Quarterfinal Round- JJ vs Brobafett

For our penultimate highlight of the quarterfinals, I'm looking at Broba and JJ. Both came out of fairly close matches, so this should be another great match to watch.

Elimination Round- JJ vs Cactusman

Our final elimination round preview article features the Worlds 2017 winner and defending World Cup champion, JJs Juggernaut against thecactusman17.

Elimination Round- Aresius vs BMcDonald7

Today's highlighted match up is the Winner of Pod #5, Aresius, against the Runner-up of Pod #4, BMcDonald7.

Matchup of the Week - Maturin vs emfrank72 (World Cup Qualifier)

Today we are going to look at our first World Cup Qualifier matchup of the week.  Per the rule, this game is worth +1 points to each player for being chosen as the matchup of the week.  Congratulations to both of them.  That means the game could theoretically end in a 7 / 6 split, which isn't particularly bad for either party, but that if one wins big, it could be big indeed.

Maturin's goal

GUEST ARTICLE: Chris's After Action Report - Pittsburgh Store Championship

[Editor's Introduction:  We recently had our local store championship here in Pittsburgh, which I sadly had agreed to sit out and TO if we had an even number of players - sadly there were only 6 people that showed up, not including myself, so I was sitting this one out.  Here is the After-Action Report from the winner - I think it gives a pretty good luck into our local meta.  One store championship to go, locally!]

Hey folks. I'm the occasionally mentioned Chris (Editor's note:  See Round 2). Somewhat recently I had the honor of being the winner of Drawbridge Game's Star Wars Armada Store Championship. Matt is a good friend of mine (and a member of our local Armada group), so I figured I'd throw a guest article at him with some of my thoughts and experiences on and about the win.

FAQ & Tournament Rules Update - 7.24.15

Today we are going to talk briefly bit about the FAQ update as well as the Tournament Rule changes just released by Fantasy Flight on the 24th.

FAQ

Overall, there isn't much in the FAQ that changes in a dramatic way an understanding of any of the cards.  For the most part, it is a clarification of the existing rules.  Interestingly enough, the ruling of XI-7 Turbolasers and how they interact with the Advanced Projectors was not covered (it should be noted that Advanced Projectors lets you transfer 1 damage to each hull zone against an XI-7 attack, per FFG email).

The biggest change was how attacks were made, specifically how line of sight was established on hull zones.  Previously, the rule as worded allowed you to take shots on an enemy hull zone if it was in arc and had line of sight that did not go through another hull zone.  Now you have to measure both line of sight AND attack range to ensure neither one goes through another hull zone.

Let's take a look at what is a legal shot and what isn't:

AFII has a line of sight on the VSD's rear arc.

But the VSD's rear arc isn't in the AFII's side arc per the new rules.

Above, the pictures show a shot that with the previous rules as written would be perfectly legal.  The rear arc of the VSD is within the side arc of the AFII (though you'd have to go through the VSD's side arc to measure it), and there is Line of Sight between both arcs.  Under the new rules, because the shortest point between the two that is still in arc is now covered by the VSD's side arc, the shot is no good - the AFII cannot shoot the VSD's rear with its side arc.

The AFII has line of sight on the VSD's rear arc from its front...

And though some points are blocked...

The nearest point in arc is not.

This is the example of something that is still legal - in the above scenario, the AFII has the rear hull zone of the VSD in its front arc, and still does according to the new rules after measuring for range.  It also has the line of sight, making it a perfectly legal shot.

General Rule Clarifications:

Each attack against a squadron is treated as a separate attack for purposes of cards.  No, you are not allowed to attack ALL squadrons with two extra blue dice with Dominator, unless you spend shields for each attack.

Card Clarifications:

Admiral Motti - Sympathetic Death for your ships is now a thing that can happen: if Motti's ship is destroyed, and another of your ships has enough damage to destroy it without Motti's effect, it blows up too.

Admiral Screed - Yes, he works like you think he does.  Screed lets you change a dice to any face that has a crit, even if other things are on that face.

Demolisher - You can use the post-maneuver attack after you use Engine Techs.  You cannot maneuver > attack > engine tech maneuver > attack.  If you don't attack before you maneuver, the first attack is lost.  Demolisher only affects one of the attacks.

Warlord - Like Screed, you can use Warlord to change your red dice to a double hit result.

Garm Bel Iblis - Just a friendly reminder, no duplicate command tokens.

Tournament Rules:

First there is a quick clarification on what happens if both players have all their ships blown up at the same time - even if there is a point differential (from objectives), the Second Player gets a win, and the game ends with a 0 point margin of victory.

TOME:

TOME exists, and does stuff.  Specifically, it changes the calculations for strength of schedule tiebreakers from "How Many Tournament Points Do Your Opponents Have?" to a calculation that does not factor in Byes to the strength of schedule.  Consider the following Scenario:

Ackbar played Vader, Piett, and Ozzle.  Vader has 26 Tournment Points, Piett has 10, and Ozzle has 15.  Ackbar - according to the basic tournament rules, would have a total Strength of Schedule of 51.

But Piett had a bye in the 3rd round, inflating his score, and Ozzle also had a 1st round bye!  So the new calculation would be as follows:

Vader = 26 / 3 = 8.67

Piett = 2 / 2 = 1.00

Ozzle = 7 / 2 = 3.50

Total = (8.67 + 1.00 + 3.50) / 3 = 4.39 Strength of Schedule for Ackbar

Conversely, Ozzle had a first round bye.  His opponents were Solo and Ackbar.  Solo had 21 ponits, and Ackbar had 24.  For the old way of measuring, he wound up with 44 points for Strength of Schedule.

But since he had a first round bye, the new calculation would be as follows:

Solo = 21 / 3 = 7

Ackbar = 24 / 3 = 8

Total = (7+8) / 2 = 7.5 Strength of Schedule for Ozzle

So you can see that the new TOME calculations remove byes from the equation, as earlier Ackbar would have a much better Strength of Schedule even though most of his opponents had byes, and Ozzle had a much worse Strength of Schedule because of his early bye.  But with the TOME calculations, the effects of the byes are removed, and you get results based on only the games that were played.  Something to keep in mind if you are playing in a tournament.

Pairings:

The next is how pairings take place.  Pairings are random for the first round, but Players can ask not to be paired up with people they traveled with or family members for the first round only.  After the first round, players are paired up against one another randomly, based on their Tournament Score.  If an odd number of players are in any particular Tournament Score, a random player from that group is they are paired with a player from the next lowest group.

The other big edit is that players should not be paired against each other more than once before the end of the tournament / elimination rounds.

Mirror Matches:

Painting your ships is now a legal way to differentiate who owns which ships.

One Tool Rule:

You can only use one measuring tool at a time to measure range / distance / movement.  No triangulation!  And no marking things off with tokens.

Displacement in Maneuvers:

Both players need to agree on how to mark displaced ships when moving through areas.

Well, that's it for this update.  I hope this lets you look at the big highlights of the changes for the tournaments and FAQs.  Next time I'll discuss movement and formations!

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Armada Commanders Wave 1 - Imperial

With Wave 1 released, both Rebels and Imperials have 3 commanders that they can use with their fleets.  Which commander you use is an important part of your strategy and build, especially as you have to use a commander and thus a flagship.  Every commander produces a fairly powerful boost to your entire fleet, but by using one, you are locked out of using any others.  We're going to talk first about the Imperial commanders - what each one does for your fleet and what kind of builld they would benefit from.

Admiral Motti 

At 24 points, Motti is the least expensive of the Imperial options.  His boost is to give all ships greater hull value based on their size - small ships get 1 hull, medium get 2, and large (not out yet) get 3.  With the current Imperial ships, that means Gladiators get 1 hull (5 to 6) and Victorys get 2 hull (8 to 10!).  The biggest benefit then is to the Victory, which makes them far and away the tankiest ship in the game - few oppenents are going to be able to throw enough dice to strip through all your shields (and redirect tokens) and land 10 hits on your hull.  Motti goes well with a few high HP ships, working to protect your investment in your larger craft.  When Imperial Star Destroyers come out, Motti will work even better - adding 3 hull to the largest ship in your fleet.

Admiral Screed

Admiral Screed comes in just 2 points higher than Motti, at 26 total points.  Screed's benefit is that once per activation (not per attack), when a friendly ship is attacking, it may spend 1 die to change a die to a face with a "crit" icon.  Screed loves black dice - he can change one black dice being rolled to a hit / crit combo, which means 2 extra damage on 2 blank die.  Factor in Advanced Concussion Missles and it turns into 4 extra damage on 2 blank die.  Remember, you have to pay a die to change a die, but even in a situation where you have rolled all hits, that is still a free crit with no loss of damage.

Screed wants those black dice, which means he wants to command ships that throw them.  Either Gladiator class ship or the Victory I are his best places to be, and with the Gladiator's mobility, you'd be more likely to throw the dice in question.  Screed is the lynchpin of 3 Gladiator builds, and works perfectly well in a list with a mix of Victory I's and Gladiators as well.

His drwaback though, is that he is much less usueful with Blue dice.  All Blue sides have a positive outcome of some sort, so unless you roll a massive number of accuracies with your blues, and your reds, you are pretty much never going to be adding net damage to your roll.

Grand Moff Tarkin

Tarkin solves one of the biggest Imperial problems - because you have such a high command value, you aren't particularly able to adapt to chnages on the board - you need to plan ahead a turn or two to make sure your commands will match with what your ships need to do.  In addition, you have room to stock away 2 or 3 command tokens, but unless you spend the first few rounds saving tokens, you'll never get enough.  Tarken solves both these problems.  For 38 points, 14 more than Motti and 12 more than Screed, you get, at the beginning of each ship phase, 1 command token of a single type given to each one of your ships.

This can be useful for anything - a token to bank for later in the first round, a much needed navigate to slow down, or speed away, a free squadron activation from each of your ships, hasty repairs for a ship you didn't think was going to be the focus of each enemy attack (and a banked token for the rest).  Tarkin, for those 14 extra points, represents a degree of flexability that the Imperial Fleet normally cannot utilize, and a chance for overwhelming boosts if that flexability is unneeded.  Tarkin gets the most bang for his buck flying with Victorys - their 3 Command Value means that he can stock more tokens in the early rounds, and help them be more responsive in later rounds.  He can also work wonders with a pack of Engine Tech Gladiators as well, giving them all a free Maneuver token each round, leaving them free to dial up firepower or repairs on their command dial instead.

The cost is his biggest drawback though.  14 points more than Admiral Motti makes him the most expensive upgrade on the Imperial side you can possibly field.  His base cost of 38 means that he is priced the same as a rebel Corvette.  For the level of benefits he gives you, he costs just under 13% of your 300pt list - or 5% of your list compared to Motti.  And to maximize the investment you get out of taking him, you want a large number of ships on the board.

That's it for Imperial Commanders at the current time.  Next time we will look at the Rebel Commanders and how they should be used.