Grievous Fleet - What Is Dead May Never Die

Grievous Fleet - What Is Dead May Never Die

The character is still a stupid concept, but he looks cool, and I LOVE the Grievous squadron ace...

Let's start with the list itself, shall we? Quick note: If you're familiar with the most excellent Armada Fleets Designer app, then you'll be familiar with the format of the fleet list. If not, then you should know that the numbers in the parentheses next to the fleet name are as follows - number of points invested in squadrons/total number of fleet points/maximum number of fleet points.

What Is Dead May Never Die (127/391/400)

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Recusant-class Support Destroyer (90 + 37: 127)

· General Grievous (20)

· Rune Haako (4)

· Flight Controllers (6)

· Reserve Hangar Deck (3)

· Boosted Comms (4)

Comms Frigate (70 + 12: 82)

· TI-99 (4)

· Reserve Hangar Deck (3)

· Sa Nalaor (5)

Transport (47 + 8: 55)

· Bomber Command Center (8)

DFS-311 (18)

DBS-404 (17)

Baktoid Prototypes (16)

4 x Hyena-class Droid Bomber Squadron (4 x 11)

4 x Vulture-class Droid Fighter Squadron (4 x 8)

Ion Storm

Asteroid Tactics

Infested Fields

What's my aim, here? Pretty simple: get my Hyenas in bombing range and let loose. Since they're way softer than TIE Bombers (or, really, any other bombers in the entire game), I know I'm going to have to fly them A LOT in order to get good with them. They don't have the benefit of squads that can Escort them (the way every other faction does), so yeah, I gotta be careful. My Vultures are there to hit squadrons as fast as possible. As long as they remain near the Munificent fielding TI-99 (recently spoiled!), even if they don't just get to shoot on their own, they'll have a formidable Counter attack, bolstered by a Swarm reroll. I know the new version of Grit isn't as powerful as the old one. However, DFS-311 handing Grit out to my Hyenas does mean that they can't get locked down by a single squadron who just goes ham on them and has no problem sitting in the middle of my bomber cloud. You'll need at least two squadrons committed to pinning down my Hyenas for that to work. Also, if you pick on my bombers while they're near TI-99, they'll throw Counter at ya, too. Sure, it activates them, but they're not defenseless against enemy squadrons who are trying to pick on them.

Man, this movie holds up after nearly 20 years!

I'm really excited about these new ships coming out in the next wave! I've got a different version of a Grievous fleet built around a Providence-class Carrier, too, but I'm excited about this one because it doesn't lean on Trifighters the way I'm certain literally every other Separatist fleet will. The Recusant will feature Rune Haako for those Squadron tokens that'll let me command 4 squadrons instead of 3, Flight Controllers will further bolster my Vultures, and Reserve Hangar Deck on both this and my Munificent will bring back two Vultures as needed. And Bomber Command Center is obviously there for the benefit of those fickle red dice that my Hyenas will be throwing at ships.

That said, I know I'll be losing squadrons. I'm counting on it, which is why I brought Grievous with me. It's why I equipped my Munificent with the Sa Nalaor title, as well as why I'm bringing the Hyena aces. I really enjoy DBS-404's ability to take damage in order to add a die to his attack, but I'm less fond of the ability that the Baktoid Prototypes feature, given that I'll rarely want it to roll an Accuracy instead of straight damage. But both are Scatter ace bombers, and that is exceedingly rare. If I fly intelligently and plan accordingly, I can afford to burn tokens because they'll be back in no time!

I see problems with this fleet, for sure. The two biggest problems I can see are that my ships don't have dice-fixing, and my bombers don't actually feature any protection against bullies who want to pick them off. The closest I get is making you pay with my Vultures looming nearby, waiting to swoop in, or TI-99 giving my Hyenas a nice Counter value. But it's worth the risk to try this out, in my opinion. Also, there are a lot more upgrades coming in the next wave that have not yet been spoiled, so maybe I'll find something there I like. No guarantees, of course. And I can't really fly this fleet yet because even if I proxy the cards that have been spoiled (such as the Recusant-class Support Destroyer, General Grievous, or TI-99), I can't really proxy the cardboard for my Recusant, so, I'm in a holding pattern until April.

Originally, I had Precision Strike as my Assault Objective, but after talking to my friend Chris, he made it clear that he would select that every time he flew against me, given the other options. I don't really love knowing that someone might look at my objectives and have an easy decision to make. I'd rather they have to agonize and make a decision they don't like. So I swapped it out for Ion Storm. Here's my thinking for the objectives listed:

Ion Storm allows me to place all the obstacles, which means not only can I place them in a way that lets me keep my ships within distance 2 of them so that my opponent cannot leverage Ion Storm against me, but I can also arrange them so DFS-311 has maximum cover in which to hide, hand out Intel, and force rerolls on obstructed attacks. It's true that it won't last forever, but anything I can do to keep it on the board to keep bolstering my Hyenas (and my Vultures, incidentally) is an advantage I'll look to exploit. Asteroid Tactics is fairly obvious: I already have Grievous' ability, and now I'm trying to turn a strength into an obscenity with Asteroid Tactics. Finally, Infested Fields is a lazy choice for me. It's no secret that it's basically my favorite Navigation Objective for nearly any fleet that has even a couple of squadrons that can play fetch. In this case, I can get the points, but also move the obstacles so DFS-311 always has a place to hide while handing out Intel.

And that's it! Gonna have to wait another month or so to try this out, but I'm looking forward to it! Hoping to get back to playing more Armada in the coming weeks and months so I can finally get some of these horrific ideas to the table, watch them flounder and fail, and put them away so I can move onto better ideas ;)