Episode 40 of the BIG Unnamed Armada Podcast is available

https://steelstrategy.podbean.com/e/episode-40-wave-3-4-ships-plus-slicer-tools/

First Unnamed Armada Podcast since the Great Merge and you can listen to Biggs, Shmitty, and me talk about waves 3 and 4 in retrospect.

Eric updates 6/22

 Updated all the following Separatist articles now that wave 10 is completely done.:

• Kraken. Overhauled a lot of the ships and fleetbuilding. He's still very flexible in terms of what you build with him but he definitely likes the Providence.
• Admiral Trench. Added Nova Defiant Recusant.
• General Grievous. Added Gilded Aegis Recusant.
• Providence. Updated with Shu Mai.\

Minor upkeep for other articles (like the Hardcell and Munificent) where nothing major was changed, just a little word cleanup.

Separatist ship review: Providence-class Dreadnought

The first release of wave 10 (in the States anyways), the Providence-class Dreadnought offers the Separatists a dedicated multi-role flagship.

It also kinda looks like a long-necked turtle.

I can't be the only one who thinks it looks like a long-necked turtle, right?

A pair of Providence-class Dreadnoughts on the move.

I promise I'm done talking about turtles, but for real: it looks like a turtle.

Still not a fan of the new card layouts but we'll have some fun alternates below.

Separatist commander review: General Grievous

 General Grievous will be the first of our wave 10 commander reviews.

And he's already tired of listening to other people talking.

"So far no General Kenobi memes, things are looking up!"

Separatist commander review: Admiral Trench

Sorry for the delay on getting this article out - I've been busy with a massive garden upgrade project involving 150 cubic feet of soil, Mother's Day, and my wife's birthday. Not a lot of downtime to type out an article about Spider-Man Admiral Trench.

Fine, fine, have it your way.

Separatist commander review: Kraken

On to Separatist commander article number two: Kraken. I know I've got a good image around here somewhere...

No.

Separatist commander review: TF-1726

I don't have a clever intro for TF-1726. He sure is a Star Wars character, all right.

Separatist requisitions department: "Yes, I want that Speak-and-Spell Ninja Turtles garbage can wearing a trucker hat that points at stuff."

Acclamator Ahoy!

The transport ship that launched the Clone Wars, the Acclamator is the GAR medium base, and it's going to be strongly prevalent throughout your lists for waves to come.

Begun, this article has

Clone Officers

The way you're going to distinguish your ships from one another, these specific clone officers all look so different from each other in how they interact that they.... wait, let me start again.  GAR Officers!

As soon as I figure out which one this is, you're in trouble.

GAR Specific Upgrades

With the advent of the new factions, we've decided to break apart our faction-specific upgrades into their own posts.  No sense having Rebel boarding teams clogging up the boarding teams article, especially for Eric to write about how he thinks of Cham, right? Enjoy the GAR specific (non-officer) upgrades below.

Git em, boys!

Pelta and Tarkin and Yularen OH MY!

So the GAR Pelta dropped today in the US. Along with a new Tarkin, Yularen, and some upgrade cards. Perhaps you'd like to read my thoughts on all of those?  I also updated the charger article yesterday (and Acclamator today) to pull a few links that weren't just bad versions of what the Pelta was doing (and update a few builds).

Anyways take a look!

catch all

Continuing on today, here's all the remaining GAR-based upgrades (which have been largely included into builds and the articles already; I'll do a quick review these upcoming weeks but I'm outta town tomorrow, so.... soon)

I also updated the charger builds and killed one of the ones that's been replaced entirely by the Pelta.

2 Pelta 2 Furious!

This is our second Pelta article, so prepare for the arrival of Ludacris and no Vin Diesel (apparently Vin wasn't part of the Republic). If you're looking for the REBEL PELTA, it's linked in that all-capitals bit right there. For the rest of us, set your wings to closed and hit the jump!

Gotta go..... well, speed 2 I guess.

You'll Love Yularen

Alright, time to keep writing articles and time to.... what's this? An admiral or ship I can't just copy paste part of my article from? I have to do all the work myself? How will I survive this! Hit the jump for a breakdown of the totally very important I have seen many episodes Wullf Yularen!

It's like if my grandpa was suddenly working for an evil Empire. Or at this point, my dad.

Time for Tarkin

Now a better man than I would find a photoshopped version of young Tarkin for this article, or make a joke about this being the second Tarkin article, or a Daniel/the cooler Daniel meme reference. I am not that man.  Hit the jump for a breakdown of GAR Tarkin!

I've got the fuzzy slippers for YOU

Charger Coming In!

I knew those negotiations with the Trade Federation were going to be short! It's the Consular Class Cruiser article!

I wasn't even supposed to be here today!

Separatist commander review: Mar Tuuk

There are many contenders but the owner of the most punchable Separatist face has officially entered the building: give it up for Mar Tuuk!

Gotta add those nerdy little goggles and dumb hat to take that punchability up a few notches.

Separatist ship review: Recusant-class Destroyer

Breaking with normal Separatist naming conventions that are usually about wealth or shipping, the Recusant is named for "a person who refuses to submit to an authority or to comply with a regulation." Which makes sense when you consider the Separatists are refusing to submit to the Republic, but makes no sense when you consider that the Separatists are a merchant bureaucracy full of regulations they insist be followed to the letter. A not-fully-thought-through name? In my Star Wars? It's more likely than you think. Anyways, on to the Recusant-class Destroyer!

It's a giant robot space rat on a rocket stick.
On a side note, AMG can't seem to post a decent card scan of the ship they're selling and it makes me sad. Thanks to Ryan Kingston and Petersaber for slapping something together for the community.

Obstacle deployment: asteroids do not concern me, admiral!

I've been putting this one off for a while, but let's get to some deployment articles! First and foremost, let's talk about the first deployment step, the obstacle deployment step. I've found it's not uncommon for newer players to not really appreciate how much of an effect obstacle placement can have on the game and I'd like to remedy that. In short, asteroids may not concern Darth Vader, but they concern the rest of us.

If you're looking for the newer Rebellion in the Rim obstacles, check out this other article.

Turns out Sith Lords are not good bosses

john 6/13 updates

I fixed the link issues in the Rebel squadrons grouping (don't just copy-paste kids), and updated the following articles for wave 10:

Starhawk: Flak Guns/DBY-427 combo is pretty good with a salvo build! Add on Local Fire for more fun!  And PDIC for squad protection!

MC75: See the Starhawk entry

HMC80: See the above entries

Acclamator: use wave 10 stuff in wave 9? Well I CAN'T BELIEVE IT

MC75: Your Big New Friend!

Well, it took a bit of time, but finally, it's MC75 time.  Bring the funk, bring the noise, bring the fight!

He came to fight, you know

H1MC80: Space Hoagie of DOOOOOOM!

I had said before that I got into this game to play with squadrons.  And that is a mostly true statement.  However, there was one other ship that I always loved watching in the Original Trilogy.  It had power, it had command, it represented for me the powerhouse of the Alliance.  Admiral Ackbar led from its bridge; it's the MC80.

It looks like a sandwich.  An ANGRY sandwich!

There's a Starhawk, Waiting in the Sky.....

Finally fresh off the boat, it's the newest and biggest Rebel ship.  And while some may think of it as the ugly duckling of the Rebel fleet, the Starhawk is much more of a beautiful swan, ready to spread its wings and fly!  Hit the jump to see how to add this beautiful bird of prey to your arsenal!

Eric and I have been playing a good amount of Wingspan recently, so strap in for these

John Updates 6/11

The Venator upgrades have been added in; Hot Landing posted below (SPHAT was in there already).  And I added the Venator Officers to the....GAR officer article, easy peasy.

Those droids should be carrying a plate of glass, maybe have a fruit stand nearby....

Hot Landing is the Fleet Command that comes in the Venator box, and it is.... a card! It's a way of giving all your Jedi Grit, and that's... something! And if a Jedi dies near a ship, (that Jedi that costs a minimum of 17 points), you can decide to raid it with your choice! Huh? Huh?!

Look, I want to like this card.  If your squadron plan involves generic Deltas and not Anakin this is not the WORST card I've seen. What that squadron plan is, of course, well....good luck.  Hot Landing lets you get SOME benefit to when your Deltas die (and you want it for Deltas, not just adding another 3 points onto Luminara or Plo alone.  You want multiple chances to get raid tokens) but it's 3 extra points on a squishy squadron that hits like a truck and dies like a fly in a spiderweb.  It gives your opponent raid, but I'm not sure how that applies to you winning the game; preventing your opponent from doing a command that they may have a token for already is.... A plan? What does raiding your opponent do for you when your 17-26 point squadron dying isn't somehow worse for you?

If you put a gun to my head and said I need to find a way to do this; hit your tokenless opponent's carrier with Deltas.  Then when they die, raid it for squadrons.  How this wins you the game (and prevents him from GETTING a squadron token to clear the raid), I'm sure you'll figure out.

It's useless currently in CIS as they have no Adept squadrons (future proofing).  For GAR, if you can find a way to leverage this successfully repeatedly against various opponents of different skill levels feel free to let me know.  Until then, go choose Mercy Mission instead.

Blissfully Ignorant Gaming!

So as I'm SURE it's made the rounds on all the important news sites (there was a Washington Post article I swear, but paywall, so....), Eric and I have joined forces with the Steel Strategy guys to form Blissfully Ignorant Gaming!

It's dot com!

So what is it? It's the unification of all 5 of us into one blog conglomerate.  Conblogerate, if you will (I wouldn't, woof).  We realized we all like games in some fashion, and we couldn't agree on which blog was going to eat the other one in name and "brought to you by" etc, so we made a new website.  It's how our media empire has joined together in a royal alliance/marriage.  I believe we also promised Eric's son to the 4th duchess of Pittsburgh, but Biggs still has to finalize the deal with the traditional cheesesteak handshake.

CGYSO will still exist; I have ships to update and officers to write, but more importantly I was able to unpack all my stuff.  Sunday is looking good though!  But Eric and I (and the new 3, and possibly more? STAY TUNED DOT DOT DOT) will still do our Armada blogging here.  Any board gaming, generic minis gaming, board gaming, etc etc etc will be on the other site.  Which, has a blog! And I think I'm taking it over? Not sure about what I've volunteered for THERE.  Stay tuned for that, too.

What of the Unnamed Armada Podcast? Still existent, just that we're focusing on more generic gaming and gaming of all types over at Blissfully Ignorant (and the associated Blissfully Ignorant Gaming Podcast!). Anyways, come check us out!

Listen as Biggs and I try to get everyone else interested in blaseball....

Separatist Officers

Welcome to the Separatist officers article! Let's talk about who gets to ride around in the robot space donuts, shall we?

Makes perfect sense.

Recusant Separatist Officers Added to the Separatist Officers article

Three newcomers to the Separatist Officers article, just in time for the Recusant article coming... hopefully soon. Also, I changed the upgrades index a bit: now the faction-specific upgrade articles are grouped together. So if you want to look at Rebel officers and Rebel-specific upgrades, they're under the "Rebels" header instead of one in the "officers" group and one in the "faction-specific upgrades" group.

One-Stop Shop for Sunday Links!

I finished the Venator article (obviously below), but I also added Eric's Thermals breakdown to the GAR upgrades and hey, why not SPHA-Ts too?

I need to update a lot of the old articles, especially: the Acclamator, MC75, Starhawk, and HMC80 for sure, with all the Salvo tech available and all now.  It's in progress for sure!

Venator Vidi Vici!

The main reason all you wanted to fly the GAR, and the backbone of your fleet, it's time for the arrowheadiest of triangles, it's the Venator!

More lasers! More pew pew! More squadrons!

Providence article updated

Nothing major in the Providence article update, I just wanted to add in the new Flak Guns and DBYs now that they're released with the Venator. One new build for the Providence focusing on Flak Guns salvo. This brings us up to a Lucid Voice Carrier Providence salvo build and a Flak Guns DBYs Dreadnought Providence salvo build. They're distinct enough that it'll really depend on your fleet as to which you think you'd prefer.