Tuesday, February 20, 2018

Hardened Bulkheads added to Offensive Retrofits

Continuing to slowly but surely update articles to wave 7 by adding Hardened Bulkheads to the offensive retrofits article:

"All the work order says is 'paint it red and make it more orky', does anyone know what that means?"
Hardened Bulkheads is mostly straightforward, but there are some interesting interactions that bear mentioning:
  • Obviously, it's for Large ships only. No medium or small ships allowed!
  • It's common for people to misread this as "you don't take damage from overlaps involving smaller ships," but that's not quite how it works. You take 1 fewer facedown damage card. This can be an important distinction in a few circumstances:
    • When you are overlapped by a Garel's Honor Hammerhead, you will take a faceup damage card. Garel's Honor effectively dodges the Hardened Bulkheads by delivering a damage card faceup, which Hardened Bulkheads doesn't prevent.
      • It's important to note that Garel's Honor only does its thing when it is the one ramming you, not the other way around. So should you overlap Garel's Honor during your own maneuver, Hardened Bulkheads will work just fine.
    • If you are suffering from the Damaged Controls faceup damage card effect, you will suffer an extra facedown damage card whenever you overlap a ship or obstacle (in addition to the regular effects), which will result in one total facedown damage card being applied to your Hardened Bulkheads ship if it overlaps a smaller ship (1+1-1=1).
Hardened Bulkheads is worth considering on large ships that like to get into close range where they're likely to be bumping into other ships, such as ISD-Is, Kuat ISDs, and Ordnance MC75s. The main competition for the offensive retrofit slots for ships designed to be short-ranged bruisers is Boarding Troopers, which can set up some nasty double-arcs, but if your build isn't comfortable using them (especially when they ask for the weapon team slot too), Hardened Bulkheads are relatively inexpensive and much less cumbersome to use and they upgrade overlapping from an attractive option in certain circumstances to a much more guilt-free tactic against anything but other large ships. They're also worth considering on Command HMC80s that use Engine Techs, as it allows the HMC80 to trigger Engine Techs to double-ram a smaller ship in its front arc without taking any hull damage.

Hardened Bulkheads can also be worth considering on large ships should your meta have a lot of ramming small ships that you're really like to be exempt from. No more Gladiators double-ramming to finish off your Hardened Bulkhead large ships!

2 comments:

  1. Can you expand on the rules mechanic explaining why you say that Garel's Honor "dodges" Hardened Bulkheads? The way Garel's Honor is written, it does not directly deal a face-up damage card nor is this a second damage card, rather the normal 1 damage card delivered for overlapping another ship is delivered face-up. Hardened Bulkheads does not specify face-down or face-up cards, just one less total damage card. Since Garel's Honor is only delivering one damage card, Hardened Bulkheads should work against it.

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    1. Hardened Bulkheads specifically states (in the circumstances) "deal 1 fewer facedown damage card to your ship." It only works on facedown damage cards. Garel's doesn't deal facedown damage cards, it instead deals a faceup damage card. The word instead means that the card is faceup through the entire process - it's not a facedown card that is later flipped faceup, it is a faceup card from start to finish and therefore outside the purview of Hardened Bulkheads.

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