Admiral Tarkin Fleet - Dr. Terror's House of Horrors

 Admiral Tarkin Fleet - Dr. Terror's House of Horrors

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.

Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (53/397/400)

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Venator I-class Star Destroyer (90 + 66: 156)

· Admiral Tarkin (30)

· Clone Captain Silver (4)

· Clone Gunners (4)

· Take Evasive Action! (6)

· SPHA-T (7)

· Assault Concussion Missiles (5)

· Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)

· Tranquility (3)

Acclamator I-class (66 + 30: 96)

· Intel Officer (7)

· Clone Gunners (4)

· Flak Guns (3)

· Assault Concussion Missiles (5)

· Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)

· Implacable (4)

Acclamator I-class (66 + 26: 92)

· Intel Officer (7)

· Clone Gunners (4)

· Flak Guns (3)

· Assault Concussion Missiles (5)

· Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)

Axe (17)

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

Advanced Gunnery

Capture the VIP

Solar Corona

This fleet is about firing ALL THE GUNS! And Tarkin can help us do that! I haven't built an Admiral Tarkin fleet up to this point because I was never sure how I'd want to do it. I mean, I've had some ideas, but I'm so used to flying Grand Moff Tarkin that I had trouble really coming up with a concept I liked. The thing is that the two Tarkins are so very similar, and yet so different. Seriously, I adore the design of his Republic incarnation because there's great continuity between him and his Imperial predecessor (predecessor in game terms, anyway, since Imperials came first). There's a flexibility in the younger Tarkin because he can hand his own flagship a dial instead of a token, which is incredibly useful, but he can still hand out tokens to the entire fleet. Of course, the trade-off is that these commands must be chosen upon deployment. Whereas Tarkin the Elder can only hand out tokens, but the decision can be made from round to round. Just really great design, in my opinion.

That said, I'm used to the flexibility offered by choosing my token from round to round, so I wasn't sure how I wanted to build a Republic fleet around Tarkin the Younger. I also think he'll be one of the most difficult commanders to truly master because there's an element of him that is basically "easy mode" and good for new players. But for him to really shine, a player has to get absolutely maximum use of his abilities, which means a lot of forethought is necessary. So I messed with a lot of different squadron-centric fleets because he's the only way to hand out squadron tokens across the entire fleet for the Republic faction.

Ultimately, though, I moved away from those builds. Not because I don't think they'll work, but because I needed to get out of the rut I was in, effectively building variations of the same fleet over and over again.

I said "variation," not "variant!" But also, yeah, sort of. Go watch Loki; I think it's well done.

The aggressive builds I've been using lately have been fun and decently effective, so I decided to lean into that. I've put together some gunboats that can benefit from Tarkin handing out tokens. There are a couple of different ways to leverage token usage. I decide to focus on Concentrate Fire and Navigate in this build, and so I take Clone Gunners on all 3 ships (I chose the chassis I did for each one because they were cheaper, but also featured more black dice). I won't always need them, but when I do, I'll be thankful I have them. The tokens will also be useful for refreshing SPHA-T, as well as the standard use of rerolling a die. I'm not fool enough to think that's enough dice control, so I add Linked Turbolaser Towers to each of my three ships. It'll help with red dice as well as with squadrons, since my own squadron contingent is minimal.

I would rather avoid Navigating if I can, but these ships can be a bit unwieldy without some help. So I field Take Evasive Action! with my Venator (as Tarkin tokens should help with speed changes) and each of these ships benefits from an extra tick on the last joint of the movement tool at any speed. But even so, the asset about which I'm most concerned is my Venator. So I put Clone Captain Silver on there because I think the speed changes he engenders are incredibly useful. Yes, it's a thing Tarkin can do with the aid of a Navigate dial, but I'm trying not to rely too heavily on Navigate dials with this particular fleet, despite the fact that these ships love them, and really do live or die by where they land.

Since I'm setting myself up for automatic Accuracy generation, I decide it's worth trying for a black crit effect and choose Assault Concussion Missiles (ACMs). I've got SPHA-T on my Venator so that I can try and set the edge, making it tougher for ships to get around my flank, and I put Flak Guns on my Acclamators to increase the threat my Salvo tokens pose. I thought about a couple of different choices for the Officer upgrade slot on each Acclamator, but honestly, I have so few attacks that they really need to count, and so I decided to go with Intel Officer on both of them. Implacable is on one of the Acclamators as a "break glass in case of emergency." I doubt it'll save one of my other ships, but it might keep one or both alive long enough to take another swing at my opponent.

Finally, I had originally chosen to fly two V-19s as well as the two V-19 aces. But points became an issue, so I kept "Axe" and replaced "Kickback" with another generic V-19.

Two of my three objectives were easy enough to select: Advanced Gunnery so my Venator can really haul off on someone, and Solar Corona because I don't have ECMs equipped to any of my ships and Clone Wars ships really struggle without any redundant defense tokens. The tough choice for me was between the various Defense Objectives. I finally decided on Capture the VIP. I don't know that it's the best choice, but it gives me some flexibility and it's a 50 point swing if I can hold onto the token. Plus, I expect I'll be flying in some sort of formation in each match, so even if the token-holder falls in battle, another ship should be close enough to snatch it up. This is the objective I'm most likely to revisit and replace, but I figure it's worth a shot.