So we are going to talk about another ship that I very rarely see beyond the Yavaris title, yup you guessed it the Nebulon-B. The Nebulon-B is really only seen as Yavaris I hardly ever see it as anything other than that, even though it has function beyond the carrier roll. It is very rarely seen anymore, at least in my area and I believe that is for two main issues the ship has: low durability, and unreliable damage output. We are going to look at building a B that can sting and still live to tell the tale. So what do we have to work with well we got a crew, support, and turbolaser upgrade slot, what can we put in these to make it a little more reliable? Lets first start off by making this ship just that much more durable.
With two Braces, you would think this guy would be pretty hard to kill, but the lack of a redirect really makes it hard on this guy as his side shields are so low. I started to think how could I help mitigate this, well with two braces we can really spend them indiscriminately and with an evade we can keep damage off from long range as well, so why not just take that a little further and add in Major Durlin. With Major Durlin you might be surprised how tough the little guy can be especially at long range let me give you an example. So lets say we are dealing with an Arquitens it rolls two hits and a blank then uses TRC to make the blank a double well a long range we cancel the double, spend a brace to take it to one, and then Durlin that last damage away to take Zero damage, you can see how this can be quite helpful to boosting our survive-ability. Now you might say yes but Durlin only works once per-round, and you would be right, but we can fly our ship in a way to mitigate that.
I think most people fly Nebulons incorrectly they use it as a jouster, and that is not what will keep him alive he is a flanker that wants to cap the T as it where to help us cap the T we need another upgrade engine techs. Engine techs, really helps our nebulon get into the side of the opposing fleet and get its guns on one of the ships, and In an indirect way this help boost our survive-ability, as we should only be taking one maybe two shots and we will have our brace as well as Durlin to really help you last longer than you should and trust me this works really quite well. You will survive much longer than you will think with a nebulon playing the ship this way, along with Durlin's help. So now all we have to address is the damage consistency, and well we got a few ways to help us mitigate that and that. First we take the Salvation title gives as a lot more teeth when we do it and helps negate somewhat the swingyness of the red dice, buy giving us more faces with doubles, but we need more and this is where we have to make some tough choices.
We have one last upgrade slot available and that is our turbolaser, we have a few choices we have Dual Turbolaser Turrets, Spinal Armament, and Quad Battery Turrets. Its a hard pick do we go for DTT, and get in essence a reroll of one die, or do we go the other route and get just more dice overall? No matter what we pick it is still not going to be enough to get rid of the swingyness, we need something more.
To give us that little extra consistency we will need to take a commander like Leah to give us rerolls, or Sato, to give us more consistency with black dice, and/or Intensify Firepower fleet command, you could also have a build set up to make sure you nebulion will always have a con fire token to reroll one die. It can really start to be an investment, but that is why I feel that Intensify Firepower is the best way to go as it will also support the rest of your fleet. At the end of the day we end up with a nebulon that looks something like this:
Nebulon-B Support Refit (51) • Major Derlin (7) • Engine Techs (8) • Spinal Armament (9) • Salvation (7) = 82 Points
and maybe a list somewhat like this:
Nebulon-B Support Refit (51) • Major Derlin (7) • Engine Techs (8) • Spinal Armament (9) • Salvation (7) = 82 Points
Pelta Assault Ship (56) • Engine Techs (8) • Intensify Firepower! (6) • External Racks (3) = 73 Points
MC75 Ordnance Cruiser (100) • Garm Bel Iblis (25) • Strategic Adviser (4) • Ordnance Experts (4) • Electronic Countermeasures (7) • Assault Proton Torpedoes (5) • External Racks (3) = 148 Points
GR-75 Medium Transports (18) • Ahsoka Tano (2) • Slicer Tools (7) • Quantum Storm (1) = 28 Points
GR-75 Medium Transports (18) • Hondo Ohnaka (2) • Comms Net (2) • Bright Hope (2) = 24 Points
Squadrons: • Tycho Celchu (16) • Shara Bey (17) = 33 Points
Total Points: 388
I Have tried out a nebulon built this way, and it works really well, at least in early testing. It is not broken, or anything like that, but it dose become a decent ship that is pretty annoying to the other player. What are some ships that you find that are lacking or have glaring weaknesses, how do you help mitigate thoughts? I would encourage you to explore these ships you might find something really fun and interesting.