General Dodonna Fleet - All the Nebz!

 General Dodonna Fleet - All the Nebz!

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.

All the Nebz! (49/400/400)

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MC80 Assault Cruiser (114 + 45: 159)

· General Dodonna (20)

· Hondo Ohnaka (2)

· Reactive Gunnery (4)

· Leading Shots (6)

· Engine Techs (8)

· Quad Battery Turrets (5)

Nebulon-B Support Refit (51 + 18: 69)

· Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)

· Vanguard (4)

· Gunnery Team (7)

Nebulon-B Support Refit (51 + 14: 65)

· Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)

· Salvation (7)

Nebulon-B Support Refit (51 + 7: 58)

· Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)

Tycho Celchu (16)

3 x A-wing Squadron (3 x 11)

Ion Storm

Contested Outpost

Intel Sweep

At this point, all of my Armada play is centered on preparing for Adepticon, so I haven't tried anything new in a minute (not even this fleet idea which I enjoy enough to have already started painting the ships and squadrons!). It means I haven't had a ton of inspiration lately with regards to building new fleets because I'm just drilling with the same fleet. But given that I recently happened to fly against several Rebel MSU fleets in a row, all of which featured Salvation, I decided to build something that included Salvation!

I'm sure there's all sorts of reasons to NOT fly this fleet, so let me tell you why I DO want to fly this fleet! I really enjoy Nebulon-B Frigates and when they're rolling decently, they can be nasty. They melt when they're flanked without the benefit of Auxiliary Shields Team or a Redirect defense token from Vanguard, of course, but if they're lined up in a way that protects their side arcs, they can soak a decent amount of damage. Especially for a small ship.

The ship has some really great titles and I'd like to fly some of them, so I went with Salvation and Vanguard. I took the former because rolling a red die that has a 38% chance to do 2 damage is extremely appealing. I know I'm hardly the only person to think this, but it's been so long since I've flown Rebels and I so infrequently flew Nebs that I'm really excited to use it! I already knew I was likely to tack Linked Turbolaser Towers onto each Neb, but wanted to look at my other dice-fixing options anyway. There were a number of ways I could cost-save and be cute or thoughtfully address the fickle nature of red dice overall (I took an extra long look at Dual Turbolaser Turrets, especially because if things are going well, my Nebs are only taking shots from their front arc anyway; I also thought about putting a Pelta in there with Intensify Firepower!), but ultimately decided to keep it simple. Especially because (and I can't tell you exactly why I had decided this, but I had pretty early on) I planned on including three Nebulon-B Frigates and they're not cheap.

So! I've put LTT on Salvation and I'm pretty happy with that as is. I don't need to put anything else on there for Salvation to be a legitimate threat. I put Vanguard on my second Nebulon-B Frigate and include LTT on there as well. Honestly, it's probably more than I want to spend on this ship, but nonetheless, Vanguard gives me the Weapons Team upgrade slot, so I equip Gunnery Team on there as well. I figure I'm certain to get use out of it, so let's see what happens. I've not played with Vanguard yet despite wanting to for awhile, but I've really just flown Rebels so infrequently since before Rebellion in the Rim dropped that I just never got to it. For my final Nebulon-B, Yavaris holds no interest for me simply because any fighter component of this fleet will be token and Redemption is already the toughest title to justify of the 4 Neb titles. It's the most expensive, it's the only Neb title that isn't offensively-minded (it's not even defensively-minded, as it doesn't prevent damage, right? It only heals it after it has happened.) and I'm not building around it. So I just put LTT on that third and final Neb and call it good.

I think this could work as the foundation of a fleet. This isn't where I think I'm kind of just making fun instead of smart choices. It's my next choice that takes me into the aforementioned territory: I include an MC80 Assault Cruiser. Why? Because the ship is fun, I enjoy it, and I envision a scenario wherein the MC80 can score objective points if I'm going second as the Nebs form a gunline and/or flanks my enemy to add an overlapping field of fire and/or herd opponents into my gunline. All of this is extremely nebulous and I anticipate that the majority of my opponents won't obligingly stroll through overlapping fields of fire. But every fleet starts somewhere and this is where my Dodonna fleet is starting.

I know Dodonna is going on the MC80 because that's where he'll be safest. I take Quad Battery Turrets and Leading Shots so I can more or less guarantee I'll have a reroll for all of my red dice. Of course, that does mean I'll need to avoid going faster than my prey when possible. To that end, I put Engine Techs on here so that I can sit on speed 1 while effectively traveling at speed 2. I'm starting to run a little thin on points, so I move onto squadrons so I can see how many points I've got left to pump into the MC80. I haven't flown Tycho in a long time, but he seems a decent choice for a fighter screen since he can't be locked down. I consider going as fully cheap as possible with several Z-95s to accompany Tycho, but I worry it both won't be able to tank for enough damage against enemy squadrons nor do enough damage to justify including them. So I pick 3 A-Wings to accompany Tycho. Hopefully, that buys me at least a full turn free of harassment from enemy bombers. I acknowledge it's a token effort toward a squadron game, but I also just chose not to overthink it for now. This fleet seems a lot more like fun than anything else and who knows when I'll actually get around to flying it anyway! So 4 A-Wings it is!

At this point, I come back to my MC80 with very little cash left on hand. I need at least one way to get a Navigate command to trigger Engine Techs beyond banking a token and revealing a Nav dial, so I put Hondo on there. Also, I've picked the Assault chassis of the MC80. I should probably get at least one defensive retrofit upgrade on there. Points dictate it'll be on the lower end. Could I shuffle some stuff around to get EWS or ECM? Absolutely. I'm not, however, inclined to do that. So I pick up Reactive Gunnery and plan on doing more damage where I can with a Salvo attack.

My objectives were decently easy: I can easily babysit Contested Outpost, so I pick it. People can absolutely come and take it from me, but they'll have to do it and they're welcome to try. Intel Sweep is probably not the right choice, but my MC80 can only go so fast anyway, so why not let the big cruiser pick those tokens up while setting up the flank? Finally, Ion Storm. My assault objective was the most difficult for me to pick, and I did consider Advanced Gunnery. But there's nothing spectacular about my MC80 and I'd rather not hand away double points if it explodes. I chose Ion Storm because I get to place all of the obstacles, I've got rerolls to fish for crits, and I'm happy to score points as well as do damage.

Again, I'm not expecting this to be competitive or even really particularly effective. There are a bunch of holes in this build that I suspect I'd start addressing the moment I finished my first match if I were to try and make this into *a thing*. But I've never flown 3 Nebs before, the fleet looks like fun, and once I've got a little more time to experiment with different stuff instead of practicing for a tournament, I'm hopeful I'll get this to the table!