Hi everyone,

I am a new player who loves the game and the forum and I need a bit of help heading into a store championship on Sunday. I have limited my investment in the game so far as I have a little one on the way. Also, being new, I am trying to play as simply as possible given that I think that would make me less prone to making mistakes.

I have the Core Set, MC80 Liberty, Neb-B ex, and all rebel squadron ex. That is all I am going to be able to have for a bit. I did get a couple random upgrade cards as well. So I came up with the fleet below, and would love some help. Especially with objectives I have no idea.

Just looking to have fun and give people a good game. Would love to find a way to fit Luke in the game with Hera and Nym.

I call it:

Glass Cannon Fleet-400 total

Commander-Dodonna

• MC80 Star Cruiser(137)
• -Dodonna
• -SFO
• -Gunnery Team
• -Overload Pulse
• -Quad Battery Turrets
• Neb B-Salvation(66)
• -Med Team
• -Turbolaser Reroute
• Neb-B (58)
• -Turbolaser Reroute
• CR90-Corvette B-Dodonna's Pride-(45)
• Squadron's-(95)
• Hera
• Nym
• 2xAwings
• Ywing
• YT1300

Welcome to Armada!

I'm no expert by any stretch of the imagination, but here are my thoughts:

You probably want TRC on the CR90 rather than the Neb Bs. On a Neb, you'll have to spend your precious evade either on TRC or on defense, which isn't a great choice to have to make. CR90s have double tokens, so they don't get into the same kind of trouble. I would also look at putting a title on one of your Neb. If you're comfortable in the squadron game, go with Yavaris, however I've had trouble making it work when I was just beginning, so I would tend to tell you to go with Salvation to keep things simple. Plus, you don't have any other way to activate squadrons reliably, so it's not the best fit. Otherwise, you have 2 great upgrades in XI7, Intel Officer (Neb B expansion) that you're not using! Slap XI7 on the Liberty to make sure your damage gets through! I've also been told IO TRC90s are pretty annoying (though I was running 3 of them...)

As for your squadrons, I think you have the right idea by going Rogue, but it feels like you're trying to have a bit of everything? Nym will likely be more miss than hit, given that you don't have Toryn Farr to reroll and he's a bit pricey. Given that you don't have a flotilla, bombing might be a bit difficult. Shara and Tycho are my favorite (I have trouble NOT running them + 2 A-Wings in any of my lists), but you're probably better of going full Rogues here.

As for objectives, you can go fairly safe: Most Wanted isn't the best since your fleet is fairly frail, but it is somewhat safe. Planetary Ion Cannon has no drawback to you, though in practice it's not too difficult to play against. Most people will suggest Solar Corona for the blue objective and it's probably the best choice and will give you a leg up, but for some reason the corona always confuses me and it's one more element to keep track of, so I went with Dangerous Territory.

As for general advice for your store champ:
1) Have fun! I can only wish you to have a community as great and welcoming as mine has been.

2) Practice your deployment! There's no worse feeling than realizing you lost the game before turn 1 because of a bad deployment, either because your ships bumped or because you deployed them too far apart (been there, done that a lot at first). The first tournament I went to, I had a pre-set deployment and deployed exactly the same my 3 games. Won once (against triple ISDs), lost by 3 points another and finished 4th out of 9. If you can remove that variable and have a versatile pre-set deployment, that's one less worry to have. Also goes for placing obstacles.

3) Know your poisons and have some kind of plan against them. That goes for objectives as well. Know which objectives you don't want to touch with a ten foot pole. Avoid them like the plague. Burn the table if you have to (don't do that).

4) You will learn a new rule that you didn't know about. It will screw up your plans. Just roll with it.

5) See 1)

Here's something I came up with (it's far from perfect) that is pretty close to what you already have but I think has a little more oomph. You still have 6 points to play with if you don't want a bid.

Faction: Rebel
Commander: General Dodonna

Assault: Most Wanted
Defense: Planetary Ion Cannon
Navigation: Dangerous Territory

CR90 Corvette A (44)
• General Dodonna (20)
• Intel Officer (7)
• Turbolaser Reroute Circuits (7)
= 78 Points

MC80 Battle Cruiser (103)
• Skilled First Officer (1)
• Gunnery Team (7)
• XI7 Turbolasers (6)
• Quad Battery Turrets (5)
= 122 Points

Nebulon-B Support Refit (51)
• Spinal Armament (9)
• Salvation (7)
= 67 Points

Nebulon-B Support Refit (51)
= 51 Points

Squadrons:
• Hera Syndulla (28)
• Wedge Antilles (19)
• X-wing Squadron (13)
• YT-2400 (16)
= 76 Points

Total Points: 394

Name: MC80 Liberty Fleet

Faction: Rebel
Commander: General Dodonna

Assault: Advanced Gunnery
Defense: Fire Lanes
Navigation: Dangerous Territory

Nebulon-B Escort Frigate (57)
• General Dodonna (20) "Always good to look at crit cards"
• Skilled First Officer (1) "might need to make a quick change"
• Engineering Team (5) "getting an extra point of engineering is always useful"
• Spinal Armament (9) "strong frontal attack with this"
• Salvation (7) "you can get some extra crits by staying in front of the enemy"
= 99 Points

Nebulon-B Escort Frigate (57)
• Intel Officer (7) "making an enemy to decide if he wants to lose a defense token is useful"
• Engineering Team (5) "extra point of engineering"
• Enhanced Armament (10) "three dice all way around makes for a well rounded Nebulon-B"
• Yavaris (5) "spare light carrier if needed"
= 84 Points

MC80 Battle Cruiser (103)
• Weapons Liaison (3) "doesn't get much play, but because of your limited collection, you will find it useful in an attack pinch"
• Gunnery Team (7) "still one of the most used cards in Armada and this is where you put it."
• Nav Team (4) "makes a Liberty a lot more maneuverable"
• High-Capacity Ion Turbines (8) "more dice from the sides"
• XI7 Turbolasers (6) "pretty necessary with this build"
• Liberty (3) "you might need the extra squadron activation depending on circumstances"
= 134 Points

Squadrons:
• 2 x X-wing Squadron (26) BOMBER
• B-wing Squadron (14) BOMBER
• Corran Horn (22) BOMBER AND SNIPE
• E-wing Squadron (15) BOMBER
= 77 Points "a pretty moderate Bomber squadron list that will force your opponent to think about your squadrons"

Total Points: 394 "good initiative build for 1st player. if you don't care about being first player, you could add HEAVY TURBOLASER TURRETS or XX-9 TURBOLASERS to the MC80 which will give you 400/399 points respectively.

You could try this fleet as well with the Core Set and expansions you have.

Thank you for the help. I actually went on to win the SC. Albeit there were only three players and we played a Round-robin with each of us playing 2 games against the other. I had the benefit of some extremely lucky rolling. I ended up going with this list.

Glass Cannon Fleet-400 total

Commander-Dodonna

• MC80 Star Cruiser()
• -Dodonna
• -Gunnery Team
• -Quad Battery Turrets
• Neb B-Salvation(66)
• -Turbolaser Reroute
• Neb-B (58)
• -Turbolaser Reroute
• CR90-Corvette B-Dodonna's Pride-(45)
• Squadron's-(104?)
• Hera
• Nym
• Luke
• 2xAwings
• Xwing

1st Game-My first game was against:

• Ackbar
• MC75 Arm. Cruiser
• MC 30 Frigate Foresight
• MC 30 Frigate Foresight
• 2 Lancers
• Corran Horn
• Rogue Squadron

We played Most Wanted. He chose my non-Neb-B Salvation and I chose his MC75. I was able to get good positioning and with my Neb's and Star Cruiser forming a wall into his ships that came at me one by one. I had the Corvette running around causing trouble. He had the misfortune of making one error in positioning where his MC75 and a MC30 frigate collided with each other which was a huge boon for me. Luke was the MVP nearly killing one MC30 Frigate all on his own. Ultimately, i was able to kill all three of his ships and he killed just the one Neb-B Frigate. 9-2.

My second game was against an Imperial Player who was playing his very first game. I must say, he will be quite a good player when he gets a few more games under his belt. He went with:

• Thrawn
• ISD-II-Gunnery Team
• Interdictor-Interdictor title with Target Scrambler
• Gladiator-with Demolisher
• 5 ties
• Howlrunner.
• 400 points.

This was basically a classic joust with the ISD and Interdictor facing off against my Star Cruiser, and Neb Frigates. These ships basically deployed across from each other and slowed down in a head-on match. The Demolisher opted to go after my corvette which i deployed on the edge. Unfortunately, the Demolisher in going after Dodonna's Pride, basically flew himself out of the fight after two turns. Dodonna's Pride was able to get behind the ISD and Interdictor and throw a few shots out. Nym was the hero of this game as he got off a lucky blue crit and was able to have the ISD-2 discard its brace token. After that the sustained long-range firepower of my fleet was able to grind down his ships. I killed both of his ships while he took down one Nebulon-B. It ended up being a 9-2.

I had a great time, with my limited investment in the game, i don't have that many options, but i am thinking that i will drop the Corvette B for a Corvette A with TRCs. To make it work i would have to also drop the salvation title, which would be rough bc i had several 6 damage rolls with the salvation. On the other hand, i would have more consistent damage with a TRCorA.