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!