Luminara Unduli Fleet - Hell Kite
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.
Hell Kite (75/398/400)
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Venator II-class Star Destroyer (100 + 28: 128)
· Clone Captain Zak (5)
· Local Fire Control (4)
· Flak Guns (3)
· Thermal Shields (5)
· Swivel-Mount Batteries (8)
· Tranquility (3)
Charger c70 (45 + 38: 83)
· Luminara Unduli (25)
· Auxiliary Shields Team (3)
· Turbolaser Reroute Circuits (7)
· Swift Return (3)
Charger c70 (45 + 11: 56)
· Clone Navigation Officer (4)
· Turbolaser Reroute Circuits (7)
Charger c70 (45 + 11: 56)
· Clone Navigation Officer (4)
· Turbolaser Reroute Circuits (7)
Axe (17)
Kickback (16)
V-19 Torrent Squadron (12)
3 x BTL-B Y-wing Squadron (3 x 10)
Ion Storm
Fire Lanes
Intel Sweep
I built this fleet a little bit ago and finally had an opportunity to get it to the table against my friend Chris at our Game Nite open play! I had concerns about the idea, but thought it was worth trying to fly a Venator that could kite rather than diving into the fray. I've mostly been flying Grand Moff Tarkin lately, but Chris mentioned he had something new he wanted to try. He then went on to say "unless you'd like to practice with your tournament list, in which case, I'll bring the fire!"
Now. If you don't know Chris, you need to know he's an incredibly resourceful and clever player. I believe I've written more than once that no matter what fleet Chris brings to the table, I know it's a threat to me as long as he's flying it. I may or may not see the threat, but I know it's looming there. So tournament practice against him is pretty invaluable to me. But Adepticon is still a couple of months off, I've flown Tarkin a bunch lately, and Chris mentioned that he had something new he wanted to fly, and the implication was he wouldn't fly it if I was bringing Tarkin because he'd rather fly something he is certain will challenge me and my fleet. I wanted him to try something new, so I said I'd do the same and Tarkin would get the night off.
The idea behind my fleet was to build a Venator that could kite around the battle instead of flying into the fire. Given that was my plan, I knew I wanted other kiting ships as well. So I landed on 3 Chargers with Turbolaser Reroute Circuits (TRC) to accompany the Venator. If my big ship was gonna do damage out of the side arcs from distance, I needed to be flying a Venator-II. I also knew I wanted Swivel-Mounts and Clone Captain Zak. Without a Con Fire command, I'd be chucking 3-4 dice out of my side arc at long range, and 2-3 out of my front. But at medium range, I would be throwing 5-6 out of my side arc and 3-4 out of my front arc. This goes against the way I've flown for a number of years (as well as flying in the face of conventional wisdom) in that it tries to shore up a weakness rather than turning a strength into an obscenity. But after flying the Venator a bunch and just not loving how it does in direct combat (at least, in the way that I want to build it out), I wanted to try this and see if it's feasible.
I put Local Fire Control on there so that I could nearly always Salvo, and since I was going that route, I also equipped Flak Guns in order to extend my Salvo's range. I slapped Tranquility on there because in my opinion, it's easily the best Venator title for your money, and that's doubly true when using Luminara as a commander. I have the defensive retrofit slot, so I thought, "What the hell?" and slotted Thermal Shields in there. I don't like the upgrade as much as some others do, but I thought it could be serviceable, especially if I was going to keep my distance.
Two of the three Chargers are easy: TRCs (normally more risky with only one Evade token, but Luminara helps with that) and Clone Navigation Officers (CNO) because the Chargers already want to Con Fire and because Tranquility will need help refreshing Swivel-Mounts as well as Zak. The Charger carrying Lumi gets a slightly different load out, though. it's carrying my commander, so even though it's got some teeth, I make some defensive choices too; Swift Return can help her beat a hasty retreat as needed, and Auxiliary Shields Team affords her just a little more protection.
I'm flying Republic, and I just don't do that without squadrons. So I've got 3 V-19s and 3 Y-Wings. I love Axe with Luminara because he can afford some pretty bonkers protection. Kickback is in there because he's another ace to go with Luminara and I think he's good for smaller fighter screens that may need to cover more ground, such as mine. Then I round it out with some generics. Ultimately, the Y-Wings are a bit of a security blanket because my Venator doesn't have any dice fixing. Zero, zip, zilch, nata. It is just me asking for trouble if I rely too heavily on it to deliver more than its fair share of punches. So I figure between the Chargers, the Venators, and the Y-Wings, I've got 7 sources of damage to enemy ships and that is sufficient.
My objectives are based in the bunches of red dice I'm throwing and the mobility that my Chargers afford me. As always, this is the hardest part of building my fleet and I suspect that if I like the fleet, the objective choices will change as I get more experience in flying it.
I found Chris at Game Nite setting up a double Providence list with a Munificent as his flagship.
He is flying squadronless, so while my V-19s can only help so much in this match, my Y-Wings should prove pretty invaluable. And with Axe in tow, flak will take awhile to kill the Y-Wings, even with good rolls. Both of our fleets punch in at 398 points, but I won the roll-off. I didn't really feel like eating an alpha strike, but honestly, I thought if I flew my game, I'd be ok. I knew I had him out-deployed and I knew that taking second player would deprive him of a pass token. I took second player, certain that I'd simply deploy just about everything on the outside of his formation, kill one of his Providence dreadnaughts, and run like hell. He chose Fire Lanes, reasoning that he likes to fly fast anyway, so it was an objective he could fairly easily contest. As soon as he chose the objective, I knew I'd be setting up two objective tokens on one side of the board and the third on the opposite side (lengthwise, that is; all 3 were as close to my deployment zone as possible).
He wasn't going to split up his fleet to contest all the tokens, so I decided early that Luminara would line up wide to keep scoring the far token and stay safe while I scored the other two once or twice, killed what I could, and flew wide of Chris' guns. But if you're looking at the location and angle of my deployed ships, you might already see the problem with that idea...
...Basically, I got tabled, y'all, and killed nothing. Nuh. Thing.
Now, admittedly, I also made a choice I wouldn't have made had this been more than a fun game: Luminara flew into the fray in a bitter and vindictive attempt to exact vengeance on that Providence Dreadnaught deployed closest to center, because that ship single-handedly wrecked my day. In a tourney setting where the points matter, I wouldn't have done that. Lumi would've lingered next to the token she was scoring at far right and my squadrons would've fled. My V-19s would have, at least. My Y-Wings probably would've stuck around to try and get the kill. But anyway, why did it go wrong?
Ultimately, I deployed too close to the Fire Lanes tokens and thus too close to the closest Providence. And much like Icarus, I flew too close to the sun and I paid for it. The tokens scored pretty much the way I anticipated, with some obstructing obstacles ensuring I scored the points I expected to score. However, my Venator didn't take a sharp enough angle and wandered too close to the Providence which was, after all, going to be going before me once it was within range. His Providence rained down hellfire on me, Thermal Shields was pretty ineffective (especially because his APTs from the previous turn, courtesy of TF, had set me up with Faulty Countermeasures, meaning I could not use exhausted defense tokens. I could only use Thermals for the first attack and not the second. At which point, even with Tranquility, I promptly died. This was on turn 3. So the game was decided there. I wanted to keep playing to see if I could get the Providence and possibly escape with two of my three Chargers.
Owing to the fact that my Venator never activated in turn 3, I didn't get to use my squadron dial. Luckily, most of my squadrons were within range of the Dreadnaught I was trying to kill. However, because I didn't activate them during the ship phase so they could move and shoot, they could only do one or the other. They were not optimally positioned, and so they'd need to make their shots count. To their credit, over a couple of turns, the Y-Wings only posted a single blank! However, they also never landed a hit/crit, so Chris could use his defense tokens in a pretty leisurely fashion, and really focus on whittling down the fire from my Chargers. A well-timed Engineering dial and some good dice meant he was able to absolutely annihilate me. So what did we learn?
Well, a couple of things: the first is that I think-
No! Stop! Quiet, Egon!
Seriously, I think my plan could've worked if I had flown out wider. It would've given my Chargers more room to maneuver (as well as activate before my Venator) and toss their red dice before running for the hills, as well as maintained a gap between Tranquility and Chris' nasty little fleet. But there was also some dead weight that I knew I could cut. My double Salvo didn't really work because I regularly had defense tokens I wanted to refresh, but I had to use my Brace in order to minimize the damage done to me. So while I like the idea and I think it could work much better against smaller ships, it just didn't do a darn thing for me in this match. If I don't Salvo, Flak Guns also basically doesn't do anything for me. Finally, I died so quickly that I didn't get to use Zak or Swivel-Mounts. Womp womp.
After debriefing with Chris, I came up with the following changes to my list.
Hell Kite v. 2.0 (75/399/400)
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Venator II-class Star Destroyer (100 + 32: 132)
· Clone Captain Zak (5)
· Clone Gunners (4)
· SPHA-T (7)
· Electronic Countermeasures (7)
· XI7 Turbolasers (6)
· Tranquility (3)
Charger c70 (45 + 35: 80)
· Luminara Unduli (25)
· Turbolaser Reroute Circuits (7)
· Swift Return (3)
Charger c70 (45 + 11: 56)
· Clone Navigation Officer (4)
· Turbolaser Reroute Circuits (7)
Charger c70 (45 + 11: 56)
· Clone Navigation Officer (4)
· Turbolaser Reroute Circuits (7)
Axe (17)
Kickback (16)
V-19 Torrent Squadron (12)
3 x BTL-B Y-wing Squadron (3 x 10)
Ion Storm
Fire Lanes
Intel Sweep
I'm still likely to make changes to my objectives, but I just haven't yet. I need to experiment more so I can see exactly why I don't think some of them will work. I can theorize, but that's all it would be. Plus, Fire Lanes sort of did what I wanted it to do against this opponent: it forces some choices regarding deployment and scoring. Chris knew he planned on locking down those objective tokens. But he'd only be netting 15 points a round instead of 30 because of the far token that Lumi was babysitting. Which means he can't just leave the Dreadnaught out there to dry. If I fly wider, I think I can kill the Providence that had deployed at center and then forced him to either come out and hunt me or settle for the token scoring. I could absolutely be wrong about all of that. Especially because Chris is a very skilled player. But it's something I'm willing to try again.
That said, as Chris pointed out, if I'm going to be kiting with my Venator without dice correction, why not just commit already? So we kept Zak, and added SPHA-T. Then I thought Clone Gunners might prove a decent choice because my Chargers should be running with some Con Fire tokens anyway, and I replaced Thermal Shields with ECM simply because they weren't pulling their weight. There are too many ways to add dice to a dice pool, thus rendering Thermal Shields WAY less effective. And there you have it! The new incarnation of my Hell Kite fleet! I'm going to be trying it pretty soon, so wish me luck!
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