Ancient thread, ARISE I COMMAND THEE!!!
I didn't feel like creating a new thread for this so I'm dredging it back up from the depths. Basically, I've tweaked the original fleet I posted earlier based on the new marine list and gave it a few playtest run throughs to see how it help up against my typical marine fleet and a Bakka Light cruiser fleet. What I've been playing with is this:
1x BB
3x SC + Shield
2x SC + Bombardment cannon
3x Gladius
3x Hunter
So far I've pitted it against this fleet:
1x Emperor
2x Lunar +NC
2x Vengeance
2x Dauntless Torpedo
This game ended up pretty bloody since I deployed on the long table edges and the marines went AAF. End result was that the marines lost after disengaging. It came down to the Emperor being untouched and the marines with three SC remaining and one hit left on the BB. All that remained of the IN fleet was one lunar and the emperor. Basically it was just a matter of time until some of the emperors bombers made it though and killed the remaining strike cruisers. MVP was the two BC Strike cruisers for pasting a dauntless and crippling a vengeance. s16 BC hurt A LOT. It also didn't help I played it risky by holding off on bracing my ships in the face of that firepower.
Second game I playtested the Bakka Fleet list I've been fiddling with for a friend. I wanted to see how the thing performed before I let him use it so our upcoming battle with my marine test list didn't result in him getting pasted. The list was high ordnance resilience:
2x Vengeance
1x Armageddon + turret
4x Endeavour + turret
2x Endurance + turret
This game ended with a win for the marines after deploying on the short edges. I chalk this up to really good marine rolls and really bad IN roles for it not being closer. Again the 2x bombardment cannon SC were MVP. Their opening locked on salvo hulked the armageddon in a single turn of firing. Even with BFI, they scored 5 hits past shields which resulted in a hull breach stripping the last three. On the other side, the crazy turret light cruisers basically laughed in the face of marine thunderhawks with 4 turrets base and a couple more from turret massing, even my largest wave of 6 thunderhawks barely got one in to attack. Torpedoes fared better but were pretty easy for the CL's to intercept.
The end result was three crippled endeavours and a mostly intact vengeance up against three crippled SC and an untouched battlebarge. With the turrets halved, there wasn't much point to continue since I was having difficulty getting a good targeting solution on the SC (nebula and 2 hulks messing with firepower and LOF) so IN disengaged. I think that with some better rolling the result would be quite different though since the IN fleet was still in good standing until some lucky rolling with the BB managed to paste a full health braced Endeavour abeam and without locking on in the last turn.
What I'm finding is that the 2 shield SC are excellent investments making it far more difficult to hurt the marine ships while having a couple of BC variants provides a huge amount of firepower for the initial pass. In both cases, the hunters really didn't contribute too much and I'm thinking of dropping them for a couple more gladius and a reroll.
As for the Bakka list, my CL's see your AC and laugh. Torpedoes are more problematic but manageable with your own small salvos. I'd be curious to see how it works against some of the other fleets.
