So I don’t get to play Armada anywhere near as much as it deserves to be played. I’ve technically been playing since July last year, but have probably fewer than 20 play sessions in that time period (though several of those sessions would be tourneys with multiple games). As such, I haven’t even played with all of my ships yet. So when I decided I was going to a local tourney this past Saturday, I decided I wanted to try out a Victory Star Destroyer for the first time. After a bit of debate, here’s what I came up with:
Cymoon w/ Vader, SA, GT, QBT, 7th Fleet
VSD-2 w/ GT, Dcap, HIE, QBT, 7th Fleet
VSD-2 w/ GT, Dcap, HIE, QBT, 7th Fleet
Solar Corona, Contested Outpost, Station Assault
397/400
I settled on this for a few reasons, it let me try out the VSD as well as the 7th fleet title, and it gave me the experience of numerous Star Destroyers with their massive dice of death front arcs. From what I can tell, Dcap VSD2 is the way to go, and I’ve had a hard-on for HIE Raiders for awhile now, so I figured it was a good upgrade for the VSDs as well. I went with a Cymoon to complement the long range approach that the VSDs were geared towards. It was a toss-up between Vader and Motti with some defensive stuff, but I decided on Vader because I needed to ensure I could kill stuff during the alpha strike. The best defense is a good offense in this case. The objectives were chosen as CO and SA both gave me a place to defend, while SC would hopefully help mitigate the lack of ECMs on these things.
Round 1
I played against a rebel fleet led by Leia that seemed like a pretty decent generalist list. It was escorted by about 6 squads, mostly X Wings, and contained an MC80H as the flagship along with some CR90s and flotillas. From the beginning, I decided to ignore the MC80H and go after the small fish. In my experience, it ends up running away before I can get the final killing blow on the thing, and I know that these ships aren’t really designed to give chase. We both had a 3 point bid, and I end up winning the bid and giving him player 1 (I’m more comfortable and familiar playing as 2nd player), and he chooses Solar Corona. He sets up his fleet on the right, angled 45 degrees inwards. I setup in the center with my ISD on the left. He breaks off his CR90 to come in on the flank, but ends up getting him caught at long range of a VSD. Due to the evades, he manages to prevent himself from getting killed, but takes a bunch of damage. The following turn he ends up doing 1 damage to that VSD (rolled 4 damage, braced to two, 7th fleet to 1), and then got out of the front arc, but stayed in long range of the side. My VSD had a CF dial plus QBT to throw 3R/1B, and managed to blow up the CR-90. Meanwhile, the Cymoon managed to one shot a flotilla. His MC80 was barreling down into range against my ships and decided to target the Cymoon, but the 4 reds managed to only do a small amount of damage, his accuracy was forfeit to SC, and then he rolled 4 damage, which was again braced to 2, and 7th fleeted down to 1. But then he started getting his squads involved, which had to shoot at my front hull the first round, so I managed to 7th fleet another damage, and then took 4 or so damage, redirecting 2 to the other shields, and was left with 1 front shield. He activated his MC80 first at medium range, throwing 4R/2B onto my ISD, getting several hits, but again only one accuracy, which was lost to the Corona, so I braced, 7th fleeted, and redirected, taking the final shield up front. He did manage to move his MC80 out of everyone’s front arc though. I took some side shots with my star destroyers as well as killed off the other Flotilla, leaving him with a bunch of squads and the MC80. The final few rounds involved him taking some long range shots at my VSD, moving his squads to attack the VSD since the ISD had started to just repair everything, and me taking flak shots at his squads and throwing a couple of dice out the side at the MC80. I managed to kill a single X Wing, and did some decent damage to the MC80, but failed to kill it off. The other X Wings were all left at 1 hull (go go Biggs!). 106-0 win.
At this point I was feeling pretty good about my list. It seemed to be resilient enough to actually do something, and seemed like it would only lose one SD at max. My next round was against a MC75, three CR90s, and a transport, (all with IO) commanded by Ackbar. He had a 4 point bid, and made me player one, selecting Station Assault. I placed both stations on the lower left, and set up my force to defend them. He moved his CR90 and the two fighters to go after the stations while bringing everything else around the other way. I realized there was absolutely nothing I could do about his fighters – he kept them on the station so the flak shots would be obstructed, meaning the only way to do damage would be to have the ISD double arc them, throwing hits both times, so he could scatter the first and take 1 damage on the second. So I didn’t even bother. However, his CR90 ended JUST in range of my VSD, double arced, and of course with a CF dial. So I ended up throwing 4R/4B followed by 2R/2B after using my Dcaps, and the CR90 died after taking just one shot at the station (though he made that shot matter, doing 5 damage). Tycho and Shara continued to attack the station, doing 2 damage on turns 2, 3, and killing it on 4, with the other one moving over to the second station. Meanwhile, the MC75 was coming in directly into my front arcs while the other two CR90s were skirting around to get into flanking position. He targeted the ISD, and did some quality damage to it (lack of ECMs really hurt here), and I eventually had to pull the ISD out at speed 3 to get away. The MC75 suffered under the ISD and VSD firing though, and ended up dying on round 6, but not before he was barely side arced on a VSD and the station. Note, at the top of R6, my ISD had 2 hull left and his MC75 had 3, so I activated my ISD first to get him out of range of the MC75 as I wasn’t confident in doing 3 damage with my rear arc. But then my VSD had him double arced with side and rear, and managed to take out the MC75 (but not before he did massive damage to the VSD and 6 damage to the station, bringing it down to 3 hull remaining). The CR90s were enough to kill off my VSD and take out the station, giving me a 6-5 win.
I had a bit of a mixed feeling to the list at this point. I was really starting to feel the effects of the lack of maneuverability that the VSDs had – I spent more time shooting out of my side arcs than front arcs. And since I was trying to keep the triangles together, their lack of maneuverability translated to the ISD not being that maneuverable. But the side arcs of the VSDs are nothing to laugh at, especially when coupled with a CF and a QBT for 3R/2B and Vader rerolls. Up next I was paired against my first imperial list, a Kuat ISD, a Quasar, two Gozantis, 4 Defenders, Maarek, and Jendon all led by Sloane. He had me choose from his objectives, and I was left choosing Advanced Gunnery, Fighter Ambush, or Superior Positions. I honestly thought about choosing Advanced Gunnery, but ended up choosing Superior Positions. Though now that I reread Fighter Ambush and realize that it is “deal a damage card” instead of “deal a damage,” I think I would have been better off with that one. Oh well. I setup on the lower right, and he took the top left, and used his superior speed to engage on round 3 (I had been preferring to hold off until R4 in my previous matches). I had to drop one of my VSDs down to speed 0 in order to prevent his ISD getting a free shot at him on R2. My first activation on R3 I blew Dcaps on the lead VSD, who had his ISD double arced, I triggered HIE, and forced him to exhaust ECMs, and left him basically shieldless on the front and sides. His return fire was just as devastating, and coupled with his Defenders (who were chewing away at the rear of my VSD), he managed to bring that VSD down to 1 hull. My ISD though took a long range shot at his after he moved into range, and took his ISD down to 3 hull. The next round I managed to kill his ISD with my life-supported VSD, and then the quasar activated and the Defenders finished off the VSD. I popped my dcaps on the other VSD to one shot a Gozanti and put some hurt into the Quasar. And as the 6th round drew near, he managed to kill my second VSD with his fighters, but then the ISD killed his Quasar. Due to the new rules regarding flotillas, I managed to table him. Sadly, I surrendered so many objective points, that he still ended up winning! I say sadly, but honestly, how many people can claim they destroyed the entire fleet just to lose? It was a great moment. And honestly, I think I would have been better off with any of the other objectives, and if I was to play a rematch, I would probably select Fighter Ambush, and rely upon my redirects and engineering commands to keep shields up as much as possible.
The final round was against a Raddus fleet, with an MC80L, MC75 (Hyperspaced), two transports, Shara & Tycho, and two VCX-100s. Once again he made me player one, and I had to choose from Advanced Gunnery, Intel Sweep, and Ion Cannon. So I went with Ion Cannon, as I figured I would only have to deal with 1, maybe 2 extra 4 blue dice attacks. He had Bail on the MC80 set for Round 4. His MC80 and one of the transports came down the middle (I setup on the right, he setup in the middle), and the other transport along the right side. I figured that was so he could drop the MC75 from the transport, but he kept it out of range so I couldn’t kill it on R2, allowing him to drop the MC75 at the start of R3 at close range to my ISD, but in the ISD’s front arc. The MC80 took some damage from my left-most VSD, and the ISD/VSD went after the MC75, hammering away at almost all of the shields he had. His MC75 rolled 2B/6Black via ER and CF, and then rerolled all 6 via Caitken&Shollan, but failed to trigger APTs on my ISD. We were in a position such that he could not get away, which was fine with me and fine with him, so we both rammed each other. The following turn he triggered the second ion cannon (first one rolled 1 hit, which I 7th fleeted) for 3 damage to the rear of my left-VSD. The MC80 activated at close range double arced, and managed to kill the VSD, ouch. My ISD managed to kill his MC75 though, and ended up drifting away from the fight. The second VSD had a side/rear double arc on the MC80, and ended up bringing him down to 1 hull, but he himself was down to 3 hull. The squadron phase of R5 came, and one VCX was out of range, but both A wings and the other were in range. All three ended up hitting (28% chance of happening), killing my VSD. And since the ISD was out of range, he couldn’t kill the 1 hull MC80, and I lost.
At the end of the day, I’m honestly glad that I ran the list. I feel like I learned quite a bit about the VSD in doing so, and walked away feeling that the VSD is nowhere near as bad as people make it out to be. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend the ISD/VSD/VSD to others, but a few tweaks that I would make after playing with it for the day would include dropping gunnery teams, which may seem like blasphemy, but the ships are so unmaneuverable that I rarely got front arc shots, never-the-less two of them. Those 21 points could be better spent elsewhere. I think I would drop SA for Tua and ECMs on the ISD, and then I would probably add XI7s and IF to the ISD, and to help trigger it, Hondo to one of the VSDs. That way you can get 3 rounds of IF without actually having to spend any dials for it (Hondo one round, CF token stored from R1, and IF itself one round). Obviously the biggest change is SA -> Tua/ECM, and that would have made the greatest difference in my games, though to be fair, I didn’t lose the ISD in any of them, but I had to pull it out of the fight in 2 to keep it from dying, and that probably resulted in the MC80 in my last round getting away, and the MC75 in my second game living long enough to get the second station, and killing my second VSD. I’m actively looking forward to adding a VSD to one of my lists, especially if I have Jerry as the commander (and I still think Jerry is the best commander, even though I’m in the minority there).
