So Leia has been out for quite a while now, and plenty have messed around with her, but has anyone stumbled on great combos that really leverage her assets?

I want to hear your ship build combos, such as:

Nebulon B Support, Intel Officer, Spinal Armanent, Salvation

Nebulon B Escort, Flight Commander, Fighter Coordination Teams, Yavaris (+3 hench squads)

These two are the obvious candidates as they always loved having Raymus aboard anyway, so now they have the opportunity to carry someone else in the officer slot. However, these two can both be serviced by banking a token turn 1, and then Hondo turn 4 in order to get their boost turns 3 and 4. There must be more ship combos which welcome her contribution!

Maybe another one is GR-75 with EHB. That's 23 pts that can push around 4 squadrons

2 minutes ago, Ginkapo said:

However, these two can both be serviced by banking a token turn 1, and then Hondo turn 4 in order to get their boost turns 3 and 4. There must be more ship combos which welcome her contribution!

This is what has weakened the token commanders, and indirectly Leia. There are just so many ways to get tokens that when I find myself building for Garm, Tarken, or Leia. There's a secondary feature that one of the easiest ways to generate tokens (comms net flotilla) is also incidentally useful for activations.

The HH is among the best ships for Leia because you've got to solve the activation problem in a way that is useful to Leia, and so she gives you a speed 1 to 3 jump and a boosted CF without the need to add a bunch of upgrade cards to the point ships. Salvation/Yavaris are good choices. Flotillas for bigger squadron activations. On the bright side, one really ought to be able to hit 6 activations with her.

3 minutes ago, Lemmiwinks86 said:

Maybe another one is GR-75 with EHB. That's 23 pts that can push around 4 squadrons

However, my issue with this is that you can do this once with a stacked token. Can you do it twice? Or are you out of range or relying on huge numbers of VCX's? If the flotilla isnt spamming squad, what other commands has it got worth Leia boosting? Why not just use Raymus?

@Vergilius - What builds do you use for these hammerheads?

I wrote a whole article about her! What I found that weirdly works for me is that a lot of the time I don't often keep the same command more than 3 turns in a row. Con Firing from HH under opening salvo is great, especially as she can repair damage late game fast to deny your opponent those points.

My salvation build is title and QBTs (because wh n Toryn is near....) And my Yavaris is just title, but that's largely a matter of trying to cram 2 Nebulons into a list. I'm not a role model, kids.

HH is TFOrgana and ExRax if I'm bringing 2-3, garels, exrax, and boarding Engineers if just one.

I've had super fun with a flotilla with quantum storm and slicer tools, just long bombing a slice. Ive run it on an attack flotilla, which also means con firing under opening salvo.

CR90Bs with ion cannon batteries CAN work, but you desperately need Toryn near to be sure you don't end up screwing yourself IMO.

The thing I've enjoyed with Leia is confiring with Yavaris (whut) turn X and then X+1 doing the squadrons after another ship flung the squadrons. Im usually just bringing 6 squads with her, which means that if I push squadrons and they're moving this turn to shoot something, Yavaris doing it or a flotilla doing it are equivalent.

To answer @Vergilius , you can easily do 6 ships and 6 squads. Heck, my second place store champs was 7 and 6 a wings, and only 2 flotillas. My main problem now is trying to cram 2 Nebulons into a list I actually LIKE.

Because you're usually running smalls, I found Opening Salvo is great, as is Solar Corona (no one wants to set up everything and then let me drop 6 ships). My yellow has been Contested Outpost, but I've run Fleet Ambush with success (this objective dies when Raddus shows).

My basic ship building design philosophy with Leia (or at least I try to!) is that most of your upgrade is Leia; you can get 1-2 things that steady your dice or BCC if you're running Yavaris and some friends, but end of the day Leia improves your SHIPS and their dials, so going Super Hard Squadrons with her doesn't seem like a good plan. I love Intel Officer on Salvation, but I don't have 7 points to spare. Same with the extra stuff on Yavaris, sadly. My CR90 usually ends up running DTTs, again, because points.

Those are good thoughts @geek19 .

@Ginkapo : I don't run Leia a lot myself, but I can look at an upgrade card or a commander and answer for myself, "If I had to create a situation in which this card would work the best, what would I do?"

I think we're seeing a general trend where commanders aren't really generalists, but require one or two very specific builds that maximize their potential.

2 hours ago, Ginkapo said:

and plenty have messed around with her.

whoa man, WHOAH.

don't talk about her like that.

A weird, but effective build I use with her is:

Hammerhead Torpedo

Flight controller

EHB

External Racks

As I don’t like the AFmk2, this gives me an independent pocket carrier to trigger flight controllers with. Use that and a Toryn Farr/EHB Bright Hope to activate 7 squads a turn.

1 hour ago, Lemmiwinks86 said:

Maybe another one is GR-75 with EHB. That's 23 pts that can push around 4 squadrons

I've used this myself, adding the Bright Hope title to help keep it alive. It can keep a small fighter screen going all by itself without bothering the rest of your swarm, and can easily keep up with the Biggs+ 3 X-Wings I have run with it.

I have had some success with the Hammerheads with her, though I was being weird and using the scout variant with QBTs - turns out pumping 5 shots out the front is pretty good

I've been liking Leia on ships that like doing several different command + token combos in specific situations. Sure you can store the token with other methods but Leia gives you the opportunity to fire it without prior planning. You see the opportunity, you take it.

For example my Salvation build with Leia is:

64 pts - Neb Support (51), Salvation (7), Quad Battery Turrets (5), SFO (1)

I like to use Salv as part of a swarm. It is the ship that can face a big ship like a ISD head on for 1 or 2 rounds.

With Leia I can super concentrate fire every round on a slow speed 1 approach then use SFO dial switch to get me out of trouble in 2 different ways.

Nav - Jump to speed 3 and hop over the big ship / ISD. Sometimes this is awesome, sometimes it isn't even possible. The ability to do this also lets me stay at speed 1 as long as possible to maximize QBT.

Repair - Shrug off any plink damage taken on approach leaving me strong enough to survive 1 big medium range full dice salvo before I go down. 5 eng points can heal a hull and move 2 shields rear to front which most of the time leaves my neb with 2 shields front and full 5 hull. Not easy to 1 shot even for an ISD.

I can set up any of these with prior planning (garm, coms net ect.) but I can't plan for all 3. Leia makes it super simple. Point and click no support needed.

It doesn't hurt that she loves so many other rebel swarm ships - hammerheads, Cr90, even Mc30. If I get a little flexibility on each ship that can make the whole swarm much easier to fly - less distance or order of activation requirements. That's the idea anyways. I'm still not sure if the flexibility is worth the high premium point cost yet.

20 minutes ago, Mala said:

I can set up any of these with prior planning (garm, coms net ect.) but I can't plan for all 3. Leia makes it super simple. Point and click no support needed.

Could you not just use Ashoka for this?

1 hour ago, Ginkapo said:

Could you not just use Ashoka for this?

My general thoughts:

Most of the ways you emulate Leia on the battlefield is either limited to one ship (Raymus), or its limited to once per turn (Ahsoka), or even once off per game (Hondo).

Leia's main benefit is always being there for every ship, to boost every command... No coordination required. Which means MSU fleets that can fly dispersed as well as they do clustered, versus a CommsNet buffed fleet that is limited on both its activation order and activation range.

That's mostly the difference.

3 hours ago, Ginkapo said:

Could you not just use Ashoka for this?

Definitely. In order for Leia to be worth it I would think you need to be getting this sort of benefit on a couple ships each turn.

That's why I think you need to run a small ship swarm to get enough oomph from Leia for her cost to be worth it. Luckily rebels have a LOT of small ships that could really benefit from her. I think really anything besides the command 3 ships could gain a lot from Leia.

It has made my swarms way simpler to fly in terms of distance and activation order but I'm still not sure whether it is worth Leia's cost over a different swarm admiral.

I'm thinking about her the same way I do Vader, meaning I need to use her to effectively replace upgrades. I'm mulling a Hammerhead TFA Scout Swarm backed up by a StM Pelta. With 5+ Hammerheads, I'm replacing 25 points of DTTs and effectively giving the same to the Turbolaser-less Pelta. I'm still very unsure about it, but it could be worthwhile.

I find it interesting that a few guys are saying they like her with nebs. This is the reverse of what i thought. To me she is pretty weak for the command '2' ships because when i play a neb or mc30 i find i am always using tokens. Eg your mc30 torp may be naving but it uses its eng token to move some shields around or something.

Mostly i have tried her with hammerheads with so far poor results. Of course, all my hammergead usage has had pretty poor results so far.

I see her as a maximiser. Yes she shines in command 1 heavy fleets, but shes not to shabby for higher command values too. Ive never heard anyone pass on token& dial command resolution

I have a buddy who places her on a Liberty with Nav teams as the flagship supported by varying numbers/types of small ships. You’d think she’d be wasted on such a high command ship, but the surprisingly fragile Liberty sure does love the extra engineering or Madine like maneuverability. With Lando on board the thing is *almost* tanky!

4 hours ago, Ophion said:

I find it interesting that a few guys are saying they like her with nebs. This is the reverse of what i thought. To me she is pretty weak for the command '2' ships because when i play a neb or mc30 i find i am always using tokens. Eg your mc30 torp may be naving but it uses its eng token to move some shields around or something.

I don't think she's a great fit for MC30s because they generally don't care about the supercharged commands and prefer to do two things at once (usually nav + concentrate fire or engineering, even if one or more of those are tokens). They also tend to become a bit expensive when properly kitted out and they're not as interested in changing speed by 2 or need to reroll dice while adding one from concentrate fire (as Ordnance Experts takes care of that in most cases).

Nebulons, though, tend to be more specialized (let's be honest, we're talking about Yavaris and Salvation here) but Salvation is lacking easy access to red dice rerolls, which can make its damage output a bit unreliable (Dual Turbolaser Turrets is the closest you get and generally it's okay but it's better to just take an upgrade to help you throw more dice) and Yavaris wants to command 3 squadrons whenever it can - it can do this with Raymus onboard , but it means you don't get access to the Flight Commander+Fighter Coordination Teams combo, which makes the Yavaris title itself more reliable and also helps make up for it being unable to equip Boosted Comms (being able to command post-move gives it that bit of extra command range). Otherwise, being able to change speed by 2 helps your Nebs go from speed 1 "snipe and wait" mode into speed 3 "GTFO" mode in one dial and the boosted 5-point repair commands help too (repair one hull damage and one side shield is gold, or just for moving shields around and regenerating one or two).

Quote

Mostly i have tried her with hammerheads with so far poor results. Of course, all my hammergead usage has had pretty poor results so far.

I think she's great with Hammerheads, but Hammerheads are tricky. They're similar in some respects to Raiders, with some pros and cons in the comparison (overall they're worse but they're a good deal cheaper proportionally). Raiders are tricky ships to get the hang of.

On a for-funsies note, I am 100% behind using this as a fan-made alt-art for commander Leia one day. It's only very mildly profane, so hopefully nobody gets offended because I think it's hilarious.

Gary being in there makes it even better.

49 minutes ago, Snipafist said:

On a for-funsies note, I am 100% behind using this as a fan-made alt-art for commander Leia one day. It's only very mildly profane, so hopefully nobody gets offended because I think it's hilarious.

Gary being in there makes it even better.

Gary makes everything better.

37 minutes ago, geek19 said:

Gary makes everything better.

Thread just got even better!

Are we just devolving this into a "share Carrie Fisher" pics and stories? Because if so....

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vanityfair.com/style/2017/10/carrie-fisher-aol-hero/amp

30 minutes ago, geek19 said:

Are we just devolving this into a "share Carrie Fisher" pics and stories? Because if so....

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vanityfair.com/style/2017/10/carrie-fisher-aol-hero/amp

❤

Leia is a great Admiral with a lot of ships and combos, but I did marvels with Mon Karren and Pelta+Projection experts.

6 hours ago, Ritalbringer said:

Leia is a great Admiral with a lot of ships and combos, but I did marvels with Mon Karren and Pelta+Projection experts.

put nav team on said mon karren and laugh all the way to the bank with a two double click speed three ship.