Friday, February 23, 2018

Commander's Guide - Mandolorian Gauntlet Fighter

Two of these guys manage to sneak into the Chimera expansion.  Are they worth your time to bring along?


Mandalorian Gauntlet Fighter - 20 points


First the good:  It's a Rogue with Speed 4, meaning you can both hustle these guys into the fight, and can afford to hold back on squadron activations and let them go during the Squadron phase without losing their ability to move and shoot.  Assault as a keyword makes them and the "Ace" Gar Saxon the only sources of raid tokens for the Imperials.  7 Hull means these things can handle getting in close, and as far as hull per point, you're getting pretty close to TIE Fighter / Decimator efficiency.

The bad news?  They hit like a wet noodle (except when they don't).  If you're not taking them to get off Assault and generate raid tokens, you're looking at 1.5 damage per attack anti-squadron (with a theoretical max of 4) and just 1.0 damage per attack anti-ship.  If you are going hunting for raid tokens, that anti-ship damage drops to merely 0.25 per attack, and you've only got a 75% chance of hitting that token in the first place.

And the Imperials have nothing that can modify your attack anti-ship.  Toryn Farr is a Rebel upgrade, and Admiral Sloane doesn't need their scum (Rogue ships).  And 20 points is an awkward point total for something that is an EW squadron, and won't contribute much to the actual fight.  That's not to say it can't, but if you wanted something that could do that, there are many other squadrons that can do the role better for a reduced cost.  Like a Firespray.

I certainly don't see any reason you'd ever want to bring 3 of them into the game, taking up 60 points - nearly half of your squadron points - for what is mostly going to be preventing commands.  Just one or maybe two will be sufficient.  And if you're only bringing one...


Gar Saxon - 23 points


Why not spend 3 more points?  For those 3 points you get a Brace, bonus damage against enemy squadrons with Intel or Relay (they don't even have to do anything, they take the damage just by activating), and a much better odds on doing damage to the enemy ship and a modest improvement to your raid token chances.

Gar Saxon trades the double blue for a blue / black anti-ship, giving him a 87.5% chance of landing the hit for Assault, and a 37.5% chance of doing damage with the shot after your Assault.  The drawback being that he becomes unique and thus able to be Agent Kallus'd.  In my opinion these things more than make up for the 3 extra cost.  Unless you literally can't find those 3 points somewhere, he's going to be your best bet for including a Gauntlet into your list.


Assault


A quick note on how the keyword works - it is a "spend" effect, and thus takes place in the Modify Dice step of an attack.  You can thus attack - for example - a Mon Mothma ship or Flotilla and spend the die to add a raid token before they are able to spend their defense tokens.

Also, while any dial can cancel all raid tokens, you must spend a specific command token to cancel a raid token.  This means that your "best" option might be to raid a command the opponent has already has a corresponding token for.  Worst case, you've forced them to burn a token.  Best case, you've made them discard an entire dial just so they could use that token.

This also could be just the thing to make a Konstantine control list sing.  Special K's biggest problem always was "the opponent will just navigate".  Now they can't dial up a navigate (Raid) and can't bank a token (Tractor Beam).  And you're setting their speed with Konstantine.


That's it for new ships and squadrons, and thus that's it for Commander's Guides for now.  Except I still have most of Wave 1 and Wave 2 to redo.  Plus lots of upgrade cards to go over.  Plenty of work for the near future!

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