Return of the Jedi Fleet

 Return of the Jedi Fleet

This post is the third in a series of posts featuring Star Wars Armada fleets inspired by the films. In my mind, that's very different from fleets that are based on those films. I make the distinction because there are plenty of ships, squadrons, and upgrades that are not featured in the films, but they have a place in these fleets. This exercise is more about considering how I (and others, like my friend Josh who pitched in his own fleet idea for The Empire Strikes Back here!) connect with each film and what parts of those films resonate with me.

To that end, I had quite a lot of difficulty building this particular fleet! I'm not sure if that's because as I've gotten older, Return of the Jedi has sort of fallen out of my favorite SW films or because my love of it when I was younger was based on more sort of superficial stuff, such as Luke having a green lightsaber (which I always preferred over the blue just because of my color preferences) or the fact that the good guys win or the lightsaber duel between Luke and Vader is so cool (the way it's sometimes shot in the dark so we get that amazing contrast of the red and green blades clashing in the dark). I'm not sure! I just know that I tried to build out several ideas inspired by this film and I ended up deleting each of them. Several included the Super Star Destroyer, but even those sort of devolved into my just trying to build a halfway-decent SSD fleet that featured a bunch of TIEs. But after deleting the last iteration of an RotJ fleet, I sort of sat with why I was struggling so hard and really tried to consider what stands out to me about the film. The first thing that sort of jumped out at me at that moment was how much I always enjoyed the following exchange between Luke and Palpatine...

Luke: Your overconfidence is your weakness.

Emperor Palpatine: Your faith in your friends is yours!

That thought brought me back to the Imperials and their overconfidence in setting this trap for the Rebels, and how that overconfidence is what puts the Rebels in a position to destroy the Death Star (again) and deal a devastating blow to the Empire. That thought hit a little too close to home for me, as I've built quite a few fleets that telegraph my overconfidence in just how much damage my chosen ships can do. Rather than building in redundancies, I sometimes just sort of trust what I've got to "take care of business." And when I trust my red or black dice to do sufficient damage without much in the redundancy department...well, if you play Armada, you know how that game goes. Live by the sword, die by the sword. To that end, below is my overconfident Imperials of RotJ fleet!

RotJ Fleet (89/399/400)

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Imperial I-class Star Destroyer (110 + 40: 150)

· Admiral Sloane (24)

· Flight Commander (3)

· Boarding Troopers (3)

· Expanded Hangar Bay (5)

· Avenger (5)

Interdictor Suppression Refit (90 + 16: 106)

· Minister Tua (2)

· Disposable Capacitors (3)

· G7-X Grav Well Projector (2)

· Grav Shift Reroute (2)

· Interdictor (3)

· Reactive Gunnery (4)

Raider I-class Corvette (44 + 10: 54)

· Ordnance Experts (4)

· External Racks (4)

· Corvus (2)

Howlrunner (16)

Valen Rudor (13)

4 x Tie Interceptor Squadron (4 x 11)

2 x Tie Fighter Squadron (2 x 8)

The first thing you'll notice is that there's no way this fleet can consistently take down an opponent. Outside of the TIEs and their Swarm keyword, there are no rerolls in this build. There's simply no way that ends well for me on a regular basis. I know this. But I'm leaning into the overconfidence of the Empire. Now, I'll be the first to acknowledge that the Empire is also predicated on overwhelming force and I don't have that with regards to ships. But I do have those numbers when it comes to squadrons! The other advantage the Empire has always boasted has been superior technology. Any cool tech the Rebels get, they're usually stealing or sneaking under the Empire's nose. So I also chose to take an Interdictor because it's got Experimental Upgrades, which is something that no other faction features in its arsenal.

I knew I'd be putting in a bunch of disposable squadrons and using Experimental Upgrades, so I started with a Suppression Interdictor. The fleet is wonky enough without choosing a Combat Interdictor. I fill both Experiemental Upgrade slots with upgrades that can help me set a trap for my opponent: moving obstacles and doing more than usual to dictate the battleground location.

Hey, you're the one who decided to keep reading after I posted that ridiculous fleet!

I'm not sure what else I want the Interdictor to do at this point, but Disposable Capacitors are so cheap and so useful that I don't want to run this ship without them. So I tack them on and then pick out my squads. When I was growing up, I had a Return of the Jedi puzzle and it featured that moment that the Falcon flies through a cloud of TIE Fighters and Interceptors. You know the moment I mean...

It also featured some shiny bits, including the green lasers of the TIEs; it was a cool puzzle!

So that particular moment is forever sort of frozen in my mind. So I went with 4 generic TIE Interceptors and a couple of generic TIE Fighters. But I like flying aces and I thought Howlrunner and Valen could serve me well here. Valen, of course, takes advantage of moving within a mob of friendly squadrons, and Howl makes a group of TIEs feel like aforementioned mob. That's 8 squadrons, but no bombers. I decide that it's Sloane who will lead this fleet, thus negating any need for TIE Bombers. After all, I'll absolutely just wipe out my opponents' defense tokens, so why do I need bombers? This'll be fine!

I do, however, need a source of firepower to back up those TIEs and Sloane wiping out defense tokens. How about an ISD? I bounced between the different chassis, but settled on an ISD-I so I could push squadrons with it while also engaging at medium to close range, since I don't have Boosted Comms and don't want my TIEs to outkick my coverage. Since I'm flying Sloane, Avenger felt like the right Title upgrade here. Oh hey! Remember earlier when I said this fleet didn't feature any redundancies and that would bite me? Turns out I lied! I've got Boarding Troopers on my ISD so that I could BTAvenger regardless of how my Sloane-powered TIEs rolled! Honestly, I also just thought this might let me effectively spread out the ISDs fire and be more particular in taking attacks of opportunity with my TIEs instead of having to get them to a specific target. It's probably a weird sort of thing to fixate on, but it's what my brain did while I was building this fleet. I've got Flight Commander on here just in case I want to push my squadrons after my ISD moves. I can't imagine I want to do that terribly often, but there are two instances that quickly come to mind: 1) if I do manage to outkick my coverage for a particularly juicy target, or 2) my squadrons are in danger of being locked down by enemy squadrons. If this latter is the case, I can throw my TIEs out in front of my ISD-I and then run over them with the ISD. After they all scatter, there may not be enough room for my opponent to position everyone in such a way that they all continue to be locked down. I thought it was worth a try. I also put Expanded Hangar Bay on there because this is the only ship that will regularly be pushing squadrons and I'd like to be able to push more whenever possible. Particularly for my alpha strike.

Since I know I'll be lacking in ship-to-ship fire (and my squadron-to-ship fire isn't really a threat to the ships without ship-to-ship fire!), I decide to make the Interdictor in a bit of a Salvo boat. I add Minister Tua so that I can equip Reactive Gunnery. And because 2 Salvos per turn are better than 1, I also add the Interdictor title. I've got some points leftover, so I decide to add a Raider to my merry band in the hopes that it can help dictate the battlefield (via the Corvus title) and bat clean-up if something gets past my BTAvenger. I keep it cheap with External Racks and Ordnance Experts. And that's that! Welcome to my overconfident, technologically superior Return of the Jedi fleet!