Star Wars: Armada

Star Wars: Armada is a fleet-scale tabletop miniatures wargame developed by Fantasy Flight Games and set in the Star Wars universe; not to be confused with the other one.

In Armada, the fleets of the Rebellion and the Empire wage massive battles, with Star Destroyers and Mon Calamari capital ships trading fire while X-Wings and TIE Fighters engage in fierce dogfights. The game emphasizes forward planning, rewarding skilled positioning and ship commands chosen turns in advance, with an upgrade system that allows for an almost unlimited variety of list-building options.

Why Play Armada

Relevant information is presented clearly for both players to see at a glance.

Armada's ships come pre-painted and pre-assembled (although the squadrons come in unpainted colored plastic), saving players less interested in the hobby side the need to model and paint, while still allowing those who want it the option to repaint their ships. Ships and squadrons come with all rules and tokens needed to use them, aside from the game rules available in the Core Set and as free PDFs on FFG's website, so there's no need to buy a giant rulebook or continually re-buy overpriced army books.

The rules are both straightforward and intuitive, but still allow for a great deal of complexity and depth. The ships include dials, tokens, and counters, to make tracking game information such as ship health, speed, activation, and the like quickly and easily.

A combination of factors- alternating activation, ship movement using a maneuver tool that limits their turn radius and gives them inertia, moving after shooting, and command dials (a special action the ship makes during its activation) being set as many as three turns in advance, combine to give the game incredible strategic depth and a strong emphasis on planning and foresight.

Star Wars X-Wing

Star Wars: X-Wing and Star Wars: Armada are completely different scales and rulesets, and while those familiar with X-Wing may notice many individual similarities, Armada is a very different game and in some instances the rules are the exact opposites of their X-Wing equivalents. While X-Wing is a tactical game of starfighter combat between small squadrons of fighters, Armada is a strategical game of fleet combat between capital ships escorted by half a dozen or more squadrons of fighters. If X-Wing draws inspiration from World War 2 dogfighting and allows you to re-enact scenes such as the Death Star trench run, Armada is inspired by WW2 carrier fleets and can simulate the entire Battle of Endor. If you want to command the full might of an Imperial Star Destroyer and throw a baker's dozen squadrons of TIE Fighters at all of your problems, you're in the right place.

Cost

Compared to some other tabletop strategy games, Armada has a relatively low entry cost and upkeep requirement. A tournament-standard 400 point fleet can run you as little $150, and staying up to date with new releases means buying just three or four new ships a year. Players on a budget will find that around $200 to $250 will get them all the ships and upgrades needed to run tournament competitive lists and never feel like they're stuck playing the same builds over and over. On the other hand, a player who goes all-in will find almost every list for a given faction can be built from a collection of one each of that faction's bigger ships and maybe two each of the smaller ones (and a friend playing the other faction to borrow upgrade cards from), which will in total cost you somehwere around $350 USD - or significantly less second hand.

Beyond the initial purchase, staying up to date with new releases is very inexpensive. With one to two waves per year, and usually one ship per faction per wave, upkeep costs can be as low as $40 once every six months. Unlike X-Wing, it's uncommon to need to purchase duplicates of most expansions, let alone four or five copies; the exceptions being the expansions featuring smaller, cheaper ships anyways.

Note that the Core Set can be a rather poor and misleading representation of the full game - giving the inaccurate impression that Rebels are fragile flankers with strong squadrons and the Empire flies slow, front-firing bricks supported by glass TIEs; and often causing very lopsided games dependent wholly on whether or not the VSD managed to line up a shot with its front arc. If possible, get someone with a complete collection to demo the game for you, rather than demoing just the ships in the Core Set.

Gameplay

The game is played on a standard 6'x4' table, with 6'x3' dedicated to gameplay and the remaining six inches per side for cards and tokens.

The first player activates a ship, and then reveals a command dial set in secret often several turns in advance. If it's a squadron command, the ship activates a number of nearby squadrons which can then engage enemy fighters or make a bombing run on an enemy ship. Then the ship fires if any targets are in range, and then after shooting, moves - making positioning a game of cat-and-mouse as you try to predict where your opponent will be, rather than being able to shoot at where he is now.

Ships attack with one or more of three colors of dice, each with a different combination of results and a different range, making up to two attacks a turn; with each of the ship's four firing arcs potentially having different numbers and colors of dice. While defending, ships have a variety of defense tokens that can be spent to reduce or redirect the incoming damage, with the remaining damage reducing their shields or damaging their hull. Ships move using a maneuver tool that restricts turning based on ship maneuverability and current speed, creating a feeling of momentum and further rewarding skilled positioning.

At speed 3, a Nebulon B can make at most 0, 1, and then 2 clicks of the maneuver tool.

Squadrons - representing groups of X-Wings, TIE Bombers, or aces like Tycho Celchu or Boba Fett - zoom forward, engaging in dogfights or bombing enemy ships. Squadrons can only make attacks at close range, regardless of dice color, unless otherwise stated. In addition, squadrons can only move or shoot unless activated by a squadron command. On the other hand, squadrons can move in any direction at any speed up to their maximum, and can move and shoot in either order, giving them great flexibility. If enemy squadrons move into close range they become engaged, meaning they are locked in a dogfight, can only make attacks on each other, and cannot move. Capital ships and squadrons both have separate attack profiles for attacking squadrons or attacking ships. Like ships, squadron aces gain defense tokens of their own.

Activations alternate, with the first player activating one ship, then the second player, until both have no remaining ships to activate. Then players begin activating any squadrons that weren't already activated by a squadron command, with first player activating two squadrons, then second player activating two, and so on.

Rules Summary

Each round is divided into a number of phases.

Command Phase

• Both players set command dials for their ships in secret, with each ship having a number of command dials equal to its command value. A ship's top command is revealed at the beginning of its activation, and new commands are placed on the bottom of the stack; meaning that ships with Command 2 or 3 require planning well in advance. However, even Command 1 ships have to account for the actions of any other ships that may activate before they do in the turn. Instead of providing the command's normal effect, you can gain a command token of the same type, which offers a lesser version of the ability but can be saved for a later turn. Each ship is limited to no more than one command token per type, and no more total command tokens than its command value. A ship can spend a command token while taking the effect of the same command from a dial, to augment the effect - spending a token while using a navigate command to change speed by 2, for example.
  • Navigate - When your ship moves it can make one additional click to the maneuver tool over what its card allows, and it can also raise or lower its speed by one. Note that this is normally the only way to change your ship's speed. Navigate tokens can be spent to change speed by one.
  • Squadron - You can activate a number of nearby squadrons equal to your squadron value, which can move and shoot in any order. In addition to bypassing the normal restriction that squadrons can only move or shoot, this allows you to activate them earlier in the turn for an alpha strike. Squadron tokens can be spent to activate exactly one squadron.
  • Repair - Your ship gains a number of engineering points equal to its engineering value; spend one to move a shield from one hull zone to another, two to regain a shield, or three to discard a damage card (regaining one hull). Engineering tokens provide half your engineering value, rounding up.
  • Concentrate Fire - Add one die of a color already in the attack pool to one of your attacks. Concentrate fire tokens instead allow you to re-roll one die. If using both in the same turn, they must both be used on the same attack.

Ship Phase

• Your ship reveals its top command dial, and chooses to either convert it into a token or use it that turn - if applicable (squadron or engineering), resolving it.
  • Attacking - The ship can then make one attack each from up to two of its hull zones, declaring an attacking hull zone, the target, and the target hullzone.
    • First, determine arc of fire, following the lines printed on the ship's cardboard out. Then check range, using the longest range available in the dice of the firing hull zone. Finally, check line of sight, from the yellow diamond on the attacking hull zone to the yellow diamond on the defending hull zone. After all dice are rolled, effects that add or re-roll dice are resolved, and any accuracies are spent, the target gets to spend defense tokens to mitigate the damage. When firing against squadrons, your ship does not use its normal dice, but instead uses its AA value (which is the same for all hull zones). This still counts as firing from a particular arc, but unlike shooting at a ship, you roll your AA dice separately against every enemy squadron within arc and range. Like most of the other FFG Star Wars games, the system comes with its own unique dice.
    • In Armada, the dice faces feature:
      • Blank - a miss.
      • Hit - add a point of damage to the pool.
      • Accuracy - the attacker gets to prevent the defender from using one of their defense tokens. Multiple accuracies can lock down multiple defense tokens.
      • Critical Hit - add a point of damage to the damage pool, and allow the attacker to resolve a critical effect. Note that unless otherwise stated, only ships and bombers can score critical hits, and only onto ships - otherwise it offers no effect and doesn't add damage. Only one critical effect can be resolved per attack, regardless of the number of critical hits rolled. All ships (and bombers) have the same critical effect by default - the first damage card is dealt face-up - with others available via upgrade cards or squadron ace abilities.
    • There are three colors of dice - all three are D8s, but each features a different combination of faces and has a different range:
      • Black dice (ordnance) have the shortest range, with four hits, two faces with a hit and a crit, and two blanks.
      • Blue dice (ion cannons) are medium range, with four hits, two crits, and two accuracies - and no blanks.
      • Red dice (turbolasers) have the longest range, with two hits, one double hit, two crits, one accuracy, and two blanks.
    • Damage is taken first onto any shields, and then onto the hull. Normal damage is taken as face-down cards drawn from a damage deck, but some effects - including the default critical effect - cause face-up cards. Face-up damage cards carry a negative effect that persists until indicated by the card, or until the card is repaired by the player. Once a ship has a number of face-up and face-down cards equal to its hull value, it's destroyed.

Moving

• After attacks have been resolved, the ship executes a maneuver- if the ship has a navigate command or spends a navigate token, it resolves its effect, then moves along the maneuver tool at its current speed and turning the joints up to the maximum allowed by its ship card. If a maneuver would cause one ship to overlap another, it moves back to the previous notch and both ships take a face-down damage card. If a ship overlaps squadrons, the opposing player places them anywhere in base contact with the ship.

Squadron Phase

• Any squadrons that were not already activated by squadron commands activate, but by default they can only move or attack. The first player activates two squadrons, then second player, until all squadrons have activated. Squadrons can only attack at close range regardless of the dice in their pool, and can move up to their maximum speed in any direction.

Status Phase

• Basically a clean-up stage - you reset your ships's exhausted (but not discarded!) defense tokens, and resolve any relevant upgrade effects.

Fleet Building

Every fleet must have a flagship, which is a ship equipped with a Commander upgrade - a unique character leading your fleet, who each give a different fleet-wide effect. You cannot spend more than a third of game's point limit on squadrons, rounding up - for most games, which are played at 400 points, this means you can spend at most 134 on squadrons. Unique cards, usually characters like Darth Vader but sometimes upgrades like the Interdictor's Grav-Shift Reroute, are indicated by a dot next to their name and can only be taken once per fleet (so you can't have Darth Vader as your commander and field Darth Vader's TIE Advanced at the same time). Furthermore, non-unique upgrades cannot be taken multiple times on the same ship, and a ship can only have one "modification" upgrade.

Each ship has one title upgrade slot - for example, turning a generic MC80 into Admiral Ackbar's Home One - one officer upgrade slot, and a variety of other upgrade slots which vary from ship to ship. You can equip no upgrades or as many as you have slots, and you can take as few as many ships as you want (to a minimum of one, your flagship). There are two variants of each ship model, with different points costs and often different dice, squadron values, or upgrade slots.

You can take no squadrons, or up to your squadrons point cap worth of multiple generic squadrons and/or unique aces- such as Wedge Antilles/Luke Skywalker/Biggs Darklighter, or a group of 8 squadrons of TIE Fighters.

Finally, every fleet has to select one each from three types of objectives.

Fleets are secret until setup begins - when fleets are revealed, the player with the lower points value chooses who goes first, giving incentive to "bidding" by intentionally taking fewer than max points to try and guarantee being first (or second!) player. First player always activates first in the ship and squadron phases, granting a significant advantage.

To counteract this, the first player has to choose from the second player's three objectives, with most objectives granting the second player a large advantage - but moreover giving second player the ability to bring objectives uniquely suited to his list. So either fill up to the points cap, or take below the points cap and leverage being able to choose between going first or second - having first activation, or playing your objectives.

Ships and Squadrons

Rebellion

Small Ships

• CR90 Corvette B - The Rebellion's cheapest non-flotilla ship, half of its Core Set composition, and one of its most iconic vessels. Four HP, 7 total shields distributed mostly evenly and just one redirect make it a very fragile ship. But with incredible maneuverability and two evades, the CR90 excels at weaving in-between the enemy's most dangerous arcs at long range, where its evades can remove one of hopefully very few dice being rolled. Support and defensive upgrade slots, along with its cheap cost, make some niche builds like Engine Techs and Reinforced Blast Doors for ramming damage possible. As a Wave I ship, it's been throw a lot of twists and turns in the meta.
  • CR90 Corvette A - At five points more than the CR90B, the CR90A swaps most of its blue dice for red, giving it a range out to maximum which therefore allow it to trade blows at distance with other capital ships and maintain its evasive edge and accordingly its Ion Cannon upgrade slot is swapped for Turbolasers. This is the more common variant on the table, infamously often fielded with Turbolaser Reroute Circuits to guarantee 2+ damage from long range where its evades can protect it.
  • Titles:
    • Tantive IV - When you would gain a token, another nearby friendly ship may gain it instead. Very situational, especially with the addition of Comms Net alongside the GR-75 in Wave III. Made a bit more sense back in the Wave I/II days. Found only in the core set.
    • Dodonna's Pride - As a blue crit effect, cancel all attack dice to deal one faceup damage card. Like a watered-down APTs, this can allow you to sneak a devastating effect onto an enemy ship that thought it was safe behind its shields - especially when paired with its namesake Commander. Note the timing - crit effects resolve after defense tokens are spent, so this doesn't allow you to freely bypass scatter or evade tokens. Deceptively difficult to pull off - even on a CR90B with Engine Techs, getting into medium range without blowing up can be hard, and then you have to roll a crit to even use it. Take leading shots to try and fish for that crit, and you're spending a hefty chunk of change on a gimmick that could've been better spent just dealing raw damage. It has its uses, but a CR90B with Dodonna's Pride can't just be dropped into any list and expected to earn its keep, as first reading might suggest.
    • Jaina's Light - For two points, you ignore obstacles and can't be obstructed. Combined with TRCs, this can allow a CR90A a lot of survivability - hiding behind rocks for obstruction plus cancelling a second die with evade - while it can freely dish out its own damage in return. So cheap it can often be taken on a whim, and combos well with the CR90As evasive, skirmishing playstyle.

• Nebulon B - Slower and much less agile than a CR90, but with stronger forward firepower and shields, five hull, and a pair of incredibly useful brace tokens. Lacking any redirects and with extremely large and weakly shielded side arcs, it can die very easily to bad positioning or enemy bombers - more than almost any other ship, a badly flown Neb-B is a dead Neb-B. But fly slow, keep your nose pointed at the enemy, and don't get into both range and arc of anything bigger than you at the same time, and the Nebulon is a solid long range red dice platform.
  • Nebulon B Support Refit - The cheaper variant maintains the same anti-ship weapons as its pricier sibling, making it well suited to use for the Salvation or Redemption titles, or as a turbolaser platform with the right upgrade.
  • Nebulon B Escort Frigate - For six points, the ship's anti-squadron increases by one blue die, and its squadron value improves by one. A solid pick with the Yavaris title, which allows its low squadron value to punch well above its weight class.
  • Titles:
    • Salvation - Crits out your front arc count for two damage rather than one. Slap it on a Support Refit for a cheap sniper ship. For sillier builds, TRCs, Spinal Armaments, Commander Sato, and/or the Opening Salvo objective (alongside concentrated fire commands) can boost your long range front arc damage output to terrifying levels.
    • Yavaris - Squadrons you activate can shoot twice if they stay still. Watch your opponent's face turn to horror as Wedge Antilles rolls 12 blue dice in a single turn, Keyan Farlander pulls up to 8 damage against an enemy ship, or Luke Skywalker puts two face-up damage onto a full health ISD. Combine with Adar Tallon to make one of them do it a third time. The only downsides are deciding which of the many viable candidates to activate, and the Nebulon's poor squadron value and lack of an offensive upgrade slot. The latter can be mitigated by Raymus Antilles, a Comms Net GR-75, or commander Leia Organa.
    • Redemption - Whenever a friendly ship within range 5 resolves a repair command, they gain an extra engineering point. Turns the ship into a floating medical barge, This can be a lifeline for small engineering 2 ships who cannot repair hull points with just an engineering dial, and enables engineering 4 ships to remove damage cards with just an engineering token. Note that because it does not say "another friendly ship", Redemption benefits from its own effect. Found only in the core set.

• MC30c Frigate - The MC30 is primarily a means of transporting black dice to the enemy fleet, which it excels at. With 3 black / 2 other dice in its side arcs, the maneuverability at speed 3 of a CR90, and access to both weapons and ordnance slots, it has the ability to reduce even an Imperial Star Destroyer to space dust with the right upgrades and some skilled flying. With a close range double arc, the MC30 can spit out up to 10 damage onto a single target from its black dice alone, even before considering the blue/reds or any upgrades such as APTs or TRCs. On the flipside, it's very flimsy, with just four hull, its speed 4 maneuverability leaves something to be desired, and it lacks the ability of Demolisher to project damage in a huge area. Skilled piloting, a bid for first player, and activation advantage can all be used to mitigate its fragility.
  • MC30c Torpedo Frigate - The cheaper MC30c is generally the more common one. Usually kitted with Ordnance Experts, Assault Proton Torpedoes, Admonition, and possibly an Intel Officer or Lando Calrissian; but even builds with Enhanced Armaments to leverage Admiral Ackbar's ability at long range have merit, bumping the MC30c's side arcs to match an ISD-I's front arc.
  • MC30c Scout Frigate - For six points, swaps its blue dice for red - otherwise mostly the same as above. While two dice out the side at long range isn't much to sniff at, once again, pairing with Enhanced Armament and/or Admiral Ackbar can boost your side arcs' red dice to Star Destroyer levels. For a few points less than an Assault Frigate, you can get very similar long range damage but dramatically enhanced short range damage (at the cost of survivability, among other things).
  • Titles:
    • Admonition - Discard (not spend!) a defense token to cancel one attack die. This is much more powerful than it first appears, as the MC30 lives or dies by a point or two of damage by nature of its weakness and close-range damage potential.
    • Foresight - Your evades affect an additional die, and your redirects can draw from an additional adjacent hull zone. Generally the weaker of the two. The MC30 wants to make close on the enemy, making its evades dubious, and manages to use every ounce of its shields as often as not. Still, works well if Admonition is already taken by another MC30, or with Mon Mothma supercharging its evades.

• Pelta - The Pelta is a support ship, offering a unique "Fleet Command" upgrade slot that can house one of three spend-a-matching-token-or-discard-to-activate fleet wide benefits. "Shields to Maximum!" allows all friendly ships to recover one shield, effectively acting as a fleet-wide repair dial - but is difficult to earn its cost back, amounting to two engineering points per ship that has taken damage but also not just died. "All Fighters, Follow Me!" increases the speed of all squadrons activated via a squadron command by one (to a maximum of five), giving your fighters stronger alpha-strike potential and allowing slower squadrons to get where they need to be. "Entrapment Formation!" allows friendly ships to change their speed by one, effectively granting a fleet-wide navigate token- combined with navigate commands/tokens, the ability for your ships to change speed by two (or even three) in a single turn can catch your opponent off-guard. It has a decent array of dice for its price, but is hampered by its maximum speed of two, only one each of its defense tokens, and a comparative lack of access to damage-increasing upgrade slots. Having a support upgrade slot and two yaw at speed 1 make it a potential candidate for engine techs, which can alleviate its speed issues somewhat; and an engineering value of four along with a brace, redirect, and evade can keep it alive longer than some of the Rebellion's other small ships - although it can also die that much faster if it finds its tokens blocked by accuracies.
  • Modified Pelta-Class Assault Ship - The cheaper variant is the less commonly seen. An assault Pelta with engine techs costs similarly to the MC30, but that ship offers more dice, stronger shielding, higher speed, duplicate tokens, weapons team/defensive/ion or turbolaser slots, and pairs better with smany of the Rebel commanders (Ackbar, Cracken, Mothma, Sato). In comparison, the Pelta offers increased maneuverability (being II-II or I-I-II with engine techs), an extra point of engineering, and a brace token, alongside trading the MC30's defensive titles for the Phoenix Home allowing a second officer upgrade. In all, the Assault Pelta is typically edged out by the MC30, but it has its own niche use cases.
  • Modified Pelta-Class Command Ship - For four points, gains two extra squadron, switches its black anti-ship dice to blue, drops its black AA die, and swaps the ordnance upgrade slot for an offensive retrofit. Accordingly, it is well suited to a carrier role - expanded hanger bay or boosted comms suit its squadron 4 well, it has a support slot for a fighter coordination team, and combined with a source of squadron tokens for AFFM (Raymus Antilles, Ashoka Tano, Comms Net Flotilla, Garm Bel Iblis, etc) and a Flight Commander, it can rev B-Wings up to speed 3+1, or hurl X-Wings further than your opponents speed 5 TIEs.
  • Titles:
    • Phoenix Home - The Pelta's only title grants it a second officer slot and ups its maximum token count to four. Note the wording doesn't affect the Pelta's command value, so Garm doesn't grant the Pelta four tokens. Potential combinations include Raymus/Ashoka, Veteran Captain/Toryn Farr, etc.

• Hammerhead Corvette - Releasing as part of Wave VI, in late May or June.

Medium Ships

• Assault Frigate Mark II B - Less a "frigate" and much more comparable to a Victory Star Destroyer. Although they have less Hull points than the Victory Star Destroyer, they have the same Command/Squad/Engineering values so make a great centerpiece for your fleet, as well as being one of the few mid-sized vessels that have four shields on the front arc and still having a top speed of three so you can outrun Imperial vessels. However, it's front/rear weapons leave a little to be desired and from those arcs can be easily outgunned by nearly any other capital ship, despite having a meaty four dice on the broadsides.
  • Assault Frigate Mark II A - The upgunned version of the Assault Frigate, gaining a blue attack dice on the front and rear arcs as well as on its AA guns. The downside is that it lost a point of squadron command to fit in all the extra guns, so it is more of a battlecruiser than a fleet carrier.
  • Gallant Haven (Assault Frigate Title) - Squadrons at distance 1 take one less damage from attacks. Keeps your squadrons safe from the TIE deathball that Imps love to throw at you. Consider using it to cart B-wings into battle.
  • Paragon (Assault Frigate Title) - If you hit the same ship twice, you get to add a black die on the second hit regardless of range. Useful for a gunship-built AF.

Large Ships

• MC80 Command Cruiser - Introduced in wave II, these are the rebel big boys, with broadsides as powerful as the front guns on the Victory Destroyers which it is going to need because it is only as fast and maneuverable as a Victory Star Destroyer. It also has two dice for AA capability. Comparatively speaking, it's less durable than the Imperial Star Destroyer because it has fewer hull points, although it has slightly stronger shields to the sides and rear which are easier to repair if they get knocked out. Be careful of going toe-to-toe with Imperial starships because its front and rear weapon arcs are not particularly worth calling home about, and because of its poorer speed with respect to the rest of your fleet, it requires good positioning more than any other capital ship, if you keep it to the periphery you lose the benefit of your opposite broadside, but if you move it too centrally you can be outflanked.
  • MC80 Assault Cruiser - Like the Assault Frigate Mk II, the MC80 upgrade loses a point of Command to fit in the extra guns, swapping a blue dice in each arc for a red one, giving you more long range firepower. The same goes for the anti-squadron firepower which swaps out a black for a blue. Its worth is dependent on a couple of things: its increased broadside potential at longer ranges is basically indicating that you need to run it right up the middle of the battle-zone to get full use out of it. The Assault Cruiser will dominate in both directions but you're obviously going to take a lot of return fire and worry about being out-maneuvered, so more than the Command Cruiser you're going to need to think about what other ships in your fleet can support it. Where the Command Cruiser is better at supporting the rest of your fleet instead.
  • Home One (MC80 Title) - Ackbar's flagship gives a buff to every ship within distance five by letting it change one did to an Accuracy result every time it attacks.
  • Defiance (MC80 Title) - Lets you roll one additional attack die of any color when attacking a ship that's already activated this turn.
  • Independence (MC80 Title) - Makes the Corrupter look like a chump. Whenever you issue a squadron command, each squadron you activate can move at speed 4. They can't attack that turn, but that's a small price to pay for high-speed B-wings.
• MC80 Star Cruiser: Arriving in Wave IV, you get a second Large-Base starship which will confuse you because it is also named "MC80". However, this "winged"/"Liberty" version is so utterly unlike it's precursor that it is a different beast entirely. This one is clearly a head-on slugger rather than a broadside positional player, putting it into a similar role to Imperial ships, outside of typical Rebel roles. Its front arc has seven dice (four blues / three reds) and five shields; which is more potency in one arc than any other rebel ship can put out. But the other arcs suffer, having at most only three attack dice and two shields, so if this ship gets flanked it's in deep trouble. It is faster than the Home One MC80, but still can only turn twice. It only has a squadron score of 2 so isn't fantastic in support, while in terms of anti-squadron turrets it only has one black dice. So it if it's not making the beeline towards enemy capital ships it's not adding much to its fleet. You need this thing to straight up punch your enemy; while this is novel as a rebel player, those points might be better spent elsewhere.
  • MC80 Battle Cruiser: yet another straight upgrade. Changing a blue for a red in the front and rear arc, as well as adding a black anti-squadron dice. None of this changes its role, but the upgrades would be desirable in helping it do what it needs to do by allowing it to do a little more damage from further away.

Flotillas

• GR-75 Medium Transports: You have have NO GUNS!!! Only a single black to fend off enemy TIEs. This flotilla exists only to deliver your squadrons to where they need to go, and since Rebel squadrons are generally better than Imperial ones, taking a few GR-75's can be a good choice. Give it the expanded hangar bay tif you play with a lot of squadrons. Or give it the Bomber Command Center, since most of the Rebel squadrons will benefit from it.
  • GR-75 Combat Retrofits: swaps that squadron black for a blue, and puts a blue dice in the front and rear arc. None of this changes the role of the flotilla but at least gives it some semblance of retaliation when the Star Destroyers start chasing them down.
  • Quantum Storm (GR-75 title): when you perform a manoeuvre order, you may perform an additional speed 1 move with no turn value. Meaning you can get a burst of speed to get yourself out of harms way (remember you can measure distances at any time) or you can use it to catch up with your squadrons, which might have overtaken you from earlier turns. Quantum Storm is a good buy.
  • Bright Hope (GR-75 title): When you take damage in the front or side arcs, you reduce the damage by one point. On paper this may sound like a good buy for two points, but generally speaking, one point is not going to save you from the front cannons of Imperial cruisers. Plus you have the "Scatter" defenses, which negates damage entirely (so long as no accuracy results are rolled)

Squadrons

• X-Wing Squadron - Your "basic" squadron, but is probably weight for weight one of the best squadrons in the entire game; there is very little that X-Wings cannot do. With four blue dice against enemy TIEs they are one of the best anti-squadron attackers around; and despite having only a single red dice against enemy capital ships, because X-Wings have the "Bomber" rule they do regular damage on crit rolls and are allowed to resolve critical effects rather than only causing damage on "hit" icons meaning that they have some high damage potential against any enemy target of your choosing. Also, with the "Escort" rule and their five hull points they can effectively tank hits intended for your other more specialist squadrons. In fact, with the benefits of being a squadron rather than a starship (ignoring crit results and generally being unaffected by accuracy results) they are more resilient than some rebel capital ships and are more likely to survive the game. In the end, they come in the starter box, and in the rebel fighter booster pack, therefore you have no excuse not to field X-Wings in support of any/every other squadron you field.
  • Luke Skywalker - your first unique character squadron. Much better than regular X-Wings for a couple of reasons. First they can use defensive tactics to brace against incoming hits, allowing you to reduce incoming damage by half, unless your opponent can roll "accuracy" to remove it. He also ignores shields on enemy capital ships, applying his damage directly to the hull. His capital attack dice are black rather than the normal red for X-Wings, meaning his squadron cannot roll "accurate" himself, not that it actually matters, since a single "accurate" result doesn't do any damage by itself. So it's even better being black because the best result is Crit plus hit, meaning he inflicts even more damage directly through enemy shield values. The Force is strong with this one.
  • Wedge Antilles - Much like Luke, Wedge gets the same defensive tactics, and rolls black against capital ships. However his real bonus is against enemy squadrons making him a much better dogfighter rather than ship-hunter. He adds two blue dice (six total) against enemy squadrons that have already been activated so it pays to have Wedge wait until later in the turn and attack exposed units of opportunity, being virtually guaranteed to destroy weak-ass TIE fighters in one go.
• B-Wing Squadron - Straight up bombers rolling blue & black against capital ships, they just as resilient as X-Wings and have the same firepower as a regular TIE fighter, so on paper they look pretty good. However, they are slow as HELL, being the s-l-o-w-e-s-t of any squadron currently available. This can be a critical failure if you position them incorrectly during the initial game set-up, as they will spend much of the game chasing their target around the table and will struggle to justify themselves by the end of the game when your X/Y-Wings could have got there earlier and done more damage over time. One good use for them is to keep them in command radius of your capital ships and use them as picket fighters. They move at a rate similar to your own capital ships when issued a squadron order will gasp forward on the offensive, making for good defensive screens against enemy fighters/bombers as well as being a fantastic extra punch when your own capital ships get into a melee with your enemy. If you were just looking for Independent bombers you should go for combinations of X/Y wings instead.
  • Keyan Farlander - King of bombers, may re-roll his attack dice against capital ships if they have no shields in the ark you are attacking. If your strategy centers around bombing ships into oblivion rather than trading blows with Capital ships, you want him on side. And you are the Rebels, so YES you will be using fighters over Capital ships.
• Y-Wing Squadron - Faster and more resilient than B-Wings and like them are also bombers, but with poorer attack rolls. They are also "Heavy" fighters, which is a bit of a penalty, because your opponent's squadrons can disengage from you or attack targets outside of the engagement at his leisure and because they aren't great in squadron dogfights, you really should keep them accompanied by at least one squadron of X-Wings to mop up any TIE fighters that they will inevitably fly into, or get your A-Wings to fly forward to interdict those fighters and give your Y-Wings a free pass to enemy capital ships. The cheapest of the Rebel fighters, though, and with a whopping 6 hull are amazingly beefy even unsupported (though their pitiful anti-squadron dice means they won't be doing anything for the game if they get locked up.)
  • Dutch Vander - Special Y-Wings that are better at dealing with enemy squadrons rather than Capital Ships, they have one extra attack dice in a dogfight engagement and if they attack an "un-activated" squadron they cause it to become activated, rendering it useless to your opponent for that turn. If it was already activated they do one extra point of damage instead. Dutch is a good trolling tool and like the other special characters can brace against impact and reduce incoming damage.
• A-Wing Squadron - Exemplary interceptor craft. They have a top speed of 5, meaning you can move them pretty much anywhere you need them, making them like superfast TIE fighters with a smidgem more resilience. Although they have a poorer hull strength and damage potential than the X-Wing, they have the "Counter 2" rule, which is essentially a free attack of two blue dice against any squadron that attacks you, even if you have been destroyed. Now that's not a rule you want to have to rely upon since you'll always want to try and attack first rather than be attacked, but at least it forces your opponent to take a big risk when attempting to attack them. Even though they don't have Bomber, their black battery die means they can finish off damaged ships in a pinch.
  • Tycho Celchu - A-Wings with no statistical difference, but for the defensive abilities of being an Ace pilot, including one Scatter defense token, and the special ability where his squadron can move or shoot out of the engagement freely. Sort of like an inverse "Heavy" rule, so your enemy cannot trap you in position for any longer than you want him to. He's fine without squadron command, use him to lock up incoming bombers early, and then peel him away once the rest of your fighters get there.
• YT-1300 - Tough as nails, but slow as B-wings. Escort and Counter 1 mean you can use this as a temporary shelter, but don't expect it to go anywhere fast. Alternatively, plant in locations as a one-ship tarpit for enemy squadrons.
  • Han Solo - The Falcon is a completely different beast under the hood. Faster, stronger, but ditches the YT-1300's stock abilities for Grit (needs more than one squad to lock him down) and Rogue (move and shoot in the Squadron phase). And thanks to Han's special ability, he can instead take his move at the beginning of the Ship phase, which means he always shoots first. Pretty capable assault fighter now, instead of a slow-ass escort.
• YT-2400 - A neat little ship with above average in all categories, and the Rogue keyword. Excellent for squadron command-strapped lists like corvette spam.
  • Dash Rendar - Adds Bomber, Brace tokens, and rerolls based on how many squads he's tangled up with. Otherwise, use like the non-Ace version.
• HWK-290 - A medium speed, medium armor, support ship with crap for guns. Counter 2 helps make it up slightly, but Intel is what you're here for. For 12 points, you can force your guys through a fighter screen regardless of engagement. Consider adding to an XY-wing blob.
  • Jan Ors - Even better support. Not only does she come with two Brace tokens, the blob she's supporting can use them too. Suddenly all your pilots have ace survivability.
• H-6 Bomber - Basically a Y-Wing with Grit and a B-wing's anti-ship dice for 6 more points. Hard to justify.
  • Nym - Trades Grit for Rogue, gains Braces, and most importantly, blue crits burn an enemy defense token of your choice. Might be an interesting choice as an independent bomber, except his anti-squad dice still suck and he has no way to get out of being tarpitted. Weirdly enough, he doesn't have Heavy, which means that at the very least he can lock the tarpit with him.

Imperials

Small Ships

• Gladiator I Class Star Destroyer - Smaller, faster and more maneuverable than the Victory class and arguably more maneuverable than the Nebulon B frigate since it can turn twice at speed 1 and is actually comparable to the Nebulon B Escort version in terms of command/squadron/engineering points but with even better shielding, making it a good option for lower point games, or as a supporting ship to a Victory. It is however poor at medium>long range, only having short ranged attacks on the sides, but even then it has four black on each side, making it more deadly in close engagements than a Victory would be. Slap Assault Concussion Missiles on it. Just do it. Engine Techs is also amazing at letting it chase down ships into black range and flick itself into proper position with a two-yaw final maneuver.
  • Gladiator II Class Star Destroyer - the upgunned version of the Gladiator, replacing one of those short ranged dice on the sides with a long ranged red one. It gives it a little more bite at distance so thankfully it can't just be sniped by your enemy any more. It also has the AA capability increased meaning it can deal with enemy squadrons better than most Imperial Capital ships.
  • Insidious (Gladiator Title) - Black dice (short range) can be used up to medium range, but only when your ship fires at the rear zone of an enemy vessel. As much as this sounds like a poor upgrade, it can make quite a difference, particularly because Gladiators have a majority of black attack dice anyway, so are otherwise mostly useless at mid ranges, and because they are fairly quick and maneuverable, so you can actually make an effort exploit this upgrade.
  • Demolisher (Gladiator Title) - You can perform one of your attacks AFTER you execute your maneuver. It cannot be understated how much of a difference this makes, since normally you have to shoot BEFORE you move. For ten points this can massively change the way you plan your tactics and position with this ship. Bear in mind this attack is still subject to the normal rules, so you cannot fire from one arc, move and fire from that arc again. But either way your threat radius for the vessel expands remarkably. Combine with Engine Techs, and you can now even fire in the middle of your effectively speed-4 move if you wanted to.
• Raider Class I-Corvette- Wave II, comparable to the CR90 Corvette. Fast but with virtually no long ranged firepower, what it does well is as an anti-fighter gunboat, creating a threat to those high value rebel starfighters that annoy you so much. Surprisingly durable with a Brace token though, and with an okay amount of black dice and an ordnance upgrade slot, can be kitted out into an aggressive infighter. Alternatively, kit it out with some squadron upgrades and use it as forward squadron support, shooting into the melee and boosting attack damage with Flight Controllers.
  • Raider Class II-Corvette - On paper, looks good trading one black from the front arc and anti-starfighter guns for one blue each, along with an ion cannon upgrade slot. In practice, black dice is what the Raider does best, and this has less of them. At best you might be able to use it as a cheap ion cannon boat.
  • Impetuous - A bit of extra anti-starfighter power. Take a free shot at a single squadron in range after you do your normal shots. Pair with Ruthless Strategists to assassinate enemy aces.
  • Instigator - Enemy squadrons in distance one get engaged as if there were two squadrons nearby. Can blunt a bomber wing coming in and then hand it off to some TIEs, but in order to use it as a fighter screen substitute you'll have to engage them before they can shoot at your other ships.
• Quasar Fire-class cruiser-carrier -

Medium Ships

• Victory I Class Star Destroyer - What you get right out of the core box. Has hull, command, squadron and engineering points out of the wazoo so it makes a good centerpiece for your forces, as well as having 3 Shields on the front and side arcs. The problems with it are obvious though, it steers like a cow and plods along like it just doesn't care, so if it gets out-maneuvered it could be in trouble as it's shielding on the rear is only one point strong. It also suffers from a range imbalance with its weapons, having blacks mixed with reds, meaning it is fantastic at short range, but poorer at medium>long ranges, comparable to the Rebels Nebulon B frigates at those distances. It's also not that fantastic at dealing with enemy squadrons, having only a single blue dice, but that's why you've got TIEs.
  • Victory II Class Star Destroyer - the upgraded version improves the firepower considerably, replacing those black dice with blues, giving the Victory I an impressive presence out to the medium range. Don't expect to use the front arc very often, but six dice at medium range is scary enough you can just swivel it to deny entire regions of the board.
  • Dominator (Victory Title) - You can reduce up to two of your shields from any of your hull zones to add that many blue dice to an attack. This becomes a risky venture, particular if it's early in the game since you have to explicitly order your ship to get those shields back. Though you can find use for it late game if you know you can demolish an enemy ship in a single barrage of firepower, and you won't have to worry about reprisals.
  • Corrupter (Victory Title) - Rebels look at this with envy. When you issue an order to Bombers, they increase their speed by one. If you've got TIE bombers, then you'll want this as it increases your reach and allows you to better exploit openings in your enemy's fighter screens. Combine with Rhymer and your bombers now have an obscene alpha strike radius.
  • Warlord (Victory Title) - Can be helpful, when you attack, you can replace a single "accuracy" result with a "hit" result instead. So if you have a bad roll and end up with more accuracy than you require it allows you to do more damage. This also applies to anti-squadron shooting, where those accuracy results do sweet FA. So in essence the Warlord is more reliable. For those red dice, it CAN turn accuracy into double hit. Consider Sensor Team for reliable two damage on one of your anti-ship shots.

• Interdictor Class Cruiser - The second medium sized starship available to the Imperials. We'll get to its Experimental Retrofit later, but on its own it is comparable to the Victory Star Destroyer: It is still slow, but is more maneuverable; it has one more die on its broadsides, but one less shield on its sides; It has one more hull point, Engineering point and it has access to the Contain defense, but has one less Command and Squadron point. It's not really there to act as a centerpiece for your fleet and will generally lose a straight up fire-fight with Rebel ships of similar size. But is a potential game-changer for how it can screw with your opponents due to its ability to take "Expermental Retrofit" upgrades which generally influence the way ships get deployed at the start of the battle, or can decrease enemy speed or force re-rolls on enemy attack dice.
  • Interdictor Suppression Refit - The primary version comes with two Experimental Retrofit slots so you can get maximum use out of your gravity messing abilities.
  • Interdictor Combat Refit: - The more expensive of the ship types swaps a blue dice in the front/side arcs for a red dice. Giving it more bite at longer range, which is good because you don't want this thing attempting to duke it out with capital ships. It also gains an extra black dice for anti-squadron fire. However, it loses one Expermental Retrofit upgrade slot so despite the "improvements" to the design, you might be better suited going for the Suppression refit unless there is only one upgrade card you really want, or you're playing a really small game and this is going to be your flagship.
  • Interdictor (Interdictor Title) - This cleverly named, three point, title allows you to exhaust the title card itself when you activate the ship in order to ready any upgrade card. That means you can generally use your Experimental G-8 Projector or your Targeting Scramblers twice in a given turn, but it also applies to any limited-use upgrades that you may take. You can also use it to ready cards that your opponent has forcibly exhausted through use of things like Ion Cannons, so this is definitely a tricky little number that can get your opponent scratching his head.

Large Ships

• Imperial I-Class Star Destroyer - The iconic Star Destroyer and the first of the "Large" category of starships. This ship is a veritable beast that will chew up enemy ships in a straight up fight. With eight dice in the front arc of variable colour it is a huge threat to anything it points at and even the side arcs have four dice for awesome potential. Bizarrely, its rear arc is better at medium range than its side arcs, so opponents should think carefully about trying to outmaneuver this beast. 11 hull points are to be expected, along with a large pool of command, squadron and engineering points, so this ship does everything you want it to. Oddly, for a ship this size it has speed 3, making it quicker and more maneuverable than the Victory class, which fits the fluff, since it was meant to be a straight improvement. But it will make your rebel opponents cry when they can't escape this thing. The last thing to note is the new "Contain" defense, which negates Crits caused by normal attacks, meaning this thing has greater resistance to status debuffs than smaller vessels. Of note, unlike the Imperial-II, the Imperial-I has space for two Offensive Retrofits, making it much better for a carrier build. The price tag is hefty, but probably worth every penny.
  • Imperial II-Class Star Destroyer - A straight upgrade, swapping out all those black dice for blues, meaning this thing now dominates up to medium range in the front arc, ripping whole new buttholes out of Rebel capital ships. The Anti Aircraft also got the black>blue swap, so its a little more aggressive against fighters, rather than having to wait until the last moment to do damage.
  • Devastator (Imperial Title) - What does the Imperial Star Destroyer REALLY not need, but you want anyway? More dice in the front arc! For every defense token you've discarded, you get one extra blue die, meaning its possible to throw TWELVE dice at Short/Medium range. You probably won't need those defense tokens after you've erased the ship that was pestering you. Apply this to AA firepower and you've got the best anti squadron gun in the game!(Fun fact- this was the Star Destroyer that was pursuing the Tantive IV back in A New Hope.)
  • Relentless (Imperial Title) - Reduces the number of command dials you can assign to your ship by one. Which is actually a very powerful tool: since your stack is now two, it means your uber huge starship now has the response time as some of the smaller rebel cruisers, so your orders come into play sooner. Your command value remains unchanged, so you can still accumulate tokers the same way.
  • Avenger (Imperial Title) - requires a bit of forethought to use correctly. When this ship attacks, your target cannot use exhausted defense tokens. Which is a bit situational, since in a given turn a ship may use a particular defense token twice: one to exhaust the token, the second to essentially burn it from the game. The Avenger prevents the second use, so it pays to either have a different ship beat up your target earlier so the Avenger can have it's way, or upgrade the ship with ways of exhausting defenses, like Overload Pulse. In any case, this upgrade becomes useless if you rolled up a load of accuracy results and had already removed your opponents defenses before your special ability comes into play.

Flotillas

• Gozanti Class Cruisers: Your first flotilla of smaller-than-capital-ships. Not quite as manoeuvrable as the rebel GR-75, but you at least get some guns to defend yourself with, with a blue on the front and sides. As a flotilla, you get the 2 Squadron score and the fleet support upgrade, so this is the cheap way to deliver TIEs to "tie up" enemy squadrons trying to Outflank your own ships, but don't think you can pretend to play like Rebels, as a small handful of fighters will not influence the game as much as your capital ships.
  • Gozanti Class Assault Cruisers: swap the front blue for a red, and the anti-squadron black for a blue, giving you more range on your weapons. Only worthy of the upgrade if you have the points to spare as your flotillas are squadron delivery vehicles and not meant to slug it out with enemy capital ships. If your flotilla doesn't have squadrons nearby it will be a dead flotilla, the added range does little to help you when a single attack dice is unlikely to get past any capital defenses tokens.
  • Vector (Gozanti title): when you activate a squadron without the Heavy rule (pretty much anything not a TIE bomber) you add +1 to its speed value. Makes your TIE fighters that much more responsive and increases their threat range.

Squadrons

• TIE Fighter Squadron - Your cheap throwaway unit. They are faster than most Rebel starfighters except for A-Wings, but have very little hull points and their attacking score is pretty average. But they do well in support of each other due to the "Swarm" rule, allowing them to re-roll attack dice if they are engaged in a dogfight alongside another squadron.
  • Black Squadron - A flying suicide pact found in the Corellian Conflict campaign. One point more than the regular TIE, Black Squadron loses swarm and picks up Escort and Counter 1. Only notable for being the cheapest Escort squadron currently in the game.
  • Howlrunner - Ace TIE fighter who can add a blue dice to their attack pool whenever a friendly swarm (ie: other TIEs) within distance 1 are engaged. This leads to some cool positional play where they can also get better at attacking capital ships, since Howlrunner doesn't need to be engaged herself. She also can use the "scatter" defense and completely negate incoming damage, unlike most Rebel heroes who can only reduce it. Note that this applies to Counter attacks as well.
  • "Mauler" Mithel - Gets free damage on enemy squadrons by moving into engagement with them. Note that this does not count as an attack, and the damage just happens automatically so he can make all the difference in dogfights against enemy aces.
• TIE Interceptor Squadron - Give the middle finger to pretty much anything the Rebels can throw at you. Is just as fast as the A-Wing, being speed 5 and with the "Counter 2" rule for retaliatory strikes, but has the damage capability of an X-Wing which coupled with the "swarm" rule making it a dangerous proposition to get engaged with. On the flip side, the TIE Interceptors are just as flimsy as their vanilla cousins, so can't really hold their own in slugging fest against X-Wings or other heavier fighters.
  • Soontir Fel - Support him, he should NEVER go alone. If he gets into an engagement, and one of the enemies in that engagement does not direct their regular attack against him, he automatically does 1 point of damage against them. Obviously this means that he can become the primary target as you opponent would not want to suffer damage for their own stupidity, but at least as an ACE he gets the defensive tactics, if you support him with TIE advanced squadrons (which your opponent must target first) he can do very well.
• TIE Bomber Squadron - Just as fast as regular TIES, but with the hull strength of an X-Wing. Unfortunately the have no other purpose than to be capital ship hunters. They are Heavy Bombers much like Y-Wings, so your opponent can just ignore them or trap them in engagement if he was so inclined, and they only roll one dice against squadrons or capital ships, so they don't have a great damage potential. But they are your basic bomber craft, so you at least have the potential of critical damage against enemy ships with them, rather than having to rely upon your star destroyers doing all of the work
  • Major Rhymer - Rhymer and everyone around him get to shoot ships at blue range with all of their normal anti-ship dice. Suddenly a TIE bomber blob looks like a threat similar to a Gladiator Star Destroyer all by themselves. Throw in Corruptor and Admiral Chirneau, and now the bomber blob is next to impossible to screen, difficult to lock down, and can teleport and dump a fistful of black dice into a ship's rear.
• TIE Advanced Squadron - Cross a regular TIE fighter with an X-Wing and this is what you get, the speed and firepower of the TIE fighter were the resilience and "escort" rule of the X-Wing, meaning you now have a space-superiority fighter that does well supporting squadrons of any other type (see Soontir Fel), making sure they get to their destination without being picked off. Important to note that unlike the rest of the anti-fighter TIEs, it lacks Swarm, meaning you'll want to season TIE blobs with them, not spam them.
  • Darth Vader - Improved firepower over the regular TIE Advanced, and adds +1 damage on attack dice for any crit rolls he makes, which normally only do regular damage to other squadrons since you can't crit them, so he's got quite a high damage potential. Strictly speaking the bonus damage would also work against Capital ships too, but he doesn't have the bomber rule and his attack rolls against them were pretty low anyway so there is no point throwing him at anything other than enemy starfighters.
• TIE Phantom Squadron - a refugee from the old Rebel Assault games, now found in the Imperial Squadrons II pack. Three points more than an Interceptor; trades one point of speed for one point of hull. Fighter dice remain unchanged; anti-ship is two lolrandom red dice. The special ability here is Cloak, which lets the squadron move 1 even if engaged. It's like a mini-Tycho.
  • Whisper - an even more annoying TIE Phantom. Gains Brace and Scatter tokens; if one of those tokens is used while defending against an attack, Whisper may move up to 1 just like with the Cloak ability. Yes, this stacks with the regular Cloak. Very difficult to kill, but ask yourself if those 20 points would be better spent hitting someone in the face...
• TIE Defender Squadron - Unf. Found in the Imperial Squadrons II pack and possibly the best all-around squadron the Imperials can field. Sixteen points is not cheap, but look at what you get. Speed 5. Hull 6. 2 Blue/2 Black anti-squadron dice, 1 blue anti-ship die with Bomber. There may be more specialized fighters around, but if a situation arises the Defender can probably handle it.
  • Maarek Stele - hero of the original TIE Fighter PC game from the early '90s. Adds another blue die to anti-ship fire; may change one die to a Crit when attacking. Also gains Grit and two Brace tokens. Find the 21 points to field him.
• Lambda-class Shuttle - A poor combatant but an excellent support ship. Relay is the big draw here, letting ships activate squadrons from clear across the board. Pairs well with other Lambdas, also with Centicore. Strategic lets a player move objective tokens around the board-- useful in a campaign or tournament.
  • Colonel Jendon - makes good things better. When he activates, instead of making a (poor) attack he may designate another nearby squadron to attack, even if it has already activated. Double-tapping Bossk or Vader? Yes please. Loses out on Strategic to do this, but picks up two brace tokens. Ideal for lurking in the back of a murderball.
• VT-49 Decimator - less of a squadron and more of a picket ship, the Decimator can threaten flotillas and light warships all by itself. Three blue dice anti-ship add up very quickly, and with eight hull this thing will be in the fight for a while unless you go out of your way to put it down. Three black dice and Counter 1 keep opposing squadrons honest, too. Did I mention this thing also has Rogue? It has Rogue. The only downside is that the VT-49 is very, very expensive.
  • Morna Kee - the named VT-49 costs as much as a Gozanti flotilla. It loses Heavy, gains a Brace token, and may spend that token to reroll its dice pool. That token also comes back every time she activates.
• Firespray-31 - Slower than all of your TIEs, but also tougher. Bomber and Rogue round out what is basically an independent Imperial B-wing.
  • Boba Fett - Boba gets a deadlier arsenal, the standard double Brace defensive tokens, and free damage to one thing whenever he activates.
• Jumpmaster 5000 - Similar to the HWK-290 on the Rebel side, the Jumpmaster is a support ship to tunnel your squads, especially bombers, through a fighter screen with Intel. Other than that, more or less useless in combat. It has swarm but... 2 dice are not going to kill Rebel fighters in a reasonable timeframe.
  • Dengar - Amazing support ship, this one you might consider building a fighterball around. Every other squad within distance 2 gets Counter 1, or Counter +1 if they already had it. With Howlrunner in the same ball, normal TIE fighters become just shy of interceptors, and interceptors become a scary Counter 4 + 1 reroll equivalent. Escort him with a TIE Advanced or two, there's going to be a lot of hate focused on him.
• Aggressor Assault Fighter - Almost an Imperial independent X-wing, with Counter 1 and Rogue, but no Bomber. For 16 points. Meh.
  • IG-88 - Do you want a specific enemy squadron dead, despite being in the middle of a fighterball? Maybe that A-wing ripping up your TIE Bombers? Or that enemy Soontir Fel hiding under TIE Advanced cover? Consider this assassin droid. A massive jump from X-wing to TIE interceptor speed, Counter 2, a Scatter token, and most of all, the ability to flat out ignore Counter and Escort special rules. Unlike other aces, only has ONE scatter token for defenses, so use it wisely. Doesn't shine as bright in a usual Imperials vs. Rebels match, due to not being able to one-shot most of the Rebel starfighters you'd want to kill.
• YV-666 - A weird, slow, stupidly tough fighter that can't lock down enemy bombers due to Heavy, can't protect fragile TIEs due to lack of Escort, lacks the speed to use in a reactive manner, and lacks the armament to hurt capital ships. About the only use this serves is an picket anti-fighter gun, and anything faster than a Victory will leave it behind.
  • Bossk - A not stupid version of the YV-666. Loses Heavy, gains a speed point, rolls 4 black on anti-fighter duty, has a passable anti-ship attack, and gets free Accuracy if hurt. Only gets a single Brace token on the defense.

Upgrades

Rebel Upgrades

• Mon Mothma (Commander) - The leader of the Rebellion provides a defensive bonus to all of your capital ships when they use the Evade reaction. Basically it improves the range brackets, allowing you to discard an incoming attack dice at medium range, or forcing a re-roll at short range. Best used with multiple CR90s.
• General Dodonna (Commander) - Has the potential to be very powerful. In effect he allows you to choose the critical result each time you inflict damage upon an enemy by looking at the top four damage cards and throwing the rest away.
• Garm bel Iblis (Commander) - Max out your command tokens automatically at the first and fifth rounds. Works better with the bigger command values, and thus the bigger ships, of course.
• Admiral Ackbar (Commander) - Each turn, your ships can give up the ability to fire from their forward and rear arcs in exchange for two red dice on each side arcs. Makes for even more ridiculous Rebel broadsides, but needs either expensive Gunnery Crews or nerve-wracking suicide charges through the middle of the enemy fleet to be worth it. Alternatively, use cheap ships (Corvettes and maybe some MC30s) and watch Ackbar double or triple their effective firepower.
• General Rieekan (Commander) - Your destroyed ships and unique squadrons aren't removed from the table until the end of the turn. Favors even more desperate suicide attacks.
• Leia Organa (Officer) - Cheap, but relatively situational. Whenever her vessel reveals a command dial, she allows you to change the top command dial of a friendly ship within range 5 to the same dial. It's has the sensation of being useless because Rebel Capital ships have smaller command values than Imperial ones, particularly on corvettes, so the command stack will be small enough that when you issue an order to the stack there is a greater sense of immediacy anyway since you'll issue orders as you need them. However if an unexpected situation pops up during the turn she can allow you to exploit it, by allowing you to repair unexpected damage or exploit a particularly good round of attacking, all depending upon what her own ship is doing of course. So even if you only use her once she'll have justified the three points you spent on her.
• Adar Tallon (Officer) - One of your squadrons activated by your ship gets to unactivate after it moves and shoots. Combine with Yavaris, and an ace squadron, and you can watch Wedge paste entire enemy fighter wings or Farlander roll out six black dice at essentially medium range. Absolutely amazing.
• Raymus Antilles (Officer) - Doubles your pleasure. Basically, he distills your orders to the max by simply giving you the command token whenever you reveal the dial so he becomes fantastic if you need to radically change your ship's speed, do damage or repair your ship. He does even better on vessels with higher command values so you can keep those tokens for whenever you need them, as well as spending the dial on the intended effect.
• Walex Blissex (Officer) - When you activate, you can discard him to get back a discarded defense token. Situational, but he's only way to get back lost defense tokens in the game.
• Lando Calrissian (Officer) - Essentially acts as a single-use fifth defense token - you can discard him to force your opponent to reroll as many dice as you want. Cheap and potentially life-saving in an emergency, but unreliable.

Empire Upgrades

• Grand Moff Tarkin (Commander) - You wish you were as good as Grand Moff Tarkin... he fukken rawks!. At the start of each ship phase, pick an order, any order, then every ship in your fleet gets a token matching that order. That's absolutely fantastic. However there are two drawbacks and one of them isn't his fault. The first is that he costs such a buttload of points that if you don't fully utilise him properly you may find that he wasn't worth taking, which leads to the second problem. In order to utilise him fully you need MOAR capital ships; but since you play Imperials, you are unlikely to have loads of capital ships because they cost more than the Rebel ships. In small games he's just not worth it, but in bigger engagements his value and usefulness increases exponentially.
• Darth Vader (Commander) - When you fire on an enemy, you can spend one defense token to reroll as many attack dice as you like. So it favours a very aggressive play style as befits the Lord of the Sith. Doesn't stack well with the Dominator title, but it applies to all arcs on all ships. Darth Vader can really swing games in your favour, he's probably far more useful here than in his TIE.
• Admiral Motti (Commander) - Good for your survivability, because he increases the hull strength of each of your capital ships depending upon their size. "Small" ships (ie: Gladiator Star Destroyers) gain +1 Hull point, while "Medium" ships gain +2. Meaning your Victory Star Destroyers now have ten hull points. Large Ships gain +3 hull points, so you'll get nigh unkillable Imperial Star Destroyers. Motti is still a good option and is probably better than Tarkin for general use in games, since the effects are immediately beneficial.
• Admiral Screed (Commander) - For the offensive, once per activation (ie: can apply once to every single capital ship each turn) a ship can remove one die from it's attack pool and change another to a die with a crit face. Now because the "attack pool" refers to the dice both before and after they have been rolled, you can inspect your dice and decide if you want to remove any die that resulted in a miss result to change a different one to a crit. Of course this becomes somewhat situational, because if you've already rolled a crit in the pool there is no point adding another unless you also rolled two or more misses: one to remove from the pool, and the second to change to a crit and score a point of regular damage, therefore mileage may vary depending upon the number of dice you get to throw at a given attack. Black dice, though, have Hit + Crit faces, and Screed CAN change dice to those. Use with a Gladiator, use with upgrades that give alt crit effects, watch Rebel scum cry.
• Admiral Ozzel (Commander) - The cheapest Imperial commander, befitting a man whose career ended being telekinetically strangled on his own flag bridge. Makes your ships more maneuverable by letting them change speed by one additional level every time it uses a Maneuver command.
• Wulff Yularen (Officer) - Once per turn, you can use him to immediately get back one spent command token. Goes great with upgrades that want to use the same command every turn, like Engine Techs.
• Admiral Chirneau (Officer) - Useful depending upon what's going on on the tabletop. Whenever your ship issues a squadron order, he allows you to move those squadrons out of an engagement albeit at speed 2. That allows you to get ships out of a gunfight and attack something else in the same activation, so can be really useful if you have TIE bombers stuck in an engagement right next to the starship they are meant to be bombing, or if you have a different target in mind. Otherwise if all you're doing is getting TIE fighters out of an engagement and not attacking anything then its kind of a wasted effort.
• Director Isard (Officer) - When your ship reveals it's command, you get to look through the command stack of one enemy ship. For three points this is incredibly useful, since knowing in advance what your enemy is going to do can radically change what you might also do that turn. For example, if your enemy is going to repair the turn after this one, then you might want to finish that ship off before he does. That being said, most of the Rebel starships have small command stacks, so the information has a limited lifespan, particularly on corvettes where all your opponent has to do is simply activate the ship after you look at it and any planning goes out of the window.
• Captain Needa (Officer) - A 2 point upgrade that works only once. He allows you to swap a defenseman token for an Evade token in turn one. Since Evade works best at long ranges this might actually hold some use early in the game.
• Admiral Montferrat (Officer) - Likes to go fast. So long as the ship he's on is traveling at speed 3 or higher, attacks against it are considered obstructed. Dies if the ship crashes into anything, though, so you'll want it to be maneuverable as well.

Officers

• Defense Liaison - 3 points gets you the ability to spend a token to change your dial to Navigate or Repair. Useful for objective runner ships that need to do a lot of fancy flying.
• Weapons Liaison - Same as above, except for Squadron or Concentrate Fire. Potentially useful on carriers that want to be near the frontline.
• Veteran Captain - 3 points gets you a free token once per game. Cheap, but still overcosted unless you really need that token for a specialized build.
• Intel Officer - Pricy, but well worth it. On one of your shots, you can pick a defense token that your opponent has to burn if he wants to spend it. Great on your heavy hitters.
• Navigation Officer/Tactical Expert/Engineering Captain/Wing Commander - 6 points means your command can always be this command. The better you are at reading the situation and planning ahead, the worse these are, but hey, shit happens.
• Support Officer 4 points means if everything is going not as planned, you can reset your command stack once in a game. Obviously only worth it on big ships.

Offensive Retrofit

• Expanded Hangar Bay - Squadron +1. Auto-take for any carrier.
• Point Defense Reroute - Reroll crits when shooting at squadrons at close range. Okay for Rebels, unless facing a Rhymer-ball where this does nothing, and meh for Imperials, who have crap anti-squadron anyways and are shooting much tougher squadrons.
• Boosted Comms - Give the squadron order at long range. Now a worthy contender to Expanded Hangar Bay for carriers. Or if you're running an ImpStar, grab both.
• Phylon Q7 Tractor Beams - Cut an equal or smaller ship's speed by one when you activate unless they spend a Navigate token. You can use it to hunt down smaller Rebel ships... or play keep-away with an MC80 with Ackbar, so you can pound it with your front arc some more.
• Quad Laser Turret - Your ship gets Counter 1. Not a substitute for solid point defense, but it's cheap and every little bit helps.

Defensive Retrofit

• Advanced Projectors - Redirect now lets you shuffle damage anywhere. Good in theory, but still vulnerable to X17s and Intel Officers (Though it does redirect a potential of 3 damage total from the X17s, rather than the normal limit of 1) FAQ says that doesn't work, you can only redirect 1 damage with against X17s.
• Electronic Countermeasures - Keeps one token unaffected by accuracy. If your list's flagship is fairly squishy (corvette / Neb-B spam), slap this on it to keep it safe.
• Cluster Bombs - 5 points gets you 4 dice against a single enemy squadron who hit you once per game. Not especially great, but if it kills something it'll make back its points.
• Redundant Shields - 1 free shield point a turn. Never hurts, though better the bigger you go, except for a Corvette Shield Medic build.

Turbolasers

• Enhanced Armament - Boost your side arc shots by one red die. Expensive, so put it on something that'll last the battle.
• H9 Turbolasers - Flip a hit or crit to an accuracy face. Decent at ensuring damage goes where you want it to.
• X17 Turbolasers - Redirect defense tokens can only shunt one damage. Amazing at ensuring damage goes where you want it to. Highly recommended when playing Rebels vs. Imps.
• XX-9 Turbolasers - Flip the first two damage cards instead of one. Combine with Dodonna on the Rebel side for picking out exactly what debuffs you want to slap on the enemy.
• Heavy Turbolasers - Target gets to block only one damage with Brace unless it's the only token used. Good for heavy hitters only; if you're not tossing at least 3 damage regularly at the enemy, this upgrade is doing nothing for you. But it stops Brace + Redirect shenanigans for that juicy juicy hull damage.
• Slaved Turrets - You get to only shoot once, but you get a red die shooting at ships. Crippling for big ships, overcosted for small ones, but finds it's place on the Nebulon-B, where the front arc is the only one you want to be using ever.
• Turbolaser Reroute Circuits - Spend an evade to change a red die to either double Hit or Crit. Delicious guaranteed damage, if you can spare the token. Needa makes it strangely possible to use on whatever ship he's on.

Ion Cannons

Blue dice abilities.

• Leading Shots - Cheap, spend a blue die for a reroll on anything you want in the attack pool.
• Ion Cannons - Rolling a crit means you burn one command token of theirs, or one extra shield if they don't have any. Great for limiting options.
• Overload Pulse - Blue crit means you exhaust ALL defense tokens, though they get to use them against this attack. Turns enemy ships into punching bags for the rest of the round.
• NK-7 Ion Batteries - Blue crit flat knocks out a enemy defense token. Good, but pricy.
• SW-7 Ion Batteries - Unspent accuracy does damage instead. Which means, yes, blue dice now are guaranteed damage. Rejoice.

Ordnance

Black dice abilities.

• Assault Concussion Missiles - Amazing upgrade that hammers both adjacent hull zones for one damage each on a black crit. Weakens Redirect, can't be Braced, and if you're rolling black dice they can't Evade anyways.
• Expanded Launchers - Two extra black dice in the front arc. Decent enough, but the ACMs are usually more flexible (work on side arc shots) and more cost-efficient.
• Assault Proton Torpedoes - Black crit deals an automatic face-up damage card. Free crits through shields never hurt.
• Rapid Reload - An extra black die on either side. Probably the better option given the 5-point savings over ACMs.

Support Team

• Engine Techs - If you Navigated this round, even through a token, you can do a speed-1 maneuver at the end of it. The amazing maneuverability this gives you cannot be understated. Find ways to keep a Navigate token on your ship, and this upgrade will do wonders.
• Engineering Team - You get one extra point when you Repair. Useful enough.
• Nav Team: - Your Nav tokens can be used to yaw instead of change speed. Good for ships that are fast enough but turn badly.
• Projection Experts: - Up to two engineering points can be used to shunt shields to a friendly ship. Currently the only ships that can run both this and Redundant Shields for shield-medic builds are all Rebel.

Weapons Team

• Flight Controllers - Squadrons you command get an extra blue die in their anti-squadron roll. Another good reason to keep your carrier close to the dogfight. Imp players love this for four/five dice + swarm reroll + Howlrunner bonus die alpha strikes.
• Gunnery Team - You get to shoot twice with one arc, but only against two different ships or squadrons. Looks amazing on paper, but really lures your ship into getting focused down by two other ships. Has a small role for assault carriers that can fire their good arc at the enemy ship behind the dogfight, and then use anti-squadron to help win the dogfight itself.
• Sensor Team - Slightly worse, slightly cheaper H9 Turbolasers unless used on big ships. Once a round, spend a die to turn a die into accuracy.
• Ordnance Experts - Free reroll on all your black dice. Amazing, and dirt-cheap. Slap it on all your black dice ships and never roll a fist full of blanks again.
• Ruthless Strategists - If shooting into fighter combat, you can take a hit on a friendly squadron for free damage on an enemy. Strangely works better with Rebels, who have more hull to lose and a harder time nailing Scattering Imperial aces.

External Links

• Star Wars: Armada on Fantasy Flight Games' website, includes a full description of the rules and play.