The curious case of the dead Hammerheads

Every now and then I feel like its time to dust off the Hammerheads and give them a spin, and instantly afterwards regret it. They are hard to use to say the least. Different manoeuvring than a CR90, oddly fragile despite being hull 5 (side eyes the token suite). A game where 1 out of 3 survives is in my experience, a good game.

Picture shows a Hammerhead being used right

But I suspect that it is just me that does not know how to use them. According to renown blogger and overall know-how guy in Armada, Geek19, the Hammerhead is a Rebel Raider...

Successful Raider Hammerhead use often involves a lot of navigate commands (dials and/or tokens) for speed and, at speeds 3 and 4, yaw management (hahahaha we don't get that). Frequently I see people misuse Raiders Hammerheads by deploying them at speed 3 or 4. This is usually a mistake, and often a fatal one. Ideally your Raiders Hammerheads should start at speed 2, or rarely, speed 1. They should take a nav token on the first turn and often receive a navigate command again on turn 2 (unless boarding teams). This gives you a considerable amount of control over where exactly you will be committing to moving on turns 2 and 3 at the very least and lets you play it cagey in the early game where you'll be out of range or at long range on turn 2 rather than running suicidally into the kill zone early on. Effectively, the Raider's Hammerhead's survivability is very dependent on positioning (these are Eric's words, but I wanted them highlighted and underlined) and you want to use its superior yaw at speeds 1 and 2 while waiting for your opportunity to make that happen.
Specifically, what you're trying to accomplish is to stay at long range of enemies when they are attacking and then attack them back at short range starting around turn 3 (or turn 2 if the enemy is barreling at you) to get in 1-2 rounds of pummeling before repositioning or escaping, or most likely before dying, depending on the circumstances. This can be accomplished a few ways, but the easiest and most applicable is to "catch" enemies that must move towards you. The Raider Hammerhead is well-suited appointed to this tactic because someone has to be, able to stay at long to medium range and then take advantage of its large front arc to catch enemy ships that activate, make a poor to medium quality attack against it, and then find they can't escape getting attacked at short range when the Raider Hammerhead activates later.

This above is solid advise which I should heed in the future and can draw a lot of conclusions from the past game where I introduced a new player to the ropes of the game. On to the battle report!

The lists

Name: Sato
Faction: Rebel
Commander: Commander Sato
Assault: Opening Salvo
Defense: Abandoned Mining Facility
Navigation: Doomed Station
Hammerhead Scout Corvette (41)
• Commander Sato (32)
• Slaved Turrets (6)
= 79 Points
Hammerhead Scout Corvette (41)
• Slaved Turrets (6)
= 47 Points
Hammerhead Scout Corvette (41)
• Slaved Turrets (6)
= 47 Points
Nebulon-B Escort Frigate (57)
• Auxiliary Shields Team (3)
• Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)
• Vanguard (4)
• Ruthless Strategists (4)
= 75 Points
GR-75 Medium Transports (18)
• Bomber Command Center (8)
• Boosted Comms (4)
• Bright Hope (2)
= 32 Points
GR-75 Medium Transports (18)
• Boosted Comms (4)
= 22 Points
Squadrons:
• Jan Ors (19)
• 4 x Y-wing Squadron (40)
• 3 x X-wing Squadron (39)
= 98 Points
Total Points: 400

There are a few things that deviates from what Sato likes with his fleet. The Squadrons are a typical collection of  X-Wings and Y-Wings backed up by Jans very good ability to keep the X-Wings alive a bit longer and able to hit back. It might be overkill having so many squadrons, as only one is needed to have Satos ability go off. But I am lusting for some Bomber-on-Ship action so this goes in here also. The inclusion of the Bomber Command Center feels natural here.

The Nebulon with Vanguard is also an odd inclusion. I have in the past used Salvation with very good results. But here is the new thing that comes in the Rebelion in the Rim expansion; Vanguard. A cheaper platform for Ruthless Strategist maybe? The Neb Escort has 2 blue dice to bring more threat to unfriendly squadrons. New hot Linked Turbolaser Towers also goes on the Neb.

What is different from other Sato lists is that this lacks black dice tech. I am solely banking on the fact that I will get a good roll. And to top it off the Hammerheads are Scouts, Which means 2 red dice + 1 red from Slaved Turrets. Some damage is bound to stick as long as all front arcs are in range of something.



This was my opponents first game, and I had asked him to do a list and I would review and give opinion.

Name: Untitled Fleet
Faction: Imperial
Commander: Admiral Sloane
ISD Cymoon 1 Refit (112)
• Admiral Sloane (24)
• Director Krennic (8)
• Veteran Gunners (5)
• Expanded Hangar Bay (5)
• Quad Turbolaser Cannons (10)
• Enhanced Armament (10)
• Avenger (5)
= 179 Points
Gozanti Cruisers (23)
• Slicer Tools (7)
= 30 Points
Quasar Fire II (61)
• Flight Commander (3)
• Flight Controllers (6)
• Ruthless Strategists (4)
• Boosted Comms (4)
• Squall (3)
= 81 Points
Squadrons:
• 4 x TIE Defender Squadron (64)
• 4 x TIE Bomber Squadron (36)
= 100 Points
Total Points: 390

This list is not what you usually see with Sloane, can take different routes from here and has potential, as an ISD always has. There are some upgrades I would switch out for more commonly used upgrades. I had the first hand experience of feeling how hard Defenders can be when the dice roll is not in favour.
 

Game 1

 

Round 1 

He had the higher bid so he went first. Out of  my objectives Opening Salvo was chosen.

We both had 8 squadrons but I was able to delay some deployments thanks to having six capital ships vs his three. I deployed Sato and Bomber Command Center closer to the back of the deploy zone. An error I made was with Vanguard being deployed too far from the squadrons to utilise Ruthless Strategist.
I also deployed the Hammerheads at a too high speed and did not take the speed down, exposing them to TIE Bombers early. 

Round 2

We close in on each other. He utilised the speed of both the Defenders and the Bombers to tie down the X-Wings and strip shields from one of the Hammerheads and land some hull damage. I misplace Jan so I can't send away one squadron towards the ISD, and have to use the Y-Wings trying to take down the Defenders. One Y-Wing goes down due to very good rolls with the Defenders. The X-Wings fire back and badly damages one defender.

Round 3

 This round Jan manages to free up one Y-Wing so it can paint a red dot on the ISD, just in time as all the Hammerheads gets in range of the behemoth. The TIE Bombers continue to pummel the damaged Hammerhead, leaving it at one hull after the ISD fires an enhanced armament side arc into it. The ISD completely deletes one of the Flotillas as it strays too close to the front arc. QTC resolves and locks down all the defence tokens. 
The Hammerheads and Nebulon-B (which just got in long range of the ISD) fires volley after volley and thanks to Sato and Opening Salvo obj tokens, deal massive damage to the ISD. Satos Hammerhead deals 8 hull on one turn. After the badly damaged Hammerhead fires I have to turn it hard onto an asteroid, not wanting to bump and deal an face down on an undamaged Hammerhead as well. It turned out I had forgot the yaws at speed 2 where II-I, and I could have avoided running it up on a rock. Oh Well.

Round 4

Total mutual destruction continues this round. Vanguard gets just enough damage and locked down defence tokens to become space debris. Sato's Hammerhead gets swarmed by TIE-bombers, and start to take hull damage. Sato's Hammerhead in turn deal enough damage to take down the ISD.  The Xwings start to turn the tide against the defenders and take down 2. One gets lost in turn.

Round 5

Round 5 sees Satos Hammerhead go dead. The Xwings mop up the last of the defenders and then start to tie down the TIE bombers that look menacingly at the last Hammerhead. The last Hammerhead bumps into the Gozanti which had the previous two turns bumped once with the Quasar and once with the remaining Hammerhead, leaving it dead.

Round 6

We went through everything and decided that nothing more could be killed during this turn and wrapped it up. It was a close call for Sato, but he did manage to pull through with an 8 point margin.

Closing Thoughts 

While I like Sato, Hammerheads and the interaction with squadrons he has and it was a fun list to fly. I certainly feel some things can be improved.

• Vanguard: I am not completely sold on this title for Sato. But since I misplaced it all together it is too early to dismiss it. It needs to be among the squadrons to work properly. And while Auxiliary Shield Team ups its survivability, I think Fighter Coordination Team is better to nudge squadrons ahead.
• Hammerhead Scouts: They did solid work but I think that the Torpedo versions can do more, with luck and APT/ACM. Next time there are a couple of Torpedoes here. They need a squadron screen to not take damage too early also. Another misplay on my part leaving them out in the open.
• Squadrons: Y-Wings have that high enough hull that they can close to a ship a decent amount of turns. X-wings are always nice but this setup is a bit slow for Satos taste. Old workhorses Tycho and Shara Bey seems like better suited for the role of target painting with speed 5. Another squadrons setup I will try in the future would be
  2 x VCX-100
  Tycho
  Shara
  Jan Ors
  HWK-290
  This setup frees me of the Bomber Command Center and 4 points from squadrons, maybe even upgrading one Transport to a real ship. But that will have to wait.