Imperial article updates

I've done some smaller revisions to older articles, bringing the following articles up to date:

• Quasar article cleaned up a bit, builds updated, and includes discussion on new wave 7 officer options.
• Tarkin article updated to note interaction with Sovereign title.
• Annulling Avenger Boarding Troopers article updated to include Bail and Pryce as counter-options as well as a mention of Captain Brunson.

Eric's Adepticon wrap-up

Adepticon had a Thursday and a Saturday tournament this year, both 3 rounds. I attended both events. Adepticon is always fun and there's so much to see and do, I highly recommend going if you can. This year was the Legion launch party, so FFG was there in force and Legion was selling like hotcakes. This isn't a Legion blog, however, so let's cover the 2018 Adepticon Armada tournaments!

John's Adepticon Write-Up!

So, first, this is going to be a bit longer, as I combine what I remember of Thursday into what I do of Saturday.  Thursday I got more out of (as it's going to let me write the Deadbeat Daddus article) FOR THE BLOG, but Saturday I got more out of FOR ME, so, you know, wash.

I'll be there for you, Mal. Cassian said I had to.

Interdictor article updated!

I'll be posting up synopses of Adepticon eventually, but the short version is: I got second place on Thursday and took first on Saturday. Both times I had an Interdictor in my fleet and I loved the thing. Interdictors are a legit thing in competitive play now and so I rewarded the oft-maligned triangle with an updated article to reflect that. In particular, the "Tanky Tech Triangle" build and some of the discussion on upgrades (Brunson and Heavy Ion Emplacements) has been added.

Boarding teams article updated

Darth Vader and Jyn Erso have been added to the boarding teams article:

I'm in ur ship, killin ur doodz lol

Darth Vader seems to keep popping up in new places in the game, and in this case that place is aboard the enemy ship, discarding one of their upgrades that isn't a commander. Fierce! The only rule reminder is that Vader can only be used once in a fleet in any capacity, so no using him when he's already your commander or on a TIE Advanced, for example.

Some enemy fleets are relying on ships with specific upgrades to really go nuts (for example, the Home One and Yavaris titles can define entire fleets) and Vader can punish them. However, some fleets just... aren't. Going out of your way to include Vader on a ship where the sacrifices in upgrade slots makes it otherwise pretty bad (like on either Raider chassis, for example) isn't a reliable gamble for that reason. Vader does have a home, however, on ships that were planning on getting to close range anyways and can do fine without otherwise filling an offensive retrofit and weapon team slot, most notably the Kuat ISD (and to a lesser extent, the VSD-I). Vader is also used pretty flexibly in this regard as he can definitely try to use his lightsaber sharpie to graffiti titles (Home One? More like Home None, amirite?) and other fleet-buff upgrades like fleet commands and the like, but is also quite useful at stripping off defensive upgrades like Electronic Countermeasures, Lando or the Adomonition title prior to your Kuat opening fire.

For extra fun times, see if you can get Vader to trash some Rapid Launch Bays or the Profundity title before the equipped ship can put the models inside on the table 😈.

Hey whatever happened to her, anyways?

Jyn Erso can be used in two ways: either she can hit a ship to give it 2 raid tokens or she can gain you a victory token when boarding an objective ship. Let's talk about the raid tokens first. In short, when used this way Jyn Erso is a worse Cham Syndulla. Both raid tokens can be cleared by discarding a command dial or if the ship in question has good token coverage, they can be removed individually by discarding the corresponding tokens. It's an annoyance no doubt and in the right circumstances it could be a clutch annoyance, but Cham in general is superior at those kinds of command-screwage tricks and his sabotage can persist through multiple rounds. Jyn at the very least is likely superior against Command 1 ships, but they have the weakest command resolutions overall, so that's not really a lot to brag about.

Where Jyn gets particularly interesting is her victory-token use. There are plenty of objectives with ships that have objective tokens, but what she needs is an objective like that that also has meaningful victory tokens. At the moment, that list is rather short: Blockade Run (when you are first player only), Intel Sweep, and Capture the VIP.

Intel Sweep in particular can be an interesting objective to include with Jyn because she allows you to harvest 2 victory tokens in one round - one from her boarding the enemy objective ship and one from your own objective ship grabbing a token. That can create an almost-insurmountable lead in an objective that normally tops out at 5 possible victory tokens where each side can only grab one per round. It also means that Jyn's ship might be able to destroy the enemy objective ship after boarding it, which should have Intel Sweep wrapped up nicely for you. Capture the VIP is a bit weirder - you need to board whichever ship currently has the VIP, at which point you'll get a victory token worth 50 points. If your enemy keeps the VIP, it's a wash. If you take the VIP back, you'll end up with a 100 point gain. This is another circumstance where if you can not only board the objective ship but then destroy it, you're nearly certain to get a big windfall of points.

Because of how the objectives work, Jyn seems best when used by the first player in Capture the VIP or Blockade Run and works fine on either side with Intel Sweep. Therefore she's not really the kind of thing you can really build your objective suite around (besides Intel Sweep, and she can kind of be a failsafe for screwing up Capture the VIP I suppose), but she can be helpful for picking opposing objectives.

Adepticon 2018!

John and I (and many of our Armada friends) are hitting up Adepticon tomorrow for the first of two 3-round tournaments (the second being on Saturday). At this point, I've played over a dozen games using wave 7 and I still feel like there are a lot of things I want to try and that the meta hasn't come close to settling just yet as the community processes everything, reacts to currently-hot builds and then counter-builds, etc. Suffice it to say that is cause for some concern but also excitement, as I'm very curious to see what everyone brings. John and I will be updating once we've recuperated with some tournament reports and the like, I'm sure. Keep your eyes peeled!

If anyone is there looking for us, the plan for Thursday (and Saturday for me, provided I can get laundry done on Friday) is to wear our Chicagoland Armada t-shirts. They're blue with the Chicago flag, but Armada-style. Most of the guys in our group will be wearing theirs, but just ask for John or Eric and either you'll have found us or you'll find someone who can point you our way!

Updated ISD article!

The new ISD article retains some elements of the previous one, but it's pretty much been reworked from the ground up to include the new titles, Kuat, and Cymoon but keep the total length about the same due to some streamlining. Normally I post the new bits in these update articles, but I'd just be reposting the entire article, so go give it a look!

Rebel Officer Updates!

Bail and Draven in the Rebel Officers section!

http://cannotgetyourshipout.blogspot.com/2017/06/rebel-officers.html

Imperial-class Star Destroyer article under construction

It's time to update the ISD article to wave 7, which means it's going to be temporarily unavailable as I rebuild a lot of it from the ground up. With two new chassis available in wave 7, I'm going to be changing the article around to try to make all that raw information as digestible as possible.

Caitken and Shollan added to weapon teams article

Continuing to update the blog to wave 7 by adding the Caitken and Shollan to the weapon team article:

"Seriously, Caitken, clear your browser history before sharing this thing. I've seen things that can't be unseen."

Imperial officers updated to wave 7

This is a more substantial update, this time to the Imperial officers article, and here are the four new contestants:

Defensive Retrofit Updates

Added in EWS, updated AP and Cluster Bombs.  Hit the jump for the relevant portions:

http://cannotgetyourshipout.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-best-defensive-retrofits.html

Intensify Firepower Update!

Updated the fleet commands with Intensify Firepower! (text below, Pelta updates later....)

Generic Officers Update

Strategic Adviser is in the generic officers section! Text below!

Ordnance article overhauled, Wide-Area Barrage and Ordnance Pods added

The ordnance article has been reworked from the top down, given we have 2 more options now in wave 7 and the old "brackets" system would, over time, become ponderous and unhelpful. I also streamlined it a bit to keep it from getting too long given the extra upgrades. Of relevance to wave 7, I added sections on Ordnance Pods and Wide-Area Barrage: