Armada: Home One and TRC90s

I am going to officially coin the term TRC90.

I've been experimenting with various hybrid lists featuring Ackbar in the last couple of weeks all all my tests have been pretty successful.  Here is what I have tried in the last month or so, playing mostly Rebels and have been gathering tons and tons of experience with:

• Home One, 2x MKIIs, full control, no air cover
• Home One, 2x MKIIs, no Intels on MKIIs, light air cover with 3 A-Wings
• Home One, Defiance, medium air cover with 6 A-Wings
• Home One, MKII, heavy air cover with Rebel Aces/A-Wings
• Independence, MKII, heavy air cover with B-Wings
• Home One, MKII, CR90 with TRC, light air cover with 4 A-Wings (current favorite)
• and lastly, Home One, 3x CR90s with TRCs (or TRC90s), light air cover with 4 A-Wings

One of the new hot lists that have been going around with Wave 2 hitting in full blast is the CR90s with Turbolaser Reroute Circuits.  Frankly, the TRCs are probably the best upgrade you can have on a ship with redundant evade tokens, and having them on a super maneuverable platform like the CR90 is just icing on the cake.  Yes, we all know that CR90s evaporate under dedicated firepower, but what can you expect if you're running a ship with barely any shields and equally pathetic hull.  That's not the point.  The point when you're running a good amount of CR90s is getting either the most mileage out of the evades as you can (Mon Mothma), or just wrecking havoc with consistent damage via Ackbar in the Home One.

What do I mean by this?  I mean you run a list that looks something like this:

ACKFISH

Author: HERO

Faction: Rebel Alliance 

Points: 390/400 

Commander: Admiral Ackbar

Assault Objective: Most Wanted

Defense Objective: Fire Lanes 

Navigation Objective: Superior Positions 

[ flagship ] MC80 Command Cruiser (106 points)

-  Admiral Ackbar  ( 38  points) 

-  Home One  ( 7  points) 

-  Intel Officer  ( 7  points) 

-  Engine Techs  ( 8  points) 

-  Electronic Countermeasures  ( 7  points) 

-  XI7 Turbolasers  ( 6  points) 

-  Leading Shots  ( 4  points) 

CR90 Corvette A (44 points)

-  Tantive IV  ( 3  points) 

-  Turbolaser Reroute Circuits  ( 7  points) 

CR90 Corvette A (44 points)

-  Jaina's Light  ( 2  points) 

-  Turbolaser Reroute Circuits  ( 7  points) 

CR90 Corvette A (44 points)

-  Turbolaser Reroute Circuits  ( 7  points) 

1 Tycho Celchu ( 16 points) 

3 A-Wing Squadrons ( 33 points) 

The first upgrade you take on the CR90A.

Yes, I know I'm not very creative with names, and I've only played one game with the list above, but I can tell you that it does work, and work very well.  The entire fleet swims horizontally or on a diagonal, doing nothing but Concentrate Fires for the most part and throwing extra reds so Ackbar can feed them with free accuracies if you don't score big damage.  You have 4 activations on ships and decent fighter cover so you can hopefully tie down bigger squadron lists while your ship pound the opposing fleet into the ground.  Jaina's Light allows the ship to be tricky and shoot through your own ships while Tantive IV throws out free navs (for Engine Techs) and repair tokens (6 engineering points) onto the Home One when its not using CF.

When you have 3 CR90 under Ackbar, damage can be borderline obscene not because of the sheer number of dice you're throwing out (4 from the side with CF), but because of free double hit results from the TRCs.  If you math it out, you can clearly see that 1 dice out of 4 will be a blank on average when you throw it out.  However, Home One can instantly turn one of those blanks to a accuracy if you so desire, or you can flip an evade for free damage.  Most of the time I'll take the extra damage, but there will be times where your opponents' ships will be withered enough that you'll want to direct the damage to a specific hull.  If anything, you'll pepper them with so many shots and you'll burn up a lot of Redirects and side shields from the biggest capital ship threats so your Home One herself can start laying in some pain.  There has been times where this little ship has rolled a double-hit, hit, crit and a blank, with me turning that into another double.  That's 6 damage coming from a ship worth 51 points, and consistently outperforms the MKII in terms of damage overall.

I think if we're looking at the list I presented above in relation to the meta, I think it's in a spot where it can do quite well.  Having 4 ships in your list with a 390 bid is a very, very good thing.  It has a very high chance of winning first player, and with 1 more ship over the average count of ships being fielded, you're looking at a good chance of going first and last, which is huge in terms of activation advantage.  The Tycho and 3x A-Wings is not the best thing in the world, but with careful play and positioning you should be able to tie up some Fireball lists for a turn or two so you can hopefully burn down the rest of the fleet.  It's a worrisome thing to know that it doesn't take much to kill a CR90, especially from a Fireball, but at least you will be able to throw out insane amounts of pain for relatively dirt cheap.  Now that is truly the meaning of cost-effectiveness.  The only thing that's not cost-effective is the fact you have to buy 3x MC30c expansions to get the TRCs, but good thing I already have that.  Oops.