Imperial commander review: Grand Admiral Thrawn

Let's finish up the big upgrades of wave 7 by covering the Blue Man Group Grand Admiral Thrawn.

Thrawn performing "It's Gonna Be Me" back in his boy band days

Imperial squadron review: Mandalorian Gauntlet Fighter

As I come back around to start wrapping up the new Imperial things introduced in wave 7, let's talk about the Mandalorian Gauntlet Fighter.

It looks cool, anyways.

Eric updates 12/30

Fleet building 201 articles update for today.

• Basic fleet building 201 article.
• Very minor upkeep.
• Big Heavy fleet building 201
• Removed references to the Banned Trinity of officers.
• Lots of new hyperlinks and generally trimming things down.
• Heavy Squadron fleet building 201
• Minimal editing
• MSU fleet building 201
• Removed the Banned Trinity reference.
• Included discussion of your opponent using pass tokens.
  
• MSU's death due to pass tokens has been greatly exaggerated, is the short version.
  
• Generally streamlined a bit, as I tend to over-discuss MSU.

Next update will be Thrawn (sure?) and the Mandalorian Gauntlet (boo). I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel for updating articles to 1.5.

Fleet building 201: Swarm/MSU

The last of the 3 archetype build articles, MSU, took a while to write initially due to turbulence from wave 7. Armada 1.5 introducing pass tokens has been a similar experience with the newest update, but MSU is alive and well. Arguably in much better shape than it once was.

As always, a quick warning that I'll be making a lot of generalizations in order to communicate points - once you've gotten a lot of experience with a particular archetype, you'll be able to identify circumstances in which some of the generalizations can be bent or broken with the right tactics or fleet-building.

This is the start of an MSU fleet leaning hard on Intensify Firepower, right here.

Fleet building 201: Heavy Squadron

Time for the second installment of the fleet archetype building series: Heavy Squadron. Just like the previous installment on Big Heavy, I feel the need to mention that for purposes of this article there will be a lot of generalizations that will not hold up in 100% of situations, especially with fleets made or used by experienced players who know when and how to bend or break some of the guidelines.

Just the first deployed ace squadron of many, courtesy of Admiral Sloane.

Fleet building 201: Big Heavy

Vader knows where it's at.

Big Heavy
As mentioned in the header article, Big Heavy is looking to stress the inherent strengths of heavier combat ships (medium and large ships focusing on direct confrontation). Heavy combat ships have high-value activations that can get a lot done. For the amount of space they take up on the table, they can throw an awful lot of dice, and for the most part they can take a lot of punishment, especially if the enemy is unable to gang up on them to overheat their defense tokens. Heavy ships that are only taking one or two attacks each round are in most cases effectively immortal, especially with the right defensive tech; conversely, light combat ships taking one or two attacks each round are going to be destroyed if they can't get out of trouble and soon. A Big Heavy fleet is looking to quickly destroy heavy-hitting opposition that threatens its heavy ships and then hopes to spend the rest of the game casually gobbling up the less-threatening survivors.

Fleet building 201: Archetype guidelines

In my earlier article on basic fleet-building, I mentioned 3 basic types of "skew" fleets: Big Heavy, Swarm/MSU, and Heavy Squadron. John and I have since written articles on dealing with those types of fleets (as well as more specific components of fleets that can be troublesome), but I've had some requests for articles in reverse: namely, some idea as to how to build and use those particular types of fleets. That seems pretty reasonable, so let's proceed with Fleet building 201, an article series where I'll cover some guidelines for building and using fleets based around those three basic archetypes.

 Article updates for today

• Anti-flotillas
• Minor updates - Avenger isn't a thing anymore and you can't double-ram with Engine Techs.
• Anti-conga lines
• Extremely minor upkeep. Article was still in good shape.
• Overlapping
• Added new section from the RRG about applying overlap damage before completing the maneuver.
• Removed sections referring to old Intel and Engine Techs.
• Anti-MSU
• Consistently referred to fleet archetype as "MSU" instead of "swarm" as it's more consistent with the lingo most of us use and doesn't cause confusion with the Swarm keyword.
• It still gets a little confusing when an MSU fleet includes a cheaper medium based ship as then it's no longer all small units but whatever.
  
• Discussion of pass tokens in 1.5.
• Otherwise shortened, edited, hyperlinks, the usual. I write a lot about MSU because it's something I'm very experienced with, but it can get to be a bit much.
  

Fighting Fleets: Swatting Swarms/MSU

Some of the most common types of questions John and I see online about Armada come down to "my local meta seems to be dominated by (insert archetype) fleet and I'm struggling to beat it, what do I do?" With that said, John fired off the first article about how to handle well-defended large ships that require a lot of firepower to bring down. I'd like to discuss another major archetype which in many ways is the opposite of a fleet with one or more tough large ships, the MSU swarm-of-small-ships fleet. I've run MSU fleets competitively for a few years now, so it's something I know pretty well. It's not unbeatable by any means, but without an understanding of how it works it can feel that way sometimes.

Cue the Aquabats' Shark Fighter, please!

Overlapping, or "demolition derby in space"

Despite becoming a Chicagolander through osmosis occurring over more than a decade, I was born and raised in northwestern rural Illinois (where my high school mascot is a pretzel) and let me tell you city slickers that demolition derbies are awesome. Just a whole bunch of the most junked up barely functional cars all smashing into each other and driving around with pieces hanging off and smoke blowing around as they throw mud all over the place and get into loud crashes while the crowd screams until there's only one quasi-functional car left standing. If you've never been to a demolition derby, I highly recommend it. And with that said, on to the article...

Oh man, 137 is really getting taken to Pound Town.

Fighting Fleets: Cancelling Conga Lines

It's time for another installment of "Fighting Fleets," this one a bit shorter than the others (I'll get to the why of that shortly!).

Anyways, let's discuss the nefarious conga line!

I said nefarious, come on guys! That's just adorable.

Fighting Fleets: Flushing Flotillas

First off, I'm back and thanks to all the folks who wished me and the missus well on the birth of my son! He was born November 13th in the early morning and we're super glad to have him. Mom and baby are both doing great and the lack of any serious complications has been wonderful.

Look at this big bald doof holding this weird thing with a blue hat.

Speaking of small things and awkward transitions, it's time to talk about flotillas. Specifically, how to get rid of them (wow, this transition is weird and kind of sinister if you think about it too hard). Let's get to the plastic spaceships part!

Eric 1.5 article updates 12/28

First note: there wasn't really much to update when it came to personal advice style articles (like the articles on tilting/improving) and the articles on FFG tournaments. Neither have changed any (the advice or the tournament formats, plus who knows what AMG tournaments are going to look like once we get out of the Plague Times), so I just left them be.

 Here's today's achievements as I get through wave 6:

•  Quasar Fire
• Removed Brunson as a recommendation as she's too pricey now.
• Removed references to Intel.
• What was Pryce doing in this article? I CAST YOU OUT, FOUL SPIRIT!
  
• Editing/hyperlinks/the usual.
• Commands rules article
• Updated page number references.
• If the RRG gets updated frequently, keeping the page numbers right is going to be a nightmare.
• Added new reminder based on new RRG text that effects that provide dials (like Thrawn) allow you to tokenize them upon receiving them.
  
• Boarding teams
• Cleared out the remaining Rebel unique boarding teams as John already ported those over to the Rebel specific upgrades.
• Otherwise, some minor upkeep.
• Admiral Sloane
• Removed Avenger references.
• Cleaned up and shortened the article a bit. Sloane is still good but has the same balancing act as before of trying to get enough carrier capacity, squadrons, and actual combat ships to make her shtick all come together. She can competently run Interceptors and Fighters better than any other Imperial commander but if you're not careful you can get an even larger burden on your carriers.

Imperial commander review: Admiral Sloane

Time to finally finish off the Imperial wave 6 articles with a review of Admiral Sloane! Once John gets his Hammerhead article up, we'll be completely done with wave 6.

Thanks for the sweet later-in-the-EU art, wookieepedia!

Boarding team upgrades (weapon team + offensive retrofit)

Given the unique nature of multiple-upgrade-slot upgrades, it felt appropriate to give them their own articles rather than trying to include them here and there in the other upgrade articles. Hence, this will be where all the boarding teams will be discussed, which are the upgrades that consume both a weapon team and offensive retrofit slot. Let's get to it!

Pictured: Vader in the middle of discarding the Raymus Antilles upgrade card.