ships, and due cool alpha strikes on ships. The problem with taking him anymore is that with all of the fighters people are bringing, this type of list just needs more anti-squadron and utility. I may remove him later down the road but for now he is fine on this crew.

-Zertik: The newest addition to the team. I needed another escort fighter that can manipulate dice. he has that in spades. Despite his weird die pool, his ability to reroll for 1 damage is really good. Especially against ships.

The main tactic with many of these fighters is die manipulation. I have it for both anti-squad and anti ship in this list. It is very useful and since I don't like flotillas I don't have the ability for bomber command (especially since I moved away from basic bombers since making 5th at 2015 GenCon Nationals). I tend to go for fighters first when I play. They are easy points to acquire and with the field swept I can then turn my attention to ships. Also I don't believe in Intel so I don't like running away from fighter fights and instead just blow through them. I have practiced A TON to be able to make this strategy work. Hopefully there are others on these forums that have played me that can attest to how committed I am to attempting to remove all fighters on the board lol. Sometimes it doesn't work in my favor but many times it does.

Flight Controllers: I never leave home without it. My favorite upgrade. It increases fighter power by a ton! gives me the edge in fighter fights so that I can clean them up faster to move on to ships more quickly.

Boosted Comms. Some say this upgrade is a crutch. I would highly disagree. The ability to let my squadrons roam and not worry about ship positioning is critical. Especially when I need to be as careful as I am with my movements with the big guys so that I can arc dodge and be in prime positioning. This ability allows me to do just that.

Battle Reports:

Now I don't remember names, and I don't remember lists well. So I am going to do my best and you will have to deal with it lol. I know the ships and the general gameplay but basically I fought the same type of list 3 times on Friday.

Match 1: Yavaris + Floats + Guppy+ Lots O Squads (10- 1)

Match 2: Yavaris + Floats + MC80 + Lots O Squads (9-2)

Match 3: Yavaris + Floats + Pelta + Lots O Squads (7 - 4)

I am going to group this report into one since the matches went very similarly. Essentially I knew I was going to play this. I understand this type of list is very popular right now due to its competitive presence and it was exactly what I was hoping to fight. I could elaborate in great detail how these matches had gone but I am going to give the general idea. I don't write on forums very often and don't like to type a ton despite the length of this post lol. So when going against a list like this you have to do some quick math. I will be conservative with these estimates but lets say I do just OK in the squad battle. That means that I can TIE up (see what I did there? ) their squadrons and he ties up mine. So that leaves his ships vs mine. Yavaris and any other ship without many upgrades simply can't withstand firepower of that magnitude. That isn't me being arrogant its just the ISD is too bulky and the natural gun on them is very heavy hitting. It doesn't need a ton of upgrades to be a powerful shot. So when their squads are occupied or dead that means their offensive capabilities go away with it. Ultimately that is my issue with spamming flotillas because despite their utility and activation spread they don't do anything for offense. So I will run my speed 3 ISD up to you and then fire and keep you in arc. How most of those matches went was that my alpha strike was pretty strong and then afterwards I would go after the other ships or flotillas.

Match 4: ISD Boarding Party Avenger (I have dubbed this the Party Bus) + Quasar + Gozanti + Lots O Squads (3 - 7).

There is a preface to this match. I had to DM 32 hours of Alternity all weekend for Baldman Games and since FF tourneys never finish on time I had to rush this game. I wont take that win away from my opponent though. He played very well and even if I wasn't rushing I may have still made critical mistakes. This game went OK but I made a few really bad errors. He had about 20 more points in squads than me. Even though I didn't win the squad fight, I still held them up and killed a few in the process. The only issue is that I didn't go for the real targets in this game. The Quasar and Gozanti. I tried to go for the big guy. That didn't go well. Even though I didn't lose an ISD I didn't make up the points in squads. It was a very very good game I loved it despite me having to good.

I made top 4 after this.

Top 4 match 1: ISD Board Party Avenger + Quasar + Gozanti + Lots O Squads (7-3)

Yup, I played him again the next day right at the start. It was the comeback story I was hoping for. I understood what I needed to do but didn't before and I was able to take the Quasar and Gozanti, brake even in the squad fight and pretty much brake even in the precision strike points. Again, hard fought and was a great great game. Thing to note about this game and this opponent was that he had 3 activations :D.

Final Match: MC80 from **** + Funky Bunch of 4 Flotillas + VCXs and Jan.

I done goofed in this match. So here was an example of how I chose the wrong objective.

Choices:

Sensor Net: Def would have lost. He has too many fast activations.

Advanced Gunnery: I should have chose this one. I will explain later.

Fire Lanes: I chose this because I was dumb and didn't foresee the strategy that he was going to employ. The quick and dirty of it is that he used the VCXs to strategic before I could tie them up. He moved them and I couldn't get the points back. And in a desperate attempt to get more points I fed Motti to him. That MC80 was packed to the brim with all kinds of fun goodies like Intel Officer, Xi7, Engine Techs, ECM, Blast Doors, and others. He was just punching holes in my face that I couldn't avoid. In retrospect I should have choose advanced gunnery and gone for the fighters and did a cut and run. Though that wouldn't assure me a win it may have been a much better strategy than letting those tokens go.

TL:DR: Low ship activation lists don't have to suck and often times they don't. You just need to make sure that you are set up in a way that each activation is very potent and will protect you against their swarm activations. I have been running this list for a long long time and I have done very well with it in the past (multiple store championships, 1st at Indianapolis 40+ people 2 day tourny, 2015 gencon top 5 (it was VSDs at the time but still), and other wins). I like to think they have the ability to do well. People will just need to switch up their mindset.

Thanks for reading everyone and hopefully this provides some insight into my list choice. Also hopefully I will get to see some of you at World's.

P.S: Sorry about the spelling errors and perhaps lack of elaboration on stuff. I normally don't write on forums and its like 1:30 am here so I am a bit tired lol.

-Capt. Griff

As someone who loves ISDs thanks for your tips and insight. Great run!

Thanks for sharing. This is eye-opening.

9 hours ago, Capt. Griff said:

few ships rival the activation economy that is the Imperial Class Star Destroyer.

This quote, so true! Cheers for the write-up. Gives a Reb like me a lot to think about

Good job with placing second!

Glad to see lower activations putting up some data points post flotillae. Hopefully this will shake things up for those who have wrongly rejected the game for being all about activation spam. Perhaps the "pass rule" people will calm down and maybe try some of these type lists out as well. Not holding my breath on that one though. If the past serves as a rule, we are more likely to get "NERF DOUBLE ISD" threads than anything... Ha!

I'm sad you didn't get to experience strategic more often in the run up to this tournament... AG, or any red for that matter becomes easy auto pick when you don't have strategic. One of the holes in this game imo.

Cheers

Yay another person who loves Morna Kee as much as I do! Love your squadron make up in general. I have been running something very similar but with Jendon and Valen Rudor (for Shara Bey insurance) instead of Boosted Coms and Vader. I find Jendon in that squad make up is pure win because Steele isn't even an auto pick for the double attack, every single squad in list in different circumstances is an excellent double shot candidate. A Rhymer range boosted Morna Kee double tapping a flottila turns activation economy into easy points economy especially, but there is no arguing that you killed it with your make up!

Congrats and thanks for the write up!

grats. Always good to see double ISD

How favorable do you think your first 3 match ups were? When I ran 2x ISD i loved those types of Rebel MSU lists as they didn't have the punch like demo msu to get through the ISD. Interested to see if you found the same thing to be true.

@Capt. Griff

Thanks for the write up! Awesome and congrats!! Gives me a little hope for my 3 VSDs, but also makes me think about switching to 2 ISDs. I appreciate the AAR

5 hours ago, BrobaFett said:

Yay another person who loves Morna Kee as much as I do! Love your squadron make up in general. I have been running something very similar but with Jendon and Valen Rudor (for Shara Bey insurance) instead of Boosted Coms and Vader. I find Jendon in that squad make up is pure win because Steele isn't even an auto pick for the double attack, every single squad in list in different circumstances is an excellent double shot candidate. A Rhymer range boosted Morna Kee double tapping a flottila turns activation economy into easy points economy especially, but there is no arguing that you killed it with your make up!

Congrats and thanks for the write up!

As you dais Jendon make good everywhere squash.

I used Jendon with IG-88 or saber to kill Intel among scort,( in my area bigs and 5-6 xwing is common if they use bombers a rebels)

Congrats on a nice run! Good to see ISDs do work!

Also neat to see an Ackbar list with no Bombers do well! It's felt like for the past year or so everything Rebel has been Reikaan + Bombers or some descendant thereof, so a great final to remind us all just how good large ships can be!

Can you post your objectives @Capt. Griff?

@n00bzilla99 Even though I didn't plan to play them very often I was rolling with this:

1. Precision Strike - Even though I don't play with many actual bombers anymore, this is an amazing objective for squadron lists. As long as you can land one or two damage cards on an enemy ship, your ability to rake in points is absolutely bonkers.

2. Fighter Ambush- Fairly standard for squad lists. You DO NOT have to forward deploy when you take this objective. I typically just deploy as normal after I put my two ships down. use it mainly as an objective where pretty much I am the only person who can score from it.

3. Superior Positions - This is also par for the course with fighter squadrons for the obvious reasons of getting behind enemy ships and getting a TON of points.

The ones I played against during the convention were mainly precision strike and superior positions since my opponents had them as well.

Thank you so much! @Capt. Griff

I did want to know what you thought of the Ackbar list that won. Did he have anything special on the Flotillas or just... flotillas?

@n00bzilla99 Oh that list was tight. In most other games I play I really like super units and his MC80 is like a callback to that. One big ship that messes everyone up. Alongside being heavy hitting, his list had a ton of utility such as having the good versatile fighter list with the VCXs and floatillas. The floatillas each had a special role. I believe one had Adar, one had Com Net, and another had Bright Hope. I forget, but it was a fun list to go against. Definitely frustrating to fight lol.

Thanks for the detailed write up!

I am happy the day of the low activation fleet, AND that of the Strategic fleet, has come. Now if only I could get to a major tourney!!!

Thanks a lot for sharing your experience.

I have slightly mixed feelings : On one side, I deeply feel that your list would be much better with Jendon instead of the boosted coms, and including avenger + boarding troopers for just 8 points is (unfortunately) a no-brainer to me.

Yet on the other side, I think that you've proven your list to be strategically brilliant : Your list wrecks the most popular North American archetype (Yavaris, Aces, one nice ship, transports), and your victories attest that you made the right choices (Motti, double Flight controllers with a 15-point bid for a very strong ISD + 4 top squads 1st activation each turn)

Against Jeff Berling's list, I think fire lanes and sensor net are almost lost causes, I'd be surprised if Jeff ever lost a game playing on one of these two objectives. But I think there is a game vs. his advanced gunnery indeed. And I agree it looks like a simple squadron skirmish victory is the best way.

I have the highest respect for Jeff and what he brought to X-wing, and now to Armada, yet I really dislike what his list means in terms of competitive flavor (and the whole cohort of lists with 1 power house ship + a high number of flotillas)

And despite my comments on your list, I think you managed to make your point :

1) low activation fleets can be competitive

2) ISDs are the great overall ships they should be in this game

3) There is more than 2 archetypes (1) squadrons do everything (2) one superior ship + loads of flotillas

and these three points are extremely refreshing for the game !

It reminds me when PT106 unleashed his squadron-less Demolisher-less "ISDs + raiders" list last year and won a couple regionals with it : the fact that you could do well with such "outlier" lists is a pure rekindling source for my love for this game !

Fantastic report!

About all I could have added to anyone else's comments, on seeing your list, is...

...man, the Empire could REALLY have used you at Scarif!

When I read that a two activation list achieved such a standing in a major tournament, I thought that this is simply impossible. Your opponents should have last-first the **** out of you.

Then I saw your bid. Now I can understand. Your achievement was not impossible in these circumstances, but merely incredibly difficult. Well played, Sir, and congratulations to your great achievement. Better to be second with two ISDs than to be first with MSU!

Wow, well done and consider this newbie very inspired!

Ironically enough my second ISD arrived in the mail yesterday!

Well done capt Griff and thanks for the write up!

You raise some really interesting ideas, particularly for me the point that the ISD plus squads basically negates all the flotillas. That said I wouldn't have the nerve to run this sort of list without leading shots, avenger, boarding troopers etc etc. Which of course would detract from the core strategy.

13 hours ago, Capt. Griff said:

@n00bzilla99 Oh that list was tight. In most other games I play I really like super units and his MC80 is like a callback to that. One big ship that messes everyone up. Alongside being heavy hitting, his list had a ton of utility such as having the good versatile fighter list with the VCXs and floatillas. The floatillas each had a special role. I believe one had Adar, one had Com Net, and another had Bright Hope. I forget, but it was a fun list to go against. Definitely frustrating to fight lol.

I appreciate your feedback sir!

Nice write up Griff. In your final match, did you win the bid? Do you think taking 2nd player might have been a better strategy?

32 minutes ago, Kristjan said:

Nice write up Griff. In your final match, did you win the bid? Do you think taking 2nd player might have been a better strategy?

I did win bid by 6 points I believe. I still think going first was an appropriate choice, but I definitely shouldn't have taken that objective lol. The reason being that 1st allows me to activate and run or always to attempt to make a big play before my opponent does.

I played you in the third round, even though I did lose, it looks like I at least did the best of the 3 similar lists you played. (maybe a small consolation prize for my feelings?)

I thought I had it going into the game, but I was definitely wrong. My squadron dice were a little cold, but honestly, dice rarely make much of a difference. it usually equals out in the end. I do think there's something to your list of people thinking it's weak since it only has 2 activation. I certainly underestimated the list.

At the end of the day, I got beat by a great player who knew his list very well. The extra speed of his fighters made a big difference compared to my very slow rebel ones, it allowed a small mistake moving jan to turn onto a huge problem. I really got outplayed in that squadron fight.

It was a fun game that I enjoyed even though I lost, and it goes to prove that great PLAYERS win big tournaments, not great LISTS.

Nice job @Capt. Griff hope to play you again in the future.

Was the final Armada battle at GenCon recorded?

If so, is there somewhere we could go to watch it? Always great to watch nop-notch players.