More Task Force Tournament Prep! While I am comfortable with my list, my friend wanted to try his out against some lists he might be facing in two weeks. The first was against a fully-upgraded Starhawk. Below are the lists.

Name: Task Force Centicore

Assault: Surprise Attack
Defense: Asteroid Tactics
Navigation: Dangerous Territory

Arquitens Light Cruiser (54)
• Skilled First Officer (1)
• Early Warning System (7)
• Slaved Turrets (6)
• Centicore (3)
= 71 Points

Arquitens Light Cruiser (54)
• Captain Needa (2)
• Early Warning System (7)
• Turbolaser Reroute Circuits (7)
= 70 Points

Gozanti Cruisers (23)
• Darth Vader (1)
= 24 Points

Squadrons:
• Ciena Ree (17)
• Valen Rudor (13)
= 30 Points

Total Points: 195

All he did was change out a Skilled First Officer and Slaved Turrets for Captain Needa and Turbolaser Reroute Circuits on one of his Arquitens and switching out Salvage Run for Dangerous Territory.

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Name: Task Force Concord

Assault: Station Assault
Defense: Contested Outpost
Navigation: Solar Corona

Starhawk Battleship Mark I (140)
• Strategic Adviser (4)
• Kyrsta Agate (5)
• Caitken and Shollan (6)
• Quad Laser Turrets (5)
• High-Capacity Ion Turbines (8)
• H9 Turbolasers (8)
• Magnite Crystal Tractor Beam Array (10)
• Concord (12)
= 198 Points

Squadrons:
= 0 Points

Total Points: 198

Just a Tank Starhawk looking to destroy some Arquitens.

My opponent had initiative and chose to be second player. I choose his Asteroid Tactics for the objective.

Deployment: He placed all the obstacles in a line for cover at the center of the play area. It just let me know what his route was going to be, so I could then prevent him from benefitting from the non-squadron part of the objective unless he wanted to get very close to my Starhawk. I deployed right of center in my deployment zone, while he placed his Gozanti and squadrons in the opposite corner and Arquitens in a line at the back end of his deployment zone to the right.

Round 1: I move ahead and turn towards his Gozanti; I land on the Debris Field and take the damage from my right side shields. His Gozanti moves forward at Speed 3. He then makes a small error by turning his Arquitens at Speed 1, taking his back-end off the board; since this is a game to help my opponent get ready for our tournament, I let him replay the move, as losing a ship in the first round doesn't help with that goal. His other Arquitens moves forward towards my Starhawk.

Round 2: Starhawk moves forward to the center of the play area. His ships DO NOT fire at mine (he goes with my Task Force plan of just not engaging the Starhawk and going for a 6-5/5-6).

Round 3: I attack his Arquitens and move towards his ships, landing on the Asteroid Field (and drawing Target Disruption... darn). Still not shooting at my ship (Salvo!), he narrowly avoids my ship.

Round 4: I fire out my rear arc at his Arquitens, giving it a single damage card. I also attack Centicore , without damaging its hull. After much debate, I decide to drop down to Speed 0, taking his Arquitens down to Speed 0 as well. Remaining on the Asteroid Field, I pull a Structural Damage card, putting three damage to my hull. While he can't move his Arquitens away (Repair Command), he does get Centicore out of range of the Starhawk (because it doesn't happen a lot, he forgets to shoot at my Starhawk, which cannot use Defense Tokens at Speed 0).

Round 5: I attack his Arquitens again, putting three damage cards on it. I chose to stay at Speed 0, which will keep him at close range (if I get two damage, the Arquitens is destroyed). Remaining on the Asteroid Field, I draw Disengaged Fire Control... oh no. He moves his Arquitens forward one.

Round 6: Due to the effect from Disengaged Fire Control, I can no longer attack his Arquitens (Early Warning System). I lose 0-0, by virtue of being First Player (5-6, 0 MoV).

Thoughts: My opponent did an excellent job of not engaging my Starhawk, although he got a little too close to it for his comfort. Exactly how I plan to deal with them in two weeks. This game also showed just how terrible face-up damage cards can be. Off-hand, I cannot think of two cards that would have been worse in this situation. Anyways, this game certainly prepared him to face a "Starhawk Tank" list, so consider the missioned accomplished for its purpose.

Hope you enjoyed the BATREP!

Actually, choosing not to attack your Starhawk at speed 0 was the right call. Concord can spend 1 defense token at speed 0, so you could have salvo'd him back.

50 minutes ago, Bertie Wooster said:

Actually, choosing not to attack your Starhawk at speed 0 was the right call. Concord can spend 1 defense token at speed 0, so you could have salvo'd him back.

Good call... but not if I forgot I could do that at Speed 0!

But he might face someone at the event that actually knows how to fly a Starhawk...

Thanks for the writeup, @Admiral Calkins ! This and your other AP are the two most useful things that come up when I google "task force" and "starhawk."

Some friends and I are starting a RitR campaign soon, and after exactly 1 test game where my pal brought a Starhawk, we're considering ruling them out as part of a starting fleet. Given that you and your opponent apparently decided the best possible thing was to just never attack, do you think that's reasonable? Or have you seen them seriously challenged in a 200 pt format (maybe by squadrons)? How'd Starhawk lists do in the tournament (if you got a chance to see)?

Thanks!

1 hour ago, hobbesque said:

Thanks for the writeup, @Admiral Calkins ! This and your other AP are the two most useful things that come up when I google "task force" and "starhawk."

Some friends and I are starting a RitR campaign soon, and after exactly 1 test game where my pal brought a Starhawk, we're considering ruling them out as part of a starting fleet. Given that you and your opponent apparently decided the best possible thing was to just never attack, do you think that's reasonable? Or have you seen them seriously challenged in a 200 pt format (maybe by squadrons)? How'd Starhawk lists do in the tournament (if you got a chance to see)?

Thanks for the kind words. Unfortunately, we had to postpone our tournament due to the COVID-19 group guidelines (10 or less, and we were already tracking 14 players attending), so I don't have good data; when we try it again in a month, I'll definitely be posting about it. But from what I've seen in the two Task Force games we played, it will be very hard to take down a Starhawk, especially one that has two or more Salvo defense tokens. One of the most brutally offensive TF lists that I came up with involved having 8 x Firesprays, and those weren't able to take down the 200-point Starhawk builds that I was seeing (2-3 Salvos and each having Quad Laser Turrets). I have not played a RitR campaign yet (this Summer!), but I have heard anecdotally that large ships present a problem with being almost impossible to destroy. Given that the Starhawk is the toughest of the large ships, I would certainly think it was reasonable to keep it out of starting fleets.

I just found these. This is really cool. Are you using my Taskforce rules, or a different rule set? (No worries if its not mine)

Oh I see, no commander.

57 minutes ago, Blail Blerg said:

I just found these. This is really cool. Are you using my Taskforce rules, or a different rule set? (No worries if its not mine)

Thanks. Hope you are enjoying them. I use a modified version of the RitR Task Force rules. No commander, no squadron limit, normal obstacles. The big difference is the scoring. Instead of halving the objectives, I doubled the points for destroying ships/squadrons. We determined that (for our Task Force tournament) it would be easier for newer players to understand and calculate their scores.

1 hour ago, Admiral Calkins said:

Thanks. Hope you are enjoying them. I use a modified version of the RitR Task Force rules. No commander, no squadron limit, normal obstacles. The big difference is the scoring. Instead of halving the objectives, I doubled the points for destroying ships/squadrons. We determined that (for our Task Force tournament) it would be easier for newer players to understand and calculate their scores.

Hey, that's a good idea!

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I'm surprised with the no squad limit. What have you found from that? Have you seen it abused?

12 minutes ago, Blail Blerg said:

I'm surprised with the no squad limit. What have you found from that? Have you seen it abused?

Only by me in our first TF game. It was powerful, but just wasn’t fun or in the “spirit” of a TF game. Much more concerned about large ships that are almost impossible to destroy at 200 points (i.e. Starhawk). I like your half-damage rule with large ships and will talk to my group about including it.

2 minutes ago, Admiral Calkins said:

Only by me in our first TF game. It was powerful, but just wasn’t fun or in the “spirit” of a TF game. Much more concerned about large ships that are almost impossible to destroy at 200 points (i.e. Starhawk). I like your half-damage rule with large ships and will talk to my group about including it.

Got it thanks.

I was pretty darn sure that 134 squads was already incredibly strong in 400 points, and that 150points of squads in 200 would be completely silly. Is there a reason you still use the no squad limit rule?

4 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

I was pretty darn sure that 134 squads was already incredibly strong in 400 points, and that 150points of squads in 200 would be completely silly. Is there a reason you still use the no squad limit rule?

I was trying to make it as close to RitR Task Force Battles as possible. For our event (that was cancelled due to the COVID-19 restrictions), we considered a squadron point maximum, no large ships, and large ships counting as half points if at half damage or more, but never ended up implementing any of them.

Sorry to hear about your tournament. My group was always aiming for doing it online, due to geography. We're still getting ours arranged, but we've played a lot of test games with both players bringing a starting RitR fleet (vanilla task force rules, starting RitR commander). We'll probably play vanilla for the first time (for simplicity's sake, other players probably less in tinkering than I am, etc.), but I'm interested in @Admiral Calkins (or others!) thoughts on these things.

Our impressions have been that large bases are much less powerful with only 1 upgrade than with the potential to xmas tree, and definitely not invincible. They certainly explode often enough, although some of that might be due a tendency among us of flying a little on the reckless side (not naming names or admitting fault here 😅 ), especially since large base often goes with "fewer activations" and/or "not much squadron coverage."

Having flown against a Starhawk a second time in that format, I'm maybe slightly less intimidated by them. Admittedly, that was against the newest player of the group, so not the best data. But I think 1 upgrade + no unique upgrades to start + no defensive retrofit is a big hit to it against a player who figures out how to whale hunt. They seem to really want Agate, a unique officer (Walex Blissex, Lando, etc.) or one of the titles as defensive tech, especially since, being the priciest large base, they have even more of the fewer activation and squadrons vulnerabilities mentioned above.

Still, I'm interested in the half-damage, half-points idea. Didn't know that about SSDs, found a bunch of interesting stuff looking up huge ship rules!

Curious about extending it to all ships in a task force game? Or even squadrons? The better-flown/less-reckless ( 😅 ) RitR test games among us are tending to be pretty low-scoring, and I expect that many/most of our games will approach that as people get more familiar with the format and their fleets, or just as the fact we're playing For Keeps settles in when we start the campaign. It might be more interesting if 2 damage to a CR-90 is worth a few points (or worth repairing to deny the points). It's still a malus to larger ships, for the same reason Opening Salvo favors smaller ships -- a smaller ship is more likely to have just exploded anyway.

As for squadron cap, among us people have tried squadron fleets, but no-one has pulled truly dominant combo yet (someone even tried something like Task Force Firespray, but didn't succeed in protecting the flagship well enough; seeing how well TFF did, I'm wondering if that was a one-off, or if the Rebels can do anything similar).

Many of our test fleets seem to be starting with 0-1 squadrons if they're not a squadron based fleet, and expecting to add them during the campaign. That might be a product of just our priorities (you can add anything except ship hulls during play, so why do squadrons up front?) but it'll be interesting to see how squadron task forces (who will get to refine with upgrades and aces) and not-squadron task forces (who will get to double, triple, or more their squadron points) evolve in comparison to each other. One of the things that looks fun about RitR is that sort of ongoing evolution in response to circumstances!

That got long, but again, curious what people think, so I can bring it back to my group.

8 hours ago, hobbesque said:

Unfortunately, I have never played an RitR campaign, so I am probably not the right guy to give you any advice on it (aside from the Task Force Battles and Obstacles pages, I actually haven't even read the RitR book cover to cover). I would suggest playing the campaign "as is" the first time. Then take your own and others' observations to house rules some things. Really wish I could help more.