Emperor Palpatine Fleet - Master and Apprentice
Master and Apprentice (79/396/400)
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Imperial II-class Star Destroyer (120 + 30: 150)
· Reeva Demesne (4)
· Gunnery Team (7)
· Flak Guns (3)
· Reactive Gunnery (4)
· SW-7 Ion Batteries (5)
· Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)
Quasar Fire I-class Cruiser-Carrier (54 + 48: 102)
· Emperor Palpatine (35)
· Flight Controllers (6)
· Boosted Comms (4)
· Disposable Capacitors (3)
Arquitens-class Light Cruiser (54 + 11: 65)
· Reactive Gunnery (4)
· Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)
Darth Vader (21)
Captain Jonus (16)
3 x TIE Phantom Squadron (3 x 14)
Rift Assault
Planetary Ion Cannon
Volatile Deposits
It's worth noting that I've spent about a year working on this fleet.
It started as an experiment over at It's A Trap, the St Louis-based Armada blog to which I contribute. Basically, I've been interested in Palpatine as a commander since he was spoiled. But as has been pointed out in a lot of different places, he's extremely expensive for a commander who often has an unpredictable and immeasurable impact on the game. He's a tough sell: one needs to call the right token each round, needs damage to be consistent so the threat he poses to enemy defense tokens isn't a toothless one, needs enough sources of damage to overheat those defense tokens or punish someone who doesn't want to sacrifice them, and on top of all that, has to find 35 points for Palpatine. As I said, he's a tough sell.
So it became a challenge for me. But it was also, I thought, a decent series of blog posts to publish on IAT as a way of displaying the process I use for building and testing fleets that I'm thinking of using competitively. I won't bother rewriting that entire process in this post because it's all covered over at IAT, the Armada blog to which I linked just below the fleet list. What I will say is that the changes were usually fairly small while I tested it, as I really wanted to isolate what worked and what didn't. Each of my battle reports (batreps) was broken down round by round, as well as deployment. Then I asked and answered the following questions:
- What did Palpatine provide?
- Was his impact worth 35 points?
- What worked?
- What didn't work?
- Changes?
Okay, so what is going on, here? Well, I replaced the Cymoon with an ISD-II specifically for two reasons: so I could use SW-7s for more consistent damage, and pair Reactive Gunnery with Flak Guns (recently spoiled by AMG and hopefully dropping real soon!). Yes, I could have equipped my Cymoon with Minister Tua to get Reactive Gunnery, but it would have been more expensive and I would not have guaranteed damage on my Salvo, courtesy of SW-7s. I had Gunnery Team on my Cymoon as well, so this was an easy add, as was Linked Turbolaser Towers. Of course, now I've sacrificed Intensify Firepower! and the guaranteed hits it gave my entire fleet. But I found it difficult to navigate the 1.5 rule changes without another source of tokens, and so I don't feel like I'm losing much. Of course, without the guaranteed hits, I reconsidered what I was doing with my Quasar. I feel like I made a really valiant effort to use the Quasar Fire II-class Cruiser-Carrier instead of the Quasar I (which is the chassis nearly everyone uses), and I appreciated the red dice it threw sometimes! But without IF! as a way to guarantee at least a little bit of damage, it loses some of its usefulness. Plus, I need to make up some points, given how much more expensive my ISD-II is when compared to the Cymoon I previously employed. So I made the change to the more common Quasar I and equipped basically the same upgrades as I had on it previously. The change from II to I meant I went from two Weapons Team and one Offensive Retrofit slot to one Weapons Team and two Offensive Retrofit slots. So I exchanged Veteran Gunners for Disposable Capacitors in order to throw blue dice at long range for a turn. Pretty standard.
My Arquitens retained Linked Turbolaser Towers (LTT) and I added Reactive Gunnery. The Salvo won't mean a bunch of damage, but the more attacks in a round we can get while fielding Palpatine, the better. Plus, LTT means I can reroll that Salvo die, too. Of course, I still needed to make up points. I'm still pretty attached to Vader because of what he can do to squadrons, so I kept him. And after using Major Rhymer this past weekend, I switched over to Captain Jonus to give my ships more reliable dice (specifically, a guaranteed Accuracy). But Rhymer and Jonus cost the same number of fleet points. I ran out of places to cut, so I finally dropped a TIE Phantom so I've only got 3 of them for a total of 5 squadrons. I already miss the Phantom I dropped, but I needed the points, and while I really enjoy them, when I fly them well, I rarely need all 4 of them. And it's not as though I was commanding six squadrons in a turn anyway. My Cymoon always wanted to Navigate or Concentrate Fire, and my Arquitens is certainly not commanding squadrons. So anyway, that's where I landed!
I love the Phantoms with Palpatine because they each chuck 4 blue dice at enemy squadrons, which is the max. They throw 5 when commanded by my Quasar, which they always are. But what's interesting to me about them is that they throw 2 red dice at ships. It's true that red dice are ridiculously swingy. Oftentimes, they only do zero or one damage. Other times, though, they hit for three or four! I can't count on this, of course. But if my first TIE Phantom tags a ship for anywhere from 2-3 damage, my opponent has a tough decision to make: do they spend the Brace or Redirect I called out with Palpatine and burn it for this one attack, or do they save it? The next two TIE Phantoms could whiff, and so spending the tokens now makes sense. But the next Phantoms could also hit for 3-4 damage, and my opponent is now without their most useful defense tokens. It poses difficult decisions, and I like that about Palpatine. And sometimes, his impact on the game is actually measurable (again, referencing the tournament this past weekend, my opponent could actually pinpoint where in the first match he made a decision not to use Scatter because he didn't want to burn it, and it resulted in a dead A-Wing ace in the following attack).
The objectives include some odd choices, but I also felt somewhat vindicated after this past weekend. Planetary Ion Cannon is pretty obvious: it can't be used against me, and it provides additional sources of fire to take advantage of Palpatine's ability. Why Rift Assault? It offers me dice fixing as well as objective tokens and victory points. I like scoring objectives with this fleet because my MOV with the Palpatine fleet has always been a bit more narrow than I'd like if I'm going to try taking it to tournaments and want to place. The power of the objective is lessened somewhat with blue dice simply because I could use it for double hits on all of my ships before, and that's no longer the case with my Quasar. But I can still use it for dice fixing, double hits on my ISD-II and Arquitens, crits on any of my ships, and point tokens. Volatile Deposits fills a similar niche: I can use the crit effects at long range, which my opponent will dislike. And they fly in tight formations at their own risk. Plus, if they want to score points, they need to get close to me and to obstacles. I'm happy to pick that particular fight.
I think the added context from my upcoming tournament report will clarify some points I've made here, but ultimately, it was a different fleet than the one I have listed here. That said, I also have a lot of experience with Palpatine and this *type* of fleet now, and I have some decent confidence in it. I'm looking forward to flying this one again soon! And who knows? Maybe these are the changes I needed to be more competitive with Palpatine and supplant my love for Tarkin!
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