Cracken fleet - A Tough Nut to Crack(en)

Cracken Fleet - A Tough Nut to Crack(en)

Taken from his official Rebel military personnel file...

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.

A Tough Nut to Crack(en) (90/395/400)

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Modified Pelta-class Assault Ship (56 + 45: 101)

· General Cracken (26)

· Veteran Captain (3)

· Shields to Maximum! (6)

· Projection Experts (6)

· External Racks (4)

Hammerhead Scout Corvette (41 + 10: 51)

· Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)

· Task Force Antilles (3)

Hammerhead Scout Corvette (41 + 10: 51)

· Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)

· Task Force Antilles (3)

Hammerhead Scout Corvette (41 + 10: 51)

· Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)

· Task Force Antilles (3)

Hammerhead Scout Corvette (41 + 10: 51)

· Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)

· Task Force Antilles (3)

Lando Calrissian (23)

Kanan Jarrus (19)

3 x YT-2400 (3 x 16)

Station Assault

Asteroid Tactics

Salvage Run

The notion behind this fleet is simple enough: do everything possible to keep the Hammerheads alive to roar in on approach and then fly on by, guns blazing the whole way. They've got some dice fixing with Linked Turbolaser Towers (LTT) since they cannot rely on the Task Force Organa (TFO) title; the title slot is held by Task Force Antilles (TFA). Honestly, I have difficulty thinking of a fleet in which I flew Hammerheads and DIDN'T use TFO. So I thought I'd try something different!

It's not completely different, but it's different enough, I think.

If I recall correctly, I have flown this fleet once before and lost to my friend Ted. I honestly cannot remember how it all went down, but if I had to hazard a guess based on the way I fly new fleets, I was likely too conservative and spent too much time dancing to try and avoid damage. The result being, of course, that my ships stayed in front arcs and range for longer than they should have and exploded. Again, best guess. But it feels likely to me.

There's no way this fleet can stick it out, go toe to toe, and hope to survive. The damage mitigation afforded by TFA, Shields to Maximum!, and Projection Experts simply isn't enough for that. It's (hopefully) enough to let them make their attack run and then get out of there. That's it. At least, that's it insomuch as I had a plan when building this fleet months and months ago! I haven't flown Rebels in some time.

The Pelta brings up the rear, since it can't keep up with the Hammerheads. It can't even go speed 3 and thus cannot benefit from Cracken! So, things to remember. It has External Racks in case it does enter engagement range with anyone, whether by your choice to finish off an enemy ship or by their choice in hoping to make short work of a slow target. It can also, if needed, command one of your squadrons. Obviously not a way you should plan on using your dials each turn, but if you bank a token, you can command 2 squadrons for a single turn, possibly getting an unexpected jump on something that thought it was safe.

Seriously. If you've not watched Kim's Convenience, you're doing something wrong with your life.

The squadron game is mostly anti-squadron cover. It's true that Lando and Kanan can be effective against ships, and it's a thing I appreciate about both of them! But the 3 YT-2400s make it clear, I think, what my concern is. Also, all 5 squadrons are Rogue so I don't have to worry about pushing them. There's nothing brilliant about the combination of squadrons, no machine I'm trying to build, so if you find you'd rather change up the squadron game, go for it! But I'd like to mess around with this combination before trying something more traditionally synergistic. I would like to get a sixth squadron in there to give me the extra deployment, and I had one in there before the 1.5 points change! (Spoiler alert: it was Rogue Squadron) But External Racks went up in cost and brought my fleet total to 401. I decided to see what would happen if I dropped Rogue Squadron and changed Dual Turbolaser Turrets (DTT) on all of the Hammerheads to LTTs. I'm short a deployment, but gain better rerolls as well as a 5 point bid.

My choice of objectives likely needs work. Sometimes, one or two jump out at me as being perfect for whatever fleet I've built, but other times, I'm so in the weeds with my build that the only way to figure out the best possible objective suite is to get stomped with my own objective, take a look at how and why, and change accordingly. Station Assault is often a sort of default for me when I'm not entirely certain how I want to proceed because it helps dictate where the battle will take place. If I don't want to handle my opponent's fleet all at the same time, I'll place the stations on opposite sides on my end of the board so that they either have to split up their fleet or give me at least 40 points for the station they do not attack. The other possibility (if I'm willing to camp a little bit) is to put both of my stations in about the same place to heal and obstruct my units and force them to maximize their damage output or risk leaving points on the table. With this fleet, I think I'm more likely to do the former than the latter, but as I say, I haven't even gotten to play this objective with this fleet yet. Asteroid Tactics was a choice I made with the thought that I can place the asteroids in a sort of funnel that'll funnel my Hammerheads directly at my opponent's fleet so they can recover defense tokens as they charge. Not entirely certain how effective this will be, but it sounded good in my head. Not entirely reassuring? Yeah, I hear you there...Salvage Run felt like one of the easier choices here. My Hammerheads are good for picking objective tokens out from debris and asteroids, I want to be moving fast anyway, and if my opponent decides to move fast in an attempt to snag the tokens before me, then hopefully, their fleet is lined up for my guns.

"Looks like they're lining up."
"Yeah, well, they're excited."

And that's it! As I say, I can't say I'd bet on this fleet because it was built on a bit of a whim as a way for me to use more of my Hammerheads. And the only time I flew it, I lost. But I periodically go through my fleet lists and delete any that no longer interest me, that I'll never fly, or that I cannot comprehend what I was thinking when I built them. This fleet survived the latest of those purges, so there must be something in there I want to try! Admittedly, it's towards the bottom of my list, as I'd like to play some more Clone Wars matches, but at some point, I'd like to get back to this Cracken list and see if I enjoy it at all...