I played a tournament this weekend with the following list. I ended up taking first place against some tough lists and good players. For context, there were 12 players participating.

• Interdictor Suppression Refit w/Admiral Motti + Projection Experts
• Victory II-class Star Destroyer w/Disposable Capacitors and Dual Turbolaser Turrets
• Victory II-class Star Destroyer w/Disposable Capacitors and Dual Turbolaser Turrets
• Victory II-class Star Destroyer w/Disposable Capacitors and Dual Turbolaser Turrets
• No Squadrons
• Contested Outpost/Advanced Gunnery/Solar Corona

Generally speaking, you deploy the three Vics forward and close to each other with the Interdictor in the rear. As the game plays out, you move forward slowly, doing everything in your power to get the first shot. Against a fast moving fleet that wants to get behind me, I have no issue with dropping to speed zero immediately and then speeding up to 1 when the opponent gets close. Ships like Demo are far less threatening when they're forced to fly in front of multiple star destroyer front arcs instead of behind.

The Vics are self explanatory. Shoot when you can and fly in TIGHT formation to keep overlapping front arcs. Don't be afraid to intentionally self bump to preserve a good firing arc. Stack engineering to heal or concentrated fire if you think that's better. I stack one or the other depending on the opponent.

The Interdictor's whole job is to feed shields to the Vics while keeping Motti alive and replenishing his own shields. With a token, the engineering dial lets you move two shields while regaining two shields. Without a token, you move two shields and regain one. In the late game, you're taking dual arc shots at the opponent's straggler ships. Generally obstructed, but that works out to 2blue/1red, which is no joke when combined with Vic shots.

Contested Outpost is like a free 80+ victory points. Solar Corona gives me massive deployment advantage and get me better use out of my defense tokens (due to the corona effect). Advanced Gunnery is mediocre, but it's better than the other reds for me.

CONS:

• No squadrons
• Zero wiggle room for upgrades/changes

THOUGHTS???

As I wrote in the other topic this fleet should autolose 5-6 to other fleets that refuse to engage it (Which may be the best strategy in this case). It may lose more than that to bomber-heavy fleets.

35 minutes ago, PT106 said:

As I wrote in the other topic this fleet should autolose 5-6 to other fleets that refuse to engage it (Which may be the best strategy in this case). It may lose more than that to bomber-heavy fleets.

You say 'should' like it's a given. In practice, I've yet to see anyone give me first player AND successfully refuse to engage. It's certainly doable, but isn't what MOST players will think to do. I took a very similar list to Gencon for the NA Championship and played every game as second player, winning more than I lost and finishing in the top third. People want to play. People want to win. People don't want to get a 6-5 victory that won't help them win a tournament by refusing to engage with what the community clearly considers to be an antiquated and questionably viable ship from in a competitive sense.

1 hour ago, KrisWall said:

• Interdictor Suppression Refit w/Admiral Motti + Projection Experts
• Victory II-class Star Destroyer w/Disposable Capacitors and Dual Turbolaser Turrets
• Victory II-class Star Destroyer w/Disposable Capacitors and Dual Turbolaser Turrets
• Victory II-class Star Destroyer w/Disposable Capacitors and Dual Turbolaser Turrets
• No Squadrons
• Contested Outpost/Advanced Gunnery/Solar Corona

As has already been mentioned, mass squadrons (moreso with relay), is the biggest weakness of this setup. In most cases, if I am trying to score more points, I won't completely run away as @PT106 says. What you might run into quite frequently against opponents is a game that doesn't start shooting until turn 4-5. If they have ships that can out maneuver or present more than one threat or both, they get to choose the moment of engagement. The proposed fleet simply contains no tools to force or keep engagement. If your opponent, either because they miscalculate, or are a baby seal; runs right into the front of the slow moving gunline, you will probably get a giant pile of free points(if the dice gods favor you).

I played against @CaribbeanNinja's triple Vic squad list a good number of times. I think he would agree that ceding the time of engagement to an opponent that can properly utilize the advantage means that they can set up favorable trades. Your Vic's are not going to die easy by any means, but it's pretty simple math to figure out what the odds of favorable engagement are. That being said, I think you would get far far more value of of having a squadron component than the interdictor.

To speak to @PT106's point, Armada's scoring system, while better than at launch, is still very very swingy. With only 3-4 rounds of swiss, it is difficult to tell what average level of points is needed to win. A single round of 10 points can make an almost impossible lead in a smaller tournament, meaning taking a 6 is inadvisable. (Hence why I'm personally not a fan of willingly taking a bye). Since Armada takes so long to play, I don't know exactly what the solution is.

Have you considered Blockade Run? Not for getting to their deployment zone, of course.

This is just my opinion and I'm by no means an expert on this:

Let's assume you're going up against a typical rebel MSU style fleet, with TRC90s and/or MC30s.

You'll almost invariably be second player. Without extra activations and gunnery teams, smarter players will wait out your slow-moving, predictable activations as much as they can and try to sucker-punch activated ships, then overload your weakest flank with targets so you'll never be able to hit all of them with your best arc. They'll try to last-first your weakest flank to get rid of it early, fly around your fleet in the hole they've made, and shoot you in the back or sides for the rest of the game with little recourse from you, even with navigate commands.

With that being said, this fleet would be much scarier if you had gunnery teams on each Vic2 and replaced the interdictor for a few gozantiis, probably with comms nets. Extra activations will help you set up important shots, which is often better than having a bunch of shooters that are hard to set up. The comms nets can feed you navigate or engineering tokens to make up for your lack of interdictor, or fly in front of enemy ships to keep them within your gunline if you're being cheeky. Gunnery teams will make trying to overload one side of your fleet harder. I don't think this will make it a perfectly fleet, but it ought to help.

3 minutes ago, DerFurst said:

This is just my opinion and I'm by no means an expert on this:

Let's assume you're going up against a typical rebel MSU style fleet, with TRC90s and/or MC30s.

You'll almost invariably be second player. Without extra activations and gunnery teams, smarter players will wait out your slow-moving, predictable activations as much as they can and try to sucker-punch activated ships, then overload your weakest flank with targets so you'll never be able to hit all of them with your best arc. They'll try to last-first your weakest flank to get rid of it early, fly around your fleet in the hole they've made, and shoot you in the back or sides for the rest of the game with little recourse from you, even with navigate commands.

With that being said, this fleet would be much scarier if you had gunnery teams on each Vic2 and replaced the interdictor for a few gozantiis, probably with comms nets. Extra activations will help you set up important shots, which is often better than having a bunch of shooters that are hard to set up. The comms nets can feed you navigate or engineering tokens to make up for your lack of interdictor, or fly in front of enemy ships to keep them within your gunline if you're being cheeky. Gunnery teams will make trying to overload one side of your fleet harder. I don't think this will make it a perfectly fleet, but it ought to help.

I've considered this and have tried it. It really comes down to math. With my build, the Vics are 93 points and the Interdictor is 120. If I lose two ships, I'm down 186 points. I usually lose 1-2, but not 3. I just need to kill more than 186 points to win. That's usually one big ship an one little ship. If I load down the Vics with extra upgrades, I've made them more killy, but not more durable. I've also made them more expensive. I now need to kill 200+ points to win. That's probably means I need to kill a whole extra ship to break even. Remember, I'm not trying to keep my whole fleet alive and I'm not trying to win 10-1. I'm being a proper Imperial Admiral who is perfectly willing to throw one ship out as a sacrificial target if it means I can line up perfect shots for the next round or two with the rest of the fleet.

I like that you're still fighting the good fight with VSDs.

They are stubborn blocks of hull and you make them even tougher with Motti and the Interdictor.

My skills aren't up to maneuvering this list so that it can't be outflanked. If yours are, I salute you.

I do think it's a great core for a Corellean Conflict campaign fleet.

I'm dubious, but I want to try it on the table before I dismiss it because I love the idea of a brick wall of Vics.

My question is, why bother with the Interdictor without any of the experimental retros? Why not just use a way cheaper Glad for that job, which oh by the way can also do other stuff? That will free up the 21 points you'd need to bring GT on the Vics, making them way scarier?

I just have a hard time seeing how Rogues or Relay squadrons won't push your poop in. Any squadron player worth his salt is going to take second if he gets bid (and at 399, you're not bidding hard). You'll be picking from Precision Strike, Superior Positions, and a long list of terrible choices of yellow (FL, FA, PIC, HA)--and I don't see what recourse you have against something like that at all.

I would think about dropping the expensive interdoctor. It isn't as though you are utilising its other aspects like grav shift, target scrambler or Disposable Capacitors.

Replace it with a GSD with Grint and projection experts. Maybe add Racks or APTs but it makes a cheaper doctor and still generates 5 repair points.

This saves you 20-29 points to add gunnery teams to VSDs and maybe some leading shots.

A GSD even without too much ordnance upgrades still makes a reasonable anti flanking deterrent acting as a sweeper or goalkeeper and dealing with threats to the gun line ships. It can also sit back behind the line handing out shields if there is no immediate threat.

Seems like a slow-moving Gladiator (since it's behind the VSDs) would be an easy kill. Sure it's obstructed. But it only has 5 health.

Also, an Interdictor can use engineering (8 eng) to move 2 and repair 2 every turn. The GSD (5 eng) can move 2 and only repair 1.

1 hour ago, Democratus said:

Seems like a slow-moving Gladiator (since it's behind the VSDs) would be an easy kill. Sure it's obstructed. But it only has 5 health.

Also, an Interdictor can use engineering (8 eng) to move 2 and repair 2 every turn. The GSD (5 eng) can move 2 and only repair 1.

True but in the original post @KrisWall is maxed out on points and cannot afford to make the interdictor have Grint or Wulff to get 8 repair a turn. His current Interdictor could do it once a game maybe if it chose not to bank a Nav on turn one.

If the enemy wish to sit in front of 3 VSDs shooting through them at a GSD at long range I would gladly lend him my dice to do so.

Keeping the Interdictor and boosting it with Grint and D-Caps could be done if one of the VSDs was swapped for a VSD-I with E-Racks, Ordnance Experts & DTTs. It would make a nice bookend for the gun line. Any MC30 trying to get around that flank could face a nasty 7 dice volley out the side arc with rerolling black dice.

1 hour ago, Mad Cat said:

True but in the original post @KrisWall is maxed out on points and cannot afford to make the interdictor have Grint or Wulff to get 8 repair a turn. His current Interdictor could do it once a game maybe if it chose not to bank a Nav on turn one.

If the enemy wish to sit in front of 3 VSDs shooting through them at a GSD at long range I would gladly lend him my dice to do so.

Keeping the Interdictor and boosting it with Grint and D-Caps could be done if one of the VSDs was swapped for a VSD-I with E-Racks, Ordnance Experts & DTTs. It would make a nice bookend for the gun line. Any MC30 trying to get around that flank could face a nasty 7 dice volley out the side arc with rerolling black dice.

My original list had a VicI kitted out more or less like that. I found that two long range Vics and one short range put out a lot less dice over the course of a game than three long range ones. I'm still toying with where I want to take this.