He is playing an all drazi force so no league allies.
Your choices for providing initiative sinks is limited. I cannot recommend against the Sunhawk enough as it primarily gives your opponents fighters something to do. The guardhawk might be worth considering, if you can keep it near your own fighters when they lose a dogfight all those anti-fighter AD might get a shot. The new Eyehawk from S&P might be patrol...not sure, but it would be a decent choice of a set of bad options.
Skirmish is a tough set of choices. This is where your best initiative sink lives in the Darkhawk. Again this is a real paper tiger, if any ship with a beam or even a few dice of long range double/triple damage gets a look at you your dead. The jumphawk is a great buy, take one, as initiative is very important. And of course the reason this is all so painful is that this is your bread and butter the Warbird/Strikehawk combo is here and frankly better than either of the above choices for survivability.
Solarhawk...kinda a lonely ship here...but the most likely reason your Darkhawk survived a turn.
Stormfalcon is a decent attack ship but too hampered by the boresight, consider instead, at least for your first battle choice a Nightfalcon. The ships is less boresight dependent, has a command rating, is relatively large and carries enough fighters to scare a number of smaller ships. Start with the star snakes launched and make full use of the catapult to put the Sky Serpents forward and directly into escort by your more expendable snakes. Remember if the snakes go down in the dogfight, use the serpents to kill the offending fighters.
Depending on the level you are fighting at tactics vary. Lets look at a 5 battle fleet.
1 point - Nightfalcon
1 point - Solarhawk, Darkhawk x2
1 point - Solarhawk, Darkhawk x2
1 point - Solarhawk, Strikehawk x2
1 point - Solarhawk, Warbird x2 (replace with eyehawks if in use)
Theory here is that you have all good targets (not really the Warbird/Strikehawks but you get the idea.) With that many Solarhawks on the table your opponent will be hard pressed to kill them all. But he will kill them, try not be rattled by this. You have not given up a single skirmish choice to have them and the combined power of that beam squad should make a mess of whatever it wants.
Use the Nightfalcon as your first sink, moving forward catapulting the serpents out front. Follow with the Darkhawks on Close Blast Doors, then the scouts if you can find a spot that is inside 24 but not in primary weapons range of the enemy (not easy). Bring in the Strikehawks as a squadron (or paired with a Warbird each if no scouts.) Only then move in the Solarhawks.
If you have won initiative, you should have deployed the Solarhawks on a flank, I recommend one flank as you don't have the range/speed to guarantee you won't be engaged piecemeal if you try for two. Darkhawks form the middle with a close in flank opposite the Solarhawk one for the Strikes/warbirds.
Try to cover your fighters with the Nightfalcons twin link on the second turn when dogfights are most likely, you will still likely lose them but at least it should be costly. Also realize you won't have enough dogfighters for true escorting, so place your three dogfighters to occupy as much space as possible around your bombers. You can protect them better this way than being drawn off by the first flight to come by. If you can get even three of those 8 AD roman candles in on a ship you should do well.
If you can make use of hyperspace jump ins for the solarhawks. Make him work around to get the shot and eviserate anything that doesn't. (I shouldn't use words I can't spell but I'm tired.)
The Darkhawk bombardment should be able to penatrate even an interceptor guarded target and fish for the good crits. In this case there are really only two good results, speed zero or no fire. No fire is of course just generically good, but all stop lets you charge forward and board...all your ships carry good amounts of troops, take every oppurtunity to use them. Even your darkhawks, if your already in heavy weapons range just charge as your dead men anyway...least this way the marines will live on the enemy's ship a while longer than you will.
In all cases you should take your shot and all power through the enemy when you can with this fleet.
Anyway its one fleet....one possible strategy, different from the tourney styles which were mired in the Warbid/Strikehawk mold from when we weren't allowed variants.
Ripple
