Anyone tried bringing the big boi to the Outer Rim battles?

Seems you'd need to stick with the Mark 1 to get anything else worthwhile at all in, but...

Mk 1 Starhawk + Linked Turbolaser Towers

GR-75 Medium Transport + Comms Net

Gives you 33 points for squads, so...I dunno, Norra and Dutch? Shara and Tycho? Something like that?

Start with Ambush Gunner I as the commander ability?

Feels like that would be...rather obnoxious.

It’s a possibility. It would be very hard to blast through all those shields and hull.

I am currently fighting one in a RitR campaign. It's a handful. I planned on being a bully in the campaign with a ECM Kuat, but I am being outbullied.

MkI, rapid Launch Bays, B-wings, objectives that incentivize camping. Not only is the Starhawk hard to kill, but it becomes extremely difficult to pick up points elsewhere in the list, and any points on objectives seal the win.

3 hours ago, Vergilius said:

Not only is the Starhawk hard to kill, but it becomes extremely difficult to pick up points elsewhere in the list, and any points on objectives seal the win.

Yeah, that sounds about like how I thought it would go. Feels like it would be really difficult to score against, so somewhat skew the campaign as a result.

Would half-points for half-hull on large bases help, as is done for the huge-bases in the regular tournament format?

Problem is, ISDs are already pretty easy to kill, so that would knock it all out of balance.

9 minutes ago, Cpt ObVus said:

Problem is, ISDs are already pretty easy to kill, so that would knock it all out of balance.

I'm not sure I've heard someone suggesting ISDs are 'easy to kill' in the 200-pt RitR format. Really, they were the first problem of point fortressing, but the Starhawk now cranks that dial to '11'.

I’m not suggesting it, I’m saying it. Without trying particularly hard, my RitR fleet kills ISDs all the time. AFMkIIB, CR90A, GR75s, bunch of squadrons. No big deal.

I do think there’s a balance problem with the Starhawk. Trying to kill that thing is like shooting wooden arrows at a cinderblock that shoots your arrows back at you.

Lots of lists can kill large ships. Also, where a rebellion in the rim game requires merely that you win, not by how much, abs objective points represent a higher percentage of points than in a 400 point game, you’ve got chances to pick a good objective and run.

We're about to kick off a RitR campaign. I'm planning on running a Starhawk (it it ever arrives in the UK). However, we are opting for 400pt fleets instead of 200.

19 minutes ago, Gallanteer said:

We're about to kick off a RitR campaign. I'm planning on running a Starhawk (it it ever arrives in the UK). However, we are opting for 400pt fleets instead of 200.

I would recommend against going 400 for the campaign. Yes, 200 feels more complex to work with, but that's kind of the point - and the 'pivotal battles' in this one that requires everyone get together to play happen more often than in CC. 1200 points on the table (or higher, you didn't note what your fleet cap was) per side takes a loooooong time to play. The nice thing about the RitR 'pivotal battles' as designed is that they are only 600 pts to 750 pts even for 3-on-3. That's still a big game, but now much more easily doable in a single day. (Which is good, as you'll be doing a few of them!)

1 hour ago, xanderf said:

1200 points on the table (or higher, you didn't note what your fleet cap was) per side takes a loooooong time to play. The nice thing about the RitR 'pivotal battles' as designed is that they are only 600 pts to 750 pts even for 3-on-3. That's still a big game, but now much more easily doable in a single day. (Which is good, as you'll be doing a few of them!)

Yeah, I definitely agree. Your circumstances may vary, but we just played our campaign’s first pivotal battle (704 points vs. 707, 6-7 ships & about 15 squadrons per side), and while there were a couple of 40-minute interruptions, it took us an obscenely long time. We were actually surprised nobody got divorced the next morning.

Well, we're going big (and not going home).

8 of us 400 pts each 🤪 (similar to how we ran the CC campaign).

To be fair, we'll probably have 2 parallel games of the pivotal battles, randomly chosen from the opponents to keep things moving.

Probably take 6 months because we only meet up every 3 or 4 weeks, but who cares?

3 minutes ago, Gallanteer said:

Well, we're going big (and not going home).

8 of us 400 pts each 🤪 (similar to how we ran the CC campaign).

To be fair, we'll probably have 2 parallel games of the pivotal battles, randomly chosen from the opponents to keep things moving.

Probably take 6 months because we only meet up every 3 or 4 weeks, but who cares?

*shrugs*

To each their own, I guess. Myself, I like the more tight focus of RitR as written, allowing for quicker games. Several rounds of paired battles can happen in a single day often enough, and even the pivotal battle only taking a single day each, means you can usually get through a full campaign in 6 weeks or so easily enough. Then re-think your strategies, re-build the opening lists, and give it a go again.

4 hours ago, Gallanteer said:

Well, we're going big (and not going home).

8 of us 400 pts each 🤪 (similar to how we ran the CC campaign).

To be fair, we'll probably have 2 parallel games of the pivotal battles, randomly chosen from the opponents to keep things moving.

Probably take 6 months because we only meet up every 3 or 4 weeks, but who cares?

I for one am jealous as this sounds like a lot of fun. Perhaps add some Battle Reports?

Some reflections after a few games, and also looking at the match-ups that I could potentially face as those fleets scale with upgrades.

1. The absence of an ECM AND the absence of Krysta make the ship considerably more vulnerable. While it does have plenty more shields and hull than the other larges, I've got a couple of larges in the other fleets that are focused on accuracy generation. When they start flinging 2 or more accuracies or accuracy+Intel Officer, they might as well have taken XI7.

2. One of my opponents took an Onager, this is where the Magnite beams would be extremely useful for crossing the board and forcing the opponent to go Speed-2 into you. There are a lot of ships that really want to keep their distance, but for whom increasing their speed makes all the difference. It isn't just for slowing people down. I didn't start with Magnites and didn't make them part of my game-plan, but this ship really really really wants that upgrade if you take it in RITR.

3. Commands get a little awkward with the Rapid Launch Bays. We've been able to set the dials how I wanted and then use the Destiny token as a dial so that I can always do the one squadron command with them, but in reality, this ship wants to Nav at a critical moment so that it can double arc (or arc dodge) and Engineer the rest of the time. But the B-wings really want to be dropped via Squadron Command, and then commanded via Squadron on the next round. So while the build is cool enough, and the principles of point denial are sound enough, I think there are better Starhawk builds at 200 points.

4. I've had a couple of points where I was a little worried about being able to kill something of my opponent's back. Although the Starhawk is beefier, I just finished an Ordinance MC75 build that was really amazing. if you can set up a double-arc well on the MC75, you're basically doing as much damage, especially when you start adding Ordinance and rerolls to its black dice.

5. I've got all of 1 deployment. I just picked up a Spynet token. That's going to be tons of fun.

6. Command Bridge or Command Staff open up some strange support options for your big ship. There are too many good officers that can either provide key support benefits to your fleet (Toryn) or that can keep alive this strong sturdy tank (Derlin might very well get 5 rounds of use in RITR, Lando when your Brace is locked).

And almost every list out there has some way to lose on objectives. In RITR, as many of you who have played it have discovered, you can end up picking a bunch of really good objectives for your list, but then never ever play those objectives in the entire campaign. Some of the strategy is a matter of looking for assaults that have objectives that are favorable for you, but really bad for your opponents. And while there's not a great way to take down that single Starhawk, especially early on, there are ways to score points on objectives and ways to deny points to the opponent. Killing 2 squads while losing 1 is certainly a way to win a RITR game, and you've got to be prepared for that. It makes it challenging.