Quick Thoughts on a Wave 7 Seasonal Tournament

Hooray, Wave 7 is here for Star Wars: Armada.  I was excited to pick my new ships up last week and it worked out that one of the local shops, The Portland Game Store, was having a seasonal kit tournament.  I figured it would be a great chance to not only try, but to play against some of the new toys from Wave 7.




While the temptation was strong to drop everything and try totally a new fleet build, instead I decided to modify an existing Ackbar fleet that I had with what I think will be his favorite new upgrade, Intensify Firepower!.  I was actually as curious to find out what it would be like to play against the Wave 7 stuff as to play with it and playing something that I knew seemed like the best way to evaluate things.

Here's what I had:

Intensify Ackbar 
Points: 400/400  

Assault Objective: Most Wanted
Defense Objective: Fire Lanes
Navigation Objective: Solar Corona

[ flagship ] Assault Frigate Mark II B (72 points)
-  Admiral Ackbar  ( 38  points) 
-  Skilled First Officer  ( 1  points) 
-  Gunnery Team  ( 7  points) 
-  Quad Battery Turrets  ( 5  points) 
= 123 total ship cost

CR90 Corvette A (44 points)

GR-75 Medium Transports (18 points)
-  Toryn Farr  ( 7  points) 
= 25 total ship cost

MC30c Torpedo Frigate (63 points)
-  Ordnance Experts  ( 4  points) 
-  H9 Turbolasers  ( 8  points) 
-  Assault Proton Torpedoes  ( 5  points) 
= 80 total ship cost

Modified Pelta-class Command Ship (60 points)
-  Raymus Antilles  ( 7  points) 
-  Disposable Capacitors  ( 3  points) 
-  Intensify Firepower  ( 6  points) 
= 76 total ship cost

1 YT-2400 ( 16 points) 
1 Rogue Squadron ( 14 points) 
2 A-Wing Squadrons ( 22 points)

Rather than a full recap of battle reports I am just going to focus on how the new stuff performed.

Round 1

• My opponent was running Jerry on a kitted out Kuat Refit ISD.  The Kuat was pretty terrifying as it has such a high damage ceiling relative to other ISDs.  He had no trouble spanking my MC-30 when I failed to setup a good escape route for it.  The side arcs on the Kuat are interesting, being pretty scary, but easier to avoid the worst of with their short range.  I came away with a healthy respect for the Kuat. 
• He had Hardened Bulkheads on it as well which saved him from a couple of damage both from me bumping him and him ramming me.  I like it.
• He had brought 3x Slicer Tools Gozantis to the game, which were a challenge, but those were backed up by one of the new Gauntlet fighters.  I was really excited to see how Raid would work out.  He managed to drop a couple of Raid tokens on my ships over the course of the game.  They were annoying, but not as bad as the Slicer Tools.  Raid would be worse against a fleet that relies on certain commands, but that isn't what I brought.  I can see the potential, but I am not too concerned about it.
• He also had Instructor Goran, but that Gozanti got slagged before it came up as I was avoiding his superior squadrons with my own.  Still, the potential that he had with Goran and Dengar both boosting Vader was amusing.

Round 2

• This game it was time to face Raddus and an Ordnance Cruiser.  I have proxy-ed Raddus for some games in a CC campaign, but this was my first time playing against him.  I tried rushing my opponent to get force an early Raddus drop so I didn't have an MC-75 running around behind me.  That worked, but it was still able to drop in a bad spot for me.  The biggest thing I have noticed about Raddus is how easy it can be to drop the ship in a psot where it just isn't threatened.  My fleet thrives on ganging up on large ships and I just wasn't able to do that.  In the end I killed pretty much everything but the MC-75
• Profundity was also used to drop Garel's Honor out in a spot to trash my CR-90.  That is a combo I think that will be common.

Round 3

• The last game saw me up against a pair of Cymoons.  Before Wave 7 Ackbar was really the king of the long-range game in Armada, but I think that the Cymoon changes that.  It can just throw so many red dice down at range that even Ackbar fleets can come out the worst in the exchange.  I used to feel like I could kinda skirt ISDs at long range and be okay.  The Cymoon is going to have to change some of my tactics in that regard.  It desperately needs dice modification, but I've already run against it with Vader + IF! and that seems to do the job just fine.

For my own fleet I found IF! to be absolutely invaluable.  It just completely changed how my fleet performed allowing Ackbar so much more consistency in the red dice attacks.  I can't imagine I will play Ackbar without having an IF! Pelta along for the ride.  The Pelta actually worked great in the trailer role and was responsible for killing 2x ISDs and a Quasar in one game!

All told it was a fun day and a great chance to see some new toys in action.  I am already looking forward to my next Wave 7 adventure.