Name: DFNR
Faction: Rebel
Commander: Kyrsta Agate

Assault: Surprise Attack
Defense: Asteroid Tactics
Navigation: Hyperspace Migration

Starhawk Battleship Mark II (150)
• Kyrsta Agate (20)
• Ray Antilles (7)
• Walex Blissex (5)
• Gunnery Team (7)
• Heavy Ion Emplacements (9)
• Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)
• Unity (10)
= 215 Points

CR90 Corvette A (44)
• Turbolaser Reroute Circuits (7)
= 51 Points

CR90 Corvette A (44)
• Turbolaser Reroute Circuits (7)
= 51 Points

Squadrons:
• Dash Rendar (24)
• Shara Bey (17)
• Tycho Celchu (16)
• 2 x A-wing Squadron (22)
= 79 Points

Total Points: 396

I immediately recognize a serious problem with your Starhawk build: Lack of dice rerolls .

LTT only permits rerolling 1 red die, which I suppose is better than nothing, but the Starhawk rolls so many dice, 1 reroll isn't good enough. I presume that you intend to use Ray Antilles to grant a Concentrate Fire token with the CF dial, but again, that's just one die. You need Caitken & Shollan and/or Leading Shots on the Starhawk.

I understand the reasoning behind equipping the Starhawk with Heavy Ion Emplacements, and I acknowledge that equipping it on the Mark II is better than the Mark I because of the extra blue die; regardless, IME it rarely works. I've faced Starhawks in nearly 10 battles now, half of which had HIE equipped, and my opponents only managed to trigger HIE a few times.

Firstly, my opponents almost always equipped Caitken & Shollan, instead of Gunnery Team. (BTW you don't need Gunnery Team because the Starhawk's LoS yellow dots are placed in such a way that double-arcs are easy to achieve. After my opponent who equipped GT realized this, he switched to C&S instead.) Both Starhawk variants roll mostly red dice, so my opponents would almost always reroll reds -- except on the rare occasions that their reds were good, then they'd reroll black or blue dice. So they rarely rerolled blue dice and therefore rarely got Blue Crits. Usually they wanted Blue Accuracy's instead. When they rolled Accuracy's, they kept them instead of rerolling with C&S, even though they had HIE equipped.

Second, my opponents attacked head-on with the Starhawk and wanted to blast through my ISD's front shields by blocking Redirects using Accuracy's, rather than depleting side shields with HIE. (FYI I used ECM to protect Brace and Reeva Demesne readied it a second time, so they were always targeting Redirects with Accuracy's.) I suppose my POV is too Imperial-focused; I suppose HIE might be worthwhile against Mon Cal ships with wider side arcs.

Your build has good squadron protection, which is somewhat rare for a Starhawk build. I doubt you'll need the Starhawk for anti-squadron attacks. Even if you do attack squadrons, Unity provides a reroll, so I doubt you'll need LTT for a reroll or its extra anti-squadon dice.

I'd make the following changes:

• Gunnery Team (7) --> Caitken and Shollan (6)
• Heavy Ion Emplacements (9) --> Leading Shots (4)
• Linked Turbolaser Towers (7) --> Spinal Armament (9) or XI7 Turbolasers (6)

Gunnery Teams is on this build to mostly take anti-squad from the same arch (I play against alot of squadrons usually so I need it to take shots at carriers and give my squadrons support.)Plus Gunnery teams is always just nice to have at Long range

HIE is just too powerful and affect for me the few times it does work usually lets me kill a smaller ship in one shot and can double as exposing broadsides for my cr-90s to Exploit

I agree with you on rerolls, but I suppose that's what I'm sacrafising to gain different powers

So Ive got about 30 games in with the Starhawk at this time, so here's my experience: there are 2 main ways for the Starhawk to get consistent damage output that Ive used: Blue Crit or Double Salvo builds... plus then there is a speed 0 trap that I haven't used yet...

I used your Officer selection to show comparable point costs.

Blue Crit:

Starhawk Battleship Mark II (150)
• Kyrsta Agate (20)
• Ray Antilles (7)
• Walex Blissex (5)
• Weapons Battery Techs (5)
• Heavy Ion Emplacements (9)
• Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)
• Unity (10)
= 213 Points

(I actually used Intel Officer in place of Ray on this one and Toryn rides on a GR75 nearby - on the front arc shot: Intel the Brace, and HIE is practically guaranteed to work due to Toryn (maybe a Confire token if there still arent any blue crits/accs) and WBTs)

Double Salvo:

Starhawk Battleship Mark II (150)
• Kyrsta Agate (20)
• Ray Antilles (7)
• Walex Blissex (5)
• Local Fire Control (4)
• Leading Shots (4)
• Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)
• Unity (10)
= 207 Points

(Local Fire Control replaces the Contain with a 2nd Salvo - LTT/Leading Shots pretty much make every die have a 1.0 expected dmg output.)

(Double tokens mitigate opposing accs on the first shot, so you're pretty much guaranteed to throw the extra 3 dice at a specific target)

In the end, I have used both of these to good effect...they tank damage and can tear apart opposing ships...

there are 2 big concerns:

1) they have to worry about is being ignored...ie the opposing ships and fighters pick off the rest of the list's ships and squadrons for a low-margin win, (which can be mitigated by objectives and fleet placement)

2) an opposing high point target limps away on 1 or 2 hull. - which has to be addressed by the supporting ships and squads.

That said my current version is:

Starhawk Battleship Mark II (150)
• Kyrsta Agate (20)
• Expert Shield Tech (5)
• Walex Blissex (5)
• Local Fire Control (4)
• Quad Laser Turrets (5)
• Leading Shots (4)
• Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)
• Unity (10)
= 210 Points

GR-75 Medium Transports (18)
• Leia Organa (3)
• Comms Net (2)
= 23 Points

GR-75 Medium Transports (18)
• Toryn Farr (7)
• Comms Net (2)
= 27 Points

Squadrons:
• Shara Bey (17)
• Tycho Celchu (16)
• Lando Calrissian (23)
• Ketsu Onyo (22)
• Dash Rendar (24)
• 2 x YT-2400 (32)
= 134 Points

Total Points: 394

QLT is there to help with the rise of Sloane 2-ship again...since I will hold my fighters back, take the squadron alpha on the Starhawk, then retaliate with my own squadrons...

One question for all of you then Raymus Antillies or Intel Officer

Maybe go into something like this

Name: DFNR
Faction: Rebel
Commander: Kyrsta Agate

Assault: Surprise Attack
Defense: Asteroid Tactics
Navigation: Hyperspace Migration

Starhawk Battleship Mark II (150)
• Kyrsta Agate (20)
• Walex Blissex (5)
• Intel Officer (7)
• Caitken and Shollan (6)
• Heavy Ion Emplacements (9)
• Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)
• Unity (10)
= 214 Points

CR90 Corvette A (44)
• Turbolaser Reroute Circuits (7)
= 51 Points

CR90 Corvette A (44)
• Turbolaser Reroute Circuits (7)
= 51 Points

Squadrons:
• Dash Rendar (24)
• Shara Bey (17)
• Tycho Celchu (16)
• 2 x A-wing Squadron (22)
= 79 Points

Total Points: 395

If using HIE, i think WBT are mandatory

Need Caiykan and Shallon for rerolls

Just now, Basile1902 said:

Need Caiykan and Shallon for rerolls

Wow I butchered there names so badly

How about this? With Toryn on Jaina Light nearby, and the LTTs it gives you 1 red and 1 blue reroll, plus Ray on Tantive IV can push a token over, freeing the Unity to run Nav or Eng commands. It does give up some anti-squadron power in your squads though.

Starhawk Battleship Mark II (150)
• Kyrsta Agate (20)
• Walex Blissex (5)
• Intel Officer (7)
• Weapons Battery Techs (5)
• Heavy Ion Emplacements (9)
• Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)
• Unity (10)
= 213 Points

CR90 Corvette A (44)
• Ray Antilles (7)
• Turbolaser Reroute Circuits (7)
• Tantive IV (3)
= 61 Points

CR90 Corvette A (44)
• Toryn Farr (7)
• Turbolaser Reroute Circuits (7)
• Jaina's Light (2)
= 60 Points

Squadrons:
• Shara Bey (17)
• Tycho Celchu (16)
• Lando Calrissian (23)
= 56 Points

Total Points: 390

The biggest problem I see is that now the cr-90s have to stay close to the Starhawk which will usually be facing down the big threats things cr-90s will probably die quick to. Keeping them as flankers is probably the safest decision in terms of points.

Why switch to lando though, he has a great ability but hes so slow that he can't keep up with other squads like Dash

I understand trying to maximize the effect of HIE's but there's a point I think where we just have to back off trying to maximize to a certain situation and look broader. Being able to expand the battlefield and force an opponent to deal with multiple issues rather than one big problem

For the squads: i would intend to only use them defensively, and expect to lose them against a med or heavy squad ball - with the intent being to trade up in points...Lando's ability is key to killing Scatter Aces, if he can kill 1 scatter ace, and 1 other squad (or even better, a 2nd scatter ace) he has met the goal...and his special ability makes that more feasible than Dash - and being a point less is a point saved when he is ultimately destroyed.

So one thing to think about is personal playstyle, I suspect you and I play a bit differently...I tend to value concentration of forces and consistency for key aspects...(and if Im using HIEs it becomes a key aspect - since successful use of it on 3 rounds is 9 damage into 2 opposing ships).

[In this case I recognize that the red dice consistency is limited, and Caitken & Shollan (aka C&S) could help with that - but Im willing to bet that the reds will average out a bit under 1 dmg per die each attack, and that the added damage from the 2 or 3 HIE procs will have a higher total damage than if I tried to increase the red consistency at the expense of the probability of crit to use the HIE].

And for full disclosure, I dont mean to defend the use of HIE/WBT as the best build for the Starhawk - i have 4 games with HIE w/out WBT, 6 games with both HIE/WBT, and have even tried 4 games with High-cap Ion Turbines and C&S, but ultimately have gone with the LFC/LTT/Leading Shots version for all the rest.

From your last comment I anticipate that you value distributed lethality - ie multiple avenues of attack that can all concentrate on a specific target over 1 or 2 rounds with limited vulnerability to a concentrated counter attack against any of the individual ships.

Which means to me, the main impetuous for the ship loadout/fleet comp/obj choice is dictated by personal playstyle and the planned use for each part of the fleet.

Cool

I love HIEs, but they just don’t trigger often enough without WBTechs. Of course, the problem then is that you’re using up Caitken & Shollan’s spot as well as the Leading Shots slot. And as others have said here: You NEED good mass reroll options on your Starhawk. It’s not fast or maneuverable, and if you whiff badly on even one or two attacks, you’re gonna have opponents escaping you. So whether it’s C&S or Leading Shots, I think you need to make some concessions, and that probably means dropping HIEs.

The other massively glaring problem with this list is that you’re missing the best card in a Starhawk list: Leia Organa. Whether it’s a CR90, a GR75, or a Hammerhead, I consider it practically mandatory to put her on a command-1 ship accompanying the Starhawk. Try it. Trust me, it makes the big ship sing. As a corollary to that: use Raymus Antilles on the Starhawk. It’s not an absolute must, but they’re an amazing combo, and he’ll do more for you than Walex or the Intel Officer (if you use Leia, and you really should). As far as Walex or Intel Officer for your second chair? Either is great.