Monday, November 9, 2015

Wave 2 Officers

Let's continue into discussion of Wave 2 upgrade cards, with Wave 2 Officers.  This is the biggest addition of upgrade cards with the new expansion, bringing in 5 non-unique upgrades as well as 2 named officers for each faction.  We're going to take a look at all the new officers and see where they can fit into your Wave 2 fleet.




Unique Imperials:

Admiral Montferrat - 5 pts - This Admiral improves quick moving ships by making all shots against them count as obstructed if they are going speed 3 or higher.  However, if your maneuver overlaps a ship, he is discarded.  Monty comes with the Imperial Raider expansion, and feels like a good fit for the ship that wants to zoom around the board at speed 4.  It makes the raider a particularly difficult ship to bring down at long range, where the Raider can't even fire back.  It could also see some use on a Gladiator, keeping it alive as it sets up a close range shot, though the GSD lacks the short of maneuverability at higher speeds that can keep it from running into an enemy ship.  The ISD would also be an interesting option, though the large ship base would make avoiding an overlap difficult, any enemy ship that tries to block your forward movement would be eating a full frontal arc shot.  All in all, a solid choice for a key Imperial ship that you expect to take a lot of fire on approach.

Captain Needa - 2 pts - At the start of the first round, you can replace any defense token with an Evade on Needa's ship.  Worthless for the Raider, pointless for the Gladiator, Needa lives on a larger ship - either a VSD or an ISD, and turns it into a better long range defender at the cost of either redundancy in shields or the ability to absorb critical hits (ISD only).  Obviously, using Needa to swap out your Brace would be silly.  An important note on the timing:  Because it takes place at the start of the first round, you don't need to have decided on which token you are swapping out until after you see the objective, your opponents fleet and setup.  You don't even need to swap something out if you feel that an evade token wouldn't be useful for the match.  For example, if the enemy setup has Gen Dodonna, you might swap for Redirect to keep Contain to block incoming critical shots.  If the opponent goes with an all close quarters ordinance list you might swap out Contain as the opponent won't be using the standard critical effect at all.  And if you see the opponent going with a Medium Range heavy list - Torpedo MC30s and CR90Bs, you could just elect not to take an Evade at all.

Unique Rebels:

Lando Calrissian - 4 pts - Lando is all about taking one punishing attack against you, and having it rerolled into something hopefully less painful.  During the spend defense token step (after the attacker has modified his dice), you can discard Lando to force the opponent to reroll whatever dice you want.  The obvious use for Lando is Screed insurance on a big ship - he can force the reroll of any number of critical results, to try and slip away without taking a nasty effect.  He can also neuter a big roll against a smaller ship - imagine forcing a reroll of multiple hit/crit and double hit results against you from an ISD1, letting your MC30 dump fire back the next turn.  He's a one time use that rewards aggressive play - he comes with the MC30, but could see time on any flagship or slasher.

Walex Blissex - 5 pts - Walex lets you discard him when you activate, to recover a defense token that you had already discarded.  More than anything else, Walex is Brace insurance - Take multiple nasty hits, burn your Brace to absorb each of them, and it's back the next turn to take another pounding.  The MC80 is what he shows up in, but any high value target ship with a Brace (the AFII) can benefit from him.  Between him and Electronic Countermeasures, you can keep a ship punching above its weight class for a long time.  He also works well with Turbolaser Reroute Circuits, allowing you to spend your evade token on offense twice in a single turn.

Generic Officers:

Navigation Officer, Wing Commander, Tactical Expert, Engineering Captain - 6 pts each - I'm going to discuss all of these at once, because really they are the same upgrade with different flavors.  Each one lets you change a command just before you reveal it to the command that the officer represents.  Of them all, Tactical Expert seems the least useful, though he could be seen possibly on a ship that doesn't know when they would be lining up a good shot, like a VSD.  Wing Commander will likely be seen as a new staple for squadron heavy fleets - change to a squadron command only when you need to use one and your squadrons are in range, otherwise keep going about your business.  Navigation Officer and Engineering Captain are likewise useful, especially for a list that only would be using Navigation or Engineering - you now don't need to issue the other order, just issue one and change to the other as needed.  Obviously, this is better with the larger command ships, giving you better flexibility, but it can work with smaller ships as well - consider a CR90 with Navigation Officer that is free to dial up Concentrate Fire commands every turn.  If the opponent isn't in range, navigate them into position.  Maybe not the most point-efficient option, but something to think about.

Support Officer - 4 pts - Another command related upgrade, the Support Officer lets you, at the start of the Command Phase, discard him to discard all of your command dials, thus letting you set new ones in their place.  This is an amazing card for any Command Value 3 ship, giving it effective Command 1 for a single turn, and the ability to react to whatever the opponent is doing.  In a 6 turn game, this can be a powerful game changer if the wrong ship is being attacked, or you need a specific command this turn.  In my opinion, this is the best officer card of the new bunch, and definitely worth the points it gives you for tactical flexibility.

4 comments:

  1. As an Armada rookie (1st game yesterday) your blog has been a deep source of resources, guides and insight on this fine game!

    Keep up the good work!

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    1. Glad you've liked it. There's plenty of other resources out there as well - I've got as many as I could find in the navigation bar on the right side of this post - look for "Useful Armada Links"

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  2. I think the Wing Commander upgrade is the most interesting. It allows you to bring a ship focused fleet with a fighter screen, and time the activation of those squadrons perfectly to get the optimum strike on your opponent's squadrons. Or for a carrier based fleet, line up other commands (like repair) and ensure that you can activate whenever needed.

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    1. I've been having a lot of luck running Wing Commander and Boosted Comms on an AFIIB, throwing around squadrons and switching off to engineering / navigation as they get engaged or the ship takes damage. I think it really works best with 2 ships each with Wing Commander / Boosted Comms, and 6 squadrons - that way you can begin repairing the ship that is getting focused on, and not lose too much in the way of activations. It's a way to react to your opponent's movements.

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