My first Imperial fleet build (it probably needs a LOT of help!)

By deogg, in Star Wars: Armada Fleet Builds

(NOTE: IMO this list looks so dang light)

ISD II
Darth Vader
Devastator
Captain Needa
Redundant Shields
Turbolaser Reroute Circuits

ARQUITEN LIGHT CRUISER
Centicore
Reinforced Blast Doors
Enhanced Armament

ARQUITEN LIGHT CRUISER
Hand of Justice
Reinforced Blast Doors
Enhanced Armament

SQUADRONS
IG-88
Boba Fett
Bossk

THE BASIC PREMISE:
-Have the Arquitens running around broadside-ing everything with 5 red dice from long range (via EA and using Concentrated Fire), with Reinforced Blast Doors to help keep them each alive a little longer
-Darth just being all big and bad Darth aboard the Devastator (and of course to provide rerolls for the Arqs). Needa is there to convert a defense token to fuel the TRC. If I use the Concentrated Fire command, I could have 5 shots coming out the front of the ISD at long range.
-The bounty hunte......I mean, squadrons: I could probably do SO much better on this front. The thing is, with only 72 points available for Squardons, I doubt I have enough to drop in the stuff necessary for the Fireball engine.
NOTE: I am already debating changing at least one of the Arqs to the Command Cruiser. Then if/when I have to fire from my front arc, I'm still at least firing with 3 dice until I get to long range.

Edited by deogg

I've been trying Vader/Devastator recently; major problem is cost.

Suggestions: drop TRC for Gunnery Team, with Vader rerolling TRC is a waste. Keep Needa though, means you can dump your tokens quicker if you need to.

I'd be tempted to drop both EAs as 20pts for 2 extra red is pricey - maybe drop a Goz in for an extra activation or spend on squads or more upgrades for the ISD (RBD or XI7 maybe)

Squads is always the issue and I haven't found a decent solution yet.

Best test is to fly it ?

Edited by Kendraam

My major concern is that you overload the ships with expensive upgrades. Enhanced Armament on an Arquitens are a little overkill.

So a few other suggestions (Kendramm already said a few good parts).

The Light Cruiser cost base 54 points. But yours are at 72 and 73. Thats 33% more. But they do not really last much longer. The Blast Doors could help, but if your ship get destroyed before you can use them, they are wasted.
Try to remove all the upgrades from the two ships and try to add a 3rd light cruiser.

The Devastator Titel on the ISD is, the way you want to play it, a bit wasted (10 points are quite a lot). You want to keep the evade token for the TRC and you want to keep a token for Vader. This means you stand in your own way when it comes to the bonus from the titel. Either you wasted 10 points for the titel or you wasted 7 points (+2 for Needa) for the TRC. It might work for one turn, for a full damage hit. But i find it a bit wasted to spend this many points for opposing effects. Maybe drop one of these for the 3rd Arquitens.

One of the biggest problems of the arquitens is the maneuverability. They are so inflexible in their movement and easy predictable this way. Jerjerod is normaly a good commander for these. but i would suggest to play around with them, and see how it works. Sadly they really need a navigate command to be at least a bit flexible.
This, combined with only 3 ships, makes it really easy for the opponent to predict where they will be, and dodge them or force them into a trap.

One last word about the squadrons. My suggestion is to try them first and find it out for yourself if they fit to you or work against the opponent. But 3 squadrons is really low (it is only one deployment). And all these expensive uniques hurt really much. Especially Boba. He is way overpriced for the effect and the stats (i know, a lot think he is "the man". But in Armada he is what he really is: not really good :P).
Same with IG-88. He looks nice, with the scatter, the speed and the effect. But he is to expensive for it. IG-88 is a pure anti squadron fighter. Sadly he does not last long enough against these enemy squadrons in the way you want to play him (with only 3 squadrons). So you have a 21 point squadron, that will not last over the first combat turn (against some serious squadrons).
I can see that you want to use rogues, to keep them independent from the ships. And this is really a problem with the imperials (rebels have the better rogues). So my suggestion would be: test them, and see where you might have problems. My predictions is, that they will have no effect at all against a real squadron list, but will last a while against some lower squadron lists. And even when the opponent has no squadrons, they are still fine against ships.

I was a bit bored and meshed together something between Tokras/Kendraams suggestions and the spirit of your list.

Commander: Darth Vader

Assault Objective: Station Assault (I have no idea what red objective to take, this was the only one I thought might work but don't count on my word here)
Defense Objective: Fire Lanes
Navigation Objective: Solar Corona

[ flagship ] Imperial II-Class Star Destroyer (120 points)
- Darth Vader ( 36 points)
- Gunnery Team ( 7 points)
- Electronic Countermeasures ( 7 points)
= 170 total ship cost

Arquitens-class Light Cruiser (54 points)
- Hand of Justice ( 4 points)
= 58 total ship cost

Arquitens-class Light Cruiser (54 points)
= 54 total ship cost

Arquitens-class Light Cruiser (54 points)
= 54 total ship cost

4 TIE Fighter Squadrons ( 32 points)
2 Aggressor Assault Fighters ( 32 points)

Gunnery team is always worth the points on an ISD II in my opinion, if you can ever pull of two attacks at medium range you can do a lot of damage.
I would always prefer ECM or Reinforced Blast Doors over Redundant shields (turn 1 and six its kinda wasted and you can die with remaining shields on your destroyer).
The squadrons are intended to be commanded by the ISD (turn two and three) and the Rogues give some extra punch and hull points.

I kept Hand of justice because it goes so well with Vaders token spending needs)


Generally I would not take the Command Cruiser that seems like a waste of points to me in almost all cases.
Edit: Oh and the Arqs are more sturdy than they appear on first glance, you have a lot of shields and two redirect tokens. This makes them surprisingly sturdy.

Edited by Doppelganger
16 minutes ago, Doppelganger said:

Edit: Oh and the Arqs are more sturdy than they appear on first glance, you have a lot of shields and two redirect tokens. This makes them surprisingly sturdy.

Except: you run into Xi7. Then they pop real easy. Granted Xi7 are less prevalent now, but it's always important to keep in mind.

7 minutes ago, Doppelganger said:

Assault Objective: Station Assault (I have no idea what red objective to take, this was the only one I thought might work but don't count on my word here)

I'd maybe drop the third Arq and go for a Raider and put Intel Officer on the ISD but I like the list.

Reason for Intel Officer is you can do the following shenanigans with Devastator and Station Assault:

  • Place the two stations as close together as you can
  • Turn 1, Devastator Nav command, take a token (saving it to speed up if needed in later turns)
  • use a side arc shot from Devastator to shoot one of the stations - Intel Officer one of your defense tokens and use Vader to discard it to reroll any dice with damage to try and reduce the hit.
  • move towards the stations at speed 1
  • Turn 2, Eng command, take a token (you are going to need it) and again shoot a station discarding another defense token
  • move at speed one aiming to straddle both stations without obstructing your front arc
  • Turn 3, nav command down to speed zero and if no other targets again shoot a station discarding a third token.
  • You are now sat on both stations at speed zero which means you can't spend defense tokens when defending (not a problem since you're Devastator and only have 1) - your speed zero means you still complete a maneuvere which means you land on both stations every turn discarding two damage cards. All whilst chucking 11 dice (12 with CF) out of your front arc being able to reroll all of them if needed with your remaining defense token.

Pretty edge case but the look on your opponents face when start you shooting your own stations...priceless!

Discarding Devastator defense tokens like this is a receipt for disaster. You should use them for maximum effect during the approach, fire for effect and disengage.

This setup is the exact opposite of that approach.

I normally have an Interdoctor on stand by when running this so yeah you need to think about how you want to fly Devastator, was just pointing out what you can do with Station Assault.

1 hour ago, Doppelganger said:

Edit: Oh and the Arqs are more sturdy than they appear on first glance, you have a lot of shields and two redirect tokens. This makes them surprisingly sturdy.

I just dont like a ship without a brace. At least the Arquitens has 2 redirect, so one acc is not enough to block it, and it can last a bit longer this way (as long as it has shields).
And what does "more sturdy" mean. One attack with 9 damage (or two attacks with 11 damage) on close range and the Arquitens is gone. Happens more from time to time (really easy with ISD, MC80, MC30, GSD). With Brace a ship can survive hard hits way better (as long as there are no acc).

It always depend on the kind of attacks. Redirect is good against small hits and good to block a standard crit (to bad the Arquitens has as well a contain token). Especially the two redirect tokens do help really well with it. Brace is good against big hits.
Second part. Redirect does not remove any damage. It just move it on another shield. And this only works as long as there are shields. Brace just remove damage that the ship would get.

Back to the list. You just do not want to be in the center of fire with the Arquitens, and especially not at close range. It just does not last long enough for this.
But you need to play and test the ship to find out of the style of the ship fit your play style.

36 minutes ago, Tokra said:

I just dont like a ship without a brace. At least the Arquitens has 2 redirect, so one acc is not enough to block it, and it can last a bit longer this way (as long as it has shields).
And what does "more sturdy" mean. One attack with 9 damage (or two attacks with 11 damage) on close range and the Arquitens is gone. Happens more from time to time (really easy with ISD, MC80, MC30, GSD). With Brace a ship can survive hard hits way better (as long as there are no acc).

It always depend on the kind of attacks. Redirect is good against small hits and good to block a standard crit (to bad the Arquitens has as well a contain token). Especially the two redirect tokens do help really well with it. Brace is good against big hits.
Second part. Redirect does not remove any damage. It just move it on another shield. And this only works as long as there are shields. Brace just remove damage that the ship would get.

Back to the list. You just do not want to be in the center of fire with the Arquitens, and especially not at close range. It just does not last long enough for this.
But you need to play and test the ship to find out of the style of the ship fit your play style.

Just that they exceeded my initial impressions of them. And since one usually tries to avoid close combat with them the hits will often be smaller (at least initially [and against fighters and smaller ships not on your list, which also constitute the majority of ships in the game]) and therefore I generalised a bit that they might be sturdier than one initially thinks. But yes, you are - of course - completly correct in your analysis and I did not try to imply that they are somehow invulnerable.

Or to sum up what I meant, from someone who put it better than me: "The Arquitens is pretty durable when used in its element."

Edited by Doppelganger
1 hour ago, Doppelganger said:

I did not try to imply that they are somehow invulnerable.

Sometimes they are:

y4m2Zge4LSu_jEVwGNv4ES9GUNAjexqiv2aJsyvO

What is wrong in this picture? :P
Btw, the Rebel admiral was Ackbar.

So they are great, and fun. But this is really rare.

10 hours ago, Tokra said:

One of the biggest problems of the arquitens is the maneuverability. They are so inflexible in their movement and easy predictable this way. Jerjerod is normaly a good commander for these. but i would suggest to play around with them, and see how it works. Sadly they really need a navigate command to be at least a bit flexible.

For this reason I prefer to field Command version with ET. More expensive, but a totally different beast.

8 hours ago, Tokra said:

Sometimes they are:

y4m2Zge4LSu_jEVwGNv4ES9GUNAjexqiv2aJsyvO

What is wrong in this picture? :P
Btw, the Rebel admiral was Ackbar.

So they are great, and fun. But this is really rare.

That must be the sneakiest or luckiest Arq ever :D

Definitely a lot of stuff to take into consideration and tweak and playtest around with, that's for sure!

Now I just have to get a preliminary fleet list for the Rebels. See, for Empire (which is my faction of choice), after doing a lot of homework, I had an idea in mind for their fleet list (long range sniping by Arqs).......and even that is gonna get wrecked once Thrawn arrives! The Rebels, on the other hand, are NOT gonna be the faction I play a lot, BUT I still want to at least have a halfway decent 400-point build for. So, for the Rebels, I'm still kinda stumbling in the dark.

But hey, it's progress!