I’m astounded to see this thread. Here I keep hoping they’re going to give us something that makes the SSD “decent,” and while the StarHawk looks exciting on its own merits, it also looks like an imminent death blow to the SSD.

Meanwhile, the prevailing opinion seems to be diametrically opposite to my experience. Weird!

#RavagershouldhavebeenanArquitenstitle

It seems like Mart Mattin can ruin Ravager’s day...

1 hour ago, scipio83 said:

It seems like Mart Mattin can ruin Ravager’s day...

Add Adar for double trouble

Edit: Adar does not work with Mart

35 minutes ago, Muelmuel said:

Add Adar for double trouble

Edit: Adar does not work with Mart

He moves him? And then untaps him, so he KINDA works

My group sees the SSD as being a bit weaker than most builds. Particularly vs Rebel MSU. My massed Nebulons killed one in 2 turns of shooting the only time they faced it.

I think it's pretty balanced, and player skill with it is the main determinant in who wins and by how much. When each player has only flown it 3 or fewer times, then it dies easily. 5 or 6 games, with resets when you spot a terminal outcome early enough to have time to start again, would help massively.

4 hours ago, Gilarius said:

My massed Nebulons killed one in 2 turns of shooting the only time they faced it

I would like to know this list pls 😃

4 hours ago, Muelmuel said:

I would like to know this list pls 😃

Leia commander in Jaina's Light and TRC.

5 Nebulons each with Aux Shield Team and TRC.

396pts of fun! Currently played 7 games and won all of them.

6 hours ago, Gilarius said:

Leia commander in Jaina's Light and TRC.

5 Nebulons each with Aux Shield Team and TRC.

396pts of fun! Currently played 7 games and won all of them.

I love it.

How do you handle squads and what objectives did you take?

55 minutes ago, Madaghmire said:

I love it.

How do you handle squads and what objectives did you take?

A) hope and pray they want to be First Player! Or that they have a smaller bid so I can choose 2nd.

B) Surprise Attack; Hyperspace Migration; and Asteroid Tactics.

Both SA and AT are bad for squadrons: Raid vs squads plus a juicy target easily killed quickly parked on the station should work well; the Exogorths really hurt squadrons too, far more effective than I thought they would be before I used it in a real battle.

Hyperspace Migration is so unbalanced that even a totally non-optimised fleet like mine should win regardless of the actual fighting.

I faced a Rieekan and a Sloane fleet on my Asteroid Tactics and a Garm fleet which chose Hyperspace Migration. None of the 3 dared use Surprise Attack. Both of the Rebel games were at a Prime, Sloane was a practice game to help me choose my objectives.

Sloane piled into the obstacles and got her squads chewed up badly, but lost due to losing all her ships to my forward Firepower. (Kuat, Raider flagship, and both Gozantis - I killed those first to stop them from commanding squadrons. Then the ISD, then hunted down the Raider, which shouldn't have been near my ships but my opponent made a mistake with it. Didn't matter to the outcome this game.)

Rieekan lost because he was too scared of the Exogorths, keeping his squads alive but not contributing as much as normal while I killed his HMC80 to win the game.

Garm lost because he chose Hyperspace Migration. He would probably have won any other objective, he was a lot better at the actual game than I am.

The other 4 games didn't feature many squadrons, so simple jousting won me the games.

I don't think there is a problem, its a fleet with several strengths, it also has several weaknesses and takes skill to fly (like most lists) one mistake will cost you the game. If every competitive fleet lost its strengths we wouldn't have anything left to play with. On top of that the next wave contains several counters, it probably not meta for long.

12 hours ago, Pwmf said:

...one mistake will cost you the game...

This. It does take skill and experience to fly well, and more so than any other list I’ve ever tried, making one bad choice, hitting one asteroid, turning into the opponent instead of disengaging, queueing a Nav command when you really should have Engineered, choking out your DCO a little too early... all of these mistakes and more can basically turn a runaway victory into ignominious defeat in an instant. And sometimes there’s just nothing you can do about it. In other fleets, yeah, maybe you screwed up and let your big nasty flagship hit a rock and take a critical damage, but hey, maybe your bombers and support ships can pull out the victory? Not so with this thing. All of your eggs are in this basket. Something goes wrong and you don’t have an immediate answer? Catastrophic systems failure. A-Wings through the windows.

There are a couple of additional points... without some yaw enhancements, it's very hard to change tack once you're committed. And disengaging from a bad encounter with the enemy... Vics have it easy lol

If the opponent can engage you early, with Squall or Onager or other things, and put damage into the SSD from round 1, then there is a very big risk of being tabled. Even if you're not tabled, it's more likely than not you'll be crippled. So unless you table your opponent, which is very hard with a single combat ship, the MoV will not be great (SSD lists also struggle finding good pts scoring objectives).

So in a tournament you risk maybe winning 2 times with 7-8 points and then you have a bad loss on top of that. Not horrible, but not a good strategy for winning the tourney.