I have gotten in several games with multiple different archetypes with Admiral Trench and I don’t want to jump the gun, but I found him very lackluster. He has Rumblings of Grand Admiral Thrawn, but is much more fiddly to use and is also more expensive and you need to invest in some token generation to even get him to work while Thrawn just did his thing. Trench does get one more dial, however, I have found that dial to be much less impactful than one might think. This is because most of the time you will use the dials on turn two and the 4th dial will become available in round 5 at this point in most armada games it’s just clean up and this command is just not that impactful. Trench does give you the dial+token effect and Thrawn just gives you the dial so I guess we have that let’s look at the commands and see what this gives us.
Con-fire command with Trench gives you an extra die and one re-roll on one of your attacks. The problem is that most ships the separatist have wanted to double arc and so the extra die and re-roll on one attack just is not that great Mar Tuuk can give you extra dice anyway, and you just take what dice fixing you need. Mar Tuuk I think outperforms Trench in this Con-Fire category, and Kraken gives some dice fixing as another alternative but does not get the extra die.
Recusant Support Destroyer (90)
• Admiral Trench (36)
• Passel Argente (6)
• Swivel-Mount Batteries (8)
• Patriot Fist (6)
= 146 Points
Hardcell Battle Refit (52)
• Hondo Ohnaka (2)
• Slaved Turrets (6)
= 60 Points
Hardcell Battle Refit (52)
• Slaved Turrets (6)
= 58 Points
Hardcell Transport (47)
• Munitions Resupply (3)
= 50 Points
Hardcell Transport (47)
• Rune Haako (4)
• Comms Net (2)
= 53 Points
Squadrons:
• 4 x Vulture Droid Fighter Squadron (32)
= 32 Points
Total Points: 399
Navigate Command, the CIS does not have a commander that has navigate shenanigans, but in order to really make the dial+token work, you want ether really fast ships to jump up and down although this is not very useful in most cases. Another option would be Nav Teams however only the Muni and Transport Hardcell have the support slot and Nav Teams does nothing for a Muni that already has a nav dial, compound that will nav being a pretty hard token to get a hold of relative to the other tokens it makes this idea pretty much a non-starter and I did not try it out at all.
Engineering Command this one is okay. In most games, your opponent won’t be spreading out the damage around all your ships, but I do like this as one of your 4 dials to use in an emergency. Particularly in round 5 to keep your ships from dyeing a dial+token engineering command is a pretty good way to make sure your ship does get to limp away. It’s just, not something I would spam though.
Munificent Star Frigate (73)
• Admiral Trench (36)
• Thermal Shields (5)
• Point Defense Ion Cannons (4)
• Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)
= 125 Points
Munificent Star Frigate (73)
• Thermal Shields (5)
• Point Defense Ion Cannons (4)
• Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)
= 89 Points
Hardcell Battle Refit (52)
• Tikkes (2)
= 54 Points
Hardcell Transport (47)
• Munitions Resupply (3)
= 50 Points
Hardcell Transport (47)
• Parts Resupply (3)
= 50 Points
Squadrons:
• 4 x Vulture Droid Fighter Squadron (32)
= 32 Points
Total Points: 400
Squadron Command, This is the kind of list Thrawn found his home in commanding squads while still letting Imperial ships do other things. So it makes sense this is where Treach would shine as well. With expanded hanger bays a Providence can push 6 squadrons with Treach pretty consistently, you probably want this to be a dreadnought for flight controllers.
Providence Dreadnought (105)
• Admiral Trench (36)
• Rune Haako (4)
• Flight Controllers (6)
• Expanded Hangar Bay (5)
• External Racks (4)
• Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)
• DBY-827 Heavy Turbolasers (3)
• Invincible (5)
• Thermal Shields (5)
= 180 Points
Hardcell Battle Refit (52)
• Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)
= 59 Points
Hardcell Battle Refit (52)
• Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)
= 59 Points
Squadrons:
• Phlac-Arphocc Prototypes (19)
• General Grievous (22)
• 2 x Droid Tri-fighter Squadron (22)
• DIS-T81 (17)
• DBS-404 (17)
= 97 Points
Total Points: 395
After a local game night I personally found Trench to work best in Two-Ship builds, a bit Ironic since Thrawn was also known for that, however that build has fallen out of favor. I went back home after a game night and revised my build and took it to the virtual tabletop, and it performed pretty well. It is honestly the list that I had the most success with Trench and was not regretting that I did not take a different and cheaper commander.
Recusant Support Destroyer (90)
• Admiral Trench (36)
• Rune Haako (4)
• Flight Controllers (6)
• Expanded Hangar Bay (5)
• Reserve Hangar Deck (3)
• Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)
• Nova Defiant (4)
= 155 Points
Recusant Support Destroyer (90)
• Tikkes (2)
• Flight Controllers (6)
• Expanded Hangar Bay (5)
• Reserve Hangar Deck (3)
• Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)
= 113 Points
Squadrons:
• 5 x Hyena Droid Bomber Squadron (55)
• General Grievous (22)
• Phlac-Arphocc Prototypes (19)
• 3 x Droid Tri-fighter Squadron (33)
= 129 Points
Total Points: 397
We spam navigate with our ships as a navigate command on a speed 3 Recusant is just absolutely amazing. Each Recusant can push 5 squadrons with flight controllers. It is at the very least a very interesting list to fly. You can either spam 4 squad commands or do 3 squads and one engineering for when you really need it.
Really what I kept running into with Trench was I had to invest so much into making him work that I just really did not have the points left to make a good list. I think if Trench is going to work it will likely be in the Squadron area and will like to stick in that 2 ship archetype. I fitting in enough squads to get value from Trench means taking about 10ish and that does not leave much room for ships so two ship seams to be consistently the best kind of build. 2 large ships with a bunch of squids in every other build he is outperformed by other cheaper commanders MSU: Kraken LMSU: Grievous/Kraken/Mar Tuuk Three Amigos Prov/Rec/Muni: Mar Tuuk/Kraken. Every archetype other than heavy squads with 2 large ships he can’t even compete and even in the double Large+Squads archetype Grievous is still knocking on the door. Trench is just too expensive and too fiddly, it is like there is a piece to his puzzle missing. For now, he seems like he is only good in one very specific archetype, and is out-competed in all others by the other CIS admirals, though I guess that is better then not having any spot at all.
What do you think of Admiral Trench? How have you used him? What builds have you found him to be useful in? Until next time have a great week!
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