Bail Organa Fleet - Resolutely Plo-wing Ahead

 Bail Organa Fleet - Resolutely Plo-wing Ahead

He's no Jimmy Smits, but come on now: he's still one handsome devil.

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.

Resolutely Plo-wing Ahead (54/400/400)

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Venator I-class Star Destroyer (90 + 25: 115)

· Clone Captain Zak (5)

· All Fighters, Follow Me! (5)

· SPHA-T (7)

· Resolute (6)

Acclamator I-class (66 + 37: 103)

· Bail Organa (28)

· Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)

· Implacable (4)

Acclamator I-class (66 + 21: 87)

· Boosted Comms (4)

· Expanded Hangar Bay (5)

· Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)

· Nevoota Bee (5)

Armed Cruiser (37 + 4: 41)

· Radiant VII (1)

· Munitions Resupply (3)

Plo Koon (24)

3 x BTL-B Y-wing Squadron (3 x 10)

Rift Assault

Abandoned Mining Facility

Solar Corona

I am so, so excited to finally have a Venator! I bought two, but for now, one will suffice. I know I'm not the only one who was waiting for this. Not just because of the upgrades that come packaged with it, but because it's hard to build a fleet with only two ships available to a faction. Even just adding a third option makes a big difference, and to have it be such a fun ship makes it that much better. 

So I knew I was starting with a Venator. For whatever reason, I decided to build starting with the title. I think all 3 Venator titles are excellent and will see use. I've already built an idea or two around Triumphant, and I expect I'll be using Tranquility frequently, as Luminara is going to see a ton of play with me as my primary Republic commander so far. So that left Resolute. A couple of thoughts I've had about the card are that I need to have a plan for those tokens. If it's just a catch-all, I'm not only spending 6 fleet points on an upgrade that isn't even all that reactive in a faction that needs every point it can get, but I'm also skipping out on one of the other excellent titles. Also, to reiterate, this is a poor choice for a "catch-all" reactive upgrade. Why not just take Tarkin as my commander? I have to pre-select his tokens too, but he gets them for all 6 rounds, and can give me a dial instead of a token if I prefer. I have to not only pre-select the 4 tokens on Resolute; I only get one token from it after I resolve a dial. So I'm limited as to when I can trigger it. So I equip the Venator with SPHA-T and All Fighters, Follow Me! I can use the Con Fire tokens to refresh SPHA-T, and I can use the Squadrons tokens to fuel AFFM! But of course, I also need to trigger Resolute by resolving a dial. Ok then: let's try putting Bail in command of this fleet.

I know I'm not done with upgrades on the Venator just yet, but I move onto the squadron contingent because I already had an idea of what I wanted when I put AFFM! on the Venator-I: ARC-170s. I pick up 3 ARC-170s and give them Grit with Kit Fisto. Then I double back to my ships and pick up Nevoota Bee and Implacable. I just love both the Acclamator titles, and since my squadrons are pretty light, I need to make sure I'm not counting solely on my Venator to take out my opponent, or Imma do quite a lot of losing. I know I want to run them light, but I also know I want Boosted Comms and Expanded Hangar Bay on Nevoota Bee so I can activate everyone in one go. I throw Hyperspace Rings on Implacable so my ARCs can start ahead in addition to being boosted by AFFM! Except I'm starting to get worried about dice fixing. Plus, I'm still not that comfortable with only three activations. I've done it before, but I generally feel like I've got an equalizing trick up my sleeve, such as with Palpatine. So I add in the cheapest ship I can: a Consular Armed Cruiser and set it up with Radiant VII and Munitions Resupply.

But points are real tight and I still don't have what I want. I definitely moved things around, cut and edited, but still couldn't get the shape I wanted from this fleet. Ultimately, I decided the ARCs had to go because while I could find the points for them themselves, I just couldn't fund the apparatus needed to support them in this fleet. So I ended up switching to Y-Wings. Once I did that, I no longer needed Hyperspace Rings, and decided to switch out Kit for Plo Koon. I put LTT on both Acclamators to help with additional dice fixing, and settled on Clone Captain Zak on the Venator.

I'm really not sure how I want this fleet to behave, exactly. And I really haven't flown much Republic, so a lot of where I'm at is theory. I know that if you play and understand Armada, the game hasn't changed *that* much for the Clone Wars factions that it's an entirely new world. But I still feel like, for me personally, I need to fly these factions a lot to get a feel for how I want to fly them. I can theorize, or people can explain their thoughts to me, but I still need to log the hours. So while I think I can tweak this fleet or, frankly, overhaul it a countless number of times, I think I'm just going to try this one and see what happens. I suspect that my squadron choices will get me killed more often than not and I'll have to make changes there. I also think it's likely I'll need to either lose the Consular or one of the Acclamator to free up the points I need for the squadron game to be smarter. But for now, I'll take my licks and learn from them.

My objectives. I'm hoping Rift Assault gives me some points and extra dice fixing simply because of the volume of dice in my pool from 3 of my 4 ships. I've got 4 ships and Bail, so I'm willing to try Abandoned Mining Facility with this fleet. I know it can be turned against me, but my opponent will need to have the right build (which also means 5 ships in order to get more objective tokens than me) and also know how to fly the objective. That's at a base level and assuming they're not built for such an endeavor, but are good enough to get the tokens while multitasking. It certainly happens, but for now, I'm willing to take the chance. And finally, Solar Corona. I don't love the objective because it's so often used and it doesn't score me points. But man, these Clone Wars ships with no redundant tokens and accuracy-generating tech just continues to make me nervous. So if I can find a way to use my defense tokens without putting ECMs on every single ship, I'll take it.