While building Clone War Fleets I almost always hit a slump with the Assault or red objective I should include in my list. As I mentioned last week Kraken makes Ion Storm honestly best in the slot for him, but in almost all other cases I just default to Surprise Attack. I wanted to get out of this rut and try some new red objectives, I have tried a few with different degrees of success. In today's AMM I am going to look at each red objective and how it can be utilized in clone wars not only to help myself get out of this slump, but anyone who may be experiencing the same thing.
Advanced Gunnery, one of the go to for the Civil War factions is a bit lackluster for Clone War Factions. This is mostly because clone wars ships so far have no more than 6 dice in each battery armament. When you think about Advanced Gunnery it's mostly in Ackbar lists or ISD and in most cases that means you are chucking 8 or more dice. I think the Republic can make a case for taking this upgrade with an Acclamator or Venator with Swivel-mount batteries that brings the front to 7 dice. The big downside is this can be a very bad objective if you run into an Ackbar list or an ISD as it gives them a free slightly better gunnery team, because of that I would shy away from this objective.
Blockade Run, It is a fun objective, but not very good as far as getting value out of it. Effectively it makes all your ships worth 20 more points each time they die, and gives you 20 points for each that effectively survives, but this usually means breaking away from the early so you can make sure you get the points at the end of the game. It’s not a great pick for any faction because of this, but it's a fun way to mix up the game.
Close Range Intel Scan, I acutely kind of liked this objective as it let you throw away needless accuracies and get points for it. However with Salvo now a thing if you have a needless accuracy you probably rolled quite a few of them. Maybe the Republic could do a weird point farming thing with con fire tokens and clone gunners or you could use H-9s with salvo attacks to get points each time you salvo, but at the cost of damage. I am just not seeing this one pay back super well, as like I said with a salvo about accuracies are all the more relevant.
Ion Storm, already talked about this one, it's a great pick for Kraken or any list that can guarantee crits. It can be fine in a list that can't guarantee crits, but if you run into a Kraken list or another list that can, you are going to have a really bad time. So unless you are that list I would stay away from it. If you are that list this is a golden objective you will do a lot of extra damage and score points while you do so.
Marked for Destruction, so in most cases this is a trash objective, but have found one case where it works pretty well. Marked for Destruction is the only red objective with purrgils, and when squadrons overlap a purrgil they take one damage. Grievous wants his squadrons to die so his ships can get tokens back. I find that most list that bring light screens or no squads will just ignore Grievous’s squads and it will be hard to trigger his ability to get tokens back. However sacrificing your squadrons to the whale god is an easy way to get tokens back. It's n0t amazing, but in those circumstances it can pay off in dividends making it really easy for a ship to discard objective token towards the end of the round to take less damage or deal out more will salvo, then sacrifice squads in the squadron phase to get tokens back, the possibility of getting points is just something extra.
Most Wanted, So it's not a terrible choice it's just not as good when compared to the civil war factions because they have access to cheap flotillas. In most cases you will always get more then you lose from this objective, however if you run into MSU clone wars factions will struggle to get as much value out of it compared to their civil war counterparts due to not having access to cheap flotillas. This is a fine pick in most cases if you have a cheap ship to put it on, but if MSU is something you might run into I would shy away from this one.
Opening Salvo, if you are running MSU this is always worth considering more dice to kill things and if you get a damage card on something you will get some points. There is not much more to say about this one simply it's always worth considering in MSU.
Precision Strike, both clone wars factions can make good use of this card, however they need to bring some amount of bombers to make it work. I would say that this objective is even better for the clone wars factions then the civil war factions because of how prevalent salvo is in the clone wars faction. If a ship has damage on it you can get points from your salvo attack. ARC-170 are best for the republic to help get this to trigger and still get damage on the target, you should almost alway pick this as a clone wars faction if you have bombers, in my opinion.
Rift Assault, I think this objective is a pretty good choice for clone wars again with an increased prevalence of salvo it has more opportunities to trigger. It can also be used as a tool to help trigger crit effects, spend a die now to help you trigger a cirt later, and get points while doing it. It could also be used to simply beef up your attack. It’s a good objective particularly when double aching less damage on this attack, but more on the next and you get points. I think this is overlooked too often.
Station Assault This is a simple objective, it's not amazing, but it gives your fleet effectively 10 more hull as each station has 10 hull. Once one station is down the point gain is effectively a wash so your opponent can ignore the second station. The issue is doing 10 damage to something that has no way to mitigate incoming damage is way too easy. The station will take a few attacks, away that would have attacked your ships, but I just don't think it is enough. This objective would be more interesting if the stations had a small defense token suit and/or were armed stations. As is, I think it's just better to stay away from this objective because you have stronger picks.
Surprise Attack, this is the go to objective right now, particularly for lists that have only a small investment in fighters. This is for good reason: it forces the flagship down and forces it to over extend making it vulnerable to attacks. The raid tokens can be quite helpful against heavy squadron lists making it harder for the other player to command squads. Most people don’t want to have to deal with this and this objective is almost never picked. That is what makes this objective so strong is that it effectively reduces your objective pool to two.
Targeting Beacons, okay so I will be the first to say this card needs to be fixed its dumb that the first player can stack two objective tokens off into the far corner of the setup area making them irrelevant. However with some ships having limited amounts of re-rolls in clone war fleets this can be interesting. You will probably always play this objective, but if you are leaning on it for re-rolls that might not be a bad thing. It will be better once strategic is in play for the clone wars, but its not absolutely horrible as it lets you build a list with very few dice modifications, have a small bid for second, have your yellow and blue be unappealing and bam you get re-rolls. Force the engagement around the tokens, it's not amazing but it is thinking outside the box.
I think clone war factions have at least 5 viable choices for a red objective: Ion Storm, Opening Salvo, Precision Strike, Rift Assault, and Surprise Attack. I also think a few might not be quite as bad as they may seem in the right situation such as: Marked for Destruction, Most Wanted, and Targeting Beacons. It’s easy to fall into a best in slot rut particularly with objectives, but Clone Wars factions and “Armada 1.5” have given us an opportunity to re-explore the game and put aside some of our preconceived notions. Even if we explore and find our notions to be true, I think it would be a missed opportunity to no to challenge our ideas and explore other options at this time in Armadas life. Until next time have a great week!
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