Plo Koon Fleet - Drop It Like It's Hot Landing

 Plo Koon Fleet - Drop It Like It's Hot Landing

That's Plo Koon wisely telling you, "STOP! Don't try this foolishness!" And he's right, too...

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.

Drop It Like It's Hot Landing (114/397/400)

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Venator I-class Star Destroyer (90 + 39: 129)

· Plo Koon (26)

· Hot Landing (3)

· Boosted Comms (4)

· Resolute (6)

Pelta-class Transport Frigate (45 + 13: 58)

· Bomber Command Center (8)

· TB-73 (5)

Charger c70 (45 + 7: 52)

· Turbolaser Reroute Circuits (7)

Armed Cruiser (37 + 7: 44)

· External Racks (4)

· Swift Return (3)

Ahsoka Tano (23)

3 x Delta-7 Aethersprite Squadron (3 x 17)

4 x BTL-B Y-wing Squadron (4 x 10)

Ion Storm

Contested Outpost

Intel Sweep

Yeah, I know: this is dumb. At present, "dumb" are the only ideas I've got left. I haven't had a lot of opportunity to play Armada in the past month and a half or so other than a couple of games I've squeezed in online. Can't remember the last time I got to play in person. So a lot of my fleet building is sort of happening in a bubble because I'm not playing and coming up with new ideas; I'm thinking of the fleets I'd really like to be getting to the table so I can implement some of the things I learn and am taught in future builds. But we work with what we've got. Plenty of gaming lately, but scant Armada. So it goes.

Hot Landing is a fun idea in theory, but an expensive and fairly ineffective one in practice. I like Raid tokens, but what other faction hands out a single Raid token to a single ship in exchange for 17 points? Yeah...

Anyway, I still decided to try and incorporate the card into a fleet just to see if I could build one that I might actually want to try. The list above is what I came up with. I started with a Venator-I because short of equipping Flag Bridge to my flagship (which I could obviously do, given that Hot Landing doesn't require any tokens), the Ven-I is the only Republic ship with a fleet command upgrade slot. I thought I'd just keep it simple. I put Plo Koon on there, but thought I'd try and make a token attempt at keeping him safe. So I equipped Boosted Comms so that the Venator didn't need to be in the midst of everything just to push squadrons. I also put Resolute on there so I could command 4 squadrons per activation.

I've got Plo Koon and Hot Landing, so I'm using squadrons. Specifically, I'll be counting on bombers to do some damage. So I include a Pelta with Bomber Command Center. I consider the Medical Frigate, but end up rolling with the Transport Frigate to save a couple of points. I also put TB-73 on there because I know BCC makes this Pelta a juicy and necessary target; I'm hopeful that the extra Evade token will help it stick around that much longer.

I don't really want to count on my bombers and Venator to do all the damage. So I add in two Consulars. I can't afford two Chargers with Turbolaser Reroute Circuits, so I add one Charger with TRC, and add one Consular Armed Cruiser with External Racks. I figure the Armed Cruiser will need a little more help in delivering its ordnance, so I equip it with the Swift Return title. Swift Return, in my mind, really helps the Consular shine. If it makes it that much more likely that I'll get my black dice on target, the 3 points is worth the investment.

My squadron contingent is really simple: 4 Deltas and 4 Y-Wings. I make one of those Deltas Ahsoka just so I have a little more anti-squadron tech, given that Deltas are pretty frail and I plan on flying them close to enemy ships so that when they die, they can trigger Hot Landing. I didn't agonize over this nearly as much as I normally do when it comes to choosing squadrons for my Republic fleets. That's probably because my squadron selection was basically baked into the idea I was building: I need Jedi for Hot Landing to work, which means Anakin as a Y-Wing and Deltas. The aces are too expensive when fielding all of them, so I knew at least several (if not all) of them would have to be generics. And because price point was a consideration, I knew my bombers had to be Y-Wings and not ARCs.

I'm not expecting much to come of this. But if nothing else, I thought it could be fun to fly once or twice. I expect that I'll fly it that many times before seeing that I don't really like much at all about the fleet and dismantle it. But hey, it's worth a shot!

I've got Ion Storm in here as my Assault Objective because it allows me to place all of the obstacles (which is really nice, given that I'm fielding a ship with the Swift Return title, as well as squadrons that will likely be happy for obstacle cover). I've also got Contested Outpost because I'm hopeful my ability to dictate the battleground will also let me do a better job of leveraging my squadrons. Finally, my Venator is not in a rush to go anywhere, so I chose Intel Sweep so I can collect tokens as I go. This is probably my weakest objective choice, but I'm hoping I either get 75 points out of it or my opponent makes some rash, inadvisable decisions to overextend in an attempt to deprive me of those points, leading to their destruction. A man can dream, right?