Raddus Rite-Up from Stewbucket! AKA Fleet Building 313A: A Blue Fish Case Study

More free content from the blog mines! Stewbucket (previous Worlds judge!) wanted to write this and it seemed pretty interesting (and i will freely take most content thrown my way, blog for the blog gods). Take a look about fleetbuilding and his insights, below!

Hey everyone! I’m Stewart Maxfield (known as Stewbucket around the Discords), here with an article I told Geek to title “Fleet Building 313A: A Blue Fish Case Study”. This article is about building a list in general, but as told through one very specific list I built recently. If you’re a newish player, poking around this blog looking to build a list, look out for certain pieces of advice in bold. This case study is by no means the only way to build a list, but there are themes that any experienced Armada player will harp on. I’m going to offer you advice through this one concrete example and show you opportunities to think about building something of your own. If you’re not a newish player, feel free to critique my decisions, laugh at my incapabilities, and build something better. You can PM me on discord or send an email here.

I managed to build something that I really enjoy - and it might even be good! It’s got a great W-L record (I think only 2 or 3 losses out of 15 plays?). It went 3-0 and won one 10-person store tournament. However, it was not built to necessarily be the top end of competitiveness, but for fun. I want to show you, dear reader, how you might think about something you find enjoyable so that you don’t always find yourself spontaneously combusting. Fly things you love! Armada oughta be fun - and flying fun things doesn’t mean you have to lose (all the time). 

Without further ado, a list:

Name: Jane and the Boys (“Only Cowards Stay While Traitors Run”) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dkg8pkCPDLo)

Faction: Rebel
Commander: Admiral Raddus

Assault: Most Wanted
Defense: Asteroid Tactics
Navigation: Infested Fields

CR90 Corvette B (39)
• Admiral Raddus (26)
• Hondo Ohnaka (2)
• Engine Techs (8)
• Jaina's Light (2)
= 77 Points

GR-75 Medium Transports (18)
• Toryn Farr (7)
• Bright Hope (2)
= 27 Points

GR-75 Medium Transports (18)
• Adar Tallon (10)
• Boosted Comms (4)
= 32 Points

MC75 Armored Cruiser (104)
• Intel Officer (7)
• Ruthless Strategists (4)
• Electronic Countermeasures (7)
• Ordnance Pods (3)
• Point Defense Ion Cannons (4)
• Quad Battery Turrets (5)
= 134 Points

Squadrons:
• Dutch Vander (16)
• Hera Syndulla (Ghost) (28)
• Wedge Antilles (19)
• Shara Bey (17)
• Gold Squadron (12)
• Scurrg H-6 Bomber (16)
• 2 x A-wing Squadron (22)
= 130 Points

Total Points: 400

(Obligatory CGYSO joke image) - the man gets us!

Before I get into how all the small bits work and then how they fit together, let me talk about some of the thoughts that led to its initial inception. 

The first was a long-standing frustration with Ruthless Strategists. You too may have a card that drives you nuts. You know it should work, but how? What could you do to make it better? (San Hill? Commander Woldar? You know the ones - cheap, but so niche you gotta have a serious plan for it). In my case, I hated the fact that RS seemed to always act like a deterrent. Nobody was willing to engage my squads in Ruthless distance. To use the card, I had to keep my own squads close, which meant they weren’t bombing. I wanted to use Ruthless more proactively - I didn’t want to wait for my opponent’s cooperation. 

The second was an irritation with some MC75 slander I’ve heard since the ship was released. “It has terrible defense tokens”. “It’s not an ISD”. “Run an MC30 instead”. This lack of respect for perhaps my favorite Star Wars Moment has driven me to put it in lists over and over. I ran an Ackbar ‘75 for a minute, I’ve used Dodonna and Sato for its APT, I think I even ran it with Madine one time. It’s a beautiful model and it deserves to be on my table any chance it gets. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19Ui_oLzCgo

The third was some squadball noodling, trying to run something I hadn’t tried before. No great flashes of irritation or insight, just a desire to do something I hadn’t done before. What if I ran the Ghost, but didn’t include any other rogues? Might be fun to have a squadball that was potent in the ship phase, but uber-flexible in the squad phase. Too often I run Hera with pre-deployment plans of who she’s going to target. What if I gave her more flexibility? Flexibility and competence are kinda her thing. 

Pausing for a second. These questions only seem to go together because of the list I posted at the beginning. If you go back to my head when I built the list, they didn’t seem to do that. Your thoughts about list building might seem similarly disjointed. Pick a couple of them, and try to tie them together. How does Hyperwave Signal Boost work? What could support it? Where could it offer support? Or, something simpler - is a Lancer a good bomber? What is Cloak? Your incoherent thoughts might have some usable threads - I can’t recommend enough the act of writing things down and forcing your brain to concentrate on exactly what it wants. (Discord can be good for this. Friends too. Or my mom, who asked “Wait, why doesn’t everyone just bring the hyperspace fish? He seems like the best.” when I tried to explain this to her). 

I goofed around on Ryan Kingston’s builder for a while, trying to get a Ruthless hammerhead to pop out of Profundity (too expensive), a double-MC75-double-Ruthless thing (no room for squads) before coming to what I consider the first true iteration of the list.

Along with that first version, let me offer a concrete piece of advice on list-building. Work from known into unknown. This is a maxim of surgery (don’t futz around in the hilum of the liver until you’re certain what you’re looking at) and oughta be a maxim of fleetbuilding too. What do you already know works? How can you incorporate your idea into something already known to be functional? What have you or others done in the past that led to success? This isn’t an invitation to copy/paste others’ ideas, but it does mean that you shouldn’t cast aside conventional wisdom unless you think you’ve got a good reason. Consider why good things are considered good.

(I’ll take any excuse to toss in Chesterton’s Fence. This is good advice for surgery, relationships, your clothing, and most anything where things may need changing.)

In my case, the “known” was Patrick’s worlds-caliber list that incorporated some rogues, two flotillas, and an incredibly squirrely CR90 flagship to complement a mean Mon Karren drop.  

My “first” iteration was this: 

CR90 Corvette A (44)
• Admiral Raddus (26)
• Engine Techs (8)
• Jaina's Light (2)
= 80 Points

GR-75 Medium Transports (18)
• Toryn Farr (7)
• Bright Hope (2)
= 27 Points

GR-75 Medium Transports (18)
• Adar Tallon (10)
• Boosted Comms (4)
= 32 Points

MC75 Armored Cruiser (104)
• Ruthless Strategists (4)
• Electronic Countermeasures (7)
• Ordnance Pods (3)
• Quad Battery Turrets (5)
= 123 Points

Squadrons:
• Dutch Vander (16)
• Hera Syndulla (Ghost) (28)
• Wedge Antilles (19)
• Shara Bey (17)
• 2 x Scurrg H-6 Bomber (32)
• 2 x A-wing Squadron (22)
= 134 Points

Total Points: 396

(Let me here thank Sam for always being available for bouncing ideas around, and I quote, “[Sam’s] excellence and responsibility for every ounce of [Stew’s] armada skill and listbuilding abilities.”)

Let’s go through the flotillas, and then Jane, and then the squadball, and then the MC75, and I’ll tell you what questions I asked myself which led to the final version (which, admittedly, is pretty darn similar to the “first” version). 

Flotillas:

You’ll notice that these had no change from the beginning to their final version. Work from known into unknown. Flotillas are a staple of rebel lists for a reason. Dirt cheap, with a useful fleet support slot, can be staffed with handy unique officers, and Squad 2. So, what do I need flotillas for? Is it just activation padding? Do I need them to act as carriers? Do I need their tokens? Do I need homes for officers that can’t fit anywhere else? Are they going to aggressively get in the fight and explode, or are they going to try to stay out of it? These are questions you oughta consider, too, when adding flotillas (all of which are covered nicely in this how to use flotillas article right here on this very website).

Well, for my purposes, I need the following:

1. Cheap activations for optimal Jane positioning for optimal Ruthless Drop Ship placement.

2. Home for Toryn (mandatory for two ships with blue flak and a whole bunch of squads throwing blue dice).

And, I’d like to have the following:

• Home for Adar? Nearly every squad in this list is worthy of a double-tap. Dutch shutting off two key aces? A third shot from blue-black bomber? Delicious. 

• Carrier capability? The Armored has squad 3 and I’ve got Hera, but these guys will probably have to pitch in sometimes

• Token generation? I might need ECM on my drop ship, and I can’t get the readying token from a turn 1 dial, as the ship isn’t on the board. 

• Slicer tools? A dropped Ruthless ship can’t go first, so I’d like some way to make sure enemy squads don’t all abandon the death zone.

In the end, the cheapness won out. All the other things are nice, but I need space for a flagship, a squadball, and a drop ship. Forcing yourself to consider the bare necessities can help you avoid building piñatas and thus delivering points to your opponent. For me, this was:

1. A flotilla that can deliver Toryn, some flak and occasional squad commands to the center of the fight. She might explode, but she’ll be annoying before she does. Bright hope will deter potshots and keep her kicking longer. Native nav dials can put her into places where the only shots available are ones that Bright Hope makes irrelevant. No space for her to fill that Fleet Support slot, no need for her to give up another 3 points if she dies. If I had to fit something, it was going to be Parts Resupply (for ECM) or Slicer Tools. But all that made the cut was Bright Hope and Toryn herself.

2. A home for Adar to swirl around the battlefield. He can start the game at speed 2 and just goof around, pinging anyone who would like to go twice or get repositioned. I want to use Adar’s ability something like 4-5x per game, and so he needs to be able to reach. Coincidentally, this will also keep him alive. If I had to fit something, it would have been a BCC for the black dice from those bombers. But 8 points is a lot, and all that makes the cut is Boosted Comms and Adar. 

Jane St-Clair:

So, a Raddus flagship needs to be able to do two things:

1. Not Die

2. Provide a large enough threat area for drop-ship dropping, either by size or by navigation.

For me, it would be nice if it could also:

• Shoot enemy ships in a meaningful fashion

• Shoot enemy squads in a meaningful fashion

• Be cheap enough to fit everything else I want

I wavered between a CR90 (who stays alive due to her Engine Techs) vs an MC30 (who stays alive due to Foresight). Other things would end up too expensive, and these two ships have the best navigational capabilities. I went all-in on squads, which meant that I had to cheapen the flagship drastically. (Working through this, I cut from a CR90A to a B to make space for more upgrades on the drop ship - more on that in a minute). The only mandatory upgrade in my eyes was the simultaneous defense (that is, escape) & offense (that is, drop-ship placement) from Engine Techs. 

I also considered running, with my limited budget, Lando officer to avoid a surprise assassination; cluster bombs to make it easier to escape with a rogue on my tail; and Hondo and Jaina’s Light. In the end, Hondo and Jane won out, due to their ability to support the rest of the list, even if they may seem suboptimal for the 90B itself. So here’s another piece of concrete advice: Never build in a vacuum. Consider not just how upgrades impact a given ship, but the whole list. Mr. Giled Pallaeon has made this point before, talking about “a system of systems”: just because somebody’s “quickbuilds” are good, it’s often rare to see them together because they have difficulty supporting each other. Jane needs to support the list, not just be well-kitted on her own. 

Hondo gives me the flexibility to do things like grab an eng token for ECM, grab a squad token for Adar, grab a squad token to yeet Shara, grab a nav token to live when I’ve dialed engineering on the drop ship, &c. His one-time free support to anyone in the fleet is superior to what protection Lando or Clusters can buy. Jaina’s Light, again, is known to be good - but the specific reasons it got included here are for (a) positioning and (b) toryn-powered blue flak. If the goal of the Ruthless build is to wipe the enemy squads early, unobstructed pings will only help speed that along. 

In the end, Jane gets cut and cut until only her important characteristics remain: 

• Positioning power for both dropping and living.

• Support for the mission in the form of flak and key tokens at any time.

MC75:

I’ve talked about the other ships needing to stay slim for the MC75’s benefit, but - for the good of the list, he needs to be slim too! Which takes us to another guideline of fleetbuilding: Be able to defend the decision for every single upgrade included. 

For the MC75, here’s how I did that. Lots of things tried to make the cut, but only these 6 were worth my while:

1. Ruthless Strategists. The central thesis of the list is trying to get this card into position, so it must be included. Other cards like Ordnance Experts are a big opportunity cost, but the list functions extraordinarily differently without the Ruthless.

2. Ordnance Pods. Here, the MC75 sacrifices his anti-ship capabilities for the good of the squads. He would like ExRax to dump on his landing target or an unsuspecting squadron (and doing so might help him live longer!), but the goal is to clear the skies. An extra attack from which to ping Ruthless is absolutely clutch. Enemy Tycho locking down the ball? With a double-arc, man’s dead in a single activation. APT, ACM, and WAB were all considered, but they fit better with the Ordnance version rather than the Armored.

1. A side-note here, on bringing the Armored: I knew I wanted blue-ranged flak for a larger threat range in addition to the larger squadron value for putting my people in position before firing off the Ruthless flak. The ability to bring a turbolaser, in addition to a longer threat out my side arcs, was icing on the cake. This goes into not building in a vacuum - although an Ordnance cruiser may be better strictly as a drop ship, it lacks the ability to support everyone else as I need.

3. Defense: Point-Defense Ion Cannons and ECM. The ‘75 is not known for its tankiness. If it’s going to do its job, it needs a little sticking power. PDIC is really only competing with Leading shots, which would be the only dice correction on this thing. (Dice correction is very handy.) But what’s this ship’s goal? Why is he in the list? The central goal was that he’s an infinitely mobile flak boat! If his shots occasionally whiff on a ship, I’ll have to live with that. PDIC can gut-check any double hits dice, goofy crits, and keep squads (sort of) at bay. It also happens to be 2 points cheaper, and keeping him cheap makes room for expensive things like Toryn and Hera. Raddus drop-ships often die; if you can make them last just an extra round and be as cheap as possible, then they can do their work all the more effectively. (During that store tournament I mentioned earlier, PDIC and ECM contributed to the drop ship surviving each game on 4, 1, and 1 hull respectively)

4. Offense: Intel Officer and QBT. Here are perhaps my least-defensible choices, but both fit into how I want things to function. If you were netlisting and copied my build, these two slots are likely the first ones you edit. Which brings me to another bit of advice: Sometimes, upgrades that work well for you might not work well for your friends, and vice versa. I don’t mean in the sense of “ah my Corran Horn always rolls badly!” but rather in the je-ne-sais-quoi of “Huh, he seems to play very aggressively and go fishing for hit/crits with his OE; I, on the other hand, seem to play cagey, and thus don’t desperately fish. Maybe External Racks is a better fit for me over APT?”. Consider not only how your fleet works with itself, but how it works with you. You are, after all, its most important ingredient.

But, back to my choices: IO provides double-duty of “screw your scatter, Deltakin” and “Screw your brace, large-ship-in-my-face”. The MC75’s 5-dice out front and sides is particularly nice for IO, I’ve found, as both shots can make roughly the same damage. I’ve popped Recusants in a single activation because they thought to save the brace for my second shot (and thus avoid my IO), only to see it acc’d away. Delicious. The ability to target an enemy salvo for extra defense (lookin at you, Anakin) or a redirect (to soften them up for my squads) provides additional utility. For a long time, this slot was Raymus Antilles, as Raddus drop ships are often hungry for tokens. I decided to outsource Ray’s duties to Hondo, and it (sort of) works. This outsourcing weakens the MC75, but I believe it strengthens the list as a whole. Your ships need to make sacrifices for each other - this applies before they even hit the table.

As for the QBT; you may look at a flak-based list and think “This idiot didn’t bring LTT”. First of all, fair. Second of all, how badly do I need one-squad shots? I need to melt his whole screen, not simply an annoying ace. Many times, I’d rather blast the whole side with my blue-enabled range, triggering RS multiple times. Third of all, the MC75 needs to be dual-role. (The need for oomph against ships is also what led me to IO over Draven’s triple-down on flak). I need him to be able to contribute meaningfully against ships - and dropping at speed 1 in the midst of some speedy smalls, getting an extra blue at each one, can often mean the difference between their death and them speeding away after discarding an evade. In the face of another ship trying to jump over me (lookin at you, Recusants and Assault Frigates), QBT can provide 4 blue dice on 4 attacks before Hondo slips me a Nav and I run off at speed 3, never to be seen again. In fact, on some occasions, QBT has induced my opponents to stay at a lower speed, thinking I plan on sticking around - when in fact, all that does is keep them in range of my speed-3 fighters eager to feast on their shieldless areas. 

Squadball:

Building a squadron coverage is worthy of it’s own series of articles, so I won’t go in to as many details here. I will simply put forth some questions I asked myself while building my coverage:

Who is going to provide anti-fighter duty?

Who is going to provide anti-ship duty? (and its logical follow-up, “How vital is anti-ship duty - what else in the fleet is going to be shooting at ships?)

Who can reasonably work both jobs?

Who can be sacrificed so others can accomplish their tasks? (For this list, specifically in the realm of triggering Ruthless Strategists)

So, I first turned to two cheap-as-heck buddies, happy to be rogue with Hera (a requirement from the start, you remember) or happy to be pinged with Adar for a second shot: Wedge and Dutch. They have reliable black anti-ship (with Bomber to boot), and are fairly tanky. Wedge’s escort provides a little cover for some more important pieces, like the bombers. Filling out my fourth ace was tricky, as there are some quality bombers, some quality anti-squad, Ten Numb (whose auto-damage would be lovely combined with Dutch and Ruthless), and Jan Ors. I decided that what I really needed was someone to be sacrificed so others can accomplish their tasks - Shara Bey. Her counter would work nicely with Ruthless and her speed would pin the enemy until the MC75 could activate. This is where the two A-wings come into play, as well. While all three of these have black dice anti-ship, which is great for squadless matchups, their first role is as pins - waiting until the AA guns arrive. 

With that in mind, I need some bombers. I don’t have a lot of anti-ship in the list, and so I had to make certain I could provide some hurt in the form of my squads. The sneakiest part of this group is the fact that it can throw four 2-dice bombers at you with a single squad token: Adar taps one of the scurrg, Gold, and Hera, and the remaining 3 are rogue. (Yes, I know Hera isn’t a bomber, but blue/black with Toryn support is pretty great). I had to make some cuts from the first iterations, but turns out that Gold Squadron, supported by Toryn, is pretty darn good for his cost. The only thing I really miss is the native grit I wanted from the scurrg, but his 6 hull for 12 points (a 4 point discount!) is a great target for Ruthless. 

In the end, I have 3 light sacrificial pieces (and thus happy to be RS’d), 3 flex aces (tanky, worthy of Adar, and willing to be RS’d if necessary), and 2 high-hull bombers. Any one of them can pitch in to ship combat or provide a pinging point for Ruthless, and only the bombers are poor at anti-squadron. Although I can think of some key weaknesses for this squadron group (Yularen Arcs, for one), I am confident in their ability to meaningfully contribute regardless of my enemy’s coverage, from squadless all the way to the full 134.

So, that’s the list. I’d tell you how to fly it, but that wasn’t really my goal (and if you’ve read this far, you can probably get the gist of how it works). I hope this glimpse into someone else’s listbuilding has at least been educational, and if you’re new, I hope it induces you to tinker around a bit. This game has a lot of shenanigans to discover, and each one of them is a lot of fun.

P.S. If you’ve skipped to the end, I’ve copied each bolded piece of advice and stuck it here:

• If you’re bored, find a desire to do something you haven’t done before

• Your thoughts about list building might seem disjointed. Try to tie just a couple together by writing things down and forcing your brain to concentrate on exactly what it wants.

• Work from known into unknown - consider why good things are considered good.

• What do I need flotillas (or other small ships) to do?

• Forcing yourself to consider the bare necessities can help you avoid building piñatas and thus delivering points to your opponent

• Never build in a vacuum. Consider not just how upgrades impact a given ship, but the whole list.

• Be able to defend the decision for every single upgrade included. 

• Dice correction is very handy.

• Raddus drop-ships often die.

• Sometimes, upgrades that work well for you might not work well for your friends, and vice versa.

• Your ships need to make sacrifices for each other - this applies before they even hit the table.

Regarding squad-building specifically:

• Who is going to provide anti-fighter duty?

• Who is going to provide anti-ship duty? (and its logical follow-up, “How vital is anti-ship duty - what else in the fleet is going to be shooting at ships?)

• Who can reasonably work both jobs?

• Who can be sacrificed so others can accomplish their tasks?

• Make sure you are confident in your squads’ ability to meaningfully contribute regardless of your enemy’s coverage, from squadless all the way to the full 134.

That was REALLY helpful, thanks Stew! If you want to write more you just let me know!