Just spitballing ideas for a take-a-bunch-of-different-lists league we've got coming up. Anybody in here who's tried something along these lines?

League B (400/400)
=================
Victory I-class Star Destroyer (73 + 32)
+ Admiral Motti (24)
+ Veteran Gunners (5)
+ External Racks (3)
Victory I-class Star Destroyer (73 + 8)
+ Veteran Gunners (5)
+ External Racks (3)
Victory I-class Star Destroyer (73 + 8)
+ Veteran Gunners (5)
+ External Racks (3)
Gozanti-class Cruisers (23 + 2)
+ Comms Net (2)
Gozanti-class Cruisers (23 + 2)
+ Comms Net (2)
Gozanti-class Cruisers (23)
Ciena Ree (17)
2 x Lambda-class Shuttle (15)
Valen Rudor (13)

I'm not married to any of the details, it's just a concept right now. Any thoughts?

Yeah, I dropped the 3 Gozantis for 2 more VSDs.

.. and the upgrades.

... and the Squadrons.

.... and any hope of winning.

Well, it was back in Wave 2. So no Racks or Veterans. So it might be better these days than it was.

Jerry. You want double arcing with those ER if you can. You also want CF without skipping navigation.

Ordnance experts. I understand the purpose of veteran gunners (red dice) but those guys doesn't work twice per activation as OE does. Again, I think you want double arcing shooting 3R3B+2R3B with ER. IMHO that's what you are goings to need with your lack of defense token mitigation. And the good point is that if you need your superpunch you still can do it (loosing just 3 red dice reroll that you usually don't want on every red dice).

This way you gain 4 points to a third Coms Net to provide the engineering token you need to recover JJ's blood cost. And 2 points to initiative, Hondo, SFO, Needa, etc.

Too easy to outmaneuver, too slow. I think that a good old ISD MSU is strictly better in that regard. If you want to utilize VSD in MSU I would explore ISD-VSD-Quasar one.

Just now, ovinomanc3r said:

Jerry. You want double arcing with those ER if you can. You also want CF without skipping navigation.

Ordnance experts. I understand the purpose of veteran gunners (red dice) but those guys doesn't work twice per activation as OE does. Again, I think you want double arcing shooting 3R3B+2R3B with ER. IMHO that's what you are goings to need with your lack of defense token mitigation. And the good point is that if you need your superpunch you still can do it (loosing just 3 red dice reroll that you usually don't want on every red dice).

This way you gain 4 points to a third Coms Net to provide the engineering token you need to recover JJ's blood cost. And 2 points to initiative, Hondo, SFO, Needa, etc.

Yeah, I'm waffling on the admiral. I haven't flown a lot of VSDs, but I know flying against them that I'm much less concerned about them with Jerry than I am with Motti. That's also probably a function of the fact that I pretty much always have MC30s when I face them, though, where I'm not afraid of them in any respect at all and thus care only about how long it takes to kill them...

Ugh, Victories are terrible.

Why am I even considering this?

Those should be Gladiators, shouldn't they?

Motti VSDs are glorious.

I would try the ISD1/Quasar1/VSD1 that PT mentioned.

With Motti, that is A LOT of hull to chew through. Leaves you 139 pts.

But its hardly MSU, is it?

I mean, dismissing the medium sized "Small"... Its more the Multiple. 3 doesn't really cut it as Multiple as a difference to the "Norm", when it is considered the 'Norm'.

The fact taht we use a term to use such as "MSU" means that its different from the "normal". Otherwise you use "Normal".

So there really has to be the Multiple aspect before anything else.

ISD/VSD/Quasar isn't Multiple anything.

TL;DR. We'll cross the "Small" bridge when we get to it. We don't get to it until we address the lack of "Multiple" in "Multiple" first.

"MAU"

Multiple Any-sized Units (Sans Upgrades)

ISD1

VSD1 + Motti

VSD1

Raider 1

Gozanti

Gozanti

Ciena + Valen

400

5 minutes ago, Ardaedhel said:

Yeah, I'm waffling on the admiral. I haven't flown a lot of VSDs, but I know flying against them that I'm much less concerned about them with Jerry than I am with Motti. That's also probably a function of the fact that I pretty much always have MC30s when I face them, though, where I'm not afraid of them in any respect at all and thus care only about how long it takes to kill them...

Ugh, Victories are terrible.

Why am I even considering this?

Those should be Gladiators, shouldn't they?

And when you played against then did you win the activation war? Cause that matters too.

I played a really funny battle where my JJ Vic 1 was engaged with a Madine Liberty and chasing each other at the same time. It ended with my Vic avoiding frontal arcs everytime and the Liberty taking my whole 6 dice. And I was second player!!

They won't be unavoidable but you have 6 activations, JJ and ER. That should help I think.

MSU = Medium Ships unly ?

Clon did. And I faced it. I'll dig up the thread in a bit but you can find it under his username if you are desperate.

@clontroper5

49 minutes ago, Ardaedhel said:

Just spitballing ideas for a take-a-bunch-of-different-lists league we've got coming up. Anybody in here who's tried something along these lines?

I'm not married to any of the details, it's just a concept right now. Any thoughts?

Switching one VSD out to Demo would probably be good:

League C (400/400)
=================
Victory I-class Star Destroyer (73 + 32)
+ Admiral Motti (24)
+ Veteran Gunners (5)
+ External Racks (3)

(Add Tua + ECM)

Victory I-class Star Destroyer (73 + 8)
+ Veteran Gunners (5)
+ External Racks (3)

Add Demo (Glad 1+OE+APT+Demo)

Gozanti-class Cruisers (23 + 2)
+ Comms Net (2)
Gozanti-class Cruisers (23 + 2)
+ Comms Net (2)
Gozanti-class Cruisers (23)
Ciena Ree (17)
2 x Lambda-class Shuttle (15)
Valen Rudor (13)

51 minutes ago, Drasnighta said:

So there really has to be the Multiple aspect before anything else.

ISD/VSD/Quasar isn't Multiple anything.

Unless it's a core of a fleet with 5+ (or 6+ -this one is fluid and debatable) activations.

Arguably then, ISD/VSD/Quasar and 3 Gozantis is a 3-Combat ship fleet with an MSU addon.

Since that's the only Multiple I see there.

But I digress, because its mostly irrelevent anyway.

I should be ignored.

I just know that I had lack of success with 5 Victories with Motti.

Never was I lacking an activation advantage at that point. And honestly, fighitng against a single-combat ship + flotilla list, the Victories would have done fairly well. Hemming that combat ship in.

But back in the day, it was a bunch of hard trade ups, with 0 survivability, and 0 reach. Since there was no Tua, and D/Caps, and nothing like that.

Yeah, in the era of Large ship + 5/6 Flotillas, the MVU (Multiple VSD Units) might actually fare okay.

2 minutes ago, Drasnighta said:

Arguably then, ISD/VSD/Quasar and 3 Gozantis is a 3-Combat ship fleet with an MSU addon.

Since that's the only Multiple I see there.

All true, that reminds me of my attampt to characterize my Wave2 2ISD fleet (that was an MSU fleet activations wise but it used ISDs as heavy hitters), and in this case VSD MSU term is self defeating. But yeah, definitions.

Another interesting possibility to explore is Vader-led VSD/VSD/Arq/Gz/Gz fleet (can be 6 activations with less squads, but the general idea is something like this):

VSD1: Def liason/Gunnery/ER/Spinals

VSD1: Def liason/Gunnery/ER/Spinals

Command Arq: Vader/SFO/ET/RBD

Combat(!) Gozanti: Comms Net

Gozanti: Comms Net

Valen/2xShuttle

397/400

VSDs can afford to CF all the time and throw 5 reds long range.

Ok

Drop the squads. Take the bomber attacks on the hull like a man!

Drop the Gozanti. Grow some balls.

Add more Vics.

23 minutes ago, PT106 said:

VSDs can afford to CF all the time and throw 5 reds long range.

Pointless.

Use 5 VSDs. 20 red dice.

Get some nuts. You're not you when you use a flotilla.

Yeeeeah I remember that now. I was never particularly impressed by it.

I feel like every VSD list is trying to be good in spite of the VSDs in it.

14 minutes ago, Ardaedhel said:

Yeeeeah I remember that now. I was never particularly impressed by it.

I feel like every VSD list is trying to be good in spite of the VSDs in it.

Not really. VSD is still a good cheap area-control piece, so it does have a synergy in a several lists.

So what ARE the strengths of a VSD and we can build around that. I see two potential conclusions.

I played a 4 Vic list at the NA Championship this year. I placed 18th out of a starting 64 or so. I would have placed around 12th had I rolled 1 damage on 2 stinking red dice!

I don't remember the entire list, but here is most of it.

• 3x Victory II-class Star Destroyers w/Engineering Captain, Disposable Capacitors and Dual Turbolaser Turrets (99 points each)
• 1x Victory I-class Star Destroyer w/Konstantine and several other upgrades like Disposable Racks and Ordnance Experts. It was kitted out for close combat. I can't remember all the upgrades, but the ship came to 103 points for a 400 point fleet.
• Advanced Gunnery, Contested Outpost, Solar Corona

No squadrons. Take the hits like a boss. Bombers WILL kill a Vic, but it'll take at least two turns. When flying this list, you have to be passively ok with the fact that you WILL lose 1-2 Vics in every battle. The goal is to kill more of his stuff than he kills of yours. Engineering Captains let you stack nav commands and swap to Engineering when you need to heal up or regen shields. Vics with spammed Maneuver commands largely mitigate their slow, ponderous nature. Angle towards the biggest threat, pop Disposable Capacitors as soon as possible and focus fire. You'll kill just about anything you focus on in a turn or 2. DO NOT split fire unless you absolutely have to. Use Konstantine to constantly mess with their maneuvers. Konstantine is underrated. It's hard to plan ahead when you don't know what your speed will be next turn. If the opponent burns nav commands to stay at his chosen speed... awesome! That means they aren't using the commands for anything else. That's a win. Run the Vic I behind the Vic II's to kill anything that slips through with close range fire. Use Konstantine to speed a ship up and get them into Vic I range quicker. It's a solid play. Most of my losses with this list were close losses. Most of my wins were in the 8-3 neighborhood.

Advanced Gunnery is nice, but people never want to give that to Star Destroyers. Contested Outpost is almost a free win. Solar Corona gives you a massive deployment advantage and makes your defense tokens work better (by getting rid of opponent accuracies).

I later modified the list to take a Glad with Projection Experts instead of the Vic I. The Glad helped keep the front Vics alive longer and still had a punch for when the enemy broke through.

2 minutes ago, Ginkapo said:

So what ARE the strengths of a VSD and we can build around that. I see two potential conclusions.

Specifically what I'm thinking is the buttload of hull. It can control and deny space in front of it pretty well, which is what I was going for in the original concept build up there: something comparable to the Rebel super pickle Strategic approach, but with VSDs in the pickle's place.

I guess I should've spelled that out and included the objectives. Guess I just thought they were pretty self-evident to be Most Wanted (AG and OS might work too), Fire Lanes, and Sensor Net.

1 minute ago, Ardaedhel said:

Specifically what I'm thinking is the buttload of hull. It can control and deny space in front of it pretty well, which is what I was going for in the original concept build up there: something comparable to the Rebel super pickle Strategic approach, but with VSDs in the pickle's place.

I guess I should've spelled that out and included the objectives. Guess I just thought they were pretty self-evident to be Most Wanted (AG and OS might work too), Fire Lanes, and Sensor Net.

Which is the direct opposite of an MC30 list. So why does your list look like vic equivalent of one of your mc30 lists?

2 minutes ago, Ginkapo said:

Which is the direct opposite of an MC30 list. So why does your list look like vic equivalent of one of your mc30 lists?

Coincidence? Build style? My name attached to it?

I don't generally bring big, slow bricks or strategic squadrons or Comms Net or... much of anything else in an MC30 list. I'm not really sure what you're getting at, other than "I don't like all those flotillas."