Sunday, August 20, 2017

More updates 8/20/2017

The TIE Interceptor, TIE Bomber, Admiral Motti, Admiral Screed, Faction breakdown, Grand Moff Tarkin, Victory-class Star Destroyer, and Offensive retrofit articles have all been updated.

For the most part, I added hyperlinks to other relevant articles and did some minor to moderate text editing to make points clearer, fixed the rare typo, and removed any ambiguity left over from anything prior to the errata we received two months ago (particularly relating to Rhymer, who keeps popping up in all kinds of places I didn't expect him to be). Nothing major.

The VSD and offensive retrofit articles had some more substantial changes:

The VSD article had some larger updates. The below were added in their respective parts of the article:

Consider speed 1. This isn't to say don't ever go speed 2, merely consider speed 1 at all times. VSDs have a tendency to overshoot targets heading towards them when they go speed 2 because they simply can't reposition well enough with their limited yaw. Once the enemy is past them, it's nearly impossible to get the front arc on target again. When going speed 1 (particularly with the extra yaw from a nav dial), you get more time with enemies in your front arc. There's a time and place for speed 2, but at all times consider speed 1 for this reason. It also combines very well with Quad Battery Turrets (more on those later).

Quad Battery Turrets are custom-made for most VSD builds. A 5 point turbolaser upgrade that adds a blue die against any ship that's set to a higher speed than you is extremely valuable on a VSD: it's cheap, you'll frequently be a lower speed than most enemy ships (to repeat myself from earlier, speed 1 is a fine speed for a VSD), and adding a blue die to all your attacks at any range helps improve the damage and chance for accuracy from your front arc and makes your side and rear arcs once an enemy sneaks past you more respectable when you need to settle for second best. You'll notice I recommend the Quad Battery Turrets on all my VSD builds below and for good reason. The only exception to that might be when the VSDs are fielded with Moff Jerjerrod, who frequently likes using them at speed 2 for the extra yaw from his ability. In those cases, I'd consider replacing them with a Spinal Armament.

Due to Disposable Capacitors, the VSD-II has a new lease on life as the most dangerous (Imperial) ship in the game at long range once per game. This has significantly reinvigorated interest in a ship that was once largely ignored. Because the Disposable Capacitors allow you to once per game discard the 3 point offensive upgrade to allow you to fire your blue dice at long range for the rest of the round, it allows a VSD-II to attack long-range targets with 6 (or more) dice, usually on turn 2. It's enough to put a serious dent into even sneakier faster ships like flotillas and corvettes just simply due to sheer weight of dice and on a good roll can even one-shot a sneaky flotilla provided you produce 2 accuracy icons and 4 total damage! With all that said, the best way to build VSD-IIs right now is to maximize the value you get from the Disposable Capacitors and that looks like...

Big Bertha
Disposable Capacitors + Gunnery Team + Quad Battery Turrets + Leading Shots
Big Bertha isn't cheap at 104 points base (prior to officer or other upgrades), but she's capable of tossing some serious pain downfield at long range on her Disposable Capacitors super-turn. It's mean. Just be very careful to get your attacks lined up and get maximum value from your Disposable Capacitors on their turn. Another thing to remember with this build is that the Quad Battery Turrets' extra blue die is added at any range, so non-Capacitors long ranged shots can still benefit from the extra blue die you can feed to Leading Shots for a reroll if your red dice turn out poorly.

With a commander like Vader I'd consider replacing the Leading Shots with a critical ion cannon upgrade like Ion Cannon Batteries as Vader can handle the reroll for you due to his commander ability. Again, as I said with the VSD-I, I'd consider Spinal Armament with Jerjerrod over the Quad Battery Turrets, but that's your call.

The VSD-I carrier build was removed, as I can't recommend it over the Quasar now. The VSD builds were altered slightly to include Quad Battery Turrets for the reasons given above and I included a brief discussion of External Racks as well.

The offensive retrofit article added a new section on Disposable Capacitors:

If you keep breaking your toys, we won't buy you new ones!
Disposable Capacitors are the new hotness from wave 6 that have brought a vitality to the offensive retrofit slot on several ships that weren't interested in being carriers. A few things to note before we go much further:
  • Remember that Disposable Capacitors can only be equipped on small or medium ships. I know it says it right there on the card, but because there haven't been any other size-limited upgrades until now, people can on occasion forget about the restriction and start daydreaming about putting it (illegally) on an ISD or HMC80.
  • The triggering window is when you activate the ship the Capacitors are equipped to. 
    • Because you can pre-measure any time you want, you can measure the range from that ship to its intended targets prior to officially activating it, so you never need to guess if the Capacitors will be useful or not.
    • Remember that the "when you activate" window is at the very beginning of your activation. If you've already moved past the reveal command dial step, you're too late. Some people may not let you use the Capacitors if you miss your window, so be careful!
  • The blue dice extending effect only works against ships, not squadrons.
  • Attacks made at long range are still at long range and so evades will work at full strength.
  • The effect lasts until the end of the round, so your blue dice will still go out to long range for effects like Fire Lanes.
Disposable Capacitors are a breath of fresh air, particularly for Imperial ships that frequently have unfilled offensive retrofit slots and a decent number of blue dice, such as the VSD-II, Interdictor, and Raider-II. Being able to use your blue dice at long range once per game frequently means you get one extra round of full dice attacks in from the ship in question, often on turn 2. The pile of dice at long range, especially from a heavier ship like a VSD-II, can be extremely impressive.

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