Luminara Unduli Fleet - Uninspired

 Luminara Unduli Fleet - Uninspired

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.

Uninspired (60/389/400)

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Venator II-class Star Destroyer (100 + 52: 152)

· Luminara Unduli (25)

· Clone Captain Zak (5)

· Local Fire Control (4)

· Reserve Hangar Deck (3)

· Thermal Shields (5)

· Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)

· Tranquility (3)

Charger c70 (45 + 14: 59)

· Clone Navigation Officer (4)

· Reserve Hangar Deck (3)

· Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)

Charger c70 (45 + 14: 59)

· Clone Navigation Officer (4)

· Reserve Hangar Deck (3)

· Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)

Charger c70 (45 + 14: 59)

· Clone Navigation Officer (4)

· Reserve Hangar Deck (3)

· Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)

Plo Koon (24)

3 x V-19 Torrent Squadron (3 x 12)

Ion Storm

Planetary Ion Cannon

Infested Fields

I think the fleet name says it all: I don't think there's anything particularly inspired about my choices in building this fleet. I think Luminara will end up sort of working at three levels as a commander.

1. As a lure for fools in which the entirety of the fleet is built around her ability so ships and aces live longer, but wherein there isn't enough firepower to win a match. Prevent defense doesn't win football games, y'all.
2. One or two fairly standard builds that are effective, if a bit predictable. In that, I mean the opponent knows how it will be used against them, but there's not much they can do beyond working twice as hard to burn through defense tokens and kill ships.
3. There's a level at which Luminara combines the predictable with the unexpected to forge some kind of fleet that turns into a real terror. By that, I mean I think there's a build wherein an opponent is so worried about the unexpected tricks or gimmicks that they almost forget about the expected uses of her ability. I don't know what that level is, but I'm convinced it's out there.

This build I'm sharing falls pretty firmly into the second Luminara archetype. There's nothing particularly clever or interesting about it, but my ships and squadrons should stick around longer than they have any right to.

The squadrons are pretty straightforward: Plo Koon makes the V-19s more dangerous to attack, and the V-19s combine with Luminara's ability to keep Plo Koon alive. Hopefully, it's a light fighter screen that sort of behaves like a medium fighter screen. The Reserve Hangar Deck (RHD) equipped to four different ships contribute to that plan. The Chargers are fairly uninteresting: RHD is for the V-19s, LTT is to lend a helping hand to my red dice, and CNO is there for emergency help (someone unexpectedly needs to move just one squadron, or I really need dice to behave, so an extra reroll might get me there. I think this build works, I just don't think there's anything particularly clever about it.

The Venator feels to me like it's basically in the same boat. It has Tranquility because I think it's tough to justify flying a Venator with Luminara without using Tranquility because it works so well with her ability. Same with Thermal Shields and Local Fire Control. I'm always going to have at least one defense token worth using and one worth refreshing. LTTs are pretty obvious given how much difficulty Republic ships have finding ways to fix their dice, and Clone Captain Zak makes a Venator double arc a little more threatening, since I'm not inclined to put Gunnery Team on here.

Ion Storm means I get to place all the obstacles, and I'm hoping my dice fixing will allow me to collect some victory tokens. I thought about Asteroid Tactics for my Defense Objective, but decided that was too much turtling and wouldn't help me win. Planetary Ion Cannon cannot be leveraged against me, and it's more damage I'm throwing at my enemy. Infested Fields is another safe choice; I've got the squadrons to easily collect the tokens for at least a fifteen victory point lead, and I can throw obstacles in the way of my enemy. Plus, though I'm counting on my small fighter group to behave like a medium one, so some well-placed Exogorths should help against medium and heavy fighter groups.