With wave 2, I'd recommend buying two more sets of dice. There will be some circumstances where you will need to roll 7+ dice (often with Opening Salvo factored in to push it over 6). Good point, I should totally pick up another dice pack As for the manouver tool, if you are just starting out you can forego a spare one for a little while. It really is a godsend when you have 4 or 5 corvettes tangling with your ISD and you want to make a speed 1 manouver and you have 3/4 of useless tool bumping ships and squadrons and making you mark and move things that are way out of the way just to accommodate the thing, but do you NEED it right off? no.

I'm interested to know, like a poker player that folded before the river, if your order from the US gets to you before I pick up my stuff on Friday. I made the call that ordering from the US was going to be a crap shoot with an added (and high) shipping cost so I pre-ordered from a local store with free shipping on large orders (then canceled the shipping when I heard they were getting it in on Friday cause a pickup on Friday or Saturday is faster than a shipment on Monday or Tuesday).

I don't understand why people think ISDIIs are squishy lol, I think some imperial players might be stuck in the mentality that big ships must only spam navigate. I have had tremendous success with my 200 point ISDII, commands are usually Engineering for the token, navigate for the token, concentrate fire (my placement and navigation have gotten good enough that I am almost certain to have little to no damage and a front arc shot in this round and an extra blue die is great for accuracies or triggering NK7s) and from then on its nothing but engineering! that's 7 more shields to mitigate the likely XI7s or the shield exhaustion of enhanced projectors (sometimes I run projectors, sometimes ECM, projectors are good versus high activation lists as you only have so many tokens anyway and people are unlikely to have bought and equipped 5 or 6 XI7s). I have had rebel players throw every ship at this thing only to expose their flank to my demolisher (with engine techs) and suffer withering return fire and the best they have managed is 9/11 damage (and this was in a contested outpost match where I couldn't leverage obstruction but did get 100 points in objective tokens). I have used this thing to 2-round a less upgraded ISD, just pointed that magical front/side arc line at it and vaporized him (he managed 2 bump damage and some shields). Its wonderful bait, both psychologically and strategically. Its a poor carpenter that blames the tools!

for the Americans on here 5cm is TWO INCHES. So to summarize, in Australia a 2 inch spider is "not that big" I rest my case. Also @ Stasy 1) I always prime all my squadrons before painting or "penning" I find the naked plastic to be ever so slightly translucent and that always skews the color. 2)Where are you that you have no one to play with?

I have 100% confirmed that I'm picking up my Wave 2 on Friday in Canada. I actually canceled the shipping so I could get it a couple of days sooner.

Downside of being on the ass end of the planet I guess...that and huge spiders

May I introduce you to wave 2?? Or failing that, the infamous Rhymerball

Lucky! I'm jealous! My 3 month old pre-order probably won't ship till Friday but hopefully my FLGS will have stock and I can pick up an extra ship or 2 to calm the shakes lol

I have used both in both 300 and 400 point lists ( I only have 1 ISD until next week so its been an either-or for me so far). I think the ISD I is unparalleled as a carrier, I have had opponents panic at the rhymerball when their fighters fail to lock it down and try to take out the ISD1 only to eat that rainbow front arc. The ISDII I have been using as a wrecking ball, I have gone completely against conventional wisdom and packed nearly 200 points into it. Gunnery team, NK7, Intel officer, tractor beam, advanced projectors (or ECM depending), Avenger (paired with an overload pulse raider) and XI7s plus screed. Ironically, many opponents that should know better see this thing and think points bucket and charge in on it, I spam engineering commands and 2 shot most anything that gets in medium range while my overload pulse missile (raider) serves them up. Last game I played with this thing I faced 4 Neb Bs, I used the station to obstruct 3 rounds of return fire (4+ of his dice obstructed vs 2 of mine) it made such short work of them my flanking raider and demolisher barely got a taste (demolisher crashed into the side of his trailing flagship and wrecked it and I used the raider as a bump-missile to finish it). My raider literally did not get a chance to fire and my Demo only shot 3 times. When you get that front arc of 8 dice pointed at something and have a decent roll its a thing of beauty, typically you are punching right to hull thanks to the XI7s and taking away a defense token with NK7s (possibly 2 if they are forced to trigger the intel officer to stay alive), the next volley is inevitably deadly. If you get 2 fools in your front arc and can throw 16 dice total at 2 different targets it makes a little tear of joy pop into the corner of your eye.

Amazon has been very inconsistent lately. As for news on my end, the store I contacted in the US has said they will have stock on Wednesday and my local store has said they should have some on Friday. Fortunately this is good enough for me, so I can save the trip unless they drop the ball.

Yeah! You are getting it. Remember that if you pull his squadrons out first and keep yours back and keep your ships slow the added benefit is that you will likely be out of long range of most his fleet when squadrons engage, this frees you to use some arcs as anti-squadron and that means a shot at every one of his fighters in arc at medium range. Combined with the other synergies this typically spells the end for most fighter swarms as the option is either keep them together and suffer cumulative damage from all those sources or keep them apart and be picked off piecemeal. I hope to see you come back on here to tell us about your Imperial victory and your opponent wondering wtf happened

I've been using a Raider II as an overload pulse missile with Avenger and Screed, I haven't got it down quite right (not used to small, hyper maneuverable, super squishy ships) but when it comes off its amazing! I have tried both keeping the little guy cheek-by-jowl with the ISD and also as a flanker that shoots in if the rebels take the bait and go for the ISD en masse. I have yet to field both my raiders but I'm mulling over a list that might work.

Not to be rude, but if you're not ending the game after 6 rounds and you're not using objectives then you're not playing the game the way it was designed or balanced. That's especially true if you're running a slow fleet with VSDs which take forever to turn around after the initial engagement. A Rebel fleet with infinite turns is going to get the better of you after that first joust because he'll be able to turn around much faster than you and then has infinite turns to keep punishing you afterwards while your slow VSDs continue to try turning while getting shot in the rear. If he is running 10 squadrons of bombers why are you only running 2 TIE squadrons? Are you committing your TIEs too soon in other games? That's a fairly common mistake - if you just throw your TIEs up there, they are going to get mulched up by Rebel fighters and anti-squadron flak that has nothing better to shoot at. If you're within range of the Yavaris jank (triple activation) then it sounds to me like you're being too reckless with your TIEs. Are you ganging up on his Y-Wings to make the most of Swarm? Are you using Howlrunner? Have you considered dedicating a carrier VSD-I to assist you(I'd recommend Expanded Hangars+Flight Controllers with Howlrunner and TIEs to get big piles of blue dice)? Have you considered Interceptors? They're kind of a gamble in the "maybe no squadrons" meta, but if your regular opponent is going squadron heavy then they're superlative superiority fighters. How is your friend running 10 squadrons? Unless it's all Y-Wings (100 points), he's going over the 1/3 limit for a 300 point game and his fleet is thus illegal. Why are you running Tarkin (he's very expensive, especially in smaller games)? Have you considered a cheaper commander like Motti instead? Not being rude at all, I know the game is balanced for the objectives but we both get frustrated at the idea that there's a round limit, especially since we're just killing time before RPG games in a few hours. Objectives we might worry about more if we weren't struggling to teach ourselves the game, we can't make our schedules line up with the store's actual Armada group so we'd have people that knew what they were doing helping us learn. I should have mentioned the 10 bombers list was us trying out 400pts, it was closer to 6 or 7 in our 300pt games. But being too aggressive with my fighters does sound like it could be my issue. And until today I've only had 1 set of the fighter pack so my Interceptors didn't go very far with only 2 of them. I'm hoping more will help things. I have been using Howlrunner in every match surrounded by as much swarm as I can. I tried a carrier VSD-II (as you described, only it's the 2, which likely led to me fighting the closer range I need to keep for squadron commands vs the longer range it wants to shoot at. Now that you mentioned the VSD-I as a carrier I can see why that would work better.) once but it did little good after a very poor initial placement had it on the wrong flank for where his ships would run. I used tarkin because I (apparently wrongly) thought I'd need the command management he provides. If I'm spending every command on turning or fighters I thought I'd like the tokens to either boost those or give me repairs or rerolls. It's likely a holdover from my time playing Star Trek Attack Wing and playing fleets with as many free actions as I could get. Motti just seemed like a bad idea, ideally if I'm taking so much damage I need his extra hull points, I've lost anyway. Which means I'll probably go with Skreed next time because Tarkin really doesn't seem as useful as I thought. I rather like Tarkin at 400 points. Especially if you are running more than 1 big ship and can just pile up those delicious tokens to unleash at the right moment. A good combo to try is using Soontir fel with a couple of Tie Advanced and mauler mithel with Chiraneau. The tie advanced have Escort, so his fighters have to shoot at them, but if they are also engaged with Soontir they automatically take a damage, tie advanced also have the flexibility of packing a black die for anti-ship. Chiraneau allows your activated squadrons to move even if engaged, so you can drop Mauler into a fighter swarm and do 1 damage to all of them then next turn activate him and move him a little and do another damage to all of them. Also worth noting that Howlrunners added dice count for Counter as well, so she helps soontir and any tie interceptors roll more pain back at the rebel scum. If you make a strategic investment in anti-squadron fighters and try to get him to commit his sqadrons first you can easily neuter most rebel squadron setups or at least keep them out of the fight enough that they don't tip the balance.

Not to be rude, but if you're not ending the game after 6 rounds and you're not using objectives then you're not playing the game the way it was designed or balanced. That's especially true if you're running a slow fleet with VSDs which take forever to turn around after the initial engagement. A Rebel fleet with infinite turns is going to get the better of you after that first joust because he'll be able to turn around much faster than you and then has infinite turns to keep punishing you afterwards while your slow VSDs continue to try turning while getting shot in the rear. If he is running 10 squadrons of bombers why are you only running 2 TIE squadrons? Are you committing your TIEs too soon in other games? That's a fairly common mistake - if you just throw your TIEs up there, they are going to get mulched up by Rebel fighters and anti-squadron flak that has nothing better to shoot at. If you're within range of the Yavaris jank (triple activation) then it sounds to me like you're being too reckless with your TIEs. Are you ganging up on his Y-Wings to make the most of Swarm? Are you using Howlrunner? Have you considered dedicating a carrier VSD-I to assist you(I'd recommend Expanded Hangars+Flight Controllers with Howlrunner and TIEs to get big piles of blue dice)? Have you considered Interceptors? They're kind of a gamble in the "maybe no squadrons" meta, but if your regular opponent is going squadron heavy then they're superlative superiority fighters. How is your friend running 10 squadrons? Unless it's all Y-Wings (100 points), he's going over the 1/3 limit for a 300 point game and his fleet is thus illegal. Why are you running Tarkin (he's very expensive, especially in smaller games)? Have you considered a cheaper commander like Motti instead? yeah, a lot of these questions popped to mind for me too. I admit when i first started I didn't bother with objectives or with the turn limits but as I've grown to actually understand the depth and complexity of the game I have realized that objectives are absolutely pivotal to the balance of the game. Also, explain how he is activating his fighters without having his ships in range for bomber commands? Frankly from the description posted, and with all due respect, it sounds like more than a few rules are being missapplied or straight broken! I find that when there is serious missaprehension of the rules its a HUGE help to seek out new people to play with like in an FLGS setting. I can't even remember how many rules I was misinterpreting in my first few games!

It's just you, dude. Learn to point the line between your front arc and side arc at the target you are vaporizing.

Just finished a game where IG88 and another agressor rogued it up to cover the exposed backside of my ISD against Han and Nim. sometimes its just worth it!

UPDATE! Distributor site shows wave 2 items are "Available" as of today! so...yeah...I take it all back

Hello, officer? I'd like to report a hijacking.

So what you are saying that as a company they have not improved their logistics capability at all in 6 years of operation? Well, that's shoddy. Anyways, if it hits the distributor on the 27th, it probably won't be in stores till the 3rd, and my pre-order shipment won't arrive until the 7th or 8th? So, yeah, I'll be hopping the border on the 28th to see if I can snag an MC80 in the states, sorry LFGS Curious, which store do you preorder from? Pre ordered from 401 Games. They have the best prices and a reputation for fast shipping. I just finished making arrangements for a store in Buffalo to hold the other items I want until the 26th

its less than an hour drive for me. I drive way longer to go to work every day. In point of fact, it takes me LONGER to get to the store in Toronto that I preordered from in Saturday morning traffic than it would take me to get over the border. If it was a 4 hour drive...forget it! Aha, that makes a little more sense then, given that perspective. I just hate dealing with the US... As an Ex-Australian Military Man with a Security Clearance, I try to avoid tangling with Border Services I'm an innocent looking skinny nerd guy. Border guards basically wave me through both directions.

its less than an hour drive for me. I drive way longer to go to work every day. In point of fact, it takes me LONGER to get to the store in Toronto that I preordered from in Saturday morning traffic than it would take me to get over the border. If it was a 4 hour drive...forget it!

So what you are saying that as a company they have not improved their logistics capability at all in 6 years of operation? Well, that's shoddy. Anyways, if it hits the distributor on the 27th, it probably won't be in stores till the 3rd, and my pre-order shipment won't arrive until the 7th or 8th? So, yeah, I'll be hopping the border on the 28th to see if I can snag an MC80 in the states, sorry LFGS

For us Canadians anyway

So bad news for us Canadian Armada fans, the distributor is listing on its site that the wave 2 items won't be at the distributor until the 27th Maybe I'm an optimist but I was hoping it would be in STORES by then. I guess this means December before we get to these . Too bad for my local stores if the US stores stock them a week earlier cause I'm taking a trip to fill in gaps on my preorder. Seriously FFG, you found the slowest boat in the world to bring these from China, now you are shipping them to Canada by Bike Courier or something?

Thanks! It's my favourite