So I have messed around a lot with the super star destroyer and Think I am ready to talk about it as a ship in its own right, specifically in 400 point games. There is a lot to consider with this ship we will talk about crippled SSDs and how that impacts build philosophy. We will talk about commanders and the option we have there. Also about key upgrades that should pretty much always be taken on an SSD. The types of SDDs available in the 400 point format. We will also look at the builds I played with, and finally the advantages and disadvantages of SSD lists.
So if you are building an SSD it is important to remember the crippled value of your ship so a naked SSD at its cheapest type would give out 110 points to your opponent. If your opponent does this and loses no more than 50 points themselves they will get a 7-4. However it is unlikely to be a naked SSD but if we don’t kill anything of our opponents but don’t get killed our self it would be a good idea to keep your crippled points you give out to 139 and under to stay in the 7-4 range. That would mean you will want to try and keep your SSD at or under 278 points. If you don’t follow this you are going to make your crippled ship is going to bleed a lot of points making it harder, and harder for you to win big. Its okay for you to go over this limit, but you really want to stay as close to it as you can as if you put it at 278 point total you only have to kill 80 points to make a 7-4 loss a 6-5, and becomes much more manageable to pull that to a 8-3 win or even a 9-2. Staying under 278 points can be hard especially if your commander is on the SSD and especially if you’re taking the assaults prototype. There are also several upgrades I consider mandatory after playing with the SSD so let’s look at thoughts.
Gunnery Teams
Whatever your thinking stop, just stop, and take this card its mandatory I have used it almost every round in every game I have played with the SSD just take it and forget whatever you were thinking of doing it’s not worth it.
Quad batteries turrets
So it is extremely likely you are going to be going slower than most ships you are shooting and let me say speed 2 on an SSD is sometimes just way to fast, so I would stay at speed one as much as possible, and ships are going to be escaping into your side arc as much as possible so why not get extra dice on pretty much every shot you take. Spinal is a bad choice trust me the majority of your shots will come from your sides, so this is just absolutely mandatory.
Leading Shots
But I have Krennice.. Great he only works on one attack you get 3 and it just combos so well with Quad Battery Turrets so just take this you won’t regret it trust me.
Next here are a few that while I would not consider mandatory are highly worth considering.
Damage Control officer
Okay so you will be surprised how fast your SSD can go down against a crit heavy fleet its hard to justify not taking this card on your SSD after you have played against a crit heavy fleet, but if you really need a different officer in your last officer slot you might be able to justify not bringing her along, but she will help your SSD more than you know in the right situation.
Emperor Palatine (officer)
So I don’t want to say too much about him now, but he addresses one of the SSD’s list weaknesses in that it is actually pretty hard for you to get your opponent to burn tokens as you will in most cases only get one shot against each ship you attack every round meaning the tokens will be coming back next round, but since you are the biggest target well getting players to spend tokens while attacking you can really add up then follow up with an attack and the tokens get burned.
So with our mandatory upgrades these are really the cheapest SSDs we can get away with.
SSD Command Prototype (220) • Gunnery Team (7) • Leading Shots (4) • Quad Battery Turrets (5) = 236 Points
SSD Assault Prototype (250) • Gunnery Team (7) • Leading Shots (4) • Quad Battery Turrets (5) = 266 Points
So after taking mandatory upgrades the SSD Command has 42 more points to play with and still stay under the 278 threshold, however the assault costs a whole 30 more points than the command, so it’s only going to get 12 more points to play with so if you want to say under the 278 threshold well you got to put your commander somewhere else.
So let’s talk commanders, for me JJ is the end all be all of SSD commanders what he can do for you on the SSD is insane and negates probably its biggest weakness Deployment disadvantage, let me show you.
So he negates deployment disadvantage, and you also have 6 hull zones worth of shields to play with, and you don’t have to worry about navigating to get yaw its just super hard for me to justify any other commander than JJ, I mean if you are taking the support and take the take evasive action fleet command I could see argument for others, but what JJ does is just so good for the SSD to pass up. He is the quintessential commander for the SSD, Thrawn and Piett are both close seconds though, and I have played with both in and SSD list but I really find myself ether going JJ or Piett, however Piett requires a little bit more build around and JJ well he is just a plug and play, and is always good so that is why I feel I go to him more often than not.
When taking an SSD you really need to ask yourself why you are not taking an ISD and a small combat ship or 2, I mean you can fit an ISD 1, 2 raiders, and a Gozanti for just one point more than the cheapest SSD so we should really ask why you are taking this. So let’s look at each type of SSD viable in 400 point games, and why you might take them over other ships.
Command SSD
Okay so the first thing you should notice is the fleet command this is the only ship currently in the game capable of taking 2 fleet commands, any ISD can with the Chimera title take one fleet command, and rotate it to whatever one they need during the next round, so two get value out of the two slots you need to use both fleet commands on as many turns as possible as if you just rotate fleet commands well Chimera does that cheaper.
Another difference you can see is the squadron value of 5, 6 if you count the free token you get. It can act as a nice carrier, but again an ISD I can get up to 6 as well as a quasar with some token generation, not to mention both are okay taking flight controller and you as the SSD really are not. So I find this a bit of a wash, sure the SSD is durable, but if they get it to 11 hull damage they are still getting about as many points as killing a ISD-I supper carrier so I have a hard time justifying it.
Lastly is all its officer slots Damage control officer should really take up one of the slots in most cases, but you can do a lot of interesting stuff with 3 officer slots, and that can really be the tipping point to taking an SSD having a single ship that can combo/or perform multiple rolls, because of the officers it has.
It is also important to consider the titles available to the SSD as they make it so the ship can do things no other ship can, I will talk about the titles a bit more a little later, but just keep them in mind.
Assault SSD
Okay so this guy losses the two fleet command slots and gets an extra Ion, turbolaser, and offensive retrofit slot. The two ion slots means it can have both leading shots and a blue crit upgrade in most cases the turbolaser slot is interesting because we already have more dice in each of our arcs and might times be able justify not taking QBT, but they are such a good card on the SSD, it has two turbolaser slots, but so does the cymoon, but having access to leading shots does make this ship reliable without needing too many other upgrades the double offensive retrofit is interesting, but not super exciting.
I think the issue I have with the assault is its cost, by the time you take bare minimum upgrades and a commander you are almost at 300 points, after that what do you do? You can take some squadrons, maybe one combat ship. However if you do that you are not really leveraging everything you paid the extra 30 points for, I mean sure you are getting one extra die in each arch other than the rear, but you would be wasting all the extra upgrade slots given to you, your already at nearly 300 points if you put your commander on this guy and, well you probably are. So just go crazy spend the extra 20ish points and make this guy the mega ship he was made to be. It’s an all your eggs in one basket type of strategy, but you have put nearly 3/4ths of your points on this guy anyways going a little bit more won’t kill you.
As I said before I do think keeping SSD at or lower than 278 points is ideal, to keep crippled SSD’s from leaking too many points. If you are putting your commander on this guy there is no way you are staying under 278 points. In most cases when you take the assault variant it’s probably going to be the only “real” ship you have so it better do its job very, very well so take advantage of it’s upgrade slots. I mean in list building I defiantly follow the mantra of the whole is greater than the individual parts, but if you’re taking the assault it really is your whole fleet so making it greater than itself is building on synergies with the upgrades you take.
Like I said I really struggle with the assault in list building because it is your whole fleet you just have so few options, but finding interactions with your upgrades I feel is key with this guy.
So before we dive into lists let’s talk briefly about the titles of the SSD as they can really help justify taking the SSD over other ships.
Annihilator
Is a wonderful title and should really be pared with Kallus+QLT that is a total investment of 16 points that’s 2 tie fighters and well it’s going to do more work for you in the squadron game than 2 tie fighters will so if you are not wanting to invest in squadrons or bleed points out in a squadron scrum an SSD with this title and a few upgrades is really all you are going to need, and you will still be fully capable of taking out an entire squadron wing. Pair this with the Emperor palatine card, and you can really strip aces defense tokens very quickly.
Executor
Okay so I got excited when I first saw this and was like well I will just take a ton of engineering tokens and get a super engineering command. However it does not work that way because in the rules it states there are 3 ways to resolve a command with a dail, with a token, or with a dail+token. So resolving a single command with multiple tokens is illegal, and you cant resolve the same command more than once. So what is this good for? Well the command SSD to bank up a ton of tokens for its fleet commands. It’s not the fanciest title but it really helps the command SSD get off its fleet commands without really any kinks, so in the right fleet is very much worth considering if you are trying to leverage that to your advantage.
Eclipse
Okay so this card is just… meh. I mean it’s kind of “nice”, but it does not combo or do anything really game breaking there is no way to build your SSD around it. I mean I could talk about what could make it good, but it really does not matter because it’s just not good unless more upgrades come out or it gets changed or buffed in some way. As of right now this is the title you take if you have filled all other slots and have 3 points or more left.
Ravager
So I really like this title as it makes your side arc really scary, however to really get its full value personally I feel that you need to be doing the con fire command that way you are getting to add 2 dice and not one. However I can see the value of passing a con fire token and in essence giving the ship the con fire command. Something else to consider is that you can also use this to light up a single squadron especially when paired with linked turbolaser Towers from Rebellion in the rim add Kallus and you can chuck up to 7 dice at a single arc with rerolls from leading shots. However you need to get 5+ damage to make this better than Annilator and Kallus, because of brace, as annilator is very capable of getting 3 damage with kallus more consistently than you would think. The biggest advantage is when also paired with H-9s you can lock up scatter aces, but the right annilator build can strip scatters really fast, so its interesting, but it will not consistently outperform annilator, but has the possibility to on a single squadron, and works well against ships.
I have played just over 10 games with the SSD and I have played various list but these are the builds I have played the most.
Command ship support Support
SSD Command Prototype (220) • Moff Jerjerrod (23) • Veteran Captain (3) • Agent Kallus (3) • Emperor Palpatine (3) • Intensify Firepower! (6) • Entrapment Formation! (5) • Gunnery Team (7) • Quad Laser Turrets (5) • Leading Shots (4) • Quad Battery Turrets (5) • Executor (2) = 286 Points
Arquitens Light Cruiser (54) • Hondo Ohnaka (2) = 56 Points
Arquitens Light Cruiser (54) • Hand of Justice (4) = 58 Points
Squadrons: = 0 Points
Total Points: 400
So this is the list I have played the most by far I believe I played 3 or 4 games with it, or some variation of it at least. It really tries to take advantage of the two fleet commands. So this is how it works, turn one take two con fire tokens with the Executor title with your dail+ free token, arqutens will take Engineering banking the token. Turn 2 you will trigger IF and get two Nav tokens with dail+free token now your ships for the next 3 rounds will have dice fixing with IF, and with JJ and Entrapment basically getting nav command every turn for the next 3 turns, this also lets the arqutens focus on con fire commands on turn 3 you will dump Veteran captain to get your con fire token while the SSD spams engineering commands to not die getting 3 shields back a turn. You will at some point have to discard your fleet commands but you should get quite a bit of value out of both of them.
The SSD is over the 278 point threshold, but I just felt safer keeping JJ on the SSD than one of the arqutines and bleeding an extra 11 points on them crippling my SSD is not terrible. the list is also decent with dealing with squadrons some overlapping flack combined with Quad laser turrets can really hurt squadrons even without Annihilator, I can just use leading shots for rerolls if needed. hand of justice is actually quite “Handy” as you have two braces on the SSD but no ECM so you can refresh a brace and not have to worry about burning a brace too early it can really save you from situations where you have a red brace and they get an accuracy and lock up the green one so one brace goes away making it much easier for them to completely deny you a brace.
I did have it worked out so that you could trigger your fleet commands every round with Aresko and Wulff, but I ether had to give up Kallus, and while he is not as amazing if I could take the annihliator title he can still really help in the squadron game especially with leading shots on the counter attack. I have also flip flopped between Shields to maximum and entrapment formation, both have their merits in this list as shields to max gives the SSD a supper engineering for a few turns and helps the arqutines keep the JJ shield tribute flow. But keep the SSD at speed 1 an I am deathly afraid that the one face up I will get will set my speed to zero and I will have no way to fix it, and that also helps the arqutines out with speed adjustment, also sometimes going speed 2 with SSD is not bad to close the distance. I really like the list I think it is one of the more nuanced list that I came up with and well I kind of like its playstyle as well, but I’m a sucker for fleet commands what can I say.
Supper Carrier
SSD Command Prototype (220) • Admiral Piett (22) • Wulff Yularen (7) • Emperor Palpatine (3) • Veteran Captain (3) • Gunnery Team (7) • Expanded Hangar Bay (5) • Leading Shots (4) • Quad Battery Turrets (5) • Ravager (4) = 280 Points
Squadrons: • Colonel Jendon (20) • Maarek Stele (21) • Morna Kee (27) • Mauler Mithel (15) • Zertik Strom (15) • Dengar (20) = 118 Points
Total Points: 398
Okay so I have tried 2 variations of this list and well other carrier lists just do it better. Like it’s not a bad list is actually pretty solid, just other things do it better there really is not much more I can say than that. I am just not sure the carrier ship roll is something the SSD is going to really shine with at first I thought Sloan Generics, but you need to turn at some point so you have to stop your squadron stuff to turn maybe when Take Evasive action comes out and you can support the ship with some token generation maybe that will work. Just as of now I have a hard time seeing the SSD being a super carrier as other lists and builds can just do it better for cheaper. I think an SSD with support from rouges is a little better than having a carrier SSD, but that is just how I feel.
HUGE-MSU
Huge-MSU
SSD Command Prototype (220) • Admiral Piett (22) • Emperor Palpatine (3) • Agent Kallus (3) • Gunnery Team (7) • Quad Laser Turrets (5) • Leading Shots (4) • Quad Battery Turrets (5) • Annihilator (8) = 277 Points
Gladiator I (56) • Ordnance Experts (4) • External Racks (3) • Demolisher (10) = 73 Points
Gozanti Cruisers (23) • Comms Net (2) = 25 Points
Gozanti Cruisers (23) • Comms Net (2) = 25 Points
Squadrons: = 0 Points
Total Points: 400
So this is my Annihilator list. Now I was flipping and flopping between ravager and annihilator to really bleed squadrons, but what really set me on annihilator was its combination with Palpatine in the mix of kallus and QLT. So squadron attacks must spend a token most likely brace then counter 2 with Kallus with Annihilator it will likely be 2 damage now they can spend the scatter or discard the brace ether way you are okay. Then you will flak that squadron latter if they spent the scatter to avoid the damage just pump out as much damage as you can 3 to force them to burn it or take 2 damage by burring their brace, if they burnt the brace you can reroll some of the blues to lock up the scatter, and well you will get the scatter next round if you don’t kill the fighter next round. This ship is more than capable of completely eating an entire squadronball in 3 turns or less. I mean lets look at the deadly trio MMJ.
Morna attacks must spend her brace, discards brace for reroll takes 2 counter damage back Marrk comes in spends token takes 2 damage back spends other brace uses Jendon to double tap burns other brace takes two damage then we flack 3 damage to marrk and that kills him 3 damage to morna that kills her, and unless she disengages now she is likely dead next round, now you won’t always get max damage with annihilator but it happens far more often than you would think.
Stripping Palpatine
SSD Assault Prototype (250) • Moff Jerjerrod (23) • Admiral Ozzel (2) • Damage Control Officer (5) • Emperor Palpatine (3) • Gunnery Team (7) • Leading Shots (4) • Overload Pulse (8) • Quad Battery Turrets (5) • H9 Turbolasers (8) • Ravager (4) = 319 Points
Gozanti Cruisers (23) • Darth Vader (1) • Comms Net (2) = 26 Points
Gozanti Cruisers (23) • Admiral Titus (2) • Slicer Tools (7) = 32 Points
So Overload Pulse with Palpatine officer on an SSD is fun, this is especially true with first player as you can get it to trigger on 3 different ships and then as you are really the only ship to attack ships can lose tokens really fast, this is very helpful. This was the idea that sparked one the lists that made this idea. The other part was as soon as I saw what JJ could do on turn one I knew I wanted to pair that with Ozzle, it just completely fixies any deployment issues, and also lets us be super aggressive sometimes even getting shots on turn one with this combo.
So the list is all about hyper aggression kill or be killed type scenario, it works pretty well with H9s I have taken two flotillas off the table turn one, and on other attacks locked up tokens that are troublesome, but still get exhausted to be striped by Palpatine, because of Overload Pulse. Ravager can make your sides just and dangerous as and ISD’s front for one attack, Darth Vader can provided rerolls with ozzel DCO if they have no special crits and even Palpatine if your opponent as burned though their tokens, and there is also always JJ if you really need to kill something.
The comms net gives out engineering tokens to get shields back and slicers helps keep squadrons in check titus helps so a ship can’t escape into the sides to quickly after the ozzel move. It’s a list that is looking to table your opponent, I mean all lists want to but this is just going for the jugular as it where and says ether you die or I die, and with how much damage Ravager can produce, and how fast tokens can start flying off with Palpatine and Overload pulse it can really get the job done.
The sad thing in this list really needs to go for the table as if you’re SSD get Crippled and you lose the two gozantis you can still pull an 8-3, but that will most likely require a table however I don’t think you will lose both Gozantis that often. If your SSD gets crippled if you lose one Gozanti you can’t get a 9 unless you make up points in objective play.
Assault+one
SSD Assault Prototype (250) • Moff Jerjerrod (23) • Damage Control Officer (5) • Agent Kallus (3) • Admiral Ozzel (2) • Gunnery Team (7) • Quad Laser Turrets (5) • SW-7 Ion Batteries (5) • Leading Shots (4) • Quad Battery Turrets (5) • H9 Turbolasers (8) • Annihilator (8) = 325 Points
Gladiator I (56) • Darth Vader (1) • Ordnance Experts (4) • External Racks (3) • Demolisher (10) = 74 Points
Squadrons: = 0 Points
Total Points: 399
So I was really having a hard time with more SSD assault builds, but like we talked about the thing is basically your whole fleet. I was able to squeeze in one ship other ship into this assault list, however it is pretty much the same strategy as the list above with one less activation and takes Annihilator to have a more direct impact on the squadron game with its fire power supplemented by Demolisher it can in most cases afford to take shots at squadrons and still really wear on the opponents capital ships.
So I have not played every possible archetype, but I can imagine how it would play out SSD+Interdictor just seams like a better version of the double repair crew gozanti and also gives you some extra firepower. SSD+ISD you just don't have enough points to make ether ship that deadly. SSD+Rouges I have sen this in play, and seen it done well, but any squadron ball worth its salt and commanded by consistent squadron commands will get to act before you on the important rounds and even if you take decimatetors 8+ squadrons should be more than capable to taking down 2 decimatetors a round, and would fair even better against Firesprays.
I want to touch briefly on objectives always put capture the VIP as your yellow you can easily pick it up turn one and it will act as 50 points to offset your ships crippled points, with no downside really because if you die well you have probably lost anyway. After that Dangerous territories is just really nice for your blue objective as you don’t have to worry about obstacles with your exceptionally long base, solar corona can be nice as well. As far as red goes just don’t ever pick Opening Salvo.
So over the course of playing with the SSD some very glaring weaknesses became apparent. Frist Crippled, so this rule makes since, however because of its existence you will basically never be able to pull a 10-1, because you get crippled you losses a bare minimum of 110 even with a full table that is just enough to keep you out of 10-1 territory. Sure you can make up points with objective play, but I will still be very unlikely to get a full 10-1 IMO. My wins and losses with the SSD are about even, but In almost every game the SSD was Crippled.
The SSD is such a big target and a big points piñata in a since that you can just bash it and eventually you will get basically as many points as killing an ISD and then if you keep bashing it you will get the points for killing two ISDs. The other player is going to throw attack after attack into you and your defenses tokens will go much faster than you think, and damage will start piling on.
Another downside is that because you are so long it is pretty easy for ships to escape your front arc, much more easily than it is to escape an ISD’s, even though your arch is slightly wider, because of how long your ship base is. Most of your shots will be coming from your side and your auxiliary arcs. Without JJ it gets pretty difficult to leverage your front arc against anything, but once the fight has moved past your front arc even with JJs help sometimes it will take some time before you can swing around and bring it into the fight again, where as an ISD can get that flipped back around fairly quickly, in comparison.
Another weakness is by taking an SSD you in general are only going to take one shot at each ship that you attack, as it will likely be your only combat ship your opponent is probably very rarely going to be burring defense tokens, so while they pluck away at your tokens they just don’t really care all that much, they will ECM their brace and go about their merry day.
So the SSD in my book is not the greatest most amazing ship ever, but it can do some things that other ships just can’t. I think it has it place and can be competitive, but I don’t think it’s going to Meta defining. It will just be a ship you will see from time to time, and I know many people are more creative than I am when it comes to list building, but I just seemed to hit road block after roadblock when building a list because of how expensive the SSD is point wise, and that to me is its biggest weakness it feels very restrictive in fleet building.
With all that said, the SSD in the right hands is not a bad choice. I can do a lot of things other ships simply cant. Annihilator with QLT Kallus and Palptine can shred squadrons pretty well, and if you are wanting to go squadornless this is a pretty good option as far as I am concerned. In order for the empire to get access to two fleet commands a turn it would have cost 224 points now it only costs 220 not that much cheaper, but hey every point counts, and you don’t have to upgrade two separate platforms this to me is one of its biggest advantages. It combines the chaise of 2 ISDs into one and so you don’t have to double down on upgrades. It can take multiple officers making for really cool and powerful combos on a single ship no other ship can do that outside of a title. The SSD has a lot to offer and I think it will chicle out its own little niche in the meta.
So that is my thoughts on the SSD, a solid ship that requires a bit of fines and practice to get it right, but can still pull its weight. As of now an SSD placed I believe 6th overall in the German national championship. So it is possible to do well with it at high levels of play, so if the SSD is your thing you can get it to work it will just take time, to learn the ship and fine-tune the build. Until next time have a great week!
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