Thursday, August 25, 2016

Wave 4 Weapons Team Upgrades

On to the next upgrades, Weapons Teams!  We are going to discuss the two new Wave 4 upgrades, Fire-Control Team and Veteran Gunners.

Just some Weapons Team capable ships I had a spare picture of.


As a reminder, the following ships are capable of taking a Weapons Team for each side:

Imperials:
Victory Class Star Destroyer
Gladiator Class Star Destroyer
Imperial Class Star Destroyer
Raider Class Corvette

Rebels:
Assault Frigate MkII
MC-30c
MC-80 Liberty Class


Fire Control Teams - 2 points - During the Resolve Damage Step, you may exhaust this card to resolve one additional critical effect.  You cannot resolve the same critical effect twice.

A few things to note here - the trigger is "During the Resolve Damage Step", so should be able to resolve multiple critical effects that do things like resolving the standard critical effect (deal first card face up) then after the first card is dealt, resolving an additional critical effect (like XX-9's) to make the next two cards dealt face up (or the other way around).

When looking for who this helps, the Imperials with their ways of getting dice modification from Commanders jumps immediately into mind.  Having Screed guarantee a critical or Vader give you the key reroll to fish for one seems the best use for this card.  But what are the best ships to put this on?  Where can you get the most bang for your buck?

Well, the critical effect that makes the most sense for this to work with is Ion Cannon Batteries.  At 5 points, it lets you either get rid of a command token or snake an extra shield off of your enemy's arc  The shield part is key, because that could be just enough damage to get your damage card through that you wouldn't have otherwise.  Ships with Ion Cannons and this upgrade include the VSD2, ISD, Rdr2, and MC-80 Liberty.

Another idea is to couple it with a black critical effect for even more damage card nastiness.  For that, your best bet is probably a shield cruncher like Assault Concussion Missiles, to ensure damage actually reaches hull rather than the current standard of Assault Proton Torpedoes.  Gladiators get the most work out of this combo, though MC30cs and VSD1s could certainly take it.


Veteran Gunners - 5 points - While attacking, you may exhaust this card to reroll all dice in your attack pool.

I see two ways of using this card.  Way #1 is to fish for a specific result that I want.  Certainly not for Black dice, because Ordinance Experts already do this and do it better.  But for the Blue Critical off of the Ion Cannon Upgrade slot, there isn't much not named Screed or Vader that can get you those rerolls.  Rdr2s can fish for Overload Pulse for their Avenger buddy, without sacrificing Motti's hull.  The MC80 Liberty or VSD2 can find those NK-7 results they want.  I guess you could use this with MS-1 too?

The way is making those fickle Red dice get the rerolls you need, without sacrificing Blue firepower.  On an AFIIA set up for double arcs, this thing is loaded for bear.  But as it is a reroll of every dice in your pool, you have to know when to press your luck, and when to take an average roll.  To continue with the Ion Cannon theme, I think these work best when paired with SW-7 Ion Cannons.  After all, what do you care what your blues reroll into?  You just want to use those sweet, sweet reds.  Imagine Avenger rolling up with Veteran Gunners and SW-7s, and you've already been Overload Pulsed by the Rdr2 with Veterans Gunners.  Those 4 Red dice suddenly look pretty terrifying.


That is it for Weapons Teams.  It will be Support Teams time to shine next time!  Stay tuned!

7 comments:

  1. I like your thinking on Veteran Gunners. I initially wasn't impressed, but it works well with just a plain old VSD-1, as most of the time you are just shooting red dice. The ability to reroll reds is very nice.

    Fire control team is cheap, but there are so many other good upgrades in that slot. Plus you have to build your fleet for it. I need to try it more on the table.

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    1. Don't forget that you can spend your accuracy before reroll.
      That may be usefull sometime.

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    2. An execellent point that bears repeating Charles. You can also spend a hit to flip a card from Precision Strikes prior to rerolls.

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  2. I don't think you're XX-9 logic works. The card says "the first two damage cards dealt to the defender by this attack", not "the next two". Also, the rules clearly state that critical effects are resolved before you sum up damage and deal cards. Both the standard effect and XX-9's merely change how cards are dealt later in the turn, they don't actively do anything directly to the target and they don't stack. Also, looking at this, I don't think APTs and XX-9's would stack either.

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    1. Well, until a FAQ comes out, we only have the preview article to go on which shows the Standard Crit and XX-9s stacking.

      For APT, if you trigger it after the cards get flipped up for the first time, then it would give you a face up card no matter what the ruling.

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    2. No it wouldn't. The order of operations is quite clear in the rules. " The attacker can resolve one of its critical effects. Then the attacker determines the total damage amount. Then the defending squadron or hull zone suffers that total damage, one point at a time.". You can only trigger APT before any other damage cards are dealt making it always the first damage card dealt by the attack.

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  3. Although you would still get the free +1 damage from triggering APTs...

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