Took a snowy day off work to head on down to our regionals at Myth Games in Calgary. Great showing with 22 players including some very skilled ones to I might add!

I had put in a lot of games for practice in December and January with the assumption that wave seven wouldn't be dropping by the time regionals rolled around. So I was pretty set on a JJ list with quasar, demo, raider, gozanti and 134 points of aces. I think it would have done well in wave 6, but as soon as I heard wave 7 was going to drop a few days ahead of the regionals I had some doubts... I thought most lists would feature a large base with strategic adviser and against those lists I would typically not enjoy an activation advantage. They could have 3 ships and still be on par with my list, meanwhile enjoying the firepower and endurance of a large base.

So I looked at going ISD, demo, gozanti, with SA and the same 134 of aces... A strong list for sure but those new wave heaven toys would mostly be sitting on the sidelines, and the kid in me wouldn't have it!

Spit balling some ideas with other community armada players for what wave seven would open up in terms of lists, commander abilities, etc, it became apparent that their were going to be a great many possibilities indeed... Raid, bail, Pryce, Raddus Bombs, Vader Cymoons, 2x larges, new squad hate, new squad love, interdictor buffs, the list was literally endless. Whatever was eventually going to emerge as THE card/combo of the wave, it was going to have a lot of tough competition. Even more, all of these ideas might be coming together right on top of our regionals.

With those reasons in mind I set about creating a list that got to play with some serious wave seven upgrades, and then just have fun with the list at regionals.

To be continued...

The day wave seven hit shelves, I met another local and practice buddy, let's call him Brunson, down at The Sentry Box to crack open the new toys and test some stuff out... Brunson had actually been on about the possibilities of Sato with the MC75 along with wide area barrage about a month before the wave dropped, but me being skeptical to the point of being obtuse , I dismissed it as being decent but perhaps too high of a setup cost to pull off consistently.

Not two weeks later, going over the possibilities of the new wave I had a revelation... SATO AND WIDE AREA BARRAGE ??? I quickly consulted Brunson on what he thought about it. Seems maybe I did too good of a job in discouraging him on the combo as now he was in the skeptic chair with me being all wide eyed and hopeful...

Never the less, we constructed lists around the idea partly for fun partly to test and convened on the night of the release to check it out...

I played the above mentioned ISD demo gozanti 134 list with SA and he played a list similar to the one I'd eventually take to regionals... Though I did win the game, Sato barrage was making a very big impression already, wiping out my dengar leaving my ball without a way to bomb... Several other squads would bite it all due to barrage including 5 hull Jendon hiding on the station to a barrage double tap... I was excited for our next match as I would get to hopefully throw down my own barrages.

I took a list with ten generics, mc75, pelta for flavor, two transports AND BAIL... I was going strategic with 3vcx, advanced gunnery, ion, sensor net... Long story short, Bail kicked in on turn four allowing me to blow away yvaris, and BH with barrage damage helping to kill bright hope and luke. I was hooked!

A couple days later was regionals and I took this:

Author: skycake

Faction: Rebel Alliance
Points: 399/400

Commander: Commander Sato

Assault Objective: Most Wanted
Defense Objective: Planetary Ion Cannon
Navigation Objective: Superior Positions

[ flagship ] MC75 Ordnance Cruiser (100 points)
- Commander Sato ( 32 points)
- Bail Organa ( 7 points)
- Ordnance Experts ( 4 points)
- Reinforced Blast Doors ( 5 points)
- External Racks ( 3 points)
- Wide-Area Barrage ( 2 points)
= 153 total ship cost

Nebulon-B Escort Frigate (57 points)
- Yavaris ( 5 points)
- Flight Commander ( 3 points)
- Fighter Coordination Team ( 3 points)
= 68 total ship cost

GR-75 Medium Transports (18 points)
- Bright Hope ( 2 points)
- Toryn Farr ( 7 points)
= 27 total ship cost

GR-75 Medium Transports (18 points)
- Hondo Ohnaka ( 2 points)
- Comms Net ( 2 points)
= 22 total ship cost

1 VCX-100 Freighter ( 15 points)
1 Jan Ors ( 19 points)
1 Ten Numb ( 19 points)
1 Wedge Antilles ( 19 points)
1 "Dutch" Vander ( 16 points)
1 X-Wing Squadron ( 13 points)
1 Gold Squadron ( 12 points)
1 Tycho Celchu ( 16 points)

The list came together quite easily. Sato likes squads, squads like yvaris, yvaris likes aces, BH Toryn of course...

Hondo versus Leia was a choice here. I decided raid was likely and slicer not so much so took Hondo. Hondo also had more upside with yvaris.he could also allow Bail a clutch squad command to summon Tycho to proc Sato. Also a one point bid could come in handy(it never did).

The way I ended up playing the cruiser(delay, pounce, skidaddle) you could easily lose the RBD...

Most wanted because I figured most opponents would have a large base, they all did.

Planetary Ion Cannon because it's my favorite and I've yet to lose with it.

Superior positions for deployment perfection allowing me to better predict BAIL, and points are good in tournaments apparently ??

Game 1:

I had the pleasure of playing Ryan. A stand-up guy for sure. He picked my ion cannon. He was flying a Sato list as well with 4 hammerhead, mc75 with apt racks, and 5 squads somewhere in there... I setup yvaris, BH and Hondo on the middle with my squads having last deployment with my mc75. He deployed 3HH on the right with squads, and mc75 on the left with last HH and last squad... I setup my MC75 across from his figuring it would last long against long-range HH APTs on the right... I set Bail for turn 4.

his HHs on the right took a long time to engage, meanwhile yvaris started blowing away squads and weakening his cruiser...ions were also chipping away. By turn four it was ready to fall. IN WALKS BAIL. I should mention at this point that he had DCO in his cruiser basically my barrages worst nightmare. Thankfully I had two nice corvettes to shoot at as well... I had a squad command with token queued up and put a bomber on the cruiser bring it to two health, I used the other two bombers to weaken a HH A in preparation for the barrage damage coming off HH B. I then blew away the cruiser out the side. Then shot out the front at HH B with racks killing B with 11 damage triggering enough WAB damage through shields to bring HH A to 1 hull. I then rammed HH A to death, then landing and healing on the station. The last two hammerheads came in but could not destroy my cruiser on turn 5. They got yvaris finally, nothing else, but I then got those corvettes and it was game. 10-1.

Game 2:

This is where you can become a victim of your own success. With a top score in round one, you are very likely to face a very tough opponent and game 2 was no exception. I faced Sean, who was last year's regionals champ and all around nice guy. I would be happy to walk away with a six five. He brought 3 transports, dodonna admo, and liberty with SA. Also Blount, 3 z95's, and two rogues(good man!) Ketsu and Dash. He picked my most wanted and I setup yvaris in the middle again with squads and flotillae. He setup his flotillae, one with slicer On the left and demo and lib on the right with squads. I put BAIL opposite flotillae away from liberty allowing yvaris time to kill before pouncing with bail. Picked liberty and Hondo as MW. Set bail for turn four and we went at it.

Sean's a pretty clever guy and he wasn't going to let my bail get the best of him, he wanted instead to use it against me, so he began a long stall out till turn five...in the mean time squads started going at it him attempting to pick off the vcx, jan protected it well and yvaris cracked back with a whole one squad token due to slicer. Leia, you were missed. Flotillae helped other squads and we were coping. Armored cruiser activated first turn 4 using Sato to change out blacks for blues enabling it to down two transports... I bumped my BH to prevent flying into death zone of lib and admo..

Liberty destroyed my transports and admo setup along side his cruiser. Yvaris having won the squad war, tore into the side of the liberty dropping it's hull fast. Still, it would have to survive the liberty next round to really put the hurt on the lib. TURN FIVE.

the lib activated with a front arc to yvaris side, which despite dodonna and xx9, was able to hold on at 2 hull 3 shield on front. He then blasted my MC75 puncturing a hole with xi7 and landing a crit... Next yvaris put the liberty in the critical zone, before getting whacked out by dodonna.. Then the MC75 took out the liberty and that was game.

The end of the game was really frenetic and there was some post game debate about whether he should have put projector misaligned on yvaris and taken a shot at it with side arc of lib to finish it off... I ultimately felt like even if that had worked, the mc75 cruiser would have survived another turn, allowing it to kill the lib instead... And there was a decent chance the side arc would whiff.... I think it ended up being am 8-3 due to mw... GG for sure. Barrages taking some squads btw.

Game 3

Final round was against Ryan of Ryan Kingston's fleet builder. The first shot of the game may have then been me showing him my list created in Armada Warlords He's a solid player and makes into the top four on a regular basis and he had a pretty decent list... Dodonna doom pickle, yvaris, 2 transports, and 2vcx, 2b, jan, and 2e's. He had initiative and made me first... Oh well, bail was on token duty...which is piety nice btw. From AG, ION, MINE I picked minefields because I had a lot of experience with the objective and a vcx of my own. Also those other two were death to me, though I would have picked AG if I had expanded launchers.

Mines were scattered all over the board along the middle of the map lengthwise. Same deployment for me with yvaris, flotillae and squads as before in the middle... He mirrored me exactly, then he placed dodonna of to the left and I mirrored dodonna with my own cruiser.

Our nebs charged toward eachother with squad versus squad...aces versus generics.aces always win. However, his vcx were getting the mines where they needed to go, 3 of them toward my mc75. But I kept shoving one back in his face and he elected that his Hondo should run over it instead of his yvaris... The dice came up hit crit and what do ya know, STRUCTURAL DAMAGE... Poof... I like minefields in strategic, but out can definitely backfire...

Meanwhile with the mines heading toward my cruiser I decided that I would either have to suck it up and take it dodonna style, or borrow a move I learned from @drasnighta and sacrifice a non important ship to them and that's what I did. I speed Hondo up to speed 3 and curved him into all 3 mines... He exploded promptly!

We blew up each other's yvaris and he engine tech rammed my BH. Healing twice on the station like a boss I might add. So after all the damage my yvaris put on his doom pickle, it was pretty well off... Enter Sato, and he puts out 7 hit icons, 8 damage, to deal four after brace and 4 directly to his BH sitting right next to it... The barrages are good. I move and try to setup a double arc... It's close and T.O. rules it in. The final dice get rolled and dodonna goes down to table town.

That match got me a 9 to finish 27 on the day. 5 points ahead of Brunson of all people! Ha!

"See Brunson", I said. "I told you Sato barrage was good!" ???

GG's everybody, it was great seeing you all. Thanks to the venue and the organizers as well, they dida wonderful job...

Cheers!

Spoiler Alert: Sato also would have taken last, but I got a pity bye in Round 2

14 minutes ago, Belryan said:

Spoiler Alert: Sato also would have taken last, but I got a pity bye in Round 2

Brunson

Brunson reporting in. I'll admit my initial hype for wide area barrage had diminished but, seeing it on the table, that card is legit. Perfect for Sato.

As much as I would like to take credit for coming up with SkyCake's list, he certainly made it better (and had the guts/skill to use it at regionals). Most importantly, including Bail instead of Intel Officer was critical. He completely turns things around and exceeded my (fairly high) expectations. It will be tough to leave him off a non-Raddused ordnance cruiser.

TLDR: Bail sucks, don't use him. Sato still unplayable. Nothing to see here.

Did you ever feel like you wanted APT or ACM over WAB? I would think ACM would be best with a Yavaris list because you can quickly strip shields with the 75 or squads, and just pile on damage.

I'm also surprised you took RBD and Hondo over BCC.

I have a similar list with less squads and Nym because I like to troll people I was considering running a much larger squad ball and now I want to look into it.

Didn't miss acm or apt, and honestly wouldn't run it with Sato without barrage. It's amazing, nuking a flotilla or an ace for free... It's like a three or four shot gunnery teams... If hull values are low enough and you can shoot twice, there is no reason you couldn't erase up to four targets... 2 with shots, 2 with barrage. Not to mention rams... And when you apply damage with barrage you can setup for that ram... Ie, 3 barrage onto a healthy flotilla cause you know you can ram it.

So, 4 activations didn't bother you? Bail gives you first right?

Did you plan to use Sato more at long range, or more at close range, changing a majority of the dice to black and WAB-ing the frak outta everything?

On Nym: I wanted him in the list as soon as I knew I was taking bail over Intel officer, but was having a hard time with the points...I would have to swap with ten, or gold, and get bcc in there too, and even then it wouldn't be a lock. Without Bcc, I felt like his ability wouldn't be worth it. The thing is, how I flew it, the big ships were out of tokens, or low on hull so that brace didn't matter, without Nym. That's just the death of a thousand cuts bombers naturally bring. So I didn't really miss him at all in the end.

On no BCC: again points...I really wanted it in there, but decided toryn was good enough... I could see myself ditching rbd, but not Hondo, so again we'd be 2 points short... It might be better to just keep as is and ditch rbd, using points to get ketsu in there or bid for second...

6 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

So, 4 activations didn't bother you? Bail gives you first right?

Did you plan to use Sato more at long range, or more at close range, changing a majority of the dice to black and WAB-ing the frak outta everything?

Yeah close range barrages was always the plan... When the long range reds got a shot off it was nice, but preferred to stay out of range with mc75 until turn bail.

4 activations are enough... I'm not generally on the activation count side of things, more preferring to be on the activation quality side of things instead. And once engagement happens, that barrage is money!

Thanks for this article, @SkyCake , I took that list as inspiration and made a list quite similar to yours and am very happy with it and how it performs.

@SkyCake followed this write up pretty extensively.

Actually just used a very, very, slightly tweaked version of this list in a battle report.

I definitely think there was user error / unfamiliarity on my end but wow a Sato - Wide Area Barrage (SWAB) MC-75 is really on my radar now. Really enjoyed the list, and will probably use it a few more times at least.

3 hours ago, Captain Weather said:

@SkyCake followed this write up pretty extensively.

Actually just used a very, very, slightly tweaked version of this list in a battle report.

I definitely think there was user error / unfamiliarity on my end but wow a Sato - Wide Area Barrage (SWAB) MC-75 is really on my radar now. Really enjoyed the list, and will probably use it a few more times at least.

Cool, look forward to seeing it!

I think there are many ways to setup the 75. Either with expanded launchers looking for advanced gunnery, external racks which has flexibility at the cost of one time use, or rapid reload making giving sides arcs the potential for 3 WAB damage as the front does...

Sato 30's can reliably churn out a 3 damage barrage as well, usually out of both sides in a slash attack, or 3/2 using side/front.

I can also definitely see pelta command with generics over yvaris aces, the pelta bringing in the upside of IF which makes WAB even more consistent.

I'm excited to see how the community makes use of WAB in the future, should be a good show!

Cheers!

I really enjoyed this writeup as well! Pairing Wide Area Barrage with Yavaris is pretty brilliant.

I couldn't get the Pelta/intensify forward firepower out of my head, so I ran an MC75 ordnance (strategic advisor), Pelta command, flotilla with Toryn, and Salvation and about 90 points of squadrons at a casual tournament recently. It worked decently well. I think there is some real potential with the Pelta as an alternative to Yavaris in a similar concept.

I won my first game against a newer player who ran in his ISD/Quasar/Demolisher, and I was able to chain WABs from ship to ship to get some good splash damage. The second game was a rough matchup - BTavenger Motti, relay bomber list which outactivated me. I went second and Toryn was too busy intel sweeping to support my fighters, which were heavily outnumbered. WAB dropped Dengar and Mauler to help my beleaguered squadrons, but they were mostly overwhelmed with just a couple VCXs left when we ended at round 5. I switched one round to bombing to try to get the Motti ISD, but it survived on 2 or 3 hull when we ran out (I might have gotten it, but lost my MC75 to bombers next). The Pelta got BT Avengered. In hindsight, I had Aspiration loaded, and could have stepped up to block the path to the Pelta, but I was more worried about giving up a double arc. Fun game as I lost and traded squadron losses, losing my Salvation and Pelta but adding in the intel sweep points. The last game was a tight one against a low squadron Cymoon double Vic 1 list, with Tarking, where I got the Cymoon, lost the Pelta and Salvation again, and came out ahead, getting quite close to claiming a Vic but not quite. This game also saw Salvation save the Rebellion, save the dream with 9 damage on 4 dice (black hit crit x 2, blue crit, red hit), which was beautiful. I ended up 4th out of 9 (I think?) so in the middle of the pack.

My impressions of intensify is that it is a great great fleet command. It did help out WAB on occasion. I was dreaming of 4 WAB splash with external racks. I got it once, but didn't have a 4 health target at the time. Intensify helped Salvation somewhat, although I think Raymus would have been just as good, and it was quite good for the Pelta's own dice. I enjoyed having it and it felt quite beneficial.

I enjoyed my fleet, but would make some changes. I think having two slow-ish ships that want to be finishers was a weak spot. I also think the missed synergy in what I did was in not having more of a bomber force. I'd try it again, downgrading Salvation to a torpedo HH with WAB, and adding ~20 pts of squads with a different layout. I had Tycho/Shara/Gold/VCX/VCX/Hwk, which I like for the points, but would probably downgrade Shara to a generic A, add some Y wings or Bwings, at a minimum sub boosted comms for the Pelta's disposable capacitors, and have more of a bombing threat after WAB does its work. My WAB squadron kills earned me points and reduced threat to me, but didn't really turn loose my squadron horde since I just had Gold squadron as a credible bomber.

On 2/10/2018 at 4:28 PM, anonymousguy said:

Thanks for this article, @SkyCake , I took that list as inspiration and made a list quite similar to yours and am very happy with it and how it performs.

So, here is the list:

MC75 Ordnance with Sato, Raymus, OE, WAB, ER, EWS

GR75 med with Bright Hope, Toryn, Jamming Field

Gr75 Med with BCC

GR75 med with Ahsoka and Comms Net

GR75 med x2

Biggs, 2 x-wings, Jan, Norra, Gold Squadron, 1 y-wing squadron, 2 b-wing squadrons

Thinking about putting Bail on the ship, but I'll need a little more experience.

You inspired me to try writing a SATO list and you're right, they do basically write themselves. By the time you take MC75 plus Yavaris and a bunch of squads you're out of points anyway!

Love Wide-Area Barrage! Great job!!!

As Passenger 57 said, "always bet on black [dice]!"