So it appears there has been some confusion of late as to how exactly dual Imperial class Star Destroyers (ISDs) are not a recipe for disaster/a great way to lose a tournament horribly. Before we begin on how that isn’t the case, however, I need to acknowledge a couple of things. First, I have a reputation in the Vassal community of being one of the most aggressive players on there, more or less regardless of what I’m flying. Many of my tricks will require ice water for blood, and as much as I hate it personally, a willingness to get your ships shot to shreds and occasionally destroyed in order to get wins. Bear that in mind as you read my ideas on how to do this. Second, I am planning to reach both experienced players and new players, so I will be going a little slow. Please bear with me and them. Third, as should be obvious, all of the following is my opinion. I am not the only prominent or good player on here that tries this nonsense, and they will in all likelihood disagree with my proclamations. Their opinions are just as valid as mine. This is my doctrine, not theirs.

Alright, we’re going to do a BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front). If you are reading this walking into a tournament with two ISDs, what do you need to know? In order, keep these things in mind:

Battle Commandments

1. Engagement control is king and speed is its crown. If you aren’t sure what the command should be, default to navigate. Everything else I will suggest will come back to this.

2. Control his fire. ISDs are Speed 3. With a nav command, you have three clicks of yaw, even more with Jerjerrod (JJ). Use that to put the enemy in your front arc and to stay out of his arcs. Your speed will be very important to doing that. Also see commandment 3.

3. Shoot to kill. I don’t care if this is Opening Salvo and you get halfsies. (Also you’re a fool in all likelihood). You don’t have to kill on that shot, but intend to kill anything you roll dice at. Anything still alive is almost certainly still shooting, and they only have a couple targets.

4. Do not be afraid to be aggressive. You are using two Imperial class Star Destroyers, the single most powerful unit in this game. Nobody can outgun you, nobody is tougher than you.

   1. Corollary to No. 4, bully your opponent. Not only do you have one ISD, you have two. Use them.

5. Do NOT, under any other than the most exceptional circumstances, separate the ISDs. You have a pair, not one, and to have the pair you gave up the fleet support to run one like one. Remember that.

6. Take calculated risks, including putting your ships in danger you believe they can survive. Note that this is commandment 6, versus commandment 5.

7. Maximize information disparity at all points of the game. If you can force your enemy to tell you where he will be, whether or not he knows your approach vector can become irrelevant. However, make sure he doesn’t until the last possible second.

8. You are not invincible. Your ships can and will succumb to prolonged or sufficiently high-end firepower. When in doubt, disengage with what you have and run. Re-engaging is almost always a bad idea. Note that this is not the same as mopping up or chasing.

9. You are pretty close to invincible. Use it. You will have to put your ships in danger, and sometimes they will die, but they are only ships, not close family members. Do it.

10. Remember that you are flying a well-known list whose weaknesses are exactly charted by the best of the best. It will be incumbent on you to outfly them. You should have a simple list, so devote all your brainpower to that.

Good luck Admiral.

Conversely, for the player browsing this Friday night before the Saturday tournament, here are the rules I use for listbuilding:

Shipyard Commandments

1. Optimize for your playstyle. All lists do well when their owner knows them well and can exploit their full potential. Dual ISDs is very reliant on that happening, so build for what you can use.

2. Build a plan first. This plan should include ideas on how to deal with any reasonable combination of ships you can imagine. Note that the plan almost certainly cannot counter every opponent, but maximizing the number without sacrificing effectiveness against those fleets is ideal.

3. Build the fleet around the game plan. There will be several example ISD lists in here. All started with a plan. ISDs offer a lot of capability and a lot of options, so you can be flexible. Choose something and work around it.

4. Ruthlessly optimize. A lot of points were sunk into those two ships. Wasted points is a lot more dangerous here as so many are already gone. Do not be afraid to trim to the bone and build back out.

5. Maximize your use of the ISDs. These are big battleships that offer a lot of capability (hence the expense). Insofar as your plan allows you/encourages you to do so, use as much of the capability on offer as possible to get as much as possible out of your points.

6. Build a flexible fleet for the battlefield. Your game plan cannot include specific moves, only generalities. Do your best to give your ships the tools to handle as many situations as possible.

7. Choose objectives that favor you. There are only handful that this is actually true for, and we’ll discuss them further down.

8. Test your fleet incessantly. You will not be able to pick up a dual ISD list and win tournaments. Appearances aside, this is not a fleet for rank beginners as it very deeply relies on engagement control knowledge you will need time to develop, just as you will need to learn how to fly your ships.

9. Build a resilient list. Build a list that can take a beating, or have its core idea interrupted by the enemy plan and continue to perform well/retake the initiative.

10. KISS. Keep It Simple Stupid. Build an idiotproof list, where the idiot is you. Make sure that the fleet will work well in as many circumstances as possible, and that you can do as little as possible to prevent that, and as much as possible to make it even more effective/get it on target.

As an aside, that’s an awfully long BLUF by most standards (just over a thousand words). This is your final warning, there are no more good breaks in this article. Go get your tea, your blanket, your cookies, whatever you need, and strap in for my latest novella. (Seriously, there are about 6000 words between here and the end. Go get a cookie.)

Dual ISD Basics

Let’s start with some basics about dual ISD fleets. The first thing that I’m going to note is that there are two main types of dual ISD lists, the castle variety, and the maneuver variety. I have flown both, and found moderate and good success with them respectively. Both are fairly easy mechanically, but essentially look at two different parts of the ISD’s abilities. Be aware that this is very much an arbitrary distinction, and that all dual ISD fleets are somewhere on a spectrum of castle to maneuver, and well-built ones will use elements of both.

Let’s start with castle fleets. As the name implies, these are lists designed to hide points in their corner of the board or locked away in their hull, and generally win by killing a little bit of you and not giving the enemy anything whatsoever. This is in fact the origin of my journey through dual dreadnoughts. The oldest list, which went through about a dozen iterations, used two ISDs and an Interdictor. Together that’s 31 hull to start with, 39 with Motti, and a mighty 45 if the ISDs have and use Reinforced Blast Doors (RBDs).

In general, castle fleets have the following characteristics. Most fundamentally, they are slow fleets that try to force the enemy to enter their gun range, rather than run them down. They rely on durability to disallow giving up points, which helps keep the margin of victory (MoV) wider. They tend to prefer second player, where they can use their plans for objectives to double down on the lure for the enemy. They often are Motti fleets, though any dual dreadnought commander will do, and they tend to be Imperial-II class units, to maximize the threat range they are able to create. If a dreadnought fleet has an Interdictor, it is very probably a castle fleet, and should be approached with caution, since the entire point of the list is to make you come to it. As a weakness they are the definition of predictable, often cannot control when the engagement happens, only where, and are prone to being outmaneuvered.

The other end of the spectrum is the maneuver fleet. This is the fast, run and gun fleet. “JJ Borrows the Dreadnoughts”, the list I took to Regionals, is a maneuver fleet with a castle catch. These fleets tend to maximize maneuverability and close range brawling. Moff Jerjerrod is often the commander, but again any will do in a pinch. These lists will often try to herd their opponents with the raw size of an ISD, and when faced with Large enemy threats will try to gang up on it or approach from poor angles to prevent death. The fact that an ISD is Speed 3 is critical here, as this is often the deciding factor for catching many smaller targets. Remember that only three ships in the game are natively faster than an ISD (Raider, CR90, MC30), and only four more (Gladiator, Arquitens Command Cruiser, Nebulon-Bs, and Liberty’s) can equip upgrades to outrun you (and Quantum Storm).

This list, opposite its counterpart, prefers first player and/or aggressive use of base size to prevent its hard-caught prey from escaping, and must be able to choose from enemy objectives. Its weaknesses are the necessity of maneuvering two Large bases in closeish formation near the enemy, an aversion to many objectives in Strategic based lists, and are prone to being outflown by high-velocity fleets or falling into the trap of bomber minefield lists.

With that out of the way, both fleets have some commonalities. Both seek to leverage the firepower of an ISD in every way possible. In theory, Imperial-IIs are more optimized for castle fleets with their greater threat range and consistent damage options, while the high speed nature of a maneuver list favors Imperial-1s for the burst damage black dice are capable of. This is not a hard and fast rule, as an I-2 can provide a flexible ship offering a larger threat range to a maneuver list, and an I-1 offers the burst damage needed to catch an incoming target if they stray too close to a castle list’s ship. I have not had any good chances to test the incoming variations of the ISDs, the Cymoon 1 and Kuat Refits, but both appear to be similar enough to slot into the roles of their predecessors at least experimentally, and in the long run will pan out per their own subtle tweaks.

If there is one area I always expect dual ISDs to suffer in, it is deployments. Barring some sort of dual ISDs plus max TIEs thing (which I really doubt I’d ever recommend), any dreadnought list will very probably be hilariously out-deployed. Any list using flotillas to offset activation disadvantage is probably worse off than average here, since those ships are more expensive per drop, decreasing your total overall. To that end, it is very important that you minimize the possible damage that can cause. As many may have seen, I was the top table of the Hothlanta Regionals this year for rounds 2 and 3, and they are very different games. Most notably, I more or less lose the third game with deployment. I gave away too much information and forced myself into a corner that I wasn’t really able to escape. (There’s a more detailed breakdown of this later, I promise.)

Now, that does start to constrain your objective choices. When at all possible, try to choose objectives that give you information but not your opponent. For example, my go-to objective, not in the least because quite a few folks keep it as their yellow objective, is Contested Outpost. When I select CO, I know where you will be to try to farm points, and I know where my ISDs have to go to catch you. However, you only know the destination of my ISDs, not their approach vectors. Obviously if you can gain deployment advantage with Solar Corona, seriously consider it, but remember when considering other objectives whether or not your fleet may be particularly vulnerable to them (e.g. Motti fleets probably shouldn't take Acehole Fighter Ambush).

That's a lot of theory, but what does that all mean in practice? In the interest of directness/having exact compositions to comment on, we’re going to start our sojourn with my Regionals list, do a quick analysis of the fleet, and move through my Battle report for the Hothlanta event.

First, the list, JJ Borrows the Dreadnoughts

Faction: Galactic Empire

Points: 387/400

Commander: Moff Jerjerrod

Assault Objective: Most Wanted

Defense Objective: Contested Outpost

Navigation Objective: Solar Corona

Gozanti-class Cruisers (23 points)

- Hondo Ohnaka ( 2 points)

- Comms Net ( 2 points)

= 27 total ship cost

Arquitens-class Light Cruiser (54 points)

- Captain Needa ( 2 points)

- Turbolaser Reroute Circuits ( 7 points)

= 67 total ship cost

[ flagship ] Imperial I-Class Star Destroyer (110 points)

- Moff Jerjerrod ( 23 points)

- Intel Officer ( 7 points)

- Ordnance Experts ( 4 points)

- H9 Turbolasers ( 8 points)

- High-Capacity Ion Turbines ( 8 points)

= 160 total ship cost

Imperial I-Class Star Destroyer (110 points)

- Intel Officer ( 7 points)

- Ordnance Experts ( 4 points)

- H9 Turbolasers ( 8 points)

- High-Capacity Ion Turbines ( 8 points)

= 137 total ship cost

In the interest of honesty, this fleet wasn't ever expected to be competitive. I had screwed around a couple times with I-1s in theory sessions, but the utility of Defensive Retrofit kept bringing me back to where I started, I-2s. What finally lured me into trying this exact armament fit was a sortie through the Imperial class article on Cannot Get Your Ship Out (CGYSO). In there there was a note, below the usual I-1 supercarrier build that was the Imperial mainstay before the Quasar, for a Bruiser Extraordinaire. The original BE build is identical to my final fit except without Intel Officers. It's an efficient and cheap (for an ISD) build, able to murder an unwary flotilla or corvette out of any non-rear arc, and capable of consistent, devastating damage with rerolls on double arcs. Knowing that the vast majority of Large ships in my area fielded ECM to deal with accuracy-generating tech, I added IO as extra insurance and anti-token technology.

One of the biggest reasons I was willing to try my new augmented BE build was a fact I had noticed in several later Dreadnought tests, that because of my aggressive default tactics, my big expensive Imperial-2s kept ending up at black range of their enemies. So I went and grabbed BE, and took JJ to maximize my ability to get a double arc in a pinch. Now my sleek new ISDs clocked in at 137 each, for 274 as a pair and 297 with the Moff on board. Note that means if I kill nothing and my opponent bags the not-flagship ISD (pesky lifeboat nerf), they only earn a 7-4 tournament point spread, which while far from ideal is also far from fatal. And they have to kill an ISD to do it.

Now for my final 103 points. I needed a couple things here. One, I'd like a Comms Net Gozanti for activations and tokens. Add Hondo for emergency tokens, and I've spent 27 points, leaving 76. Now I can either take a light squad screen and another Gozanti, a medium squad screen, or what I actually chose, an Arquitens light cruiser with Captain Needa and Turbolaser Reroute Circuits (TRCs). Why did I take the Arq? For starters, it's only a 63 point ship, leaving me thirteen points of bid. Second, I had until I added that zero skirmishing ability. Now I have a semi-expendable ship I can sortie to hunt flotillas or CR90s or to use to herd victims into the Star Destroyers’ main arcs. Early tests quickly proved the utility of the ship, especially an early test against Sato where the Arquitens managed to provide the killing blow on Admonition with the last shot of Round 6.

But Giled, what’s your anti-squadron plan? Well that’s twofold. First, while I-1 anti-squadron armament isn’t exceptional, it’s not terribad either (see the Victory or the Arquitens, etc.). The black die means I can pretty consistently manage one damage there, the blue is a 50-50 chance, and if I happen to face Scatter Aces (notable examples and pains in the a** Tycho Celchu and Shara Bey), H9s guarantee that one damage is getting through to hurt them. Will they probably run away? Probably. If they do, is that one (or more) damage less I’m not taking? Also yes. The alternative point is thus: the vast majority of bomber fleets are optimized to work with squadron commands. Most are also not used to dealing with two ISDs. My plan is essentially the same as it is in most other cases, bumrush the carriers and blow them out of space, but unlike other circumstances where after trading up I’m willing to pull away, if any carriers survive/the squadrons are mostly/all Rogue, I stay in the fight and go for the tabling. Not counting any objectives, a tabling for everything other than the flagship ISD is still a 8-3 victory (160 points for the ship plus the thirteen of bid), and just the Arquitens escaping is still a 7-4 (margin for 6-5 is 60 points versus the 76 I get from the ship and my bid).

Regionals

NOTE: All directions will be from my point of view (i.e. my right versus stage right, etc.). Additionally, all my opponents’ lists can be found here (scattered throughout).

Now for Regionals, the entire point of my theoretical exercise (started way back here in the Fleet Builds subforum). I was at the Hothlanta Regionals, where an incredibly unusual snow storm cut attendance down from the estimated 34-35 to 20, including two byes. I chose/was told not to use mine, so first round I ended up paired with Wayne Down (@Whiplash205). For better or for worse, I was the start of a long day for him, since I was his first Armada opponent ever and also the first ISDs that he ever faced. (He also later acknowledged I was the only one who didn’t creep across the table at him, much to his list’s chagrin.) He was using Snipafist’s alternate newbie Imperial build (list here), and we played his Contested Outpost. I have mentioned this elsewhere but I must commend Wayne not only for being a good sport but for having a staggeringly good grasp of Armada mechanics. Short a command dial flub on turn 1, never did I have to help him through a mechanic, which was shocking. Lord knows I didn’t pick it up that fast.

Unfortunately for all three games I did not take pictures, but the streams for games two and three (since I was on the top table) are found linked near the start of those sections. For this game (not streamed as Cryodex assigned us the bottom table), we started roughly opposite of each other. The station was center of the board laterally, and as close to his side as it could legally be, with all the obstacles off to the left of it, the Arquitens, three TIE fighters behind the station, and everything else off to the right with the Victory inboard and the Quasar Fire outboard. That battlegroup was most of the way into the right corner of his deployment zone. They plus his Gozanti and the remaining squadrons formed a relatively tight group aimed at about a 70 degree angle from me towards the station. As my own counterdeployment, my Arquitens was in the right corner positioned to run at the flank of the Quasar, with the flagship ISD (hereafter Flag) and the Gozanti behind it aimed at the current position of his heavy ships, while the other ISD (hereafter Not-Flag) was positioned near the center to contest the outpost.

The game really went about as well as it could have for me. The Not-Flag ISD easily bullied the Arquitens off the station and essentially parked there after turn 3, forming my anvil. For the hammer, Flag and the Arq advanced essentially in tandem, forcing the Quasar to pull away from the ISD and crossing the T of the Victory. Due to some less than exemplary dice rolls from the ISDs, the Victory actually managed to escape in between the two battleships, but the speed and agility afforded to me by JJ and the Arquitens native ability let the light cruiser run it down and murder it with TRC fire. Because of the spread of his fighters and the overall durability of my list, that I was squadronless was a non-factor. Final score 460-0.

Game 2 was Joshua Nichols, who also had dual ISDs (stream link). In contrast to mine, he used two I-2s, one Avenger with Darth Vader on board, the other Relentless with Overload Pulse, both with assorted other fixings, and Bossk and Morna Kee to make my life difficult. Again I won bid, and I chose his Close-Range Intel Scan. Knowing that many fleets would have ECMs in our meta (because our Larges exist at all), this was a reasonable choice for him to have, but ended up being a non-factor in our game.

We deployed and played on about one half of the board. Obstacles were deployed roughly such that we stared each other down across the station, and were lined up to do so. The station was slightly closer to Joshua, with his Vader on the outside edge (left) and Relentless on the inside (right), with my battleships mirroring the deployment, with the Gozanti to the right of Not-Flag, and the Arquitens to the left of Flag, positioned to run around flanking, as per usual. I deployed at speed 2, and Josh deployed at Speed 1. We both stayed more or less straight on, while I lined up Not-Flag on the gap between Avenger and Relentless, while Flag moved to the left side of Avenger.

My activation advantage turned out to be crucial in this game. On turn 2, Josh revealed Navigate commands on both Star Destroyers , but rather than accelerate onto the station, he chose to take navigate command tokens on both ships. This was a mistake. After both of his ships had gone, my two Star Destroyers leapt forward at Speed 3. Flag set herself up with Vader on her starboard quarter (45 degrees off her bow to the right, for you non-nautical types), while Not-Flag did the dangerous thing, as is her job, and leapt onto the station, crossing Avenger’s T, and allowing Relentless to cross her T. Through the magic of last-first, Not-Flag promptly opened fire savaging Vader’s forward shields and beginning to lay damage into the bow of Relentless. In reply, Vader moved first, ensuring that Overload Pulse would never see work in this game, and while the dice output into both ships was significant, neither was significantly degraded as a combatant, and Vader pulled in between my two dreadnoughts. Flag promptly thanked Vader for giving it a black dice range side arc shot (previously only a medium range double arc) and hammered his bow, before pulling around (onto a debris field unfortunately), and allowing the Arquitens to bring the Star Destroyer down with a red range shot.

The rest, as they say, is history. Not-Flag was never able to escape Relentless and succumbed to her wounds, but not before delaying her so much Flag was able to avenge her with the tabling. As all of this was going on, Bossk and Morna had made right pains of themselves, bullying and beating up the Arquitens in the background, eventually bringing down the valiant cruiser on the game’s final squadron phase. As neither of us collected any objective tokens, final scores were merely kills, making it 400-200, good enough for an 8-3.

Game 3 was, well, I think the polite term is a debacle. I always knew that being top table is far from guaranteeing victory for the tournament as a whole, but I was hopeful, until I saw the standings going into round 3. Adam Newton (@Space_Cowboy17) is a minor Armada god, and a great sport, total blast to play against, but one of the last people I wanted to see across the table from me. He brought (for around here) a weird high-velocity Ackbar list, and created a unique conundrum for me, being the first fleet I’ve ever fought that both outflew me and outgunned me. One or the other is a fact of most games, but both, now that was rude.

So I won the bid (three games running), and I chose to go first. Of Most Wanted (against an Ackbar fleet? Are you serious), Contested Outpost, and Solar Corona, I faced a choice. In retrospect, I agree with myself the best two cases were probably Solar Corona or Contested Outpost, and given Adam’s capabilities, SC was probably the safer choice (that last bit is hindsight). But I was on a CO roll, so we took that. And Adam being Adam, he took maximum advantage of the fact that CO means that as second player you are placing four of the six obstacles, neatly hiding the thing behind all four of his placed obstacles, meaning if I wanted to contest it, I would need to push through exactly zero ISD-sized gaps. And if you think that was bad, wait for my deployment.

We’re going to go over this in relative detail, because while deployment didn’t lose me the game, it certainly didn’t set me up to win. I mentally calculated that I faced a choice, either challenging him over the obstacles, or trying to fly around them, and that in either case his A-wings gave him deployment advantage, so he could deploy around me. That’s pretty standard for this list, but in this case, it was worse than usual. I did my whole mental calculations, trying to figure what was my best choice, and I eventually landed on trying to fly around the left of the obstacles, running Not-Flag over the edge of them if necessary and fighting him that way. Then I went and made two mistakes back to back, I placed the Gozanti too far to the left and the Arquitens too far to the right. Both ships ended up eating a lot of valuable space for the ISDs to deploy in, where they eventually ended up sandwiching the entire fleet so that from left to right it was Flag dead ahead, the Arquitens at about a 45 degree angle to the left, Not-Flag, and the Gozanti, none more than distance 1 from its next neighbor, or in Flag’s case the left edge of my deployment zone. By contrast, Adam deployed with his GR-75 facing the station with all the A-wings in tow, and Gallant Haven, Foresight, and Jaina’s Light all set to sprint around the right side of the obstacles and catch me in an absolutely murderous crossfire.

I made the comment at the start of the match I had never deployed this fleet in a tight formation before and won, and this match was a very kinetic reminder of why. I’m not sure if there’s another version of events where my ships aren’t tripping all over each other, but the tight spaces meant the usual sweeping arcs the ISDs use to cut outside the optimal arcs of their enemies, be that their front, sides, wherever, were all blocked by friendly ships. To make matters worse, Adama had second player, allowing him to force me to enter his fields of fire, while I couldn’t catch him in mine to take advantage of first player shots. By the time all was said and done, Not-Flag was in direct lead of Flag, and being pummeled by his ships as she tried to run ahead to clear space for her companions, leading to a very predictable and practically inevitable death after several ineffectual red range shots at Evade-equipped ships.

After Not-Flag went down, the entire game was an exercise in damage control. I threw away the rest of the fleet, including both the Gozanti and the Arquitens in order to get the flagship out, which I did, while also collecting three CO tokens to Adam’s two (ahh, the magic of speed 4), as well as his GR-75 and a pair of A-wings. In the end, it was partially dice luck and partially how far inside Foresight and JL’s turns I had gotten the Star Destroyer that allowed Flag to escape to hyperspace even as Gallant Haven vainly fired into the space she was leaving. Eleven hull helped too I suppose. Final score 267-1?? (two generic A-wings, three CO tokens, and the flotilla aren’t enough to make a 7-4 but it was definitely 7-4 soooo, I dunno) for a 7-4.

All in all it was great day, even though it was unfortunately cut short by unreasonable weather, and I greatly look forward to next year’s tournament, and all the ones between here and there.

Comparisons

For the sake of some more variety and depth, we’re going to examine a couple alternative fleets, just to walk through some extreme examples of what else a dual ISD can look like and play like.

Motti's Dreadnoughts Mark 7

Author: GiledPallaeon

Faction: Galactic Empire

Points: 400/400

Commander: Admiral Motti

Assault Objective: Station Assault

Defense Objective: Contested Outpost

Navigation Objective: Solar Corona

Interdictor-class Suppression Refit (90 points)

- Interdictor ( 3 points)

- Targeting Scrambler ( 5 points)

- Grav Shift Reroute ( 2 points)

= 100 total ship cost

[ flagship ] Imperial II-Class Star Destroyer (120 points)

- Admiral Motti ( 24 points)

- Gunnery Team ( 7 points)

- Electronic Countermeasures ( 7 points)

- Leading Shots ( 4 points)

= 162 total ship cost

Imperial II-Class Star Destroyer (120 points)

- Gunnery Team ( 7 points)

- Electronic Countermeasures ( 7 points)

- Leading Shots ( 4 points)

= 138 total ship cost

This is the seventh official (and Christ only knows how many unofficial) variant of the original Motti Dreadnought list. Let’s walk through a couple of points quickly. First, you have zero bid here, so more often than not it will be the behest of your opponent what you get to play. As a castle list you are often looking to go second, not in the least to maximize GSR shenanigans, but it is not your call to make. Second, this version is optimized to withstand big attacks and counter-punch, but is not optimized to face other dreadnoughts, singletons or otherwise. ECMs allows the former, making sure that brace (or other critical token) is available at least once per round, and Interdictor plus Targeting Scramblers is Demolisher/Admonition/Avenger insurance. However, in purchasing these options, you have also foregone the ability to afford XI7 turbolasers, which will reduce the lethality of your ISDs immensely. You do have a reroll in the form of Leading Shots, but your peak and average damage will both be lower than a Bruiser Extraordinaire I-1 at close range, so any kills, especially of larger ships will be reliant on pinning the victim in the front arc of both Star Destroyers and in all likelihood blasting away for multiple rounds.

The other dual ISD we will examine here is in fact not an ISD list, but a list I developed while testing JJ Borrows the Dreadnoughts. I call it Repulse and Renown, after the two Renown class battlecruisers built by the Royal Navy during World War I. Both went on to serve in World War II, with Repulse sunk by the same large series of air raids that destroyed Prince of Wales (the only KGV class loss), while Renown survived the war. Without further ado, Repulse and Renown:

Repulse and Renown Mark 5

Author: GiledPallaeon

Faction: Rebel Alliance

Points: 389/400

Commander: General Madine

Assault Objective: Most Wanted

Defense Objective: Contested Outpost

Navigation Objective: Solar Corona

GR-75 Medium Transports (18 points)

- Slicer Tools ( 7 points)

= 25 total ship cost

[ flagship ] MC80 Battle Cruiser (103 points)

- General Madine ( 30 points)

- Veteran Captain ( 3 points)

- Gunnery Team ( 7 points)

- Engine Techs ( 8 points)

- X17 Turbolasers ( 6 points)

- Spinal Armament ( 9 points)

- Leading Shots ( 4 points)

= 170 total ship cost

MC80 Battle Cruiser (103 points)

- Veteran Captain ( 3 points)

- Gunnery Team ( 7 points)

- Engine Techs ( 8 points)

- X17 Turbolasers ( 6 points)

- Spinal Armament ( 9 points)

- Leading Shots ( 4 points)

= 140 total ship cost

GR-75 Medium Transports (18 points)

- Quantum Storm ( 1 points)

- Hondo Ohnaka ( 2 points)

- Slicer Tools ( 7 points)

= 28 total ship cost

1 Han Solo ( 26 points)

Now on paper, this looks a lot like a dual ISD list, particularly a maneuver list, and to a certain extent it is. Both Liberty’s want to be running around, dodging your arcs and catching you in theirs for savage five red/three blue battery attacks, and screaming off through your debris before your other ships can respond. And in that regard, it is a maneuver fleet, but there are a couple of key differences I’m going to highlight here to explain a fairly different flight pattern.

By and large, most ISD maneuver lists I build want to close to black dice range, and hammer home double arc after double arc to bludgeon their enemies to death. In that regard, they’re a lot like a Viking beserker, very much the precision application of brute, overwhelming force. Repulse and Renown are a very different beast, more akin to someone wielding a rapier or other fine, swift blade like a katana. XI7s allows them to achieve far better piercing results than a BE can, since they are using H9s to make their side arcs dangerous, and they are even better at standoff range engagements than an I-2 (and the rough equal of the forthcoming Cymoon).

There is one other extremely important difference in the two battlecruisers before we move on to the other fleet elements, and that is the defensive manner in which a LMC80 must be flown. Remember, unlike an ISD’s 4/3/2 shield setup protecting eleven hull with two redirects, a LMC80 has 5/2/2 protecting only eight hull. Attackers that can bypass the monster front arc can also bypass the strongest shields and large attack pools stand a reasonable chance of locking down the single redirect with an accuracy result, boring into a smaller hull points pool, on an equally expensive capital ship. For that reason, while a Liberty driver is not often bothering with double arcs given his relatively pitiful side arc, he also trying to protect it from oncoming fire, which is a much shallower angle relative to his axis of movement. That’s not to say that such a commander must always avoid the opportunity to set up future shots to protect his ship in the present, but it is an additional concern that an Imperial commander need not worry about.

The final element of this list is the 79 points directly spent on anti-squadron tech. First element is two sets of Slicer Tools. This provides good redundancy in shutting down enemy carriers, and can often be used very effectively to sow chaos disproportionate to the cost of the flotillas. With scatter tokens, they can absorb often a surprising amount of fire, and allow the battlecruisers to close in their wake relatively unmolested. The other 26 points is of course Captain Solo, who if allowed to roam from obstacle to obstacle can often earn his points back in anti-squadron kills or wasted bomber shots, preventing crucial harassment against friendly warships. If only Bossk or Morna or the like were this good...

How to Learn

So you’ve convinced me, Giled. I have two Star Destroyers sitting on my shelf, and now I want to try them both out. Tag in the Chimaera pack with the Kuat and Cymoon 1 Refits, and FFG knows what other goodies squirreled away in there, where do I begin? Unfortunately for you sir, I have no good generic answers you probably can’t see coming. Go back to my Shipyard commandments and start there. If you’re a Screed man at heart and nothing is more fun than denying an MC80 her redirects with salvo after salvo of Assault Concussion Missiles, start proxying a pair of Kuats (probably a maneuver fleet) and see what you can develop. Alternatively, if you want to finally experience Ackbar level red dice chucking, may I recommend Cymoons with Spinal Armaments? You even get Gunnery Teams (in exchange for your Defensive Retrofit). Maybe you’ll find and share a fleet that I am finally willing to take Darth Vader for.

In all seriousness, there are a couple of tips that I’m going to recommend to anyone seriously trying to learn this list. First, play many, not necessarily all, but many of your first games as second player. Many lists you have will be outactivated, and you will often be last-firsted. That is going to suck, but over time it should teach you a few things. One, it will teach you about the threat spread of many ships, including MC30s, and it will help you learn just how much of a beating an ISD can actually take in different circumstances before succumbing to its fate. Second, it will teach you the importance of formation flying and predictive movement. If you can allow Admonition to last first you, but then force to remain in the front arcs of not one but two Star Destroyers, that is a valuable skill that will be all the more so when you build a list that takes first player away from it.

My second recommendation is to not use BT Avenger. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that BTAvenger is some sort of ISD easy mode, but you will spend the majority of your games and the majority of your ISDs without it, so you may as well get used to that right now and be able to fight around it. When you go to build a tournament list, by all means include it, Overload Pulse shenanigans, whatever warms your heart, but for many early games I would recommend KISS and I would recommend avoiding anything that will make your life “too easy”.

My final recommendation is to be willing to explore new doctrine and new tactics. Playing Repulse and Renown helped JJ Borrows the Dreadnoughts, not because they fly anything like, but precisely because they don’t and that speed on the table gave me a new appreciation for how best to approach many situations where I may have the initiative but I may be forced to execute radical maneuvers to stay out of danger or to put my opponent in danger. If you have a preset ISD build, analyze it dispassionately, or better yet, get someone else to analyze it, and then use the new build to work on flying. You will not be able to find new ideas if you do not frequently take risks, so be willing to take your lumps because anything that doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and you can always jump in an escape pod.

Advanced Thoughts and Other Things

I’m going to run through some advanced thoughts fairly quickly here, because I’m at 6600 words and I’m not sure if I’m qualified to make any “advanced” suggestions anyway. First, a lot of builds are in fact optimized to kill one ISD and disengage, or to kill one at a time. In theory it is child’s play to overload these lists and to hammer it with both ships simultaneously. In practice this is one of the hardest tricks to pull off and certainly one of the hardest to develop if the end state of deployment does not advantage you in this way. Additionally, do not underestimate the value of shock and awe tactics. In all likelihood, especially in a competitive environment, your capabilities will surprise no one, but you can still use aggression, speed control, and concentration of your forces to get inside your opponent’s OODA Loop and smash it into very small pieces.

Secondary to that, all the tactical know-how and experience aside, on the table flying two ISDs and support is relatively simple mechanically. Use this for all it’s worth. Your games will often be swift and relatively punchy. You can use this to remain relatively fresh at longer tournaments, and you can leverage that reduced upkeep thinking requirement to dump more brainpower into the operational requirements of whatever strategies you are employing.

Challenge every one of my “commandments”. It’s all well and good to know the rules, but it’s another thing entirely to understand why they are there, which will tell you when to bend/break them to achieve gains otherwise unattainable. The most notable example is Battle Commandment No. 5: Don’t split up the ISDs. As several folks have probably already noticed, in one of my Regionals games I started relatively far apart on the board, but then brought the two ships together in a pincer movement that caught and crushed the Victory. Alternatively, I could see dividing the ISDs to chase lesser fleeing threats (wounded CR90s or Raiders, etc.), but those engagements are the exception not the rule.

One consideration that will be of more help to some players that to others is that you involve a certain degree of meta analysis and numerical comparisons. For example, let's assume your area has a lot of Ackbar players. (Mine doesn't, they were all purged four Gladiators at a time.) From that we can deduce several elements. First, most Ackbar ships have redirects, and either redundant defense tokens, defensive retrofits, or both. So what we can consider is average damage of a given Ackbar-enabled ship at different ranges, and then consider deployment and build options to exploit that, such as a deployment denying an Ackbar slash, and a build featuring XI7 to neuter superior Rebel shields. Knowing what expected results (damage plus accuracy) is at different ranges can be crucial in deciding your exact approach vector to minimize danger and maximize outgoing threat. Conversely, if you know Madine is popular, it can be helpful to privately test popular ships to give you an idea what their maneuver possibilities include. If you run reroll tech, it can be useful to know what your average improvement in damage is for different reroll options, and at what ranges you can expect different degrees of output. The combination of this data can tell you how close to that irritating CR90 you have to be when you take a shot to stand good chances of eliminating it outright. See CGYSO's latest piece on dice analysis for more details (link to follow in a while).

My final suggestion is to experiment with ideas from all corners of the game. I’ve already mentioned I mined CGYSO for the basic build for my I-1s (and have several more ideas I’ve stolen from them that haven’t seen table time), but explore many options. I suggest anyone seriously considering this as a competitive list at any level go read the battle report of the gentleman who took second place at Gencon with a two ISD plus squadrons list. I for myself have several experimental lists that involve squadrons, but they are all still on the drawing board for now (hopefully not for too long). Skim the Fleet Builds subforum, and just generally question any pre-existing assumptions you may have about what is “good”. Who knows, maybe you’ll figure it out better than I ever could.

Conclusion

Why did I sit down and write this? What has been the point of the last 7100 and change words? Well, partially it’s that I just finished my final exams, and at various points this was a lot more fun and engaging than the studying I should have been doing. Partially it was a challenge to myself in light of certain sentiments expressed recently that Imperials are a simple “point and shoot” faction involving minimal thought or skill. And partially it’s a jump ahead of the curve, since I am one of the only regular posters currently experimenting in this realm, but that I expect that to change radically in the next few months as the contents of the Chimaera and potentially the MC75 change those facts for their respective factions. And partially, and perhaps most importantly, it’s because I love Armada, and I love the facial expressions I get when I put two ISDs on the table, and my opponent realizes this isn’t some sort of prank. Thanks for sticking this out, and let me know if you have any questions, I’ll be happy to answer them.

This was a really intriguing read, even as a mainly Rebel player. I've been matching up against double ISD's relatively often, as Joshua has been my sparring partner of late. In fact, your second match at Hothlanta actually included my own ISD model on loan!

I was wondering about your choice to run the ISDs without Gunnery Teams. With a low activation list, it seems like you would want to be able to maximize the number of shots that front arc gets. JJ makes sense in terms of helping with positioning for those double arcs, but it seems like you will have limited shots out the front arc through the game. I definitely don't want to imply Gunnery Teams is an auto-include, I'm just curious to see how you compensate.

My key strategy against them as someone largely running Rebel fleets with five activations is to deploy in a way that will keep one of the ISDs out of the game for as long as possible. This often means deploying slightly off to on side of an ISD and running in a bit of a spiral around the outside. This keeps one ISD either slowing down and trying to wait for the enemy ships to make their way around or it has one of them speeding up to get around the other ISD and has them playing a game of chase the rest of the round. How do you keep both of your ships engaged against a fast fleet?

My final question is about tournament potential. It seems that barring large skill disparity, the Maneuver Fleets don't have the same scoring potential, which looks like it will lead to smaller splits even on wins. Do you think a double ISD list can consistently push high tournament points?

Two of the four double ISD lists at Hothlanta came from our area, and I'd love to see them really take off. I know my opponents have been frustrated losing one or two ISDs to my MCUs or my Defiance/Admonition combo, so I want to see what we can do to build up skill with low activation power hitters.

4 hours ago, GiledPallaeon said:

Unfortunately for all three games I did not take pictures, but the streams for games two and three (since I was on the top table) are found here and here.

The 'here's aren't links.

Great write up! Really informative, and it has made me want to try Dual ISDs even more. I only recently obtained my second, and have run 2 of them whenever I can just because of the novelty of it. My first game with them, I went against a dual-LMC80 Sato build. That was fun. Your write up is very helpful in its potential to show me how to properly run the Dual build. Now if only I can implement the advice. . .

I've flown 2 ISD2's (with Gunnery teams) in a few tournaments now and agree with your commandments (especially commandment 1). I've also flown against them several times with a rebel MSU and the biggest threat to the MSU is the ISD's acting unpredictably (e.g. speed 1 to 3 and a 3 click turn) and managing to get multiple ships into their front arcs meaning that the MSU player can't save them all. Also MC30's don't have the best turning circle at speed so you can potentially catch the MSU player off guard and allow him only 1 round of shooting per MC30.

An MSU is a large threat to the ISD's but so are bomber lists and also a strategic objective based list (e.g. Defiance, transports and VCX's offering you Advanced gunnery, fire lanes and sensor net) and you need to have a plan for each scenario.

@Destraa

this is was a very good read. I'm considering triple ISD.....toughts?

@Destraa

this is was a very good read. I'm considering triple ISD.....toughts?

49 minutes ago, Darth Lupine said:

@Destraa

this is was a very good read. I'm considering triple ISD.....toughts?

Dual ISDs is a s*** ton of fun to play. Three becomes frustrating due to diminishing returns. One of them is almost always out of the fight or in the way of the other two. It does however create a very satisfying feeling when you watch your opponents face fall as they find out what they're facing.

I like Needa/TRC/Arquitens a lot but when I saw you flying them in the live stream I thought squads would have been a better choice but you obviously did well with it forgoing squads. I may have to give it a try. I only recently picked up a second ISD 50% off, mostly to convert to an ISD1 with Mel's kit, so I need to try a dual list.

Thanks for the mini novella

So much dual ISD love......

I've been wrestling with Dual ISDs for a while, with assistance from @Darth Sanguis for build and maneuver ideas (thanks!).

My biggest problem has been in keeping both ISDs a part of the battle in every turn. This has given me a lot of great hints for how to use them so they don't step on each others' toes.

Thanks!

TL:DR

The only thing I'd add is to practice formation flying with the large bases. Stick two ISDs on the table and fly them around a bit. Stick various target ships at different locations and figure out how you'd turn your ships in unison to address that target. Practice what moves you need to do an about-face turn. Practice dealing with ships that are using obstacles. Sometimes with your big ships it's more valuable to take the hits and charge through the damage than trying to steer around it or split your firepower.

The biggest issue I tend to see with a dual ISD list is that they don't know how to keep them together in formation.

2 hours ago, Darth Lupine said:

@Destraa

this is was a very good read. I'm considering triple ISD.....toughts?

When the Chimaera comes out, try it with the Cymoon refit and Entrapment formation. I'm playing around with it and once all the parts are there, I'll post how it does.

@GiledPallaeon's approach to a dual ISD list was quite a bit different from the GenCon list's approach. The approach shown here is one where the fleet isn't hopelessly beaten in activations; four activations is a bit on the low side, but it's manageable. The sacrifice it makes to achieve this moderate activation count is in squadrons, of course.

The GenCon runner-up list (I wish I could remember the forum handle of the person who ran it!) went in a very different direction. The fleet developer made the conscious decision to enhance activation quality at the expanse of quantity of activations. The ISD is one of a few platforms that can make one activation seem like two, by executing a massive squadron strike and following it up with its massive native firepower. But to do so, you need a lot of squadrons in your fleet, and that necessitating paring the number of ships to the bone. What is more, I believe the GenCon list was a Motti list. If I recall correctly the developer said he had toyed with the idea of using Sloane, but hadn't tested it sufficiently to bring to a major tournament.

The contrast between these two approaches is VERY interesting.

7 hours ago, Astrodar said:

This was a really intriguing read, even as a mainly Rebel player. I've been matching up against double ISD's relatively often, as Joshua has been my sparring partner of late. In fact, your second match at Hothlanta actually included my own ISD model on loan!

I was wondering about your choice to run the ISDs without Gunnery Teams. With a low activation list, it seems like you would want to be able to maximize the number of shots that front arc gets. JJ makes sense in terms of helping with positioning for those double arcs, but it seems like you will have limited shots out the front arc through the game. I definitely don't want to imply Gunnery Teams is an auto-include, I'm just curious to see how you compensate.

My key strategy against them as someone largely running Rebel fleets with five activations is to deploy in a way that will keep one of the ISDs out of the game for as long as possible. This often means deploying slightly off to on side of an ISD and running in a bit of a spiral around the outside. This keeps one ISD either slowing down and trying to wait for the enemy ships to make their way around or it has one of them speeding up to get around the other ISD and has them playing a game of chase the rest of the round. How do you keep both of your ships engaged against a fast fleet?

My final question is about tournament potential. It seems that barring large skill disparity, the Maneuver Fleets don't have the same scoring potential, which looks like it will lead to smaller splits even on wins. Do you think a double ISD list can consistently push high tournament points?

Two of the four double ISD lists at Hothlanta came from our area, and I'd love to see them really take off. I know my opponents have been frustrated losing one or two ISDs to my MCUs or my Defiance/Admonition combo, so I want to see what we can do to build up skill with low activation power hitters.

So I'll address these in order. To the front arc question, while it's an impressive weapon, it's only barely capable of killing CR90s at medium range for I-2s, and only somewhat better at close range on an I-1. Rather than maximize shots taken with a given arc, I chose to maximize the lethality of every shot, for OE to improve raw damage, H9s to help mitigate tokens, and HCIT to guarantee H9s or one damage in my side arcs. In short, I'm maximizing commandment 3 by trying to give each battleship the maximum ability to kill on its own rather than trying to coordinate fires. So from that perspective it's the idiotproof part where I'm removing one pressure on my maneuvers.

To the high speed question, one of two things tends to happen, and they're related. Option one is what happened in my third Regionals game where you circle me and I can't draw a bead on you. The alternative, which was the plan, was to cut off the end of the line, in this case the Assault Frigate, and then use net closing speed to open up a gap that the enemy can't close. That latter point is a very useful element of ISD tactics, where you can survive chases most others wouldn't through raw durability. This sort of thing is generally decided on deployment, but JJ also helps a lot.

For tournament potential, Id think my list's performance was essentially a best case scenario. Basically if you can get a table, you can often escape with a lot of the fleet to do it, which creates a huge margin. If I lose any one ship, I've still got a 9-2 at worse, 10-1 even with both Smalls. If a castle fleet can figure out how to farm the infinite VP objectives, they can start consistently putting up those margins, but given the low carnage and low scoring potentials of many objectives, you're often turning a 6-5 or 7-4 into a 7-4 or 8-3, which is usually enough to keep you competitive, but a runaway game is often necessary to get it into the absolute top tier.

5 hours ago, GhostofNobodyInParticular said:

The 'here's aren't links.

Great write up! Really informative, and it has made me want to try Dual ISDs even more. I only recently obtained my second, and have run 2 of them whenever I can just because of the novelty of it. My first game with them, I went against a dual-LMC80 Sato build. That was fun. Your write up is very helpful in its potential to show me how to properly run the Dual build. Now if only I can implement the advice. . .

Novelty = fun, I just kept working until it was at least decent too.

Yeah those are linked in their respective game reports. I'll edit that with my other edit shortly.

2 hours ago, Megatronrex said:

Dual ISDs is a s*** ton of fun to play. Three becomes frustrating due to diminishing returns. One of them is almost always out of the fight or in the way of the other two. It does however create a very satisfying feeling when you watch your opponents face fall as they find out what they're facing.

This

Also, next I get a chance there's a short edit incoming for the Advanced section at the suggestion of @PT106 about the utility of modeling and meta analysis.

Hey @GiledPallaeon what are your thoughts on the liberty? I know we have touched on the differences in the past. I get a little annoyed at the ISD = liberty and they most certainly are not. Aside from asthetics and the whole punchy front arc they are completely different animals.

58 minutes ago, kmanweiss said:

The only thing I'd add is to practice formation flying with the large bases. Stick two ISDs on the table and fly them around a bit. Stick various target ships at different locations and figure out how you'd turn your ships in unison to address that target. Practice what moves you need to do an about-face turn. Practice dealing with ships that are using obstacles. Sometimes with your big ships it's more valuable to take the hits and charge through the damage than trying to steer around it or split your firepower.

The biggest issue I tend to see with a dual ISD list is that they don't know how to keep them together in formation.

This. If one is flying maneuverable 2ISD fleet, knowing how to fly them together (as well as other ships) and what they can and can't do is paramount. What is also useful is to have several deployment options prepared beforehand (given that you're likely to be outdeployed, you can't really react to the opponent deployment much and can go with a prearranged deployment). For example, one of the advanced deployment tactics that I utilize from time to time is to deploy ISDs parallel to the long edge of the board. It is suprisingly effective countertactic against fast flanking fleets.

Just wanted to chime in and say thanks for the thoughtful post and I'm glad the Bruiser Extraordinaire (+Intel Officer) build worked out for you. I wish I could claim credit for the original idea, but I first read about it some time ago on the forums, tried it for myself, and was really pleasantly surprised by it. It's been a little while since it hit the table for me, I really should amend that ASAP.

Also, do you mind if I link to this post from the ISD article on the blog? I don't overall recommend running two ISDs, but it can be done and this is a good primer on how.

Holy crap. Thanks for taking the time to write it.

I'll probably read this tonight after STAR WAAAARRRRSSS!!!

2 hours ago, PT106 said:

This. If one is flying maneuverable 2ISD fleet, knowing how to fly them together (as well as other ships) and what they can and can't do is paramount. What is also useful is to have several deployment options prepared beforehand (given that you're likely to be outdeployed, you can't really react to the opponent deployment much and can go with a prearranged deployment). For example, one of the advanced deployment tactics that I utilize from time to time is to deploy ISDs parallel to the long edge of the board. It is suprisingly effective countertactic against fast flanking fleets.

I will have to try that trick, I never would have thought of it.

2 hours ago, Snipafist said:

Just wanted to chime in and say thanks for the thoughtful post and I'm glad the Bruiser Extraordinaire (+Intel Officer) build worked out for you. I wish I could claim credit for the original idea, but I first read about it some time ago on the forums, tried it for myself, and was really pleasantly surprised by it. It's been a little while since it hit the table for me, I really should amend that ASAP.

Also, do you mind if I link to this post from the ISD article on the blog? I don't overall recommend running two ISDs, but it can be done and this is a good primer on how.

Go for it.

Edited to include a segment on dice and numerical analysis.

Absolutely wonderful read. Thank you for your thoughts.

Im going to mutter quietly that I still think going against mass bomber lists will be extraordinarily hard. But frankly my middle of road approach of 2isds and 3gozanti plus 6 squadrons doesn’t really confer that much more of an advantage.

No squadrins and no bid seem to be making it easy to lose control.

10 minutes ago, Blail Blerg said:

No squadrins and no bid seem to be making it easy to lose control.

I'm not convinced it's true - I'm usually playing no-squadrons 2ISD fleet that expects to lose a bidding war.

Thanks for the write up and the hands on demo. You definitely made my first game ever fun and memorable. I will say that of the three lists I saw that day nothing evokes that " oh ****, this is gonna hurt" feeling quite like staring down twin isd's.

Everything you wanted in life

https://archiveofossus.wordpress.com/2017/12/16/giled-pallaeon-dual-isds/