I’m a new player who bought the core set, played a couple of the tutorial games with my son and then went out and bought a bunch of ships

Given that I have no experience in fleet building whatsoever, I thought I’d put one together and have the community tell me what I did right and what I did wrong.

The idea with this fleet is that I have combined front arc and side arc heavy hitters. I place the Liberty and the MC-30 on opposite sides of his ISD and force him to choose a direction to point his front arc. Whatever direction he chooses exposes his ISD’s flanks or rear to one of my heavy hitters.

Anvil & Hammer (399/400)
Rebels - Author: Chris Boerger

Commander: General Madine

Objectives: Opening Salvo, Superior Positions, Contested Outpost

[flagship] MC80 Liberty Battle Cruiser (103)
- General Madine (30)
- Overload Pulse (8)
- Weapons Liaison (3)
- Medical Team (1)
- Spinal Armament (9)
- XI7 Turbolasers (6)
- Fire Control Team (2)
= 162 total points

MC30c Torpedo Frigate (63)
- Redundant Shields (8)
- Lando Calrissian (4)
- Assault Concussion Missiles (7)
- Ordnance Experts (4)
= 86 total points

GR-75 Medium Transports (18)
- Bright Hope (2)
- Bomber Command Center (8)
- Toryn Farr (7)
= 35 total points

Nebulon-B Escort Frigate (57)
- Yavaris (5)
- Weapons Liaison (3)
- Turbolaser Reroute Circuits (7)
= 72 total points

Squadrons (44/134):
1x A-Wing Squadron (11)
2x Y-Wing Squadron (20)
1x X-Wing Squadron (13)

Glad to hear you loved the core enough to buy in to it. We did too.

Some thoughts on your two heavy hitters: Xi7 is great, and Assault Concussion Missiles (ACM) do a lot of damage. However, they go after different strategies of attack. ACMs is about stripping away all shields, whereas Xi7 is about drilling a hole. Xi7 doesn’t need to strip shields, it just needs to target the same zone as the MC30. That is where Assault Proton Torpedoes (APT) would be a better pairing with Xi7 (APTs deal a faceup damage to the target first, and then they suffer the rest of the damage from the attack).

The squadron compliment is really small, too small for the Yavaaris title to matter for long if your opponent brought more than a couple squads of his own. If you’re going to invest that many points into a bomber strategy (bomber command center, Yavaaris, weapons liaison), then you’ll want more protection for your bombers in the form of more escorts.

For learning the game, that’s where I would start with making adjustments to the list for casual play. There are certainly more optimized upgrade suites which I would suggest for competitive play, but I say just have fun and learn as you go along. There are lots of blog writers on the forum with good strategy articles for your consumption, and the rules forum is a wealth of knowledge for clarification on card effects.

Great advice. Decided to remove the MC-30 and go all-in on squadrons.

Anvil & Hammer (398/400)
Rebels - Author: Chris Boerger

Commander: General Madine

Objectives: Opening Salvo, Superior Positions, Contested Outpost

[flagship] MC80 Liberty Battle Cruiser (103)
- General Madine (30)
- Overload Pulse (8)
- Weapons Liaison (3)
- Medical Team (1)
- XI7 Turbolasers (6)
- Spinal Armament (9)
- Fire Control Team (2)
= 162 total points

GR-75 Medium Transports (18)
- Bright Hope (2)
- Bomber Command Center (8)
- Boosted Comms (4)
- Toryn Farr (7)
= 39 total points

Nebulon-B Escort Frigate (57)
- Yavaris (5)
- Weapons Liaison (3)
- Engineering Team (5)
- Turbolaser Reroute Circuits (7)
= 77 total points

Squadrons (120/134):
2x A-Wing Squadron (22)
1x Dutch Vander Y-Wing Squadron (16)
1x Y-Wing Squadron (10)
1x Wedge Antilles X-Wing Squadron (19)
1x Luke Skywalker X-Wing Squadron (20)
1x X-Wing Squadron (13)
1x Keyan Farlander B-Wing Squadron (20)

MC80B - Go for Gunnery Teams. gets you twice the use out of spinals and threatens multiple ships. Intel officer may be better than OL Pulse as you don't need to set up one-two's to take advantage. Just hit opponents with a big volley and ask them to use-n-loose that brace.

Yavaris can ditch Eng team. Apart from banking a nav token on turn one it should probably squadron all game. Fighter Co-ord team and Flight commander are good options or just a Raymus or Vet captain for an extra squad token. The TRC is ok but you can move it elsewhere or save points. Yavaris is already a target with a price on its head.

Fighters. With so many wishing to attack ships some intel would help. Drop an A-wing for a HWK or Jan if you ditched that TRC for points.

Change Opening Salvo for Most Wanted as you only have 2 combat ships and would hate to give 2 red dice to 5 enemy ships.