Gearing Up for Battle 2: Armada Fix Squadron Plates

Little bit lighthearted today, no major strategy to cover in this article.  Way back in April (halfway back in this blog's lifetime, haha!) Eric wrote a post about enhancing your Armada peripherals.  Carrying case, laser pen, Recreator Studios fancy distance X rulers, etc.  Well today is a continuation of that, with regards to squadron play, specifically, Armada Fix's Squadron Command Plates

Oh, 1995, when ska and Reel Big Fish were things. "The record company's gonna give me lots of money...."

John Updates 9-26

Rebel Commanders I've updated with links:
Jan Dodonna 
Garm Bel Iblis
Mon Mothma
Carlist Rieekan
Admiral Gial Ackbar
Airen Cracken
Crix Madine
Leia Organa (Commander) 
Minor grammatical changes to them all as well, but no major new content.  Sato is not on here because he deserves a rewrite, but that's likely weekend work.

Any Admiral that I can strongly suggest using Hammerheads with (Mothma and Madine, for example) got a slight blurb in their "common ships" sections.  I don't have full experience trying all of these out, but I will update these when/if I get experience and try them.

Grand Inquisitor added to Imperial officers article

The Imperial officers article has been updated, with some cleanup involving the Quasar now officially being released and the addition of the Grand Inquisitor. The ISD article has again been updated to mention when I'd recommend Leading Shots on an ISD-I and to mention the Grand Inquisitor as an option on ships with Quad Battery Turrets due to his synergy with them on an ISD. That should, to my knowledge, completely update all of my articles to wave 6.

That Grand Inquisitor section added to the Imperial officers article is below:

Where is Spain? Why does everyone ask if I'm from there? It's so unexpected!

The Grand Inquisitor requires a little clarification before we go any further:

• The line "when an enemy ship... changes its speed" is a little more nebulous than I'd like. It can be construed to mean "its speed is changed from any effect," which would allow you to trigger the Grand Inquisitor when using a Tractor Beam or some such, but consensus seems to be that it refers to the ship itself ("changes its speed," being "the ship('s owner) choosing to change its speed") making the decision and not from effects being forced on it. I'd appreciate an FAQ on this sooner or later, though.
• That said, you can use speed-down effects to encourage the owner of the ship to speed it back up to trigger the Grand Inquisitor, though!
• Remember that you can't premeasure with the maneuver tool until your ship gets to its determine course step, so when the Grand Inquisitor triggers you don't get the benefit of seeing how you like a different speed and the options it gives you like you would with a navigate dial and/or token.

The Grand Inquisitor fills a bit of an odd niche by allowing you to quasi-navigate during an opponent's turn but only if a nearby enemy ship changes its speed as well. Because of his restrictions, if you're looking to use the Grand Inquisitor as an on-demand navigate token, I'd recommend looking to Wulff Yularen for an extra 3 points or use a Veteran Captain or Skilled First Officer if you only anticipate a one-time emergency need. You really don't want to be relying on the Grand Inquisitor only to find your opponent has denied you the triggering event you need for him to work.

Okay, so when would you want to use the Grand Inquisitor over a more reliable officer that can help you change your speed? A few situations come to mind:

• On ISDs or (to a lesser extent) VSDs using Quad Battery Turrets, the Grand Inquisitor can be quite helpful as he allows you to slow down during your opponent's turn, prior to your attack with the Quad Battery Turrets. Given that heavier enemy ships are often slowing down to avoid the extra blue die when the dice start flying and lighter enemy ships are often speeding up to get out of your front arc, the Grand Inquisitor often has ample opportunities to trigger and can assist you with getting your speed into the "just right" category where you'll be able to use your QBTs and also navigate as you prefer.
• In conjunction with a navigate token for larger speed changes. This is another feature where I feel like the Grand Inquisitor is likely best on an ISD, but any ship that enjoys going between speed 1 and 3 and back appreciates a 1-point bump from the Inquisitor followed by a navigate token spend, especially if it's generally busy performing other commands. The trick is that the ship in question needs to prompt speed changes from enemy ships to be able to quasi-reliably pull this off, and that's why the ISD is a good candidate whereas an Arquitens or Raider, for example, is not.

With that said, the Grand Inquisitor isn't bad but I overall don't recommend him much outside an ISD, and that's an officer seat with a lot of competition. I have had more success with him on a Quad Battery Turrets ISD-II than I expected, however, so I'd definitely recommend giving it a shot at some point.

Checking it Twice! Individual Activations

So we've hit the start of each turn in our last article in this series.  Now, we break this down to individual ships and how to know when to activate them.

I suggest activating the Star Destroyer first.

John Updates 9/5!

Well, Eric spurred me into it, hitting some of my own articles to update or check for updates.  I just hit:

Turbolaser article (updated for ISDs with QBTs, and potentially Quad Turbolaser Cannons on Cymoons)
Generic Officers (nothing much to update beyond adding in links)
Support Team upgrades (links)
Defensive Retrofits (links)

After I finish one of the several articles I'm writing, I'll start hitting commanders and ships and updating them more.  I have several Commanders I need to update, and I know that for SURE (with crazy plans for them all.....).  I will fully admit to having been spending the last several days playing Walking Dead Season 3 (spoiler alert: alcohol keeps the crying away!), so Eric has been outdoing me on the blogging.  Eric and I have a giant list of articles we're planning, so we'll keep those going soon!

8/30-9/5 updates

In the past few days, I've updated several articles with new hyperlinks and minor editing and such (I realize this is getting repetitive, I just like to let people know that I'm sprucing things up and that we've got a commitment to keeping the articles up to date as new waves come out so they'll be relevant in perpetuity). Those articles include:

• How to black dice!
• Interdictor Cruiser 
• Admiral Konstantine
• Ion cannon upgrades
• Arquitens Light Cruiser
• Moff Jerjerrod
• Lambda-class Shuttle
• TIE Defender
• VT-49 Decimator
• TIE Phantom
• Weapon teams 
• Red (assault) objectives, wave five
• Blue (navigation) objectives, wave five
• Yellow (defense) objectives, wave five 

No major changes were made, although the Interdictor article got a bit more work due to Disposable Capacitors improving the Interdictors' stock. As we get closer to more recent articles, the amount of cleanup/linking required diminishes greatly and so hopefully we should be 100% up to date on the older articles soonish.

Next up for me is an article on something new, as editing older articles is slowly rotting my brain.