Low Brainpower Ackbar List (4th/36 at WV regionals)

[pheaver 2,325]

I came in 4th at the regionals in WV, which had an astounding 36 players.  Great turnout.  I only get the chance to play a few times a year, and I don't own a lot of Armada stuff, so I'm the "Assault Frigate Ackbar guy".  I'm really happy the game still lets me play the list, since I haven't made any large Armada purchase since Wave 2.   Maybe I'll get a Profundity to lead the conga line in the future...

So the list was made so I wouldn't screw up and forget an upgrade card or other detail in my list, and because I like Strategic a lot.  I think it'd be good for kids or people learning to play / not playing too often.  I spam Nav or Eng commands with it, so I don't even have to worry about half the command dial most of the time.

AF II A (the 2 AA dice version) with Gunnery Teams x3 (one with Ackbar)

cheap flotilla x2

VCX x4

398 points.  Targeting Beacons, Fire Lanes, Sensor Net.

Quick rundown of my games:

1: Bye.

2: I went first vs a 399 point Imperial list with a lot of generic TIE fighters, and four ships (Demo, Quasar, Gozanti, Raider?).  I picked his Blockade Run, mostly because I had never played it before.  I got to set up all the AFs in a conga line with that deep deployment zone, and the red dice reached most of the board.  I didn't even bother engaging the Demo, so it had to choose between getting points by trying to kill my stuff (and getting shot at) or running the Blockade.  I went hard at the Quasar and incidental AA fire wiped out a lot of poor squadrons.  A lucky shot on a Gozanti meant I killed 3 of his ships, getting a 9-2.

3: I went first vs another Imperial list, with an ISD and max fighters, with Quasar and Gozanti to push them.  We did Most Wanted, and I played pretty conservatively because my Ackbar was the Most Wanted.  I couldn't get around his ISD to the Quasar and Gozanti, who never entered combat.  The ISD slow rolled with the fighters to stay out for a while, too, so all that was killed were my fighters and flotillas, and a bunch of his fighters.  He was really good at ranging and staying out of blue range of more than 1 AF at a time.  I got a 6-5 loss with that.

4: I went second vs a ramming CR90 list, and he chose Bacon.  I had Most Wanted in the list beforehand, but I, honestly, got bored of it and wanted to try something different.  Most Wanted would have been mediocre here, and Bacon's rerolls helped a lot to plink down CR90s as they approached me.  He triple-double-rammed one AF2, and shot/rammed the brave flotillas that gave their lives to buy me extra time.  At the end, I killed 4 of the CR90s, and only lost the one AF2 and 2 flotillas.  I got... 8 points from that?

I used an opening that I came up with in the 2 games that didn't give me a super-extra-large deployment.  I'm not sure how advanced it is, but you can set up and decide which way your toilet bowl is going to swirl on your fifth deployment, and they get into a nice conga line with the transports providing blocks to keep people at range on the inside.

(See Ackbar1.png)

Ackbar is usually the middle AF for me, and everyone is set at speed 2, except for the lead frigate at 3.  I do Eng for the token on turn one, and then usually Nav/Nav for 2 & 3.  The flotillas will bank a nav if they don't need to move Fire Lanes or Sensor Nets around on turn 1, and then spam squadrons.

If you want to toilet swirl, the lead turns as hard as possible, the middle does a 1 click each way to stay at that angle and further out, and the back turns as hard as he can.

(See Ackbar2.png)

Then, turn 2, the other two speed up to speed 3 and can fit themselves behind the lead to conga around.  One of the fun things is that the back one can, from this start, do a nav'ed 3 turn and leapfrog the middle guy, in case you really need to for some reason.  If you run it tight enough, the leapfrog is one of the few "surprise!" moves you can do with the list.  It's not exactly a subtle list.   Roll red dice and move objective tokens around and hope that wins the game.

If you don't want to toilet swirl (because, say, you are running away from some ramming CR90s right from the start), then you can form the conga along your board edge pretty easily too.

(See Ackbar3.png)

Edited January 16, 2018 by pheaver
I suck at adding pictures :)

[MandalorianMoose 1,862]

2 hours ago, pheaver said:

4: I went second vs a ramming CR90 list, and he chose Bacon.  .

 

What expansion does the Bacon objective come in? It sounds tasty and I want to run it

[Drasnighta 26,833]

Targeting Bacon!

[pheaver 2,325]

Oh no, I don't see the pictures of my deployments.  That's annoying.  I made cool pictures in Vassal and everything.  I'll make them again tomorrow and see if I can edit it in.

Mmm, bacon.

 

[Muelmuel 774]

very nice.

how do your whales fare without ECM? 

4x vcx are for securing objectives right? but how do they fare in the squadron game?

[MandalorianMoose 1,862]

58 minutes ago, Muelmuel said:

very nice.

how do your whales fare without ECM? 

4x vcx are for securing objectives right? but how do they fare in the squadron game?

At long range they don’t need it, and even at medium they can take one good punch without it

vcx are surprisingly good in the squad game (especially with Toryn), that 8 hull keeps them around forever

[JauntyChapeau 188]

Were there any situations where you wished you'd had some kind of Defensive Retrofit on your AFs?  I love my Assault Frigates, but not being able to guarantee that Brace makes me nervous.

[pheaver 2,325]

Arg, I suck at adding pictures, apparently.  I'll poke around at lunch and see if I can figure it out.

As for defense and ECM, I didn't miss it, because Sloane exists and laughs at your puny ECM as TIE fighters remove your brace.

The VCXes die in the squadron game, of course.  They can't stand to 134 squad points, but my 6 blue AA dice can whittle away the squads pretty quickly.  They exist to move objective tokens around and give the flotillas something to do.

[JauntyChapeau 188]

31 minutes ago, pheaver said:

As for defense and ECM, I didn't miss it, because Sloane exists and laughs at your puny ECM as TIE fighters remove your brace.

 

Excellent point - I was going to say I never saw any Sloan at the Independence Regional, but I just looked up the event thread and saw that the top 4 was half Sloan.  I suppose I wouldn't have seen those lists in the middle tables, where I spent most of my day.  

[Formynder4 810]

They changed it so the easiest way to add photos is to upload them to imgur and then copy the BBC code to insert them.

[Blail Blerg 7,585]

Would you change this to add any more squadrons? Do you worry about losing ships to 134 squadrons, espeically vs rebel bombers?

[pheaver 2,325]

I tried the list with more squadrons in previous iterations, and didn't really like it.  A ton of squads didn't mesh with Ackbar as well: I think I'd prefer to be Another Rieekan List instead of Ackbar, if I wanted to have more squads.  So, instead, I wanted to have the best AA I could get, and 2 blues x 3 ships worked well enough.  Going at speed three meant they would have issues with getting slower squads to swarm me.  The Gunnery Teams helped me shoot their squads and whatever ship I was focus firing on.

It's always worth shooting at the squads: if nothing else, people will see that their squad is down to 2-3 hull, and might fly away.  Sure, you don't get points, but they aren't involved in the fight, and you can kill ships easier then.

 

[Angry_Ewok 200]

I have tried the ASF MkII A's and found the ASF MkII B's to be just as good at flaking in today's world of Ace heavy lists.  Brace can't stop your 1 damage hits but if you get lucky and roll a 2 hit shot from the MkII A's they will brace down to 1.  I think swapping to MkII B's and adding Torryn Farr takes you to the same 75% chance of getting 1 hit per flak, and save you points to add stuff like ECM or the new Early Warning Override.  I think EWO may have some real legs in an Ackbar list, though I to shrivel up a bit when I even think about not having ECM on an Assault Frigate.

[JauntyChapeau 188]

1 hour ago, Space_Cowboy17 said:

I have tried the ASF MkII A's and found the ASF MkII B's to be just as good at flaking in today's world of Ace heavy lists.  Brace can't stop your 1 damage hits but if you get lucky and roll a 2 hit shot from the MkII A's they will brace down to 1.  I think swapping to MkII B's and adding Torryn Farr takes you to the same 75% chance of getting 1 hit per flak, and save you points to add stuff like ECM or the new Early Warning Override.  I think EWO may have some real legs in an Ackbar list, though I to shrivel up a bit when I even think about not having ECM on an Assault Frigate.

Or perhaps Reinforced Blast Doors, since Pheaver is concerned about Sloan lists not giving him the option to Brace at all. 

I've played a few games with the list and really like it - I'm thinking about swapping one of the Gunnery Teams with Caitken and Shollah (sp?) and replacing Targeting Bacon with Advanced Gunnery.  Highly mobile fleets are going to avoid those tokens like the plague - last night I wasn't able to get any rerolls at all from them and it's demoralizing to get no/minimal advantage out of your own Objective.

[Angry_Ewok 200]

With 4 VCX you couldn't get them in position?

[JauntyChapeau 188]

39 minutes ago, Space_Cowboy17 said:

With 4 VCX you couldn't get them in position?

Not really.  Two of them were in the corners of the setup area, effectively out of range of the VCX (in a timely manner).  I placed the two of them as close to where I thought he might end up, but my opponent was flying a highly maneuverable list and the few times he was in range of the tokens, he was out of long range of my guns.  And of course, it doesn't take much to lock down VCXs.  Probably turn four on they spent fighting (and dying to) his fighter screen.

It might be a better objective against a different fleet, one that isn't all flying speed 3-4 and constantly Navving - I grant that.

Edited January 18, 2018 by JauntyChapeau

[pheaver 2,325]

Oh, when I play Bacon, I put my two tokens in front of where I plan on setting up, maybe a range ruler apart horizontally?  Basically, far enough away that I hopefully don't need to move them a ton, but close enough that my VCXes can start moving them right away.  And assign two VCXes per token to move them with the ships.  As you are second player, they are going to be attacking into you (or giving you a 6-5 win, whatever).  So just drag the tokens with your ships, keeping your VCXes pretty close.  When you get into the fighting turn where your VCXes are locked down, the fighters locking them down are hopefully in blue range of your AFs, and you can punish them.

But yes, I did have trouble keeping the tokens relevant when fighting the seven CR90 list.  I only got to use them a few times on his approach, but it was enough to score a handful of extra damage and kill some ships.  It's definitely much better against large ships that aren't as maneuverable (and that's what the next wave is encouraging people to play!).

 

[JauntyChapeau 188]

6 minutes ago, pheaver said:

Oh, when I play Bacon, I put my two tokens in front of where I plan on setting up, maybe a range ruler apart horizontally?  Basically, far enough away that I hopefully don't need to move them a ton, but close enough that my VCXes can start moving them right away.  And assign two VCXes per token to move them with the ships.  As you are second player, they are going to be attacking into you (or giving you a 6-5 win, whatever).  So just drag the tokens with your ships, keeping your VCXes pretty close.  When you get into the fighting turn where your VCXes are locked down, the fighters locking them down are hopefully in blue range of your AFs, and you can punish them.

But yes, I did have trouble keeping the tokens relevant when fighting the seven CR90 list.  I only got to use them a few times on his approach, but it was enough to score a handful of extra damage and kill some ships.  It's definitely much better against large ships that aren't as maneuverable (and that's what the next wave is encouraging people to play!).

 

Good point - I'll keep the objective in the list and keep working at it.  I'll be taking it to the Roseville Regional which takes place after Wave 7 goes live, so maybe I'll see a bunch of large ships!

[Stasy 2,502]

So I took a variation of this to a tournament today. I subbed a MC30 Scout loaded out with EA and GT in lieu of the 3rd AF (had to work with what I had). I haven't touched Armada in months, minus a prep game last night.

 

This list works. It was simple and elegant and for the most part low brainpower. I ended up going 1-2, but the two losses were by 15 points and 44 points, and the win was in the 8-3 range. I played very conservative and while I didn't win huge, I also didn't lose big. 

[Blail Blerg 7,585]

I still feel like this would have a hard time against a 134 yavaris bombing fleet. I think you can down an AF in one turn? 7 shields + 6 hull + 2 damage braced: 15  dmg to one shot an AF. 

B wing averages about 2.25 - 2.5 damage per attack with a single BCC reroll (not adding toryn). 15/2.5 = 6.6 ish Bwing attacks to down in one turn. ish. probably around 8 attacks should do it. which is pretty easy if you have 9-10 squads, + yavaris. 

[MattShadowlord 1,494]

On 1/22/2018 at 12:05 PM, Blail Blerg said:

I still feel like this would have a hard time against a 134 yavaris bombing fleet. I think you can down an AF in one turn? 7 shields + 6 hull + 2 damage braced: 15  dmg to one shot an AF.

There isn't a fleet that can comfortably take on all possible opponents, but having played Akbar with Frigates a couple of times myself, it does have a really good option.

Hit speed 3, fly at a low angle and blast from range, while the Bwings struggle to catch up. Unlike most lists, this one can do massive damage without having to close the distance, which has always been one of its major advantages.

 

BTW great result Paul. nice work!

[Ginkapo 9,321]

36 minutes ago, MattShadowlord said:

couple of times

Haha. Cracked me up

[MattShadowlord 1,494]

 

Quote

Pheaver: I'm the "Assault Frigate Ackbar guy"

I didn't want to disillusion him