Turbolaser Upgrades: Or "Knowing is Half the Battle!"

The best way of improving your offense/firepower/dice rolling: It's turbolaser time!

Notice the lack of Green lasers here.  Clearly Imperial ships shouldn't be shooting at all! It's in the graphic!

Imperial commander review: Admiral Konstantine

Let's finish off wave 4 by discussing the commander that comes bundled with the Interdictor, Admiral Konstantine.

Or "Pouty-lips Frown-stache" as he may be known (he's not).

Eric 1.5 updates 12/18

 Updates for today. So much stuff to do!

• How to use black dice article.
• Minor updates, some editing, added some hyperlinks.
• Ion cannons
• High Capacity Ion Turbines got even worse because it competes for Modification slots with its 1.0 buddy H9 Turbolasers.
• Even then, it was a fairly niche build mostly seen on ISD-Is.
• Ion Cannon Batteries got better with 1.5 focusing more on command tokens and command-triggered upgrades.
• New Leading Shots at 6 points.
• MS-1s got a little better but not much.
• NK-7s are still terrible.
• Overload Pulse Avenger interaction discussion removed. Thankfully.
• Interdictor
• Between Brunson getting pricier and ECMs needing repair tokens to ready, I honestly feel like it's a matter of meta and preference now between Brunson and Tua/ECM. Both options are 9 points. The Interdictor title readying ECMs for free is a nice touch, so I lean Tua nowadays.
• Combat Interdictor is still the worst ship in the game. Yay!
• Konstantine
• New Konstantine, new article. Substantial overhaul here.
• I'm still not sure Konstantine is actually worth using but he's much less bad than he was in 1.0.
• Armada peripherals
• Minor editing.
  

Gear up for battle: Armada peripherals for the player looking to upgrade their game and storage

Okay so you are getting familiar with Armada but you're still carrying your stuff around in the core set box and and you figure it's time to upgrade your game components and storage. Well I'm here for you! Welcome to my armory...

I'm pretty sure at least one of these launches Nerf balls.

Black dice: blowing up enemy ships for fun and profit!

Using black dice ships is one of the more difficult skill sets for newer Armada players to come to grips with (along with "how to squadron", but John's got you covered and then some on that topic). John and I have covered some of the elements on "how to black dice" in ship-review articles such as the Raider, Gladiator, and MC30 articles. We figured it would be useful to combine some of the all-purpose black-dice help into one article and given my love affair with black dice (its kind of my thing, just like squadrons are kind of John's thing) I volunteered as tribute.

In the grim darkness of the alternative future there are only children killing each other for entertainment and a socio-economic system that doesn't really make much sense when you sit down and think about it!

General Airen Cracken: Know Your Enemy/Commander's Corner

We continue Wave 3 with General Cracken, head of Rebel Intelligence.  Hit the jump and unleash the Cracken!

I was actually in the movie and this is the joke you open with? Ugh, I'm disappointed.

GR75s: We All Float Down Here

Let's start off our wave 3 "coverage" with the Rebel GR-75! Today's topic is covering what they do, and how to use them, and all that other stuff.  Fighting against them is another article, but for now: the first transport is away!

Hooray, John finally got to Wave 3!

Eric 12/16 and 12/17 article updates

Updates for the past two days:

• Fleet support
• A little editing and mostly bringing Slicer Tools up to date.
• It's still a good card but you need to be a lot more careful with how you use it.
• Gozantis
• The Minister Tua Electronic Countermeasures Slicer Tools Suppressor Gozanti build was cute, although not necessarily that great. Now that both of the big upgrades eat repair tokens to ready, it's not really viable anymore. 
• Possible substitutes exist but you're in much greater danger of "oops, that's my scatter" followed by the sound of comms static and a distant explosion.
  
• Bidding
• Minor upkeep.
• Attack sequence
• Added the new reminder bullet point from the RRG that you can attack engaged squadrons. Otherwise, nothing needed to be changed.
• General Tagge
• New version up.
• Fairly major overhaul of the discussion portion given there's more considerations for him right now what with the round choosing element.
  
• He still kinda sucks, but I think there's something there for someone determined to get him to work.
• That non-consecutive round requirement is the main culprit here and was totally unnecessary.
  
• Fleet building 101 basics of fleet building
• Minor editing, added some hyperlinks.

Fleet building 101: the basics of fleet building

First and foremost, I (Eric) am going to be moving into a new house this week so my availability is sketchy at best. I'm hoping to be able to get one more article in this week when I have some downtime but I make no promises. I'll do my best, though. On to the article!

John and I have been dancing around the topic of fleet building for a little while and I figured now that I'm caught up to wave 3 of the Imperial releases it's time to at least get the basic parameters established for fleet building. I'll do my best to explore the considerations that go into it at higher levels but this is not an exhaustive guide. Everyone makes fleets differently and so if you're successful and your process doesn't follow my recommendations exactly, then good for you. Anyways, let's get to it, shall we?

Imperial commander review: General Tagge

All right let's finish off the Imperial side of teeny-tiny wave three with a commander review of General Tagge!

You may remember him as "the only person on the original Death Star that took the Rebels seriously."

The attack sequence and you!

I'm taking a break from writing up the General Tagge article to talk about the attack sequence and how it works. I've mentioned it in a few posts (primarily the ordnance upgrades article) and John recently covered it somewhat in his Ackbar article and it should probably all be in one place for easy reference. In short, the attack sequence in Armada can be very important and it's frequently misunderstood. Once you get the hang of it, it's pretty easy, though, and I'd like to catch you up to speed and provide some examples!

This is how Imperials feel when Ackbar uses his add effect on an HMC80 broadside in step 3.

Bidding for initiative/Mailbox #3

We got a question from smashthedean in the comments of the Sunday Adepticon wrapup post. He asked:
"Speaking of point bids, this might be a better question for a future mailbag post, but... how much is too much??"

That's a fine question and a subject on which even experienced players can differ. I'll do my best to give my take on bids and what I would recommend:

All in on black! I've got Ordnance Experts if it comes up blank! What do you mean "you're not making any sense"?

John 12/16 Updates

Ackbarticle RE-UPDATED.  I added in the Salvo interaction and that whole deal.  Short answer: probably don't try to make a super-salvo Ackbar build?

H80 updated; Reactive Gunnery exists now! I also had to kill some of the "Bail is good on here ya know" advice.

Know Your Enemy/Commander's Corner: Admiral Gial Ackbar

That's right, he has a first name.  It's not just "Admiral."  And he's today's Know Your Commander!

And that's Carrie Fisher's daughter on the right there

Imperial ship review: Gozanti Cruisers

Waves 3 and 4 effectively came out at the same time, making them less of two separate waves, but we're obligated by FFG release terminology to treat them sequentially. Thus let's continue past wave 2 and into wave 3 with the Imperial Gozanti Cruisers!

The U-Haul of the Empire, now with mom's attic for extra overhead storage space!