Armada: Forward Firepower

Another big fish roaming the stars.

Now that we took a look a Imperials, let's talk about some possibilities with Rebels.  For one, I'm thinking about trying this crazy list with two fat fish led by the newest Rebel commander, General Madine.  Now, this guy has a really cool ability that I really like, and I might be playing him more often as a direct contender to my beloved Ackbar.

Faction: Rebel Alliance
Points: 386/400
Commander: General Madine

Assault Objective: Advanced Gunnery
Defense Objective: Fire Lanes
Navigation Objective: Intel Sweep

[ flagship ] MC80 Assault Cruiser (114 points)
-  General Madine  ( 30  points)
-  Defiance  ( 5  points)
-  Intel Officer  ( 7  points)
-  Engine Techs  ( 8  points)
-  Electronic Countermeasures  ( 7  points)
-  XI7 Turbolasers  ( 6  points)
-  Leading Shots  ( 4  points)
= 181 total ship cost

MC80 Battle Cruiser (103 points)
-  Mon Karren  ( 8  points)
-  Intel Officer  ( 7  points)
-  Gunnery Team  ( 7  points)
-  Medical Team  ( 1  points)
-  XI7 Turbolasers  ( 6  points)
-  XX-9 Turbolasers  ( 5  points)
-  Leading Shots  ( 4  points)
= 141 total ship cost

GR-75 Medium Transports (18 points)
-  Comms Net  ( 2  points)
= 20 total ship cost

4 A-Wing Squadrons ( 44 points)

Simply amazing.

This is the list that I'm currently thinking about and it's pretty much designed to do one thing and one thing only:  Utterly destroy the enemy fleet while moving around like a madman.  I don't know about you folks, but I have no idea how a former Imperial Commander like Madine figured out how to manuever capital ships around as if they were frigates.  Obviously this also means that spamming out nav tokens in the beginning of the game while keeping your trigger finger happy on the nav commands throughout the entire game will be the way forward.  Thankfully, having the cheap GR-75 activator with Comms Net helps that out a little bit, also for when the opponent decides to throw down Tractor Beams somewhere.  Think about it for a second:  The ability to move 90 degree turns with the MC80 Defiance and be able to activate Engine Techs.  Or turn the MC80 Mon Karren around with multiple double-clicks because you have both the nav command and token ready to go.  Absurd.

Overall, there was a couple of things here that I think can still need improvement.  I could technically drop the A-Wings down to Dash + YT-2400 because they won't have any command support.  This would give me 4 points to buy Bright Hope on the GR-75 to reduce some incoming damage and give me a slightly better bid.  Of course, this would give me a pretty handicapped ship to drop ratio, but when you're playing with big capital ships like these who rely on the initiative bid, that doesn't matter so much.  Your strategy and fleet composition will determine the outcome of the battle way more than any activational advantage.

All the crits!

On the topic of the MC80 Battle; this ship was designed to be a pure battleship and nothing more.  It's basically a ISD-II that wants to get up in your face and drop as much damage as possible.  This is why I geared this particular version up with the Mon Karren title, XI7s and XX-9s for maximum damage.  Mon Karren is one of the best titles I've seen when it comes to pushing damage, even more so then Avenger I think.  You're basically telling your opponent that he can only activate one of his defense tokens and nothing more.  If the target only has one Brace token for example, IO has extreme synergy with it because you pretty much know 100% that the Brace is going to disappear without any interference.  The only trouble it might have is if you're fighting against another MC80 Liberty-class for example because of the redundant Brace options, but that's one of those things that makes the Liberty solid in the first place.  The best part about the title is that it pretty much denies the use of Contain, and that it allows things like the XX-9 to really do some work when combined with the XI7s.  Not only are you pushing damage through, but you're also causing critical damage if you proc the crit.  I think if you want to go hard with the damage, it's better to go all in because you sure don't have any defensive countermeasures to worry about.  Your job is to literally dive into the enemy and shoot it to death because you have the initiative and the upgrades to do it.

Stay tuned guys, while this is definitely one of those lists I'm dying to try out, I actually have my eyes set on another.  It's pretty unique, and I've definitely talked about it before briefly.