This is one of those changes that didn't seem to go nearly far enough. While a lot of staples gained additional costs (exhaust, pay to ready, etc.) that limited how often they could be used each turn, this one just got an insignificant points increase that has no practical impact on its power level. Still far and away the best (and still one of the cheapest) ion cannon slots for the large sluggers, and ships with 2+ antifighter dice can still trigger Leading Shots a half dozen times per round (once during every squadron shot if needed) to almost ensure that you never miss against squads. Still a steal for 6pts.

Same team. Except that I'll be going a little further. I'm planning on using mini-sized proxies for the new upgrades that are only available in the larger sizes. One complaint of Armada is that most people don't own a proper table for it. I am fairly lucky in that I have a dedicated gaming space with a custom-built 6x4 gaming table, so I'm one of the lucky few with viable Armada space, and yet the bigger cards now mean that many of my fleets become a disorganized scrunched mess on my side of the board (which also needs room for damage cards, tools, dice, etc.). There were a lot of good reasons to the original design that put ships on Tarot, squads on standard, and upgrades on mini. Whatever the reason for the standardization, hard to imagine it outweighs those original design reasons.

I know this is probably under NDA, but I'll ask in case it's not: WHY DO YOU ALL HATE BLACK DICE SHIPS SO MUCH? DID THEY KILL YOUR PARENTS IN THE STREETS OF GOTHAM? 😂

Hard for me to see the appeal of Kit Fisto for his price, but I do like that the Republic at least has an Intel option, and I like that it's not locked to some wacky unthematic chassis (looking at you, Jumpmaster 5000). That said, I think it's easy to underestimate how hard the Jedi also hit against squads. 4-5 Dice with 2 Rerolls is potent, though it's far from unprecedented (it can be pretty easily achieved in Rebs/Imps with things like Howl+Swarm, Toryn Farr, etc.), though time will tell if it's worth a whopping 24 points. I know none of my early back-of-the-napkin theorycrafted fleets have even come close to including Kit yet, though.

As someone who Vassal'ed for years, TTS is far superior.

Nope. Once set aside, it can not trigger any of its cards or be affected by any cards. Raddus-tucking ships can also prevent them from gaining objective tokens and such from certain Objectives as well.

Hey, we know you were just unexpectedly and unceremoniously fired right before the holidays during a global pandemic... but any chance you want to come and spend some of your time trying to justify your decisions for a product you are no longer responsible for in order to try and assuage a bunch of complaints and disappointment from players who are unhappy with your work? Yea... can't imagine why anyone wouldn't want to do that... 🤷‍♂️

Wanted to let these sink in for a few days. Overall, I'm very disappointed with this "1.5" upgrade pack. On the one hand, the vast majority of cards were left as-is, leaving a lot of bad upgrades still quite bad. Even Home One, the most iconic Rebel command ship, wasn't improved to add a few hull points (it's much bigger than most MC80s) or a Fleet Command Slot or anything? This is a disappointing release for binder-fodder cards, as they still have no reason to leave the binder. Also puzzling is how some dominant cards, like Intel Officer or Toryn Farr, have not been touched by these changes? On the other hand, the stuff that did get changed was mostly an across-the-board penalization to black die ships. Did the devs and/or playtesters pushing these changes have some sort of axe to grind against torpedoes or something? Did the tournament data really support that MC30s, MC75s, Hammerheads, Raiders, and Gladiators were the overly dominant meta ships (ie, the only ships warranting debuffs in this 1.5 soft update)? I suppose if these changes were settled on 4 years ago, when MSU, Demo, and Admo were king, maybe these make sense? But that's been a hot second of quite a few meta shifts. Curiously, the Demolisher title change is odd... it was arguably the most degenerate upgrade in the game (allowing the ship to violate the basic flow of combat timing), and it's barely been affected by its change. It now can go back to shooting after an Engine Tech move (a pretty substantial re-buff), but it has to shoot once before and once after moving, which in practice isn't very different from how the ship already functioned? Looks like the best way to kill ships in this game will remain as either Squadrons, Star Destroyers, or a combination of the two. No wonder Miniature Market's only Black Friday sale for Armada stuff was the MC30 expansion pack 🤣

I would love to see U-Wings and TIE Reapers in Armada, though it'd be hard to imagine not having Cassian Andor as the unique pilot for the Rebels (seeing as he flew one on a host of covert ops for the Rebellion).. I think both could easily have Raid, since they are predominantly troop transports. Both then also become very analogous to the laat gunship. I wonder if we'll see 4-faction squadron releases in the future, in an effort to stretch lean Rebel/Imperial content and incentivize people to jump into other factions. A pack with: Raiding Troop Transport: U-Wing, TIE Reaper, laat Gunship Heavy Bomber: K-Wing, TIE Punisher, HMP Gunship Relay/Strategic for GAR/Sep: Republic Shuttle (ETA?Nu? Etc), Ventress Fanship or Seppy Shuttle(Neimodian Shuttle?) Would use up some iconic squadrons, provide the 8 stands of single-ships ala Rogues and Villains, and would leave people owning stuff for all four factions.

So ... playtester spilling beans? Because i also have not seen cards like APT or OE discussed in anything yet, and no reason to think they'd be in the German inserts? A little disheartening, if this all turns out to be true. I've played a lot of MC30/MC75, and they are viable if you aggressively reroll with OEs for spike damage and get double-arc shots to trigger ACM/APT twice a round on their target. Without either of those reliability boosting options... ? The thing about black-die ships is that they need to hit very reliably very hard when they get their shots, because time on target can be a real problem for them, especially against fast large ships (like an ISD). These changes make that much harder to accomplish. We'll see if black die dependent ships like the MC30 and MC75 can still carry their weight now, but this sort of change just further makes mindless ships like the ISD (point toward enemy, roll piles of dice) even better, because they don't have to be as scared of getting caught in a torp boat's dual arc.

What do you think ambulances at the scene of car crashes are doing? Where do you think they take people from crashes?

Ah, interesting. That makes sense, then, though still seems like a weird wave to roll them out (rather than later, alongside Ship Expansion packs that actually lack the dials).

Why would anyone buy the Armada dial pack? Is it just speed and command dials? Seems like a real waste of production, packaging, and shipping resources for a product that is almost going to certainly fail to sell well. Oh, good catch, doesn't appear the ETA-2 is there...

The TIE Reaper and Saw's Renegades will add some interesting large-based ships to your options, both of which are decent in combat and can serve a support role, and each have some unique and fun maneuvering options. Both sets also include the 1.0 and 2.0 content for the ships, so should you eventually end up converting over you'll have a head start with those ships.

Probably because new people are cheaper than veteran developers/designers? Also, I'd say it's pretty likely that Asmodee will try and have AMG do what FFG did but with significantly smaller staff, because again that's cheaper. Welcome to capitalism and private equity firm shennanigans.

FFFFFFFFFF FFFFFFFFFF FF FFFFFFF FFFFFFF FF FF FF

Bold of you to assume that Asmodee is looking to sell FFG and keep AMG, and not the other way around.

And I'm sure the designers and devs of those new waves and the 1.5 edition and such didn't expect to be suddenly laid off, but according to the Reddit discussions, it seems like they were... So odds are people involved in making this new content fully expected to still be rolling out this new content at FFG for years to come. I'd assume nothing about the future of these lines for the time being, until we see what, if anything, Atomic Mass Games has planned for them (for instance, AMG currently has no Organized Play).

Bold of you to assume that Asmodee has "continuity in game development" in mind with these decisions. Isn't Asmodee a private equity firm? These decisions, like all of their decisions, are made because they think it's going to increase short term gains. Does their end game include selling off all of FFG's best lines and closing it? Selling off the FFG brand itself? Trying to increase the marketability of AMG before they sell that (thus jettisoning all of their miniatures lines from their portfolio)? Who knows.

Isn't Asmodee a private equity firm? ALL of their decisions are made because they think it will increase profit margins and bottom lines.

So, Separatists are Rebel ships with Imperial Squadrons, and Republic is Imperial ships with Rebel Squadrons. Got it.

Yea, Dooku seems obnoxious. Against carrier fleets, you'll bank up two Squadron commands. Against most else, especially fleets with stuff like Gladiators, MC30s, etc. you'll bank up two Navigations.

If the alternative was to send in one tank every three years, with a single soldier running up to the enemy every 12 months going "Don't worry, some BIG tank is coming!" then yea, a tank a week would feel like an overwhelming blitz.

Are we sure about this? Why are the icons on the backside distributed in such a way that they add to the "front side" of the card overlaid atop them? That just seems unnecessary if they are two sides of the same card. Either way, doesn't change the fact that I'd have really preferred consistency with keeping Tarot-sized ship cards.

Absolutely, looking to be one of the best 5pts you can possibly spend in the game. It's kind of like Toryn Farr + Bomber Command in a single upgrade for 1/3 the cost, though only works on the ship's squadron activation instead of being passive. Nevertheless, incredibly potent upgrade. It seems like Republic's schtick is going to be dominating the squadron game. Torrents look pretty close to being slightly better, slight cheaper X-Wings while the Jedi Fighters look like they'll be both very deadly and very hard to kill.