Well I was going to wait until I'd done a Rebel and Imperial ship before releasing this… but as it appears in its new trailer, Star Wars: Eclipse is pushing up my schedule.
So before any more ships I'm currently making appear in mind blowing trailers, let's get stuck in!
The Overall Design:
Ok, this is going to be a little complex.
Firstly the size of this ship is annoying, it’s not as massive as a Super Star Destroyer or even as large as the Malevolence. But it’s still larger than a Star Destroyer and even a Starhawk.
To counter this I’ve kept it a large base ship, but put it around the scale of a Starhawk as it’s only 600 meters shorter (only, Jesus there is a lot more variance in size in this game compared to X-Wing).
However, I decided that due to the width of this ship and because of the cut out in its front, this ship shall fly sideways!
So it will function the same as all other ships, but is rotated 90 degrees. This is shown on the ship card with the ship and movement rotated 90 degrees. This means its’ front and rear hulls zone are depicted on its sides.
Next, I wanted to include the fact this ship could detach its core as a separate vessel. Therefore this ship is in fact two ships! Oh how I treat you all!
The Core ship is fully functional, if a little weak, with six hull and one shield in each hull zone. However, it is designed to only be like this if you need a cheap command ship or if it escapes the destroyed ring of the whole Lucrehulk.
The outer ring is much stronger with a hull equal to the Starhawk and more powerful weapons. It even got two variants like normal Armada ships. Its only issue is that without its core, it’s command-less. This means it cannot get command dials or tokens and is a sort of dead fish floating forward. I would also say this ship would come with a new rule saying;
You cannot deploy ships with a command value of 0.
This prevents people from bringing the outer ring without the core, as the ring is designed to only function with a core, but the core doesn't always need the outer ring.
The Variants:
Lucrehulk-Class Battleship:
This variant of the Lucrehulk is a much heavier and deadly ship, with solid amounts of weapon emplacements around it and an additional Weapon Team that can work with the Core’s Weapon Team.
Its squadron value is very respectable being as high as the prototype SSD’s, allowing this ship to fulfil both a heavy brawer and carrier role.
It even sacrifices some resilience for a better offence by getting a salvo defence token instead of an additional contain defence token like the next variant.
It's main flaw like the second variant is its lack of speed and manoeuvrability, however as this ship blurs the line between ship and star base, that makes a lot of sense.
Lucrehulk-Class Droid Control Ship:
Now, this is the variant I’m sure you were all wanting.
The Control Ship variant is much weaker in offence, losing a red and blue die in the front and sides. However, it does make up for it a little by swapping a blue for a red in its anti-squadron armament, letting it better cover its squadrons.
The real advantage for this ship is its almost ridiculous ten squadron value. This may seem large, but for comparison, the SSD, which is 1900 meters long, held a couple of hundred fighters. The Lucrehulk held 1500 vultures, plus ground units and was in control of every single one of their droid brains. So yeah, this ship deserves a value of ten at minimum!
To help you control these fighters more effectively it also comes with a trio of offensive retrofits to aid them, allowing you to increase your hanger space, activate them at longer ranges and still have room to spare!
The Upgrades:
Saak’ak:
Here we have the first Lucrehulk we see on screen and the command ship of the Trade Federation blockade around Naboo, the Saak’ak.
Because of this position as a blockade command ship, I felt the Saak’ak deserved to be one of the few ships to function well at speed zero.
This works like its only rival, Concord, but it only has two types of defence tokens, so there aren't many times you'd spend multiple defence tokens. Also if your opponent does target you, your command tokens will burn through much quicker than the Starhawk’s. This does mean you need to be careful of letting your opponent wear you down, but having a massive bulk of a ship like this sitting in a critical position is well worth any risk.
Vuutun Palaa:
I never noticed, but the Saak’ak isn’t the ship Anakin takes down. It turns out the Saak’ak and the bulk of the fleet left after the successful occupation of Naboo, leaving the Vuutun Palaa as the main command ship of the fleet. It even has a different appearance with the additional dishes across its hull.
Its role as a command vessel enabled it to control all the droids on and around Naboo so I went with an ability to match, letting all of your ships retain their command tokens if they save them and spend them with their command dials too.
Procurer:
The command ship of Mar Tuuk during the blockade of Ryloth, the Procurer was the centre of a trap to try to defeat Anakin’s fleet.
Mar’s ruthless tactics of sending his Vultures on suicide runs on the Republic ships inspired this card. You can send your AI squadrons on these sorts of runs, letting you slam them into enemy ships, bypassing their shields and crippling their hull.
Although this sacrifices your squadron, it pairs very well with Mar himself as you don’t affect the shields.
So you can send a few squadrons to wreck a ship's hull, then finish it off with Mar’s stronger attacks as the shields are still active.
Skytop Station:
The listening post Grievous used to spy on Republic fleet movements, Skytop was a repurposed Core Ship. Because of this, it is the only title to go on the Core Ship, preventing it from docking with its outer ring.
This is annoying but its ability makes up for it with it forcing your opponent to place one ship before any other ships are placed.
This allows you to better place your fleet to counter that ship.
Nute Gunray:
The leader of the invasion of Naboo, Gunray deserves a spot as the admiral of this ship.
I wanted to capture his snivelling cowardly ways while also providing an ability that can aid this ship.
Using your own ships as shields, that’s pretty on point for him.
In theory, you could do this with enemy ships as well, but it’s less likely they’ll choose that shot, however, that in itself is useful!
For the slow Lucrehulk that would normally sit in the back of a fleet, this would keep it much better protected which is useful as you would be probably sinking a large number of points into it.
Central Droid Computer Core:
As the main function for these ships after being carriers is to control the armies they bring to bear, it feels fitting to make upgrades to show this role.
The Droid Computer Core overwrites your other droid ship's command dials and forces them to perform your commands.
Doing so makes these commands more efficient, allowing you to gain both command dial and token, while still gaining other command tokens too.
This is very useful when paired with Vuutun Palaa, but if you’re taken down your ships suffer.
Although capital ships would have backup computer cores, it would take a while for the droids to recover as seen in the blockade of Ryloth, so the raid tokens show this breakdown in command chains.
Central Starfighter Computer Core:
Similar in design to the droid version, this core lets you more effectively control your droid starfighters.
Although the cost of losing all your AI squadrons if you are destroyed, and the squadrons being both slower and weaker during the squadron phase is massive, the advantage is just as large.
As the Droid Control Ship can command up to ten (or eleven with Expanded Hanger Bay) squadrons, that is a lot more firepower coming in each round from each of your droid starfighters.
You are talking about 10-12 hyena’s being able to roll 20-24 red dice against enemy ships in a round and that’s worth the risk in my mind.
Darth Maul:
As this is the only place it makes sense for him to appear, here he is!
I wanted to show Maul’s raw anger and overzealous attacks in this upgrade. So because of this he can use the loss of his allies to fuel his rage and let him order more attacks as a sort of supercharged salvo.
It can also work on himself, letting him yet again survive long enough to still be a pain to anyone who thought they may have killed him.
Swarm Coordinator:
As this ship so heavily depends on its squadrons, this new weapon team will help both this ship and its squadrons survive for longer or at least make your opponent pay.
Swarm Coordinator is like Dengar, except only for activated squadrons, but at a longer range.
This means if you use your command dial to activate a load of squadrons and they can’t reach their opponent’s fighters, they aren’t as vulnerable.
The Example Fleet:
Core Command Ship (40)
Count Dooku (30)
Central Droid Computer Core (10)
Flight Controllers (6)
Lucrehulk-Class Droid Control Ship (123)
Expanded Hanger Bay (5)
Boosted Comms (4)
Hardcell Transport (47)
Comms Net (2)
12x Hyena-Class Droid Bomber (132)
Total: 399
This fleet is a full-on overwhelming number of bombers. The Lucrehulk can launch and coordinate all 12 Hyenas with the constant addition of a squadron command token passed over by the Hardcell Transport. The Central Droid Computer Core lets your bomber all hit so much harder, and if you lose the Lucrehulk, you’ve practically lost the game anyway so hope those bombers can do their job!
The Conclusion:
Well like I said in the intro, this ship was going to be done in a week or so after I'd released a Rebel and Imperial ship, but after seeing it (or at least a predecessor to the lucrehulk) in the Eclipse trailer I just couldn't wait to post this.
I was already very happy and excited to do this ship as I feel it works really well. Making it two ships actually really helped my design and gives it an interesting feel as you want to try to hold out as long as possible as one whole ship then letting the Core flee before they are both destroyed.
I know this ship is rather popular and requested a lot to be added into the game, so I hope you all enjoyed my take on it and as normal, feel free to use these cards to help your fleet blockade the Republic's vital worlds!
Thank you all for reading,
Watcher Leader out.