Wassup y’all, I should start this tournament review with an explanation of how I got around to playing Moralo anyway. I started my armada career by playing Quad Pelta for a couple years and really enjoyed the major ideas of that fleet (Hero-ball and Fighter Coordination Team abuse). I knew that I wanted my next fleet to keep similar ideas (mainly the FCTs). I started messing around with Moralo and loved it. However, Moralo has always been a semi-troubled tournament list. He is an archetype where it is extremely easy to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. There is significant tournament fatigue, and there are some extremely problematic matchups.

I am also going to throw in this disclaimer: Do not play Moralo in anything below a major level event, especially if you are a slow player.

Fleet Breakdown

We are going to start with the most important part of the list: the squads. The first major decision that strikes us is deciding how many Lambdas to take. This will be the basic question that the rest of the list is built around. For the answer, we will look to the past. Throughout Moralo’s history, there have really only been two archetypes that have seen success at high level tournaments. The first and most standard variant is "German Moralo." Built off of the back of the already successful German Sloane archetype (Centicore, Squall, "Lifeboat" Raider and two Gozantis), German Moralo is two Lambdas with plenty of offense in the rest of the squads. It thrives on keep-away play using superior squadron range and firepower to harvest enemy squadrons with very little risk. The other, far more aggressive archetype, is "Polish Moralo." It features four Lambdas, a Quasar and two Gladiators. This is an aggressive form of Moralo, focused on massacring enemy squads before doing damage to non-PDIC (Point Defense Ion Cannons) ships.

Meta Calls

I played German Moralo in the Battle of Endor tournament and in my humble opinion, I’m not sure that version of Moralo is viable without perfect matchups. The challenge, and we will certainly come back to this, is Jaypalmany’s world’s winning list. Jay’s double ISD is single-handedly the most challenging matchup for Moralo. It is a completely unplayable matchup for that style of Moralo because JJ ensures that you can’t keep ships away from him, you don’t have the token pushing ability to flip their Fire Lanes enough to save a win out of the match, and, seeing as it was the world’s winning list, everyone seemed to be trying it. The other major problem is Defender Vader. Vader Defender can almost out-range moralo with only 2x Lambdas (technically Moralo still has him by a solid amount but it forces him way out of where he “wants” to be). Additionally, Flight Controllers with Vader + Jendon is basically a guaranteed dead Moralo. Major problem obviously. So, two Lambda Moralo, in my experience, didn’t seem to be viable. Combine this with the herculean mental load that comes with balancing four Lambdas and the reduced number of escorts, I found myself drifting towards three Lambda Moralo.

Three Lambdas

With three Lambdas, you have a technical max activation potential for Moralo of 9 activations. Additionally, three Lambdas can be spread over a very wide space, often times letting you Squall at least one Lambda. Three Lambdas also gives you barely enough points to bring everything else I wanted in squads. First, cheap escorts is mandatory. Black Squadron and TIE Advanced help you win by absorbing enemy squad attacks just long enough for Moralo to win the squad war for you. Against a standard Imperial 134 alpha, if anything whiffs too hard into an escort, things can regularly live on 2 hull, which is more than enough for them to do crazy amounts of damage back. Maarek is a must because of Sloane and then Vader Defender is here because he is absolutely insane into Rebel and Imperial 134s, which (barring JJ Double ISD) are your hardest matchups and tend towards being more direct comparisons of skill against the player you are up against.

The Quasar

To finish out the squad half of the list, it is time to talk about the Quasar. The Quasar carries a ton of the load in this fleet, it is effectively your points fortress, squad pusher, and Moralo trigger all in one. This forces a weird duality onto the fleet where you can not afford to lose the Quasar but also cannot afford to have it too far away without losing a lot of the fleet’s efficiency. The solution I found is having a robust token economy with the Comms Net Gozanti and the Veteran Captain. This gives the Quasar a ton of speed control to find the perfect place for it to sit. It also allows you to do funky maneuvers like drop the Quasar to speed one to corner quickly, and then accelerate out of the turn. Additionally, there are a decent amount of games where the Quasar is perfectly happy to drop to speed zero for a turn or two before quickly accelerating and moving out.

The rest of the build is quite standard. Flight Controllers is mandatory for dealing with scatter aces, especially the A-Wing aces. Expanded Hanger Bay allows for stronger alphas and consistent squadron pushing versus squadless lists. Boosted Comms lets the Quasar position more freely. Squall is mandatory for general flexibility and triggering Moralo attacks, especially versus ships attempting to chase down the Quasar.

This is the way.

Thus, we have now spent roughly 300 points and can beat pretty much all good matchups or put up a strong fight into most even matchups. The problem left is that there are a couple matchups that are auto-losses at this point. Mainly, Imperial 134 (especially Tie Interceptors or Tie Defender based variants), Double ISD and certain larges (mainly Liberties) that always bring Point Defense Ion Cannons. Additionally, the squads still need some help so one of the two ships needs to have an FCT.

The Last Pieces of the Puzzle

The discussion becomes Arquitens versus Gladiator. In my Endor experiment, I disliked the Arquitens a lot. Its nav chart makes it predictable. Even with Targeting Beacon rerolls the damage output just isn’t there and it does not provide any specific benefits that Demolisher cannot provide. On the other hand, Demolisher produces plenty of damage, maintains plenty of survivability with its brace token and synergizes well with the squads through using Demolisher for flak. It also benefits more from Targeting Beacons as it can FCT to reposition Targeting Beacon tokens before firing its side arc. Lastly, it synergizes incredibly well with Sloane to threaten ISDs that get too greedy and lose their brace to squadron attacks.

The last part of the list was always going to be a Raider 1-class. Originally, it was a pure lifeboat, ensuring that I always stayed on the table and providing some minor token support to the Quasar with Hondo. However, after the third or fourth ISD that limped away from me on two or three hull, I decided that I needed more ship to ship dice. Thus, the Raider evolved into a cheap torpedo. This became incredibly helpful in the matchup versus ISD Quasar Sloane because the Raider could Corvus redeploy anywhere to hunt the Quasar such that if the opponent did not send semi-significant resources to go deal with the Raider, it could trade up for the Quasar at an opportune time.

Day 1

(T5 link for day 1 is here.)

Round 1 - Bodhi Lovely (@Bodhi)

This is quite possibly one of the best possible matchups for Moralo. No PDIC in sight and only a stall ball of three hull squads. The game plan here is to divide both fleets in half and then play 200 points versus 200 points. Ideally, my Quasar and 134 plays against his stallball, Providence and two Gozantis while Demo and the Raider play versus Patriot’s Fist. This is pretty much exactly what happened during the game, he deployed in the middle, I put the Quasar on the Providence’s side and Demo + the Raider on the Patriot’s Fist side. Both halves resolved in my favor, I lost the escorts and the Raider in exchange for the table. Final score: 400-71, 10-1.

Round 2 - Andy Graber (@Arcwelder)

This is everything I was afraid of coming into the tournament. Interceptors are incredibly dangerous for my list because of their insane range, JJ makes it very hard to run away from the ISD and PDIC means that it is incredibly hard to kill his ISD unless I can fire both black dice ships into it in one round. Seeing as this was round 2 and I was sitting on a 10 into a bad matchup, my goal was to play very conservatively. The plan for conservative play is to center deploy the Quasar and Goz with the squads (Corvus dropped them off there), Demo and Raider are in the corner I am going to (pointing out to meet anyone coming at me). This was the plan I executed this round and Andy came charging into me with the ISD in the lead and the Demolisher trailing. He chose to accept the alpha onto his ISD and then counter-alpha with the squads. Moralo decided that his time had come and rolled straight fire into his ISD and did not lose any damage to PDIC which more or less sealed the fate of the ISD. He was able to clean up most all of my squads and my two black dice ships in exchange for the ISD and some squads to make a small 6-5 win to me. To reiterate, this was an absolute dicing. If Moralo rolls any worse, I do not kill his ISD and he wins big. Final Score: 271 – 231, 6-5

Round 3 - Jason Dedrick (@jznddrck)

I thought this would have been good matchup for me but ended up being deceptively dangerous. The amount of long range damage output in this fleet was a problem, especially the SPHA-T. None of my ships can take even a singular close range SPHAT. Additionally, he has so much speed that pickin a hole for the Quasar to break through is difficult. Luckily, this is also everything my fleet is prepped to deal with. Moralo is murder to his Venator if he ever over-extends it and can melt through a charger. I don’t remember much specifics from this match, the biggest thing was that the Raider was an MVP. With a Concentrate Fire command, the Raider fulfills a lead blocker role, opening a hole for the Quasar to flee through. Ultimately, this one came down to a maneuver where my Quasar barely stayed away from the SPHAT. Final Score: 306 – 77, 9-2

Round 4 - Dennis Raschke (@Tokra)

This was a non-game, however, it was enough of a game that I’m very glad I did not have to try and win it later. Full credit to Dennis, he completely outplayed me in the game and earned himself the win. Score: 5-6

Day 2

(T5 link here.)

Round 1 - Grzegorz Ludwin

Welcome to the only opponent who outbid me during the tournament. Despite that, I do really like the matchup because of Demo and the Raider versus his ships. The CR90 is really limited of where it can be pre-drop because of these threats and I can induce the drop earlier than he might want to with the raider. Additionally, first player Flight Controllers Vader is a threat to his list. We played his Superior Positions, with me deploying in the middle ish, with Corvus redeploying in line with his CR90. My squad alpha was incredible, killing off Lando and Hera and stranding Dutch to shoot the Tie Advanced for most of the game. The Raider induced the drop into a position where neither ship could threaten my Quasar. This allowed my Quasar to drop to speed 0 in a safe position, allowing Demolisher to be my first activation until it died. I traded Demo and some squads for his MC75, Hammerhead, squads and some farming. Final Score: 369 – 190, 8 – 3

Round 2 - Paul Tomashevskyi (@PT106)

This is exactly what Moralo wants to run into: slow, squadless ships with minimal PDIC. It was a forgone conclusion from the start, Paul played excellently to only give me one of his ships. He positioned in a corner with his ISD swinging out in front of his other three ships, forcing my Quasar and Demo away earlier than I wanted to. Moralo snaked around the side to kill the interdictor. The absolute MVP this match was his ISD’s Heavy Fire Zone. I ended up getting his interdictor for a 99-0 (7-4).

Round 3 - Andy Graber (@Arcwelder)

This was definitely the game of my tournament. Andy center-deployed while I picked the corner opposite of Demo. The gameplan from both of us seemed completely different. He still kept Demo back as a sweeper, but the ISD was way more conservative. He threw the squads in towards the end of round 2 and rolled absolutely terribly which let me clean up most of the squads he threw in. The ISD turned off before being able to put a serious hurting on the Quasar, which encouraged him to drive Demo out towards my Quasar but didn’t quite end up killing it. Game ended as a 224-64 (8-3).

Round 4 - Chris Fritz (@Truthiness)

This was a very quick game. Some classic round 4 fatigue really caught up to Chris and I ended up winning the squad war extremely cleanly. Some last minute heroics managed to claw him back into the game making the final result 214-98 (7-4).

Mistakes were made

Day 3

(T5 link here.)

Round 1 - Adam Newton (@AngryEwok)

I center-deployed, he corner-deployed intending to hug the board edge and non-game. However, after taking a walk around the tables, I noticed that this was going to be a very high scoring day 3. I proceeded to dive in completely recklessly and lost some squads before running everything away. If there is a lesson to learn here: don’t let other games influence how you play. Score ended as 0-68, 4-7.

Round 2 - Jacek Jaco (@Jaco)

Second verse, same as the first. This time without crazy dive in. No notes. 0-0, 6-5

Round 3 - Rhys Aghatabay (@Aghataraptor)

Now this was a fantastic game. He deployed in a corner with his Victory on the inside and Onager on the outside. My Raider was able to flank around his Onager and do its damage before dying, Demo cut across from the other side to get the Victory with the squads, and the Quasar floated at medium of Lambdas and out of beam range. However, I ended up being too aggressive with the Quasar and after sadly leaving the Onager on one hull left, it was able to annihilate both Demo and the Quasar before dying to squads for the mutual tabling. 400-400, 6-5

Conclusion

So, there you have it, that was my tournament. Starting with the important things, I want to thank all of my opponents for being fantastic (including Bodhi, Rob, Amber and the others who I ended up playing Malediction with between rounds). Special shoutout to Andy for having to play against my Moralo twice and Bodhi who had to play against both Moralo players. Huge congrats to Chris for winning the whole thing, Jason for doing the impossible with GAR and Adam for not losing a single game throughout the tournament.

As for the conclusions about the fleet, no notes. It turned out to be the perfect meta call. A downswing of Imp 134 and an upswing of all kinds of Rebels and Clone Wars meant that there were much fewer of Moralo’s harder matchups and plenty of Moralo’s best matchups. Similarly, bids were down across the board so 12 ended up being more than enough.

The big idea is simple though: Armada is alive and well. The game is in a fantastic place and I have full confidence in the community groups to continue this fantastic game. ARC's 2026 Worlds was fantastic. Get involved in the community and keep playing the game!