Kyrsta Agate Fleet - Hippocampus agatus
Hippocampus agatus (58/399/400)
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MC75 Armored Cruiser (104 + 60: 164)
· Kyrsta Agate (20)
· Raymus Antilles (7)
· Boarding Troopers (3)
· Reactive Gunnery (4)
· Leading Shots (6)
· Expanded Launchers (13)
· Profundity (7)
Nebulon-B Support Refit (51 + 14: 65)
· Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)
· Salvation (7)
Hammerhead Torpedo Corvette (36 + 10: 46)
· Shriv Suurgav (6)
· Garel's Honor (4)
CR90 Corvette B (39 + 6: 45)
· Dodonna's Pride (6)
GR-75 Medium Transports (18 + 3: 21)
· Leia Organa (3)
Wedge Antilles (19)
3 x X-wing Squadron (3 x 13)
Advanced Gunnery
Jamming Barrier
Dangerous Territory
I honestly don't really know what got me thinking about this. Without Organized Play to really push me in a particular direction of building and testing, I've just had a slew of fleets I want to try out. Which is fine! But it means I'm not really seeking out or mulling over builds as much as I would in "normal" times. So if I have an idea for a fleet, I can usually tell you exactly where it came from.
"My friend built a Leia list, so I built one."
"Playing the Eyrie in Root had me thinking about unstable engines, so I revisited my Grievous build, and tried to come up with something that let me ride a similar concept."
But for this? Yeah, I don't know. The idea is pretty simple: Profundity gets an extra Brace or Redirect, thus making it that much more formidable, and then when it drops a ship, Kyrsta jumps ship so the little guy (either Dodonna's Pride or Garel's Honor) can use a defense token to survive a point blank shot, Accuracy be damned, and run away. Nothing groundbreaking or brilliant, but I've never really flown Profundity, and I really only see it with Raddus (allowing more reach for the Raddus bomb). I was wondering if there was any other Rebel commander who would change the game by switching ships for a reason other than survival (jumping from a sinking ship). Kyrsta looks to be the only one. She'll give the MC-75 an extra defense token (which Profundity keeps after Kyrsta leaves), and then grant the small ship her ability to use a defense token by discarding it. Honestly, I don't know whether or not that's worth it, but I'm willing to try!
For this, I end up building my small ships first. I've only got three options as to what Profundity can drop, so I choose them all as a starting place. My CR90 ends up being the easiest choice: I have a soft spot for a CR90 equipped with Dodonna's Pride. So that's one. I want to keep it cheap, because it needs to hit and run. But if it can't, then I don't want to equivocate about it sticking around because it's worth more points than I'd like to give my opponent. The Hammerhead is also decently easy to build: External Racks and Garel's Honor. But now I'm pausing because I don't have a reroll mechanism for those black dice, and I really don't want to suffer through an anticlimactic Profundity drop because of bad dice. I put the Hammerhead on hold and resolve to come back to it.
I also, for whatever reason, decide I want to take a Neb. Honestly, that's the only thing driving my decision: I want to use one. I look at the 4 different titles, reasoning that I'll build it out based on which title I take. I decide on Salvation because I'm clearly not building a fleet that can take advantage of Yavaris, most of my ships can't reasonably take advantage of Redemption (I really think you sort of need to build your fleet around Redemption in order to effectively leverage it and make it worth taking), and Vanguard will only make my ship more expensive because I will feel compelled to take a Weapons Team upgrade in addition to the title. I equip Linked Turbolaser Towers to maximize the likelihood of Salvation triggering, and call it good.
I think my GR-75 is unlikely to be a Profundity drop because, at this point, I'm spending enough points on ships that I'm pretty confident that I won't be building a bomber ball. Since I'm not using bombers, I don't see any reason to kit out my GR-75, and thus, it need not drop. I throw Leia on there to fix commands on Profundity and call it good.
Next, I start working on equipping upgrades to Profundity. I think about an officer who might also appreciate traveling to a smaller ship alongside Kyrsta and end up with Raymus Antilles. After all, Garel's Honor and Dodonna's Pride will both appreciate extra dice and rerolls on their attack. Leading Shots is a no-brainer for me on this ship, since it's got blue dice everywhere. I end up adding Reactive Gunnery because I know I want to close, and it'll be a good way to make more use of that redundant Contain token. If I wanted an Ordnance crit effect, I'd have rolled in with the Ordnance Cruiser instead of the Armored Cruiser. I decide to go all on what I'm sure is scary, but unlikely to be effective: Expanded Launchers. That's 7 reroll-able dice out the front of a ship that is happy to double arc. Sure, let's try it. Because Leading Shots gives me rerolls, but I'm mostly a threat at medium to close range, I don't need Ordnance Experts or Caitken and Shollen, nor am I interested in Gunnery Team.
So I start taking a look at boarding teams. I think Boarding Troopers on Profundity will be effective, given the weight of the dice I'm chucking at my opponents. I then make the decision to put Shriv on Garel's Honor so I can strip an important upgrade off of whatever big target I choose. It's a bit of a nebulous plan at present, and it might look a bit disjointed, but I'm kind of approaching this with the notion that each disparate element of the fleet will pull its own weight. I'm not putting myself in the same league at shmitty or anything (creator of the Garm Dumpster Fire), but I'm sort of trying to adopt his idea about disparate and formidable elements each pulling their own weight and working in concert with one another.
I need some sort of squadron presence, but it's really only preventative. I decide to go with Wedge and 3 generic X-Wings. I like fielding generic squadrons whenever I can try them first, so this feels like an opportunity, since I can push the X-Wings with relative ease between Profundity and my flotilla. So that's the fleet. Why the name? Normally, I don't bother addressing the names of my fleets because they're silly and rather for my own amusement. I try harder with fleet names when I know they're going to a tournament, but otherwise, it's really just for me.
As it turns out, the scientific name for seahorse is Hippocampus. Each species of seahorse is named Hippocampus, followed by another designation. Oftentimes, the designation is based on the name of the person who discovered said seahorse. Also, did you know that the male seahorse is equipped with a pouch on the ventral side of the tail? Thus, the male seahorse carries the eggs until the baby seahorses are born and deposited into the ocean. All of that to say that the Hippocampus in this fleet is Profundity, and since Kyrsta Agate is the commander onboard, Hippocampus agatus is the direction I went in. And now you know.
The objectives were fairly easy choices to start. Advanced Gunnery will allow my Profundity to absolutely hammer an opponent. It's unlikely to ever be chosen, but that's okay: part of choosing objectives is to offer a suite of bad choices to our opponent. Next up is Jamming Barrier. I'm the first one to say I need more practice with this objective to ensure I can leverage it properly and avoid having it backfire on me. Finally, Dangerous Territory. I've got enough ships to at least break even on Objective tokens. But there's also the possibility of being fast enough to steal a token from my opponent. Plus, I don't have to worry about landing on obstacles. That's all upside for me.
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