Super Star Destroyer - Winners and Losers

Something big is coming... Soon...  No, I don't know when.

Anyways, instead of just sitting around being bored talking about nothing, let's make wild predictions about how the game is going to change when the SSD shows up!

Winners

Damage Control Officer

Damage Control Officer (DCO) is like a new person you meet hanging out at the game store, when you show up on a rare Thursday night you're not working.  They're cool, they want to learn to play Armada, but they're only free every other Thursday night.  And normally Wednesdays and Sundays are when you have off to play Armada.

Well DCO fits in the officer slot, and requires a ship that has contain tokens to even do anything.  And those ships that do have contain tokens would love to have DCO, but there's other things that need that slot a lot more.  Pryce, Tua, Brunson, Intel Officer...

But the SSD has three officer slots, and two contains.  And needs a way to prevent critical result lists from peeling it's shields away (Heavy Ion Emplacements / Assault Concussion Missiles).  Suddenly, DCO almost feels like it's a required addition to protect your big, big investment.

Plus, if your opponent doesn't bring anything like that, you can always space her to Darth Vader (officer).

Admiral Titus

Speaking of Darth Vader (officer) you now have an incentive to stack cheap officers onto your ships for rerolls, assuming they weren't already using an officer slot.  Admiral Titus in particular is an officer I've loved to use in the past and done quite well with as he lets you punish mistakes.  Then he can get tossed out the airlock to fuel a reroll.


Captain Needa

Similar to Admiral Titus, Needa gives the SSD a much needed Evade token to improve its survivability at long range, which is something it desperately needs.  Plus he's cheap and so worth spacing to Vader after he's done his job.  That's a lot of officers on the SSD now, but no one said you couldn't have Vader tag along in a Gozanti nearby...


General Tagge

My sleeper pick for one of the better commanders on the SSD.  That beast is going to take multiple attacks, making you burn tokens like crazy.  How many times have you been flying an MC80 Liberty and had someone block your green brace?  Gotta burn the red one!

Well, sure, but with Tagge you can get it back.  And the SSD is big enough (and sticks out far enough) to be taking those hits on Round 2.  And with 22 hull, it should be around into Round 5 to recover that brace again.


Interdictor

Your new home for commander Admiral Piett.  Use his ability twice in a single turn if you need to... or do defensive upgrades.  The power is yours!


Heavy Turbolaser Turrets

You are facing off against the SSD and you know you need to do something about its tokens.  You're not going to be able to count on getting enough accuracies to block everything.  XI7's look great, until you remember the thing has 22 hull, so it's going to get the chance to use those redirects anyway before you can do too much drilling.  DCO is hanging out preventing critical effects.

Why not everyone's favorite forgotten upgrade, Heavy Turbolaser Turrets?  Make them choose - redirect the damage?  Prevent the critical effect?  The standard damage is still going to hit them (minus 1 damage).  Put that on your own SSD to make a good big ship killer.

For obvious reasons Mon Karren is a good upgrade for this as well.


Repair Teams

Wait, what?

Okay bear with me.  Look at how much HULL this thing has.  You think it isn't going to take hull damage?  That's the biggest problem with Repair Team - you don't always get a chance to use the upgrade, and if and when you do, you've got bigger problems - namely that you're repairing a single hull on something that probably doesn't have much hull to start with.

This monster has 22 hull.  It can afford to take a few hits to the hull, and if you can repair them, all the better.  It's not almost dead when it has 5 damage cards on it.  It's just ANGRY.

Follow the SSD with a pair of Gozantis with Repair Teams (and Officer Vader), prime an Engineering command, and peal off 4 hull damage in a single round.

Losers

Admiral Raddus

Drunkle Raddus is Rad because he lets you win deployment, and deployment wins games.  The SSD doesn't care about deployment, and there is really no good place you can put the Raddus drop down that it can drill the SSD and fly away.  Unlike everything up to and including an ISD, the SSD can't be melted in a single turn.

With DCO onboard, you take away one of Raddus's biggest tricks for melting an enemy ship - adding extra damage through critical effects.  With double brace, it can take a double arc shot and keep on trucking.  And with the Raddus drop typically on Turn 2, Tagge says "give me back that Brace".



Low Hull Fighters

Annihilator, Gunnery Team, and your old pal Agent Kallus would like to take a few moments to remind you that Fighters aren't that much of a threat.  Especially named fighters.  This combo can put out a lot of flak at relatively long ranges, to the point where even a moderate investment in squadrons will give you the advantage in points more times than not.


First Player Bids

Last / First isn't quite as impressive when your target doesn't really care.  There are quite a few objectives that the SSD will really enjoy using with Second Player.


Rebels

There's... uh... nothing at all new that Rebels can use in this expansion.  That kinda sucks.