Hi all,

I recently acquired a collection of Armada miniatures after moving to the Bellevue, Washington area, and have had the pleasure of playing with The JabbaWookie a couple of times this past week. When we played, we noticed that my collection lacked a critical piece, one which we both consider to be the best rebel ship, the GR-75 medium transport.

I've finally ordered a GR-75 off of amazon today, and so I decided I would modify some of my existing list ideas to include a transport. I've been reading Steel Command's blog about the Dumpster Fire Mk. 14, and thought that the style of Garm token generation & manipulation seemed incredibly interesting and fun to fly. Of course, the Dumpster Fire Mk. 14 doesn't naturally contain the GR-75, so I made some adjustments.

While building, I decided I really wanted to have a mean, punchy Mon Karren, so I put Mon Karren and Intel Officer on board, thinking that a GR-75 would offset the lack of Strategic Adviser. To offset the point cost of upgrades on the Star Cruiser, I took a light fighter screen of Tycho, Shara, and one generic A-Wing squadron, allowing me to drop Flight Control Teams on the Pelta and drop it down to an Assault variant. Then, I took Quantum Storm and Slicer Tools on the GR-75. I did this for two reasons: First, it sounds hilarious to ruin two ISD's dials with an activation from a GR-75. Second, with Garm and Ahsoka helping with token distribution, I've already alleviated the need for tokens. Finally, with no bombers in the list I decided to switch Yavaris for Salvation with Spinals to take advantage of Garm tokens plus intensify firepower to add additional pain, and a naked CR-90 A since I think it's cooler than a Hammerhead (I don't own a Hammerhead to copy the Dumpster Fire more...).

After all that, I end up with an 8 point bid for potentially first player. I don't know that I need it, but with my list's greater focus on the Mon Karren's front arc, I thought it might come in handy.

2AM Brainfart Mk. 1
Author: Fencar

Faction: Rebel Alliance
Points: 392/400

Commander: Garm Bel Iblis

Assault Objective: Station Assault
Defense Objective: Contested Outpost
Navigation Objective: Intel Sweep

Modified Pelta-class Assault Ship (56 points)
- Ahsoka Tano ( 2 points)
- Intensify Firepower! ( 6 points)
= 64 total ship cost

Nebulon-B Support Refit (51 points)
- Salvation ( 7 points)
- Spinal Armament ( 9 points)
= 67 total ship cost

CR90 Corvette A (44 points)
= 44 total ship cost

GR-75 Medium Transports (18 points)
- Quantum Storm ( 1 points)
- Slicer Tools ( 7 points)
= 26 total ship cost

[ flagship ] MC80 Star Cruiser (96 points)
- Garm Bel Iblis ( 25 points)
- Mon Karren ( 8 points)
- Intel Officer ( 7 points)
- Gunnery Team ( 7 points)
- Nav Team ( 4 points)
= 147 total ship cost

1 Shara Bey ( 17 points)
1 Tycho Celchu ( 16 points)
1 A-Wing Squadron ( 11 points)
= 44 total squadron cost

I like this list idea a lot, but I have no idea if this fighter screen is ideal, or if there are other squadrons that would make better speed bumps for squadron-heavy lists. Dutch + Wedge, Biggs + 2 X-Wings, or even Rogue Squadron as a replacement to the A-Wing are options I've considered. I also wonder if I should take Engine Techs and Leading Shots on the Mon Karren, rather than keeping the bid. I could drop the generic A-Wing for an 11 point bid, while including the extra upgrades on the Mon Karren. The Mon Karren is already a points basket though, and I get nervous when I start making one ship a linchpin of the list, especially one as vulnerable to double accuracies as the Mon Karren. Last, I play a lot against an SSD player who's planning on running Ravager the next time I see him. Since I'm playing a lot of small ships, I'm a little nervous about getting murdered by his front arc.

Does anyone have any suggestions, advice for trying to fly something like this, upgrades or even ships that you would change? Any feedback would be much appreciated! (I don't want to die to Sloane! [Although I probably will anyway xD])

P.S. I'm planning to do a battle report with this list after running it next week, so keep your eyes out!

Tbh those three A-wings wont slow down Sloane much. Nor will they slow down a well rounded rebel list. IMO you should peobably be looking at either getting 4 generics or maybe drop Tycho and pick up a pair of genarics. My reasoning is that with an odd number of squads you have to deploy the odd man out as the last deployment you make.

With that said you might want to look into YT-2400s (if you have them). As as far as I can see you don't really have much in the way of carriers.

As for Mon Karren I like SW-7s, as the blue dice become damage. With intel officer in tow you can intel the brace and say use it to loose it and let the accuracy add to your damage. If you roll up on something with double defense tokens use an accuracy to stop one intel the other. Otherwise Accuracies don't help you as much because of Mon Karren and Intel Officer do the same job.

As for how to fly it, well the Cr90 should be skirting the battle as they do. I'd stick the nebulon and liberty in a close formation, and focus fire. I don't see the pelta doing anything because it's slower, also it needs black range and double arc. Maybe if you can get a flanking position from deployment, you can use the pelta as a catch ship.

I thought that the A-Wings might be too light as fighter cover. I'd use 4 YT-2400s, but I'm short on cash and would rather not spend an extra $60 on R&V packs. I'm looking at taking off gunnery teams from the Mon Karren and removing slicer tools and Quantum Storm from the GR-75, adding SW-7s and taking Jan + 3 X-Wings for fighter cover, bringing my new total to 396 points. This leaves room for me to either use the GR-75 plus tokens from Garm and potentially Ahsoka to use to command squadrons with a 4-point bid, or I could take Comms Net or Jamming Field with Bright Hope to give the GR-75 additional utility in either helping other ships gain firepower or maneuverability, or helping cover damage from fighters if I take Jamming Field. With this many points left over I could also instead keep Gunnery Teams on the Mon Karren, relying on Firepower tokens and Intensify Firepower to fix dice, and use the last two points for one of the aforementioned upgrades for support on the GR-75.

A note on Slicer Tools: it’s a exhaust, so it can’t trigger twice with Quantum Storm.

And I agree with Grathew’s opinion on the screen; it’s a thing people used to do, but it won’t last against a real squadron wing. Bulkier YTs or Xs might hold up for a bit.

Otherwise the fleet looks good.

OK, here's a revised version with Jan, Biggs and Jamming Field, more focused on surviving against large numbers of squadrons. I took off Spinals, Slicer Tools, Quantum Storm and the bid in favor of Expanded Hangar Bay, Jamming Field, the points to upgrade my fighter wing to Jan + 2 X-Wings + Biggs, and SW-7's on the Mon Karren with the remaining points. I think it'll be easier to defend my fighter screen if it sticks together the whole time, which means moving as a unit by using the GR-75 to move 3 squads, or 4 with the token on the round I engage. Jamming Field will hopefully save my ships a couple shots if and when my X-Wings get torn to pieces, and SW-7s would hopefully increase damage a comparable amount to spinals on the Salvation.

I also did some calculations on damage output for both the Salvation and Mon Karren with Intensify Firepower, with and without Spinals and SW-7s respectively. The Salvation without Spinals does an average of 3+1-(5/8)^3 or 3.76 damage without Spinals (1 damage per dice on average times 3 plus one damage minus the chances that no blanks are rolled), and 4+1-(5/8)^4 or 4.85 damage with Spinals. The cost difference (9) divided by the difference in damage output (1.1 ish) shows that I pay roughly 8 points to add one average damage.

Repeating for SW-7s and the Mon Karren, without SW-7s average damage from the front arc is (3/4)*3 (reds)+(3/4)*4 (blues) +1-((5/8)^3*(3/4)^4) = 6.17. With SW7s, assuming I choose to use no accuracies, the average damage is 4+(3/4)*3+1-(3/4)^3 = 7.005. Again dividing cost of SW7s by difference in damage, this time 5 over about 0.8 gets me 5.98 points per average damage. More efficient, which I'm a fan of.

2AM Brainfart Mk. 1.1
Author: Fencar

Faction: Rebel Alliance
Points: 400/400

Commander: Garm Bel Iblis

Assault Objective: Station Assault
Defense Objective: Contested Outpost
Navigation Objective: Intel Sweep

Modified Pelta-class Assault Ship (56 points)
- Ahsoka Tano ( 2 points)
- Intensify Firepower! ( 6 points)
= 64 total ship cost

CR90 Corvette A (44 points)
= 44 total ship cost

GR-75 Medium Transports (18 points)
- Expanded Hangar Bay ( 5 points)
- Jamming Field ( 2 points)
= 25 total ship cost

Nebulon-B Support Refit (51 points)
- Salvation ( 7 points)
= 58 total ship cost

[ flagship ] MC80 Star Cruiser (96 points)
- Garm Bel Iblis ( 25 points)
- Mon Karren ( 8 points)
- Intel Officer ( 7 points)
- Nav Team ( 4 points)
- SW-7 Ion Batteries ( 5 points)
= 145 total ship cost

1 Jan Ors ( 19 points)
2 X-Wing Squadrons ( 26 points)
1 Biggs Darklighter ( 19 points)
= 64 total squadron cost

The revision looks better on the squadron side.

It might be worth switching intel to gunnery team as the front ark of the liberty is it's only good one. If you are looking at average damage numbers assuming you get two shots off from that front arc you effectively double your damage output. Now if you know you are going to be fighting an SSD it's a waste of points as you can't hit the same ship twice. Any other fleet it shouldn't be too hard to get another target for that front arc if you keep Nav Commands sracked up.

Remeber with SW-7s your minimum damage goes up, when in blue range the worst you can roll is 0 on the reds and the blues can all be damage. Likewise if you roll all doubles on the reds and all accuracy on the blue you can use one accuracy to stop a brace and thats 9 damage to deal with with out a brace. If you had a crit in there they get to decide contain or not to contain.

Also side note Jamming field only affects squadron V squadron attacks. Not squadron V ship.