Tarkin Fleet - Red Scare

Tarkin Fleet - Red Scare

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.

 Red Scare (0/389/400)

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Onager-class Testbed (96 + 31: 127)

· Emperor Palpatine (3)

· Gunnery Chief Varnillian (6)

· Sensor Team (5)

· Engine Techs (8)

· Orbital Bombardment Particle Cannons (5)

· Rakehell (4)

Arquitens-class Command Cruiser (59 + 47: 106)

· Grand Moff Tarkin (28)

· Reactive Gunnery (4)

· Engine Techs (8)

· Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)

Arquitens-class Command Cruiser (59 + 19: 78)

· Reactive Gunnery (4)

· Engine Techs (8)

· Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)

Arquitens-class Command Cruiser (59 + 19: 78)

· Reactive Gunnery (4)

· Engine Techs (8)

· Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)

Rift Assault

Contested Outpost

Hyperspace Migration

I love Tarkin. Even before he became ten points cheaper in 1.5, I was a huge fan. I built this fleet awhile back and got to fly it once or twice. I loved the way it flew, but just didn't get back to it. As I'm revisiting old fleets for my blog, I rediscovered this one and realized that I never came back to it. Which meant I had an additional ten points to spend that I didn't have before!

If I recall correctly, my original bid was huge mostly because I couldn't afford another ship, I was more or less out of upgrade slots, and didn't want to invest points in one or two squadrons that would only serve as a speed bump. In the wake of Clone Wars, it occurred to me that Reactive Gunnery to give each Arqs Salvo in conjunction with Linked Turbolaser Towers (LTT) could be oh so much fun. So I added them!

Anyway, the thought behind this fleet is pretty simple, as it's basically a riff on the Tarquitens fleet. If you're not familiar, that fleet spams Arquiten Command Cruisers because they can use Engine Techs and get wild maneuverability because of their double click on the end joint of any move. Tarkin gives them Nav tokens each round so they can always use Engine Techs, and then they can afford to spend their dials on Con Fire every turn. It can be downright nasty, I assure you. So my riff is simple: I keep the Arquitens, Tarkin, and Engine Techs, but I add in an Onager. The Onager says, "If you attack my friends on the cruisers, I'll hit you hard from downtown." The Arquitens say, "If you go after the Onager, we're just going to circle you in a gun line and rain fire." I want to force my opponent to make choices. And between Tarkin and every single ship having Engine Techs, I can always just ratchet up the speed and run as needed.

There's not much more to say about the Arquitens other than Skilled First Officer is terrific on 2 command ships. They give you crazy flexibility with the command dial stack. The Onager is tricked out with something in every upgrade slot. I know it makes a juicy target, which is why Tarkin isn't on it. For added discouragement from attacking it, I put Palpatine in the officer chair. Orbital Bombardment Particle Cannons (OBPC) are pretty much the standard superweapon for the Onager Testbed because of the long extreme range. I've got the Rakehell title on there so it can pivot more like a piece of artillery if my opponent decides to go after my Arquitens; it's got Engine Techs to get out of there if my opponent decides it's worth attacking. I've tried to maximize dice fixing by putting in Sensor Team for a guaranteed accuracy and adding Gunnery Chief Varnillian because I just love her. I think her utility is so very high if you have the space for her.

Rift Assault offers more dice fixing. As most of my ships have great maneuverability with my current build, I feel like this is a fleet that can take advantage of this rarely-seen objective. Contested Outpost allows me to dictate the field of battle, which I appreciate, given that I'm chucking red dice. Hyperspace Migration may be a bit of a flyer for me, but I'd like to try it. Given that 3 of my 4 ships fire primarily from their side arcs, I thought this might be a good way to score some easy points while continuing to fire at oncoming opponents.

This is a fleet I'm pretty excited to get back to the table. I had a lot of fun flying it awhile ago, then forgot about it, and am glad to have rediscovered it! I think the Onager is a great ship, and I know that it was terrorizing the competitive scene as people began discovering Triple Onager lists right before the COVID pandemic shut down any Organized Play. Apparently, there were teams of people from different places testing and optimizing these Trip Onager lists in preparation for the Armada World Championship. But those fleets are optimized by vaporizing opponents before they even get to really play the game, and that's not a thing I'm into. I get why, competitively, someone would build such a fleet. But to me, that plays like a denial deck in any sort of card game, which is to say that it's a strategy based around not allowing an opponent to actually play the game we're supposed to be playing. That doesn't sound like a lot of fun to me. So I've had trouble building around the Onager in a way that doesn't feel somehow cheap to me. This is a fleet that, I think, takes advantage of extreme range without also preventing my opponent from participating in the game.