Incredibly Speculative Thoughts on the 1.5 Changes Article

So THAT was A THING.  Armada is getting updates, it's getting a 1.5, it's time to turn and face the strange ch-ch-changes.  Hit the jump for Eric's and my thoughts on them all!

I'll send the diamond dogs after Pryce, I will

The basic summary as of what's been revealed is that Eric and I like all of them, some more than others.  Feel free to scroll down and read to see HOW much we like them, but we do like them all.

(side note: hi, this is Eric. John did most of the work for this article but I'm chiming in here and there in red)

The Big Stuff!

Squad limits!
I like the squad game.  I do! I wrote a bajillion articles about how to squadron and how to do it well, but it's become a giant katamari of issues.  You either take 134 points in squadrons, or you take 0 usually.  There's arguments to be made for Advanced Transponder Network and Y-wings and TIE bombers and such, but those are stop-gap measures.  It doesn't help that all of the game's World Champions have gone max squadrons.  Squadrons, as fun as I find them, WERE too good.  Too hard to beat points out of, too hard to just point fortress in, too easy to just roll people with some of those aces.  The squad game was skewing the data, as you pretty much needed to take 134 points to have the best chance of hitting the top tables (or be shmitty).  All the ace limit does is restrict you to 4 aces per battle (or more accurately, one ace per every 100 points of fleet you're playing).  This is HELPFUL.  I can bring SFC or MFC out of retirement because if my 60-80 points can hold off the opposing squadron force of 134 and all its accoutrements for a turn or two, it's actually doing its job!

This also means there's going to be some variation in squadron groups now.  It won't be the same 8 Imperial aces across the table from you 90 percent of the time with Sloane, nor will it always be Ten Numb.  Much like the 400 point limit causes actual choices to be made in creation, knowing I can't include Biggs and Jan and Ten and Norra and Keyan means I need to figure out what my list is trying to do and realize who I need to cut and potentially give some of the lesser known squadrons time to shine.

And if nothing else, this hurts both Rieekan Aces and Sloane Oops All Aces, which I'm sure you hate ONE of those builds. 

Eric: I fundamentally agree that limiting aces is good for the game. I feel like it's going to hit Imperials a bit harder than Rebels as Rebels always have Jan to help improve durability for their generics and Dengar's effect isn't as strong in general. That said, Reserve Hangar Deck Interceptors are definitely a thing and it's time for Imperials to explore their options there, in my opinion. Regardless, less aces means less having to memorize all the special rules and keep track of as many overlapping bubble effects and that's good. I still foresee most fleets with medium to heavy squads filling all four ace slots most of the time, but that can be addressed later hopefully with some ace points tweaks to bring them closer into line with generics.

One last thing I'll add is it's going to be a bit harder to go 134 points in squads while keeping it to 8 or less squadrons, like most heavy squadron fleets did in 1.0, given you'll need to start investing in generics after your four aces and they're cheaper. You can get around this with Rogues as well as more expensive generics (like TIE Defenders or E-Wings), or just bring even more cheap carriers and embrace cheap generic spam (probably with Ruthless Strategists where possible) to get up to 10+ squads. It'll take a while for this all to shake out so we'll see.

Intel change:
• [Intel] (2.0): While a friendly squadron is at distance 1 of you, it has grit.

Don't you hate it when the 4 TIE fighter screen you brought gets immediately neutered because Jan just lets your opponent fire right into the ships past you? What if you actually had to DEAL with the screen that you brought to SCREEN with? Crazy concept.  I wasn't immediately onboard with this one, but after playing it a few times it makes SENSE and it makes for better games and counterplay.  Jan is still worth bringing to pass out defense tokens for everyone, but now you have to fight through what's there to hit the ships.  Seems fair to me!

Eric: Again, I'm on board with this change. Intel alone wasn't responsible for the all-or-nothing squad builds we were seeing by the end of 1.0 but it was a contributing factor. In my experience, Intel wasn't being used so much like it was around waves 2-4 where people were bringing tons of bombers, Intel, and some Escort to just ignore squadrons. It did however allow for easier concentration of fighters to gang up on enemy squadrons as well as for bombers to make a break for it to polish off enemy ships that were crippled and trying to escape. It's definitely a nerf to Intel but it's still got value in heavy squadron builds with dedicated bombers that want to be able to leave once you can peel some fighters off them.

Death of activation officers/birth of pass tokens
Pass Tokens (Revised 1.0; complete section)
A player receives a number of pass tokens at the beginning of the game if their opponent has more ships than they do. When it is a player’s turn to activate during the Ship Phase, that player
may spend a pass token to pass their turn instead of activating (their opponent activates a ship instead). When a pass token is spent, it is discarded.
• Before the Deploy Ships step of set up, if one player has fewer total ships in their fleet, that player gains a number of pass tokens equal to the difference between their total ships and their opponent’s total ships.
o If the first player has fewer ships, that player gains one fewer token than the difference in total ships.
Ship Phase (v2.1; complete section)
During this phase, the first player activates one of their ships. Then the second player activates one of their own ships. Players continue taking turns in this manner until all ships have been
activated.
• Players cannot activate ships that have already been activated.
• If a player has no unactivated ships remaining, that player must pass their turn for the rest of the phase.
4 of 6 v3.5
• When a player passes their turn, that player’s opponent activates a ship instead.
• When it is a player’s turn to activate, that player can pass their turn by spending a pass token. When a pass token is spent, it is discarded.
• A player with unactivated ships remaining can pass their turn to activate under the following conditions:
     o The first player may pass their turn to activate if they have activated at least one ship and the number of unactivated ships remaining in the second player's fleet is greater than the first player's.
     o The second player may pass their turn to activate if the number of unactivated ships remaining in the first player's fleet is equal to or greater than the second player's.
     o A player cannot spend a pass token to pass two of their consecutive turns to activate during the same Ship Phase.
Example: Anna is the first player and Max is the second player. After Anna activates the first ship, she has two unactivated ships remaining and Max has one unactivated ship. Max decides to pass and spends a pass token. Then, Anna activates another ship. After that ship is activated, Max cannot pass again even though he and Anna have have an equal number of unactivated ships  remaining, because Max cannot pass two consecutive turns to activate.

I don't think words can express how happy we are that Pryce and Strat Ad (and to an extent) Bail are gone.  Their effect was great as an Admiral one, not a 7 point officer.  I will not miss them, and I don't care if you do.  The pass tokens seems like a good compromise where players with large ships are not immediately hurt by hitting MSU, but MSU isn't punished forever with a Strategic Adviser every turn.  I SHOULD be slightly less petulant and say this is exciting and a brave new time for the game, but counterpoint: I'm glad Bail Organa sacrificed himself for the Rebellion and took Pryce and Strat Ad with him.  Happy Bailmas, everyone.  May his goatee fill you with love/more roles for Jimmy Smits, and may we never see their ilk again.

Eric:

For real, though, good riddance. The wave 7 activation officers were a mistake and Two Ship can rot. I'm looking forward to more officer variance on large ships again and MSU can still do fine against pass tokens.

Evade change!
Defense Tokens (v2.2)
• [Evade]: At long range, the defender cancels one attack die of its choice. At medium and close range, the defender chooses one attack die to be rerolled.
     o While defending at extreme range (beyond the length of the range ruler), the defender resolves the long-range effect and cancels one additional attack die.
     o While defending at distance 1–2, the defender resolves the medium or close-range effect.
     o While a ship is defending against a ship of a larger size class, the defender can spend an [evade] token to affect one additional die. If they do, the token that is spent is discarded, whether it is readied or exhausted.
• A defense token cannot be spent more than once during an attack.

Eric and I (him more than me) play a lot of MSU.  And it's been HARD for like 3 years now, because wave 7 added those activation officers, and long range everything has just been cracking smalls for ages.  It's pushed a lot of ships out of the meta and out of existence (Raiders) for a while now.  The change doesn't make those smaller friends immune to large ships, but now no dice is specifically safe, just for the cost of tokens.  Smaller ships have a chance at living (badly, mind you) through a lot of shots they used to be unable to.  I'm not going to claim that you should wander into ISD-II front arcs with abandon now, but it's not as easy to just one-shot smalls.  Is MSU back? I'm determined to find out!  The other benefit is that these smalls now have a chance at mitigating some of the worst anti-squadron shots they face, which also helps MSU against squadrons, the fleets they should be naturally countering.

Eric: I'm a fan of this change, for obvious reasons. Small combat ships have been a rarity in competitive play since wave 7 overbuffed big ships and the evade change helps make up for that. No other token gets turned off completely at a given range and it worked out poorly for ships with evades. Now they're a fair bit more durable against small dice pools (from squads, for example) and longer-ranged attacks from larger ships. Large dice pools will still cause them big problems, so they're not invincible by any means.

Admiralities!
Garm and Tagge getting new timing windows opens up new opportunities for both.  Garm is still a solid choice and deadly in Steel Strategy hands, and Tagge is still... present.  But maybe there's a chance at using him better now? Slightly positive change

Rieekan getting a points increase (+4)  is fine; he's still a solid admiral and still worth the points cost you pay for him.  The difference is now he allows all the other Admirals at 30 and under to be worth the points you pay for them instead of "why not Rieekan?"

Konstantine now has more opportunity to trigger.  ....he sure still is an Admiral you can take alright.

I'll defer to Eric on Ozzel but this is positive alright.

Mon Mothma getting cheaper helps, and makes her easier to justify.  This may mean an issue for Cracken fleets, but that's a future concern.

Tarkin being 10 points cheaper is SOLID.  He was always a decent admiral, just struck with the issue that he was point costed before people knew what was going on and how the game was played.

Sato getting cheaper is great.  He was priced high before I bet based on what he seemed capable of; now he's worth fielding and I have some very fun lists ready for him.  It's no longer going to be Indie Rock to run him or Tarkin or Mothma or our last entrant, but better lists and a real chance at these being viable admirals is worth that "cost."

Leia:

Set excitement to HIGH

I've been telling you that you'd all see, soon enough.  Now the instrument of your destruction is NIGH! YOU FOOLS SHALL LEARN TO MOCK LEIA ORGANA OF HOUSE SKYWALKER, FIRST OF HER NAME, THE UNTOKENED, QUEEN OF THE ALDERAANIANS, LADY VADER OF THE NOGHIRI, PART OF A FRANCHISE THAT IS FONDLY REMEMBERED, AND MOTHER OF BEN. I am very happy with this change.  Now we're going to take a short intermission while I go host a party for.... unrelated reasons and not the 400 new lists I need to design.

Eric: I'll let John cover the Rebels, although I will note as a guy who dabbles in Rebels and has brought Rieekan MSU to two Worlds I think the points increase is just fine. So for me I've got...

• Tagge. He still isn't great. The non-consecutive rounds requirement means you're still choosing 3 and 5 (like his is right now) or 4 and 6, and what value are you getting out of round 6?
• Konstantine. Is definitely better and I'll need some more time with him to get a more nuanced opinion. Only requiring one medium or larger (including SSD now!) ship of the two helps a lot for opening up list building options for him. The question remains if changing speed or zapping off nav tokens is worth the hassle of setting it all up and taking Special K instead of another commander. I'm skeptical, but I'm trying to keep an open mind.
• Ozzel. See how John feels about the Leia change? This is me with the Ozzel change. I was here first, but you all are welcome to join me in the Ozzel Fans Club. I've played him this way quite a bit and Entrapment Formation on a stick (without the token feeding requirement) works great and can be applied to just about any fleet that has all speed 3 or higher ships (the effect isn't as helpful with slower ships in my experience). In particular, I've loved running every Imperial small ship together and finding the commander works well with all of them. Old Ozzel didn't do so great with Arquitens but new Ozzel loves them.
  
• Tarkin is going to see a big popularity rise as well. Not only is he properly costed now (giving him a legitimate case against Thrawn finally) but with all the new upgrades coming out that only ready when they eat a token and/or some reworked upgrades that only trigger on a specific command, handing out tokens to the whole fleet is going to be extremely helpful.
  

Generic upgrades!
Gunnery Team requiring a concentrate fire command to use now is FINE.  Helps MSU and makes it not the bog-standard choice for every stupid ISD.  If you want to use it, you have to pay for it, and that's a good thing.  Easy choices are not good for the game, so it makes sense to alter it.  It ALSO makes concentrate fire more worth it as a token and as a command.

Captain Brunson should probably always have been 9 points, change my view.

Ordnance Experts/ACM/APT/External Racks changes - If we're trying to buff MSU here, it also makes sense to not overdo it.  And not overdo the huge damage spikes that can happen from some of the black dice ships and crits.  They are still worth using.  With HIE as good as it is, and you're willing to pay the premium for it, changing the price of the Ordnance effects makes sense.  I've had my Assault Frigate one shot by Demolisher and ACMs.  It doesn't feel good, and I'm FINE with it taking a bit more work to do so.  Relatedly, this also improves Concentrate Fire as an action for those little black dice ships.  If my weaker front arc concentrates fire, I'm adding about 1 extra damage per shot, along with the critical effect.  You CAN continue the pattern of "navigate for 6 turns" on those ships, but sprinkling in the other commands will definitely improve what they do for you.  Since OE is now only "reroll 2" it's less about crit chasing and more about dice correction.  Again, I'm fine with it.  Speaking of dice correction...

Leading Shots is now 6.  Much like Tarkin, this card was a product of when it was made.  It's still worth it if you're terrified of garbage rolls.  However, I took a Leading Shots-less Ackbar list to the 24 hour, and my failures were entirely my own and not related to my dice.  I know it's scary to trust fall into your red dice, but there's always LTT, IF, and concentrate fire tokens to fix them if everything blanks on you.  Its up to YOU if that is worth the premium you pay for that all.

H9 and QTC are now mods. Little bit harder for Onagers and SSDs to just start raining death on you with no chance to defend yourself or retaliate.  All for it on our end!

XI7s and Advanced Projector ruling effectively reversed? Great, a reason to use AP (which is not a bad card I swear!)

Engine Techs and Slicer Tools (don't care to comment, it's fine).

Electronic Countermeasures is now pay-to-play.  If you want to use it turn after turn, it costs you an engineering token.  This makes engineering tokens more worth it (much like Gunnery Team) and either you need to pay for it every turn you want to re-use it, or start looking at other defensive retrofits.  Everyone gets at least one use out of it, how hard can it be to get an engineering token on it (John starts adding in Ion Cannon Batteries to all of his builds...)

Eric: Okay, here I go covering the same things John just covered but I love bullet points so...

• Gunnery Team: good change and helps open up some options for the weapon team slot. Big ships want Gunnery Team (...usually) but they don't generally want to use the concentrate fire command a lot and Gunnery Team encourages them to do so. You can get around this with a concentrate fire token provider of some kind (Comms Net flotilla likely) for when you need it but it's still a bit more cost and hassle. Otherwise, choose a different weapon team.
• Captain Brunson: she was definitely undercosted at 5 but 9 is a big jump. I probably would've put her at 8, maybe 7. I'll consider her at 9 but only on very expensive ships like an SSD or Christmas Tree ISD flagship.
• Ordnance Experts/ACMs/APTs/External Racks: I've got mixed but generally positive feelings about these changes. ACMs and APTs were a bit pricey for only getting one attack of value out of them but definitely undercosted for getting two (4 extra damage or 2 face up damage cards). It meant generally you were only seeing them on beefier double-arcing combat ships where they could get pretty crazy, especially when Ordnance Experts let you reroll every black dice in the pool for 4 points. They've been toned down but should still see use and the price drop on ACMs and APTs helps them be affordable and still useful for smaller ordnance ships like Raiders and maybe Hammerheads. External Racks being a very "no duh" choice for anyone not taking ACMs or APTs has been evened out a bit with a modest points increase.
• Leading Shots: it's a tax on big ship damage pool reliability and I'm fine with that. A lot of the changes seem geared towards opening up some more options and increasing the stapled-to-most-large-ships Leading Shots' cost by 50% feels justified, especially when it enables such on-demand dice pool reliability. It's still a good upgrade but you might consider another ion cannon nowadays.
• H9s and QTCs: accuracy guarantees can really punish ships without Electronic Countermeasures. If you're trying to make ECMs less mandatory on anything of value then you need to do something about accuracy guarantee effects. Making them Modifications is a good simple fix.
• XI7s and Advanced Projectors: this is how it should've been for years. I still think XI7s are overrated by the community at large, but restoring Advanced Projectors to its place of competitiveness as both a solid upgrade and a soft counter to XI7s helps make the defensive retrofit slot more competitive.
• Engine Techs: Good. Double-ramming is dumb.
• Slicer Tools: Feels like it was a bit over-nerfed, to be honest. Starting off exhausted is a bit rough. It's still a good upgrade, it can still get some work done. It's just hard to keep firing off consistently so you need to be more tactical with it.
• ECMs nerf: good. You get one free use and after that it costs repair tokens to use. It's still a great upgrade against other large ships but there's compelling arguments for other defensive retrofits.
  

Title hits!
Mon Karren probably should have been this way in all fairness.

Admonition is more fair this way, and this is half the way I've been using it so I'm ok with the change and the points decrease.  Also, hey, time to rediscover Foresight it seems?

Demolisher is now either a disposable missile or one you're going to have to learn to get better with.  Fine with it.

Yavaris is a change I'm ok with.  Before, they can't release 2 dice (or even 3-dice Decimator clones) bombers for the Rebels.  Now, the title is a bit more helpful for single dice bombers, slightly slows down the death of large ships by not allowing 6 B-wing shots at once, AND opens up Rebel design space, which it desperately needs.  I still like it and still plan on using it (it gets real mean with X-wings and Y-wings near Norra!) but it takes a bit more to get there now.  And guess what? I'm alright with that.

As for Avenger, I hated the title, but I'll defer to Eric.  Personally, if the Imps had to get a bad Avenger title and I had to take a Yavaris nerf to get the rest of these changes, I'd do it all day every day.

Eric:We're in the home stretch now...

• Mon Karren: if you're going to make offensive tech more expensive or less reliable this is how to do it. When Mon Karren really wanted to pour out the pain it would usually con fire anyways so it's not a huge give-up.
• Admonition: this change is overdue but at least they made it a bit cheaper. It's still a good title. I can see Walex being a more competitive officer now due to this. Between this and the evade change, Foresight got more competitive too.
• Demolisher: still a good title but it's a lot harder to set up a triple tap without ramming and getting stuck wherever. I know some Imperials literally never made a list without Demolisher and between the mild ordnance nerfs and this change I feel that time has come to an end. Demolisher will still be good in the right fleets but it's not as much a no-brainer.
• Yavaris change was necessary, it was the best title in the game and deeply warped the internal Rebel meta when any given squad could attack twice. I've seen people saying it's a dead title/ship now and that feels rather dramatic to me. Yavaris is now effectively Flight Controllers that works on any attack so long as the squadrons don't move. It's no longer nearly as picky about the squadrons it wants to work with, which opens up some more room for Y-Wings and other single-die bombers. Combine it with another Flight Controllers ship and your Rebel squads are getting a lot of extra dice early on for dogfighting and then Yavaris helps with bombing afterwards.
  
• Avenger: it got overnerfed, sorry. I'm fairly positive about the vast majority of the 1.5 changes but this one wasn't good for keeping Avenger in the game. Typically you use Avenger to hit the other ship and stop it from bracing. New Avenger still lets them brace but not whatever else. That doesn't help much. I'm not going to cry over Avenger's loss but it very much feels like "well we aren't willing to catch flak on removing this altogether so let's just make it binder fodder and effectively remove it anyways." I would've preferred a toned-down version that actually saw some play. There's still an abundance of good ISD titles so no big deal, I suppose.
  

This is a very good day for us and for the game.  I can't wait to update all these articles.

Eric: Updating is going to take a while and I guarantee I'm going to miss something hiding somewhere in an article or two. Or three. Please be patient with us, we're going to have to comb through a lot of articles.