Cannot Get Your Ship Out: the speed zero maneuver

Wednesday, December 9, 2020

Eric 1.5 article updates 12/9/2020

Moving right along with...

Motti.

Minor editing, but he stayed the same so for the most part his article remained the same.
I removed the Interdictor as a preferred ship out of personal preference. With all the big long ranged attacks available nowadays and Brunson going up in cost, the Interdictor requires a fairly big investment to be tanky enough with Motti. It's not a bad combination but it's nothing worth going out of the way to draw attention to.

Screed

You can't use Ordnance Experts to reroll all the black dice anymore.

That's probably for the best.

Evade tokens work at close range now.

A big fan of this one.

ACMs and APTs exhaust now so you can't use them on both attacks.

Again, probably for the best. If it wasn't for the points drop I'd be grumpy but the points drop means I don't mind.

Removed the entire section about why you shouldn't make Overload Pulse Avenger fleets because Avenger sucks now and nobody will want to do this, saving me the hassle of explaining why you shouldn't.

Imperial-specific upgrades

Brand new article! I removed the Imperial-specific upgrades from their previous articles (which I'll update normally when I get to them during this process).

This includes all of boarding team Vader and Gunnery Chief Varnillian. Everything else is an officer or goes in a specific upgrade slot that's unique to that ship. Weird, huh? You would've thought there were more, right?

Otherwise, pretty minimal changes here. The effects still work just fine and didn't need much amending for 1.5.

Tarkin

28 points now awwwwww yisss my boi Peter Cushing is back, baby!
A pretty substantial overhaul given 1.5 changes both to Tarkin's point cost as well as other upgrades too. Give Tarkin serious consideration nowadays, please.

Corrupter title got better (as Chiraneau got better).
I still really hate Dominator. It's terrible. I wish FFG had buffed some awful non-commander cards during the transition to the upgrade pack but here we are.
Lots of changes, editing, moving things around. Things changed a lot for some of the other upgrades VSDs wanted so this article changed a fair bit too.

One thing I want to touch on briefly is I don't intend to update the faction breakdown article just yet. With only the starters released for Republic and Separatists, it's too early to draw any strong conclusions just yet. Once we get wave 10, I expect that will change.

Imperial ship review: Victory-class Star Destroyer

Let's begin the Imperial ship reviews at the beginning with the first Imperial ship most of us ever pushed around a table, the OG angry triangle, the Victory-class Star Destroyer (VSD)!

The Victory-I knows how to take a more flattering profile picture. Take note, Victory-II.

Imperial commander review: Grand Moff Tarkin

Oh man look out here comes ~~Peter Cushing~~ Grand Moff Tarkin!

I just ordered a planet and its inhabitants destroyed and I'm still in my comfy slippers.

John Updates 12/8/2020

As Eric pointed out, it's time for the annual blog spring cleaning. Only this time we're going to update the dates and make things easier for everyone to see what's changed.

She's talking about Pryce

Tonight I got all the Rebel squadrons updated. Summaries below.

A - cosmetic changes, don't take Green
B - cosmetic
X - cosmetic
Y - cosmetic
YT2400 - a bit more detail on some Rogues and some not for your squadron ball, eliminated some parts saying that I didn't see them much
YT1300 - cosmetic
HWK-290 - Take Jan, not a HWK. I still recommend taking her, just had to also clean up any rules/Intel issues.
Scurrg - cosmetic, more mention of Grit
Lancer - speculation about them in 1.5. Still can't really recommend them though.
E-wing - speculation in 1.5, I like them. I am not a role model.
Z95 - cosmetic. Use Reserve Hangar Decks with them! I still won't take them personally.
VCX - cosmetic

Why didn't I do the Rebel Squad Groups? Because I wanted to make sure when I pulled things out of the SFC, MFC, and LFC articles, that I would be leaving good links and not saying anything crazy about Yavaris and all there, which meant going back to the original sources and fixing those first. Now that the squadrons themselves are fixed, I can edit the Squad groups articles soon too.

And why didn't I do the Rebel upgrades article? Because since Eric did most of those, I'm gonna need a minute to get my thoughts in order for them. Or just copy-paste his work, haha.

Wave 5 Squadrons: VCX-100

Rather than move on to writing about the Pelta or Commander Sato, I decided to do WHAT I WANT, MOM, and start writing up some squadrons. With Relay and Strategic being as important as they are, this is a much smarter plan on my part and not an effort for me to skirt having to write a giant blather about how I can't get Sato to work or all the different ways of using the Pelta (shifts eyes, pretends that last sentence wasn't the train wreck it actually was). They'll happen, but I'll likely try to get them done a bit later on in the week and all.

Anyways, let's start by talking with the most important keywords from the new set, with the VCX!

If I couldn't own the Millenium Falcon..... the Ghost would be it. So long as Chopper is there.

Z95s: Baby's First Starfighter

So we wrap up our wave V squadron coverage with the cheapest starfighter squadron in the game, the Z95 Headhunter. Hit the jump for a lot of scattered thoughts on it!

It's like you told a 5 year old who just saw Star Wars to draw you an X-wing.

"Lock S-foils in Attack Position" - The Mighty X-Wing Fighter!

The X-Wing is the reason I started playing Armada. Not X-wing. I've never actually played a game, haha! I got into Armada to command masses of X-wings across the table, throwing bombs at ISDs and telling Imperial admirals to Kiss my Wookiee. Yes, I read a lot of Star Wars novels growing up. And the X-wing series was the best. Every now and then I try to find time to go back and reread them. It's just so iconically Star Wars to me.

I have like 3 different alt arts, but let's use the basic one

Lancer Pursuit Craft

Before we begin, I'd like to point out that ACTUAL original Lancer-Class Frigates were used to fight enemy starfighters, and were very un-triangle based ships that boasted 20 quad laser cannons built around-

Nerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrd!

So let's talk about the starfighter.

E-wings! Or: John gets whiny about Star Wars lore!

We're barrelling through Wave 5 right now, what with this and the Z95s being the only thing left on my end before I go back and update everything as needed. Oh, and write up Sato, haha. Anyways, let's talk today about E-wings and the Snipe mechanic! (Warning, there are spoilers for Vector Prime below, along with a rather large rant about the Yuuzhan Vong series. Keep that in mind if you're still reading that).

You can almost feel his disappointment for this pun. I choose to believe he's disappointed in the Yuuzhan Vong series.

YT-2400s: Fear the Angry Frisbees!

So I've come to realize that in order to discuss the proper way to Squadron Build and (somewhat) run squadrons, I'd prefer to have all of the squadrons having been discussed. Eric and I started this to help newer players get some things under control (I wanted to write squadrons, Eric wanted to stop people from hating on the Raider and TIEs, haha), so it makes more sense in my mind to have discussed all the existing squadrons BEFORE I get into how to run them and in what combinations and such. So my GOAL is to hit one of these every night this week, publish them in the morning, and then write another one that night. So you get a week of articles! And I get a week to learn Vassal and then take easier to see/understand pictures! Everyone wins!

So let's talk YT-2400s, the second most loved squadron from Wave II.