I am toying with an idea, which is to use an Interdictor/Onager/ISD combination. The Interdictor will use a Grav Well to deny use of a section of the map to the enemy, and operate as a shield replenisher for the ISD, who will have to absorb the massed weight of the enemy attacks. I have a reasonably large (12pt) bid and we operate a house rule of max 3 unique squads/aces.

I am also set up for a 1st turn attack using Onager with Hondo/Ozzel/Cataclysm (The Hozzaclysm).

What are everyone's thoughts as to the effectiveness of the combination? Enough firepower?

Name: Untitled Fleet
Faction: Imperial
Commander: General Romodi

Assault: Surprise Attack
Defense: Fleet Ambush
Navigation: Infested Fields

Onager Testbed (96)
• Admiral Ozzel (2)
• Ordnance Experts (4)
• Veteran Gunners (5)
• Orbital Bombardment Particle Cannons (5)
• Cataclysm (5)
= 117 Points

Interdictor Suppression Refit (90)
• General Romodi (20)
• Taskmaster Grint (5)
• Projection Experts (6)
• Flag Bridge (0)
• G7-X Grav Well Projector (2)
• Targeting Scrambler (5)
• Interdictor (3)
• Entrapment Formation! (5)
= 136 Points

Imperial II (120)
• Strategic Adviser (4)
• Flight Controllers (6)
• Reserve Hangar Deck (3)
• Electronic Countermeasures (7)
• Leading Shots (4)
• XI7 Turbolasers (6)
• Chimaera (4)
• All fighters, Follow Me! (5)
= 159 Points

Gozanti Assault Carriers (28)
• Hondo Ohnaka (2)
• Slicer Tools (7)
• Reserve Hangar Deck (3)
= 40 Points

Gozanti Assault Carriers (28)
• Commander Vanto (7)
• Comms Net (2)
• Reserve Hangar Deck (3)
= 40 Points

Squadrons:
• 2 x TIE Fighter Squadron (16)
• Howlrunner (16)
• Dengar (20)
• Zertik Strom (15)
• 2 x TIE Bomber Squadron (18)
• TIE Interceptor Squadron (11)
= 96 Points

Total Points: 588

16 hours ago, flatpackhamster said:

I am toying with an idea, which is to use an Interdictor/Onager/ISD combination. The Interdictor will use a Grav Well to deny use of a section of the map to the enemy, and operate as a shield replenisher for the ISD, who will have to absorb the massed weight of the enemy attacks. I have a reasonably large (12pt) bid and we operate a house rule of max 3 unique squads/aces.

I am also set up for a 1st turn attack using Onager with Hondo/Ozzel/Cataclysm (The Hozzaclysm).

What are everyone's thoughts as to the effectiveness of the combination? Enough firepower?

Name: Untitled Fleet
Faction: Imperial
Commander: General Romodi

Assault: Surprise Attack
Defense: Fleet Ambush
Navigation: Infested Fields

Onager Testbed (96)
• Admiral Ozzel (2)
• Ordnance Experts (4)
• Veteran Gunners (5)
• Orbital Bombardment Particle Cannons (5)
• Cataclysm (5)
= 117 Points

Interdictor Suppression Refit (90)
• General Romodi (20)
• Taskmaster Grint (5)
• Projection Experts (6)
• Flag Bridge (0)
• G7-X Grav Well Projector (2)
• Targeting Scrambler (5)
• Interdictor (3)
• Entrapment Formation! (5)
= 136 Points

Imperial II (120)
• Strategic Adviser (4)
• Flight Controllers (6)
• Reserve Hangar Deck (3)
• Electronic Countermeasures (7)
• Leading Shots (4)
• XI7 Turbolasers (6)
• Chimaera (4)
• All fighters, Follow Me! (5)
= 159 Points

Gozanti Assault Carriers (28)
• Hondo Ohnaka (2)
• Slicer Tools (7)
• Reserve Hangar Deck (3)
= 40 Points

Gozanti Assault Carriers (28)
• Commander Vanto (7)
• Comms Net (2)
• Reserve Hangar Deck (3)
= 40 Points

Squadrons:
• 2 x TIE Fighter Squadron (16)
• Howlrunner (16)
• Dengar (20)
• Zertik Strom (15)
• 2 x TIE Bomber Squadron (18)
• TIE Interceptor Squadron (11)
= 96 Points

Total Points: 588

Looks pretty good! A few suggestions:

First, your fighter wing is a little weird to me. I understand that it’s going to be, just because of the 3 aces house rule you have... but I gotta believe you can do better than those two TIE Bombers. You have Howlrunner. Make them TIE Interceptors or TIE Fighters and just go pure anti-squad.

Also: I feel like the 3 aces rule is tilted in the Alliance’s favor. The Rebels have more multirole fighters (both aces and generics). The Empire needs more ace options and specialized fighters to deal. Anyway...

Next, what is Vanto doing on a Comms Net flotilla? Like, the timing doesn’t even work. Let’s say I’m trying to Comms Net a Nav token to the Onager. And I’m already holding a squadron token. I reveal my Nav dial, dump my squad token to take the Nav token, then use Comms Net to send it over. Now, in order to use Vanto’s ability, I have to “execute my first command.” But I don’t have any tokens or dials left, so Vanto literally can’t do anything this turn. Am I missing something? There’s gotta be a better way to do what you’re trying to do.

Veteran Gunners: I can see them on Cataclysm... I guess. But they make you reroll everything. Wouldn’t you rather go with Weapons Battery Techs, or Gunnery Chief Varnillian (she’s my vote!)? I DO like Ordnance Experts, though.

Finally, I know it means dropping Flag Bridge and one of your Fleet Command Upgrades, but *especially* in a Romodi fleet, you gotta put Disposable Capacitors on your Interdictor. It even sounds like your plan for it is to cruise around behind the ISD, feeding shields to it. Obstruction should be so easy to come by. Double-arc an enemy at long range on the other side of that ISD and blast him twice with 2 red, 3 blue at long range out of nowhere!

As for your lost Fleet Command: eh. I’ve never really been a buyer on those upgrades, but if you must have it, you’re running Chimaera. AFFM! is good like what, once a game? Use it, dump it, pick up Entrapment Formation.

Hope that helps!

Thanks for your helpful thoughts.

There probably are some odd decisions in there but I will try to explain a few of them.

Vanto on Comms Net Flotilla - I thought that the way it worked was - reveal dial, use dial or turn in to a token, generate token from Vanto. Vanto's job is to feed ever-changing fleet commands to Chimaera, so I need to be generating them and tossing them across to Chimaera for it to use the turn after it gets them for its fleet command. If I have the timing wrong then please tell me. That's certainly possible, some of the game timings do my head in.

AFFM on Chimaera - it's 1pt cheaper than any of the others, so I was going to swap it for IF or STM at the beginning of turn 1, and it gives me 1pt more on my bid.

TIE Bombers - Don't really know what I was thinking specifically, I just thought they would be cheap activation, robust against Starhawk Flak (which is what I will be suffering), and might get some hull damage in against a capital ship.

Veteran gunners/OE combo - I can use VG to reroll everything, then OE to reroll the black dice after that. It's - not ideal, but if I'm throwing 5 red dice out during my ignition attack I had in my mind that I'd have a better chance of doing more damage if I had a chance of a reroll. It may be a crap plan.

DCaps on Interdictor - mmmmm, tempting but no chance of rerolling those reds... tough call.

I'll have a fiddle.

1 hour ago, flatpackhamster said:

Vanto on Comms Net Flotilla - I thought that the way it worked was - reveal dial, use dial or turn in to a token, generate token from Vanto. Vanto's job is to feed ever-changing fleet commands to Chimaera, so I need to be generating them and tossing them across to Chimaera for it to use the turn after it gets them for its fleet command. If I have the timing wrong then please tell me. That's certainly possible, some of the game timings do my head in.

AFFM on Chimaera - it's 1pt cheaper than any of the others, so I was going to swap it for IF or STM at the beginning of turn 1, and it gives me 1pt more on my bid.

TIE Bombers - Don't really know what I was thinking specifically, I just thought they would be cheap activation, robust against Starhawk Flak (which is what I will be suffering), and might get some hull damage in against a capital ship.

Veteran gunners/OE combo - I can use VG to reroll everything, then OE to reroll the black dice after that. It's - not ideal, but if I'm throwing 5 red dice out during my ignition attack I had in my mind that I'd have a better chance of doing more damage if I had a chance of a reroll. It may be a crap plan.

DCaps on Interdictor - mmmmm, tempting but no chance of rerolling those reds... tough call.

You’re welcome! Ok, so first off, Vanto:

Unfortunately, he doesn’t work the way you think he does. In order to exhaust Vanto and gain a token, you need to RESOLVE a command; that is, the ship he’s on needs to actually spend a dial, token, or dial + token. The command need not have any effect; that is, you could blow a squad dial with no squadrons in range, or spend an engineering token when you’re fully repaired, but you must resolve a command of some sort. Simply revealing the command dial is not enough to make Vanto happy. Frankly, of all the various token-generating tricks the Empire can use, Vanto is one of the most difficult, timing-wise. If you really must power an ever-changing battery of Fleet Command upgrades, you have a few choices. Vanto is one of them, but you’d want him on the ship that needs the token, and he’d be setting you up for the following turn. Other possibilities include Commandant Aresko, Wulff Yularen, Taskmaster Grint, good old Comms Net. There are probably others, but that’s what comes to mind. This is just one of many reasons why I’m not a big fan of Fleet Command upgrades; powering them consistently is actually far more difficult than it looks. Especially if you’re using more than one, or trying to rotate them. I also don’t think they’re particularly potent. AFFM! seems good once per game for slow Rebel fighters like B-Wings, and Intensify Firepower is okay, I guess... and in the right sort of fleet, I can see TEA being good, but the others seem to suck really badly.

The TIE Bombers gotta go. They’re generally horrible. If you’re maxing out on squad points, maybe having a couple TIE Bombers in the list is okay, and there are weird Advanced Transponder Network/Ruthless Strategists builds that might lean on cheap heavy squadrons with lots of hull, but absent that, leave them home.

The Vet Gunners: yep! I get what you’re hoping to do with them. And maybe it works! But here’s the thing: every time I use these guys, I hit the following sort of scenario: I make my Onager’s Ignition attack. I manage to get all the black and red dice, and I get lucky; there’s an asteroid in the way. So I gather up my 5 reds and 3 blacks, and I roll... the reds come up double hit, critical, blank, blank, blank. The blacks roll blank, blank, hit/crit, hit/crit. Totally plausible roll. What do I do? In this case, I mean, I have 7 damage on 8 dice. Could be worse! So I’d probably just Ordnance Experts the two black blanks, and forget those lousy blank reds. So Vet Gunners cost me five points, and aren’t helping me at all. And it’s like that constantly with these guys. Meanwhile, Gunnery Chief Varnillian works WAY better than she reads, especially if you get second player. Even Sensor Team might be pretty good! Smush two blanks into an accuracy? Sure!

As for the Disposable Capacitors: I don’t see that as a tough call at all. Even if you can’t reroll the reds. ****, even if you were taking an unobstructed shot, with no help from Romodi, no ConFire, DCaps are almost always worth it on an Interdictor. They can randomly give you 4-8 dice worth of damage on a target (or targets) you wouldn’t even be able to shoot otherwise. For three points? Absolutely.

Or you could spend 20 points trying to figure out which officer to use to get tokens to a ship that carries a title which allows you to get a fleet command upgrade that only works if you time it right.

Yes, I can see what you mean. The game is complex enough without me trying to magically generate perfect timing for something, especially when I'm as bad at it already as I am.

I have dumped the idea of Ozzel on the Onager for a turn-1 strike. It seems as though in order to achieve that, I've moved SA off the Onager on to the ISD which means the ISD loses Vanto so that it can take SA to give me the activation, so I'm relying on a Comms Net Gozanti with Vanto etc etc. So what I've done there is in order to do 1 thing, I have made doing 2 other things harder and more annoying.

3 hours ago, flatpackhamster said:

Yes, I can see what you mean. The game is complex enough without me trying to magically generate perfect timing for something, especially when I'm as bad at it already as I am.

I have dumped the idea of Ozzel on the Onager for a turn-1 strike. It seems as though in order to achieve that, I've moved SA off the Onager on to the ISD which means the ISD loses Vanto so that it can take SA to give me the activation, so I'm relying on a Comms Net Gozanti with Vanto etc etc. So what I've done there is in order to do 1 thing, I have made doing 2 other things harder and more annoying.

Yeah, I think your core ideas are solid, your list just needs a little streamlining. I’ve played a bit of 600-point; it’s a blast, but I found myself tempted to include some inefficient ideas because, “Hey, I have room!”

I don’t think Fleet Commands are universally bad, but I am skeptical of the Chimaera’s Swiss Army Knife abilities. That said, after a bit more thought, I hit upon a couple of things that might make it work reliably. The first is Tarkin, the second is the Sovereign title on a second ISD. But both of those inclusions would fundamentally change your list, which I don’t think you want or need to do. I guess what I’m saying is: go with Chimaera if you want to, plan on mostly relying on one Fleet Command (IF is not a bad choice), and then, if the stars align and you know you have (or can easily get) the proper token for TEA or whatever, and you want to swap them, go for it! Just don’t try so hard to make that happen that the rest of the list suffers.

As for Ozzel: Yes, he’s cool, and can make the turn one shot easier. But he is not a necessary part of the combo. If you deploy right across from an opponent, you can sometimes make that shot anyway.

One more consideration: The Onager is maybe not the best spot for Strategic Adviser. If you’re first player and have a juicy Ignition shot, you don’t want to be passing and letting the enemy escape!