Thursday, February 20, 2020

Wave 8 Imperial ship article updates

Aww yiss triangles and circles
Just a few little changes here and there to bring those Imperial ship articles up to speed on wave 8:
  • Gozanti article updated to include Commander Beck as an officer option.
  • Arquitens article updated to include Commander Beck as an officer option.
  • Raider article updated to reflect how weird Corvus gets with on-deploy upgrades like Local Fire Control and Gunnery Chief Varnillian. 
  • ISD article updated to include Heavy Fire Zone and Linked Turbolaser Tower options for the ISD-II. Added a build relying on the H9 Turbolasers + Weapon Battery Techs + blue crit combo for the ISD-I. Added a Local Fire Control salvo build for the ISD-I.
    • I'm not saying the ISD-I is suddenly amazing, but it got some new toys that the other ISD variants aren't really keen on using for themselves, so give them a try if you like.
  • VSD article replaced the Spray and Pray VSD-I build (which requires outside help) for the salvo boat option using Local Fire Control.
  • SSD article added Reeva Demesne as a defensive officer option.
I've got a couple other articles to update to fully bring everything up to speed on wave 8 (to mind, commanders that like the Onager need all their articles updated and it wouldn't hurt to update a few of the objective articles when they have salvo interactions like Precision Strike* does), but we're pretty close.

*The Precision Strike segment has been rewritten although not all the objective articles have been yet. It's mean in the right fleets with enough salvo. You can trigger both the "flip a card" element (by spending a die with a hit or crit on it) and sometimes also the "deal a faceup damage card" (if your salvo has a crit icon in it and damage hits hull), which can generate a surprising amount of extra points from your extra salvo attacks. It's not a "no duh" choice in a salvo-heavy fleet but it has a lot more synergy with salvo than generally "no duh" Most Wanted given salvo can't add dice.

Sunday, February 9, 2020

Wave 8 Rebel Officers!

Wedge and Agate updated and added to the Rebel officers page, but also posted below.

Tuesday, February 4, 2020

Turbolasers Updated!

I got this done earlier than expected, hooray!  Original article was updated, but here's Heavy Fire Zone below:
Dodge, duck, dip, dive, and.... something
Heavy Fire Zone is a very different turbolaser in that it's not modifying your attack against a ship but against squadrons.  The timing windows work, even though it may not look like it.  Lemme point you right to Eric's article about the attack sequence and wait for you to come back.

Alright, so you would pick your target and then you can change the blue dice you would be throwing at it into reds.  This is a nice way of forcing squadrons at LONG range to close with you, ensuring that you can hit them outside of your normal blue dice range (so yes, you can flak at long range with it).  When they close with you, you can use your blue dice (which provide more reliable damage and better ways of making it occur, Leading Shots and Toryn being the obvious examples).  The card does come with the downside that you don't usually have many great ways of rerolling red dice, but you're throwing them at least?  Add in a blue with Kallus or Draven and then reroll with Leading Shots?  They can't be engaged with any friendly squadrons of your own, of course, so it's there to force your opponent to move in towards you.  It also doesn't combine with Ruthless Strategists, because again: not engaged with your own squadrons.  But it's long range flak!

Who wants this? Maybe certain ISD-II builds, maybe Nebulons, maybe Assault Frigates?  They all have 2 blue flak, and one more turn of free flak isn't horrid if you weren't using the turbolaser.  You just have to be in red range, which generally then means you're moving towards the squadron ball you're shooting at.  Keep that fact in mind as you use it.

Sunday, February 2, 2020

Wave 8 upgrades: weapon teams

Moving right along, we're covering new weapon teams (one of which is a boarding team).

Wave 8 upgrades: flag bridge

Added to the offensive retrofits article but also posted separately here. As usual, any updates are going to be made in the "real" article, not this one. Let's talk about the one new offensive retrofit in wave 8, Flag Bridge:

Eric was on the Steel Strategy podcast

For anyone who wanted to hear me ramble about SSDs, Overload Pulse, and just a little bit about wave 8, check it out!