My SSD is mostly a paper weight and I *still* don’t regret buying it.

My two takeaways: Malevolence tacitly confirmed? More Huge ships a possibility (all but promised). Wave 8 being a test bed for Clone Wars mechanics (Ignition Arc?). Gernes agreeing that Clone Wars has suitable candidates. Bring it on. "Stay tuned" for space stations?! Insert excited GIF of your choice here.

Yep! 58:00 in (or so).

A thing with which this other random person on the internet apparently disagrees.

The artist is Phil Noto. Technical illustrations aren't really his specialty, but his character work is among the best in the business.

I’m guessing it will slot in around $100, be slightly bigger (physically) than the Starhawk, and costed such that you can field two in a 400pt match (hence, encouraging a portion of customers to buy two). I also predict the MC85 and Resurgent will come in at this price point, should they ever make their way into the game. Now if FFG introduces the Malevolence, I would anticipate an MSRP in the range of $150, as it should be physically smaller than the SSD but still quite huge. Time will tell! It’s an exciting time for Armada players!

In campaigns, damage carries over from one match into the next. If a damaged ship is not repaired, it carries that "damaged" status into the next game. If a "damaged" ship is destroyed, it's removed from the campaign altogether. To avoid being damaged and/or destroyed, players are allowed to escape to hyperspace (at the expense of that ship's points total, which is awarded to the other player). However, if a ship is at distance 1-5 of an Interdictor (and only the Interdictor), it is unable to escape. It's very thematic and gives the Interdictor a very unique role in the game. Unfortunately, I don't really see a way of bringing that role into standard matches.

My biggest hang-up with the Interdictor is that its ability I enjoy most -- preventing ships from escaping to hyperspace -- is a campaign-only feature. It's like the ship was designed with campaigns in mind, and the team somehow had to shoehorn its abilities into the standard 400pt format using experimental upgrade cards. The gravity well projector is probably the closest approximation of the ship's in-universe abilities in the game (deployment at speed 0), but that's not a terribly exciting ability.

Wave 2 has actually been teased already. Republic: Pelta & Venator Separatists: Recusant & Invisible Hand (Providence) Assuming we get the Lucrehulk in Wave III (pleeeeeeease, FFG) along with the Republic Arquitens, it doesn’t leave much for the following waves.

In ANH, Vader is being escorted. He’s not doing the escorting. He couldn’t care less if his squadron mates buy the farm. He’s Vader! 😜

Armada is a themed game. It should be thematic. Otherwise we could simply play chess.* *Itself a themed game.

Yes, yes, yes, to those three squadrons getting Rogue. I know FFG backed themselves into a corner, because of the order of releases (Rogue not existing at the time of the first squadron packs), but Vader having Escort (Escort?! Have they seen Star Wars??) instead of Rogue frustrates my inner Star Wars geek to no end.

Noted but it would be nice if it was built in.

I like this idea quite a bit, if only because it’s very thematic. I do wonder how it might affect game balance though. Another change that could be made, which would both be thematic and beneficial to all, would be letting players set aside squadrons on ship cards at the beginning of the game (up to that ship’s squadron value). These squadrons could them be deployed at Distance 1-2 of the respective ship when given a squadron command during the game. That would emulate the feeling of ships deploying fighters mid-battle, which I think would be a lot of fun.

And what happens in the future, if we see the Lucrehulk? Or dare I say it, MC85 or Resurgent? If those things come in as Larges, with no half-point rule, it might be better to simply run away, because I anticipate shield and hull values that are more similar to the Star Dreadnought Prototype than a “typical” Large like an ISD. Seems like something has to give. Hmmm... maybe something like an “Extra Large” with new rules that bridge the gap between Large and Huge. (Beating a dead horse here, I know.)

That's an interesting ability, though I'm still trying to figure out how I would best put it to use. The trick would be finding a deployment that doesn't simply make me a juicy target for A-Wings and Interceptors.

This was an issue in my solo match as well. See the photo I attached in my post from April 16, and you'll note that the Rebel Smalls are kind of all over the place; this was mostly the byproduct of trying to avoid collisions with each other.

I almost always throw Contested Outpost into my list of three objectives. I love it when I'm Player Two. Edit: I should add, I've only played against the Starhawk in one proper game, and while it did go down, it took the combined firepower of an SSD and Onager to do so. That's a proper tough ship. (I've used it as an opponent in a couple of solo games, but those matches don't really count, in my mind.)

And the @Crabbok YouTube channel, of course. I think he may also have a podcast but I'm not sure.

Holy Toledo. This is the Armada equivalent of that scene from Star Trek Beyond.

That’s the problem with Anakin. They pretty much put him in everything. (Best pilot in the galaxy, and all...)

I like this change. Being able to bypass a veritable fleet of X-Wings simply because I had Dengar tagging along always seemed a bit like cheating to me.

We're two peas in a pod. You could say I'm mostly a visual player. The game has to look good on the table! 😆

I'm primarily an Imperial player and tend to run multiple VSDs. As someone who grew up with the original trilogy, I love the uniformity of multiple triangular hulls on the table. VSDs are my stand-ins for generic "Star Destroyers"... they look the part, behave in a suitably appropriate way, and have the added benefit of being much cheaper to buy than FFG's ISD expansion (I bought two spare VSDs for $11 each on Amazon). I also find that the VSDs scale better with the other ships in the game than the ISDs do. I like pushing squadrons though, too, so I tend to bring TIE Bombers and Fighters along as well.

I continued to see two separate images (here and here) from what was clearly a larger panoramic (of ILM concept art), so I decided to put together this simple stitch. Old news to @melminiatures, I know, but I thought you might like this wider shot. As far as I can tell, we can see in this image the following: Mandalorian fang fighter Wookie gunship YT-2400B freighter Hammerhead corvette Pelta frigate (opened and closed wings) Lothallian corvette (bottom-left - best guess) Sullustan cargo barge MG-100/SF-17 Star Fortress MC95E (wide body) MC95D (mid-ship wing with dorsal fin) MC95C (bow fin) MC95A (bow wing) MC85 MC75 MC75C (dorsal fin - best guess) MC75D (bi-plane wing - best guess) Vakbeor cargo frigate CR90 corvette Free Virgillia bunkerbuster Aurore freighter Razor assault ship Quadjumper D-wing fighter GR-75 Coruscant freighter (bottom-right) New Gozanti What can you guys spot that I might have missed? EDIT #1: The MC95B is the tri-fin, as confirmed via Phil Szostak’s Twitter/James Clyne’s Instagram account (and ILM; see below). The version pictured at middle-left (background) appears to be the D-model, which has wings amidship along with a fin. EDIT #2: The full image has been published by ILM (along with a number of other great pieces, including profile shots for the MC95A-D). See here: https://www.ilm.com/visual_development/star-wars-the-rise-of-skywalker-developing-a-heart-of-darkness/