Happy Juneteenth, everyone!
I was most pleased to sneak in a game of Armada this past week and so I've decided to share it. I've been messing about with Palpatine for a little while, trying to find a build I think I want to bother trying. I have long thought that squadrons were a good way to go in order to burn opponents' Redirects, and so I settled on squadrons. Figured that as long as I was trying something that was unlikely to work, I might as well mess with the Command SSD because I like the idea of it, though I know the Ravager build sees the vast majority of play and success. So I landed on the following:
Papa Palpatine (94/400/400)
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Command Prototype (220 + 86: 306)
· Emperor Palpatine (35)
· Weapons Liaison (3)
· Damage Control Officer (5)
· Commander Vanto (7)
· Gunnery Team (7)
· Take Evasive Action! (6)
· Intensify Firepower! (6)
· Rapid Launch Bays (6)
· Leading Shots (4)
· Quad Battery Turrets (5)
· Executor (2)
Howlrunner (16)
Gamma Squadron (10)
4 x Tie Bomber Squadron (4 x 9)
4 x Tie Fighter Squadron (4 x 8 )
Ion Storm
Capture the VIP
Superior Positions
After giving it a whole lot of thought, I decided that my best approach was to keep the TIE Bombers back while holstering the TIE Fighters and Howlrunner in the SSD with RLB. It doesn't cost me any deployments because my SSD is the only thing that can deploy anyway. It ensures my TIEs get the alpha strike and can hit the target they want to hit. Everything else is fairly well self-explanatory, I think.
I flew against a friend (Ted) who was fielding a Leia list that had been converted over from Dodonna. It featured a B-Wing, Ten, Biggs, an X-Wing, a YT-1300, Jan, Norra...and I think that was it for squadrons? He had Yavaris, a Pelta, Leia onboard Jaina's Light, and a pair of GR-75s. He had the bid and chose to go first. He chose Capture the VIP as the objective, as he figured he'd either get the SSD or not, and so MOV did not matter as far as he was concerned. We set up obstacles a little pell-mell. I chose the station to be near me, but set up other objectives further away from where I planned on deploying my SSD so that his squadrons wouldn't have anywhere to hide. I deployed my SSD in my left corner pointed toward the middle, and my Bombers tucked into its auxiliary right arc. The TIE Fighters and Howl all went on RLBs. He deployed semi-aggressively at the center of the map with the exception of Jaina's Light, which was kicked out wide to avoid unnecessary conflict. I was happy with that, as I was hoping Jaina's Light would try to flank the SSD and run into the cloud of TIE Bombers. My priority was killing Yavaris before it could do too much damage, but I obviously wasn't in a rush to engage. Why give his squadrons more opportunities to punch me?
Ted had AFFM equipped, but he had deployed far enough away that I figured I could wait until turn 3 to dial up squadrons. Normally, I'd start with Navigate so that I could have two Nav tokens to start, but I thought I'd try and go against my instincts with the dials a little bit and see what happened. So I went with Engineering, Con Fire, Squadrons, Squadrons. This choice would cost me, but not for the reason I feared. The first two turns were dull: Ted tried to position as best he could, and I just chugged forward with the SSD, picking up the VIP token on my first turn. I banked each of my first two dials as tokens, thereby netting two tokens each turn (unable to use Vanko because I was not resolving commands). This, right here, was my mistake. I did not have a Nav token banked, and so chose not to use TEA at the top of the third round, which I should have done. I knew I had Yavaris, no problem. But I needed to turn in to make sure I didn't miss out on the Pelta. I briefly considered discarding TEA for the effect, but didn't do it. Biggest error of the game, by far. And really, the only one that I'm convinced cost me the match. It also occurred to me that I sort of saw this coming in round 2 and could have resolved a meaningless Engineering token just so Vanto could hand me a Nav token. Easy peasy! But I didn't think to do this until later. Anyway, I did not discard TEA in time for round 3, and the ramifications would be fatal.
Round 3 goes as expected: Ted easily had me outactivated, so I banked the Squadrons dial as a token because I didn't want to drop my TIE Fighters too early. His Yavaris dice weren't good, but his Pelta and squadron dice bordered on great. I knew he'd hit me first, so I wasn't panicked. And DCO nullified Norra, so that was fine too. At the top of round 4, Palpatine names Brace and I burn a token for IF and a Vanto token for TEA. I obviously take another hammering from Yavaris, but I'm still okay. I drop my TIEs and start going in on an X-Wing that's escorting Norra. My hope is that I can lock her up, force an unwanted Jan move, etc. My dice swing wildly between excellent and absolutely awful, even with Swarm rerolls. Can't quite finish the X-Wing after throwing 19 blue dice at it, with 4 rerolls. I do force some Biggs damage mitigation, and Jan is forced to burn a Brace defense token. My TIE Fighters are spent, so I use my sixth and final squadron activation to throw a TIE Bomber at Yavaris. Whiff. Executor starts with flak, as all of Ted's squadrons are in my front arc. My dice are awful. I manage a total of 4 damage out of 14 dice. Then I throw my front arc at Yavaris and one-shot it. I have the two Accuracies to kill the Braces, and I roll exactly enough damage, even before IF. I'm pretty happy, as now I don't even have to ram Yavaris to kill it. Except that probably would've been best for me, because NOW I'm trying to turn my boat to make sure I don't lose the Pelta. And the result is that I bellyflop ALL OVER THE SQUADRONS. I need to turn, but I land on all of my TIE Fighters but one, and all of his squadrons but the YT-1300 and Ten. Which...is not good. Obviously, my TIEs are relegated to the back and his squadrons are now stacked on my front. His Pelta takes a shot at me and rolls well, and then Jaina's Light hits me. Then his remaining squadrons roll well. I'm up to 15 damage at this point and have had to burn all defense tokens except for a single Brace (which I can only use once, as one of my 2 or 3 crits is that I cannot spend exhausted defense tokens).
I call it at the end of Round 4, knowing that his Pelta will activate before I get to do anything, and I just can't imagine a double-arc from the Pelta as well as 4 bombers reinforced by BCC failing to deal me 7 damage. Certainly possible, but really unlikely. So, that's the show!
Yeeeaaaaahhhhhh....I ended the game with 4 command tokens. So I made a couple of mistakes. But the biggest, by far, was my unwillingness to discard TEA a turn earlier than I used it so that I could turn BEFORE dropping my TIE Fighters in order to keep the Pelta in my front arc without landing on them afterwards. The second was using Vanko. I really liked hoarding command tokens via Executor, but if I lose the game with 4 tokens (one of each command) still on my SSD, then I didn't need that many tokens or I was too miserly with them. It wasn't the latter, which means it's the former. I have since changed my fleet to include Flight Commander - my reasoning is that I not only save 4 points so I've got a bid at 396, but now if I'm forced to splash enemy squadrons, I can drop my TIE Fighters in afterward and lock everyone down, regardless of whether I'm turning or not. Otherwise, overall, I'm pretty happy with how it ran! Now, is that to say Palpatine is the best commander for this fleet? I'm not sure yet. I'm still working him out. I like the threat he presents, but I can easily see how a switch to Jerjerrod, Piett, or even Tagge might be more beneficial. I'd save a butt-ton of points, and the effects would be more reliable than Palpatine. That said, I'm going to stick it out with Palpatine for a little while and get a better feel for him; see if I can't exploit his ability some more.
Thanks for reading, and stay well!