Count Dooku Fleet - Bear Market

 Count Dooku Fleet - Bear Market

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.

Bear Market (44/400/400)

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Providence-class Carrier (105 + 51: 156)

· Count Dooku (30)

· Rune Haako (4)

· Intensify Firepower! (6)

· Advanced Projectors (6)

· Ion Cannon Batteries (5)

Recusant-class Light Destroyer (85 + 6: 91)

· Tikkes (2)

· Nova Defiant (4)

Transport (47 + 12: 59)

· Slicer Tools (7)

· Foreman's Labor (5)

Transport (47 + 3: 50)

· Munitions Resupply (3)

General Grievous (22)

2 x Tri-Fighter Squadron (2 x 11)

Surprise Attack

Abandoned Mining Facility

Hyperspace Migration

I keep meaning to mess around with Raid tokens, but I just never do! And lately, the games I'm playing are a result of excitement about Adepticon, so I've been flying Grand Moff Tarkin. So I went back into the fleet builder to try and make something new. I'm still hooked on Luminara when it comes to Republic and I'm just not interested in Rebels right now, so I thought I'd revisit Separatists. The combination of these factors brought me to Dooku.

Even though I never fly Separatists, I just love the Recusant. So I was confident that I'd have at least one Recusant in this fleet. Figured I'd be pushing my luck to include two without a plan, though. As I was looking at the Recusant, it occurred to me that I'd never really looked very closely at the Nova Defiant title. I've seen the extremely nasty Patriot Fist builds, but I'm just not very interested in flying it that way. I have flown Gilded Aegis with Grievous and really enjoy the synergy of that build. But the notion of intentionally increasing my Command value to 4 is exceedingly unappealing. But I'm trying something new, so Imma try something new. I put the Nova Defiant title on there and figure since I'm doing a thing with tokens, why not do another thing with tokens? So I put Tikkes on there. With a command 4 ship, he'll only dictate two of my command dials, so that makes my life a little easier.

I'm not sure what else I want on here, exactly, so I decide I'll revisit it after I've fleshed out a few other things. I don't really want Dooku on the Recusant because it's such a glass cannon. So I equip him to a Providence. I like both chassis, but decide I'm feeling a little more warlike, so I choose the Dreadnought. I put Count Dooku on there, and since I'm rolling out with some token economy, I put Rune Haako on here as well. I've got an Ion upgrade slot I want to use, and though my inclination is to equip something expensive, I decide to try Ion Cannon Batteries. I'm hopeful it's a way to build some synergy with Raid tokens without building around Raid tokens in a way that makes them the centerpiece of my fleet. It's kind of a fine distinction.

I've referenced this notion when talking about using defensive tech in my Tarkin fleet: I can't fly my fleet as though these things will keep my ships alive. I've got 7th Fleet Star Destroyer on all three ships along with ECM on my Kuat. These things ensure my attackers will get to their targets, not survive the whole fight. But for a hot minute, that's not how I flew this fleet. So the result was that in trying to use all my tech to *save* my fleet, I still died. It just took longer. And I didn't really kill much.

I share all of this because Raid tokens can REALLY hurt a player's plans. But Raid tokens don't kill anything. And unless I collect objective tokens and don't lose anything, then my little Raid strategy doesn't amount to much. Anyway, that's the very long reason that no one requested as to why I'm trying to build a fleet that features Raid synergy instead of a Raid centerpiece. I add in a Hardcell and then decide to go with Grievous, two Tri-fighters, and three Hyenas as my squadron contingent. But I gotta be honest: I'm really uncomfortable with what I've built. No dice fixing, no guaranteed damage, only 3 sources of ship damage and 3 VERY swingy bombers. I think I'm too experiential at this point. Especially with a premise that doesn't offer any guarantees. So I look back over the whole list and decide on some changes.

I lose the Hyenas with the intention of counting on ship damage. So I pick up another Hardcell. I decide both of them will be Transports so that one can sport Slicer Tools and Foreman's Labor (thus leaning into the command denial motif a bit harder) and the other can be a true support vessel, using Parts Resupply to help out everyone else. I'd rather have Munitions Resupply on there for additional dice control, but I want to try it this way first.

I end up switching out my Dreadnought for a Carrier. With a Carrier, I can now boast Intensify Firepower! and a defensive retrofit upgrade. My impulse is to take ECM since I've got the token generation for it. But points are an issue. I settle for Advanced Projectors. If that choice ends up being the crux of my losing with this fleet, I'll be pretty damn surprised. And then I'll find something to cut so I can shoehorn it in. And that's a full 400 points!

I'm honestly not sure how I plan to fly this fleet. I built it based on anticipated upgrade synergies, but wasn't envisioning how it'll fly on the table when I did it. I guess it needs to be more of a gun line than anything because there's nothing particularly special about any one piece of the fleet? It's a lot of dice to eat at once, but only if they're all on the same target at the same time.

As to my objective choices, I don't necessarily feel good about any of these. But since, again, I haven't visualized how I'll fly this fleet, all I can really do is consider projected card symmetry. I've got Dooku, so I've got Surprise Attack. MOAR RAID. Tokens (and specifically Engineering tokens) come extraordinarily easily to me and I've got 4 ships, so I pick Abandoned Mining Facility. Finally, I agonize over my Navigational Objective, and end up settling on Hyperspace Migration. I'm sure there are a bunch of ways this can backfire on me. But in my mind, it's worth trying. I get to dictate the battleground, and the Recusant boasts such a monster front arc that having it fly parallel to the action means I have a solid shot at double arcing targets. The Providence is obviously happy to shoot from the side arc. That just leaves the Hardcells. They'll need to abandon the Space Whale Spectacular Show at some point to get guns on the enemy, but they might scrape up some points for me before then.