The Power of Plo Koon

One commander I personally am very excited about in Wave 10 is one of the coolest Star Wars characters, who is also apparently super important in the Clone Wars series. He's so important they made him into a card before the Clone Wars even existed and they've now banned him, so good riddance Strategic Adviser.  Anyways it's Plo Koon!

What's up, Jabberwock?

He looks infinitely cooler out of the cloak

The Card

He's got 2 parts to his card/rules, so let's hit them fancy bullet points! I've been hanging with Eric a lot!

• The squadron must have a friendly ship at distance 1-3 of your opponent's ship when it attacks. So you CAN use Boosted Comms to move the squadron into range and then attack, but if you attack first with their ship at distance 4 of yours, you don't get the bonus.
• You get to add in an accuracy that cannot be rerolled. It can be SPENT (ie you can lock their tokens) but you can't manipulate it in any way to turn your Y-wings into Rebel B-wings.
• Your non-Adept squadrons (generic Ys, ARCs, and V19s) gain Grit when near a squadron with Adept (Deltas and their Aces, Anakin). This does NOT give your Jedi Grit/turn them into full Intel squadrons, you'll need Hot Landing for that (and only in the Squadron phase)

Why Play Him

You're playing him for the first part of his ability, the second part is an added bonus.  You want to be locking out a token every chance you can get with your opponent, preventing them from spending SOMETHING that would benefit them/staying alive. You're pressuring the other tokens by ensuring you're locking out the "good" ones.  For example, with a Venator-II I can send 5 squadrons at my problems followed by a shot (or two, if I'm double arcing) into them. Because the squadrons are at distance 1 of the ship, and I'm at distance 1-3 of their ship, that means my ship is at least in blue range of theirs.  So if my squadrons all lock the same token, that's a lot of pressure on both the other tokens of the ship BEFORE I get to roll my ship batteries and see what that does to them.

Let's say I send 5 Y-wings at a Munificent.  On average, that's 5 damage (and 5 accuracies) followed by my ship attacking.  If those Y-wings all lock the lone redirect, and my ship has XI7 turbolasers attached, that's 5 damage into 1 hull zone followed by a ship attack that he can redirect 1 away from.  If I send 5 ARCs instead, and lock the brace, that's (again on average) 1.5 damage each attack, and they never get to brace against that all.  He redirects a LOT of squadron damage, followed by my ship hitting a near-shieldless opponent.  Against the clone wars factions with a lot of single tokens everywhere, he can do some amazing things towards stressing the other ones.

What if you hit something like an ISD with 2 redirects and a brace? Shoot it with Anakin first and lock the brace so they redirect 2.  Congrats, you now have a green and a red redirect to determine who to target every time with the rest of your Y-wings.  If they're bracing shots from the ARCs that follow up or bracing Y-wing hit/crits, that's a brace they're not spending when your ship attacks.  The Rebels and Imperials have a lot of redundant tokens, so it's going to be up to you to figure out what exactly you need to lock down with an accuracy to ensure you're stressing the right thing. You're pressuring their tokens when you attack their ships, and attacking their ships is how you win games.  Ideally, they die with a bunch of green tokens (or even better, unspent shields) and nothing they can do about it.  He does nothing for the anti-squadron game, so be sure that you're winning THAT as fast as you can.

Common Ships

You're going to want 2 different things from your ships.  You're going to want ships that can push squadrons (Peltas, Venators, Acclamators) with those who can put damage into your opponent after they push the squadrons and stress their tokens (see previous list).  Those ships will be the bulk of your fleet, though a very cheap Consular Radiant VII in the back doing Comms Net things or Bomber Command Center things isn't a bad plan if you know what you're doing with it.

Fleet Building

You're going heavy squadron here, as his ability is tied to squadron usage. I don't HATE 100 points of them, but realistically you're going to want 120+ points. Your ship upgrades should be based around 2 things.  First, winning the squadron game (Flight Controllers, Ruthless Strategists, Ahsoka officer, Ordnance Pods, etc) because your ability doesn't "turn on" until you're hitting ships.  Every turn you're attacking squadrons with your own squadrons is a turn your commander isn't working (Grit ability notwithstanding).  Which thus means you're going to want a varied group; some V19s to win the squad fight, some Deltas to ensure you do, followed by some bombers (Y-wings, ARCs) to take advantage of having won the squadron game.  The second thing you want after that is either improving your ship's damage (for the final followup shot after your squadrons have gone) or improving your squadron pushing abilities (to get the initial strikes from them improved).  Improving your ship's damage (because you are the GAR) are things like Intensify Firepower! or turbolaser upgrades, like Linked Turbolaser Towers (which doubles towards winning the squadron game!) or XI7 (as previously mentioned).  Improving the squadron pushing abilities are things like Expanded Hangar Bays or ways of generating squadron tokens for ships (Hondo, Clone Navigation Officer).

However you build it, you're going to be strongest if your ship attacks take good advantage of the fact that you've stressed their tokens significantly BEFORE it even attacks.  Don't just put all your eggs in the "improve squadrons" basket, because you need your ships to put some damage in as well.  Upgrades like Heavy Turbolaser Turrets/XI7s, Boarding Troopers, Flak Guns/DBY to improve your Salvos when they attack you back, Clone Gunners, Assault Concussion Missiles, etc, all take advantage of your opponent's tokens being exhausted (in one way or another), so consider their inclusion.  Otherwise, keep squadronning.  You can also go the other route and put Flight Commander on a few ships, of course, in order to target the tokens that weren't stressed with accuracies, so they HAVE to burn tokens out faster.  I'm personally already points strapped, but you do you.