Rebellion In the Rim Campaign - Pivotal Battle 1
18th July 2025
Barry
20 mins
Introduction
We’ve come to that part of the campaign for our first pivotal battle; I’m often frustrated by these as they do seem to take whole day and in previous cases don’t reach a satisfactory conclusion requiring some gaming as to what the logical conclusion might be. It’s partly for this reason that despite 4v4 we’ve stuck with the 6x3 dimensions for the mission to try and compress the game space.
Now there’s so much going on in this game, the typical batrep is going to be long just to go through fleets let alone describing each activation. That seems kind of unnecessary - so I’m going to just broadly describe the fleets.
Pivotal Battle Ops Brief
Situation:
Factions: Imperial vs. Rebels
Location & Objective: Mandalore – Fighter Wing
Ruleset: Rebellion in the Rim
Order of Battle (ORBAT):
Imperials
Imperial I - Class Star Destroyer
2x Victory I - Class Star Destroyers
Interdictor Suppressor Refit
Quasar Fire I – Class Cruiser Carrier
2x Arquitens – Class Light Cruisers
Gladiator I – Class Star Destroyer
Raider I - Class Corvette
Squadrons:
• Darth Vader Defender
• Captain Jonus
• Colonel Jendon
• Gar Saxon
• Black Squadron
4x Aggressor Assault Fighters
5x Firespray-31’s
TIE Advanced Squadron
Mandalorian Gauntlet Fighter
Rebels (First Player)
MC75 Armored Cruiser
Assault Frigate Mk2 A
3x Assault Frigate Mk2 B
CR90 Corvette A
2x CR90 Corvette B
GR-75 Combat Retrofit
GR-75 Medium Transport
Squadrons:
• Mart Mattin
• Ketsu Onyo
• Tycho Celchu
• Shara Bey
• Biggs Darklighter
• Hera Syndulla (X-Wing)
2x E-Wing Squadrons
2x X-Wing
2x YT-1300
YT-2400
5x Z-95 Headhunters
The Imperial Commander has taken charge today, and, courtesy of an Ally token we come close to matching the Rebel squadrons though we are clearly out activated in both counts. As a result of this we end up with our Arquitens misaligned on deployment as the rebels use a combo of admiral abilities and spynet to stack their fleet to our left flank focusing down on the Star Destroyers. The concern for the Rebels to first/last us is significant.
The setup.
Turn 1 Rebels start to deal with the fact that they overloaded their squadron ball around a single flotilla, so whilst it was probably activated for padding it does disrupt their setup. We move the Arquitens as padding to get them back on track, largely though our fleet moves 1 forward whilst the Rebels are forced to deconflict their moves. The angles they have chosen is restricting their activation order. The squadron moves take an equal amount of time as the rest of the turn as both sides try to position to strike.
End of Turn 1.
Turn 2 and the padding for ships is running out fast. Rebel flotilla hits a mine and the Arqs have come around and are moving as fast as possible to the centre of the board. Imperials continue to slow roll in whilst the Rebels continue to deconflict their movements and are coming perilously close to the Imperial gun line. The squadron phase sees Vader take Tycho down to 1 health.
End of Turn 2.
Turn 3 is where the fun begins as usual. The rebels opt to activate the MC75 first to trigger its boarding troops on the ISD, hits it for four damage and then rams into it. Our Quasar activates sending an Aggressor to kill Tycho for first blood, freeing up squads to move in and kill Mart and leave Shara on 1 hull. Dodonna’s Pride gets its auto-crit on the ISD (Coolant Discharge) with its side shot while its front shot is disrupted by the targeting scrambler on the Interdictor.
The ISD activates next seeing it’s the primary target and repairs the critical damage and uses its own boarding troops on the MC75. Its shot forces the MC75 to spend all but a single contain to reduce it down to 4 damage which it takes on the shields, and the side shot into an Assault Frigate yields 1 damage before ramming the MC75.
That AF activates shooting the ISD for 4 hull damage and moves into the left flank. We activate one the Arqs to create a buffer to see what else comes at us. A flotilla send squadrons to pin some of ours down, and the Raider activates a squadron to get in the fight and moves up into the mix of all the fighters.
As the Rebels continue to focus on the ISD, the red VSD kills Dodonna’s Pride whilst the other strips the scatter a flotilla courtesy of Intel Officer. As the battle continues to punish the ISD which expends its tokens and hangs on as the Rebels now start to converge and risk hitting each other. The Gladiator takes this moment to jump in and present another danger.
The squadron game is getting frustrating to keep track of – key take-away this round is Shara is killed, whilst Gar and co raid one of the Assault Frigates.
End of Turn 3.
Turn 4 and the MC75 goes first attacking the Interdictor (which is scrambled) and shoots at the Gladiator for one damage before ramming the ISD for the kill. The Gladiator punches the Assault Frigate and jumps past. That AF hits the Victory for 7 damage which forces the depletion of the defence tokens, but it finds itself staring down both the Victory and Interdictor which results in it being hit hard and left on 2 hull.
The Gladiator shakes off an attack from a CR90B, and the Quasar sends squadrons in to kill Biggs and another generic X-Wing. The Quasar starts taking serious fire and suffers Life Support Failure from one of the Assault Frigates. My Arquiten manages to punch out enough damage to kill a flotilla whilst the Rebels start charging down our left flank now the ISD is gone.
The Raider comes into its own, locking down the generic YT-1300 with Flachettes and runs through to block the Rebels. Luke is activated and misses the Gladiator, though the CR90 doesn’t miss hitting it. The Interdictor activates attacking the MC75 and a CR90 before it rams an Assault Frigate for the kill.
The squadron phase results in two dead Aggressors.
End of Turn 4.
Turn 5 and an Assault Frigate kills the Quasar and rams a Victory which returns fire at a CR90 but whiffs completely misses. Instead it lands some hits on the MC75 which focuses fire on my Gladiator which survives on 1 hull. Time to activate the Gladiator, which destroys the MC75 and seriously damages a CR90B.
Meanwhile the Red Victory is killed by the CR90A – but is avenged by the Interdictor. Rebels activate squadrons with an AF, though they labour over the execution – eventually opting for Z-95s. The combined fire between the ship and squads results in limited damage to the Victory and Raider. The Raider activates and kills 3 Z-95s and Flechettes a YT1300 and E-Wing.
My Gladiator dies to the CR90B, however the Arq manages to strip shields from an Assault Frigate. The Assault Frigate continues to flank shooting the Interdictor and Victory, which activates more squadrons to kill 2 Z-95’s, and focusing its own fire on the Assault Frigate in front and another four damage on the one flanking. The last flotilla activates remains squads resulting in the loss of a Firespray, however our remaining fighters kill a 1300 and E-Wing in the squad phase.
End of Turn 5.
Final turn and the Rebel squadrons activated by an Assault Frigate turn their attention on Gar Saxon who manages to survive, its shots at the Raider results in the loss of two shields. It shimmies around trying to avoid the Victory, though whilst it cannot avoid Imperial shots – we are unable to kill it. The squadron phase plays out the round with no additional kills.
End of game.
Debrief
An Imperial win - which felt at times close to the wire – though the final score being 567 to 425. Disproportionately it was squadrons and killing their smaller ships making up that points gap, as while were losing some of our heavy hitters it was on equalled with the Rebels losing the MC75 and Assault Frigates. A breakdown of the losses is below.
Imperials
Imperial I - Class Star Destroyer
Victory I - Class Star Destroyers
Quasar Fire I – Class Cruiser Carrier
Gladiator I – Class Star Destroyer
Squadrons:
• Black Squadron
3x Aggressor Assault Fighters
Firespray-31
TIE Advanced Squadron
Rebels
MC75 Armored Cruiser
Assault Frigate Mk2 A
Assault Frigate Mk2 B
CR90 Corvette A
CR90 Corvette B
GR-75 Combat Retrofit
Squadrons:
• Mart Mattin
• Tycho Celchu
• Shara Bey
• Biggs Darklighter
• Hera Syndulla (X-Wing)
E-Wing Squadron
2x X-Wing
YT-1300
YT-2400
5x Z-95 Headhunters
Supreme Commander at work…
I’m honestly impressed that we got the game done – 10 minutes before Jolt closed too. We go into the next phase of the campaign having held out on Mandalore – though the Rebels will continue to push the matter as they seek to take the planet for the ally token.
Without the Ally token this would be a very different game, and so it will be interesting to see what happens to the Empiregoing into the the next phase without it since it doesn’t refresh after the pivotal battle. It might honestly limit the Empires currrent momentum.
Stay Salty.
- Barry