Post by Fadril Adren on Mar 21, 2016 19:43:08 GMT -5
THE GALACTIC EMPIRE
Rebel and Imperial fleets fight for the fate of the galaxy in Star Wars™: Armada, the two-player miniatures game of epic Star Wars space battles!
Massive Star Destroyers fly to battle against Rebel corvettes and frigates. Banks of turbolasers unleash torrential volleys of fire against squadrons of X-wings and TIEs. Engineering teams race to route additional power to failing shields. Laser blasts and explosions flare across the battlefield. Even a single ship can change the tide of battle.
In Star Wars: Armada, you assume the role of fleet admiral, serving with either the Imperial Navy or Rebel Alliance. It’s your job to issue the tactical commands that will decide the course of battle and, perhaps, the fate of the galaxy.
However, battles between capital ships are fought on a massive scale all their own; the more powerful your ships, the harder it is to adjust their actions on the fly. Capital ships can’t easily vary their speeds or execute hairpin turns like the starfighters that buzz around them, so successful admirals must learn to master every aspect of the ships in their fleet and learn how best to implement their strategies well in advance of the initial engagement.
The Ships
At the game’s heart are its capital ships—massive war machines that can exceed a kilometer in length and whose crew can number in the thousands. These ships are sophisticated and complex. Their defenses, armaments, and engines all run from separate systems. You and your opponent must balance all these systems throughout your battles. Accordingly, emerging victorious will require more than just raw firepower. It requires a keen tactical mind.
Armada balances the awesome scale of the Star Wars galaxy’s ships and space warfare with intuitive ship designs and accessible rules for issuing commands and resolving combat that make for rich, engaging, and highly tactical play experiences.
Each pre-painted capital ship is divided into four sections: front, rear, left, and right. While a ship has a single hull value, which indicates how many hits it can take before it’s destroyed, it has separate shield values for each of its sections, and each of these sections also comes with its own firing arc and attack value, indicated by a number of dice.
Gladiator-class Star Destroyer Expansion Pack
The Gladiator-class Star Destroyer Expansion Pack also expands your fleet-building options with its miniature Star Destroyer, two ship cards, and ten upgrades.
Originally designed as an escort for larger Star Destroyers, the smaller Gladiator-class Star Destroyer measures roughly five-hundred meters and proved most effective as a long-range patrol ship deployed to the fringes of the galaxy. There, its brutal armament of turbolasers, concussion missiles, laser cannons, and TIE squadrons allowed it to quickly subjugate any local opposition to the Galactic Empire.
The Gladiator-class Star Destroyer Expansion Pack for Star Wars: Armada introduces one detailed and pre-painted miniature that the expansion’s two ship cards allow you to add to your fleet as either a Gladiator I or Gladiator II. You’ll also find all the command dials and tokens that you need to bring your Star Destroyer to battle, along with ten upgrade cards that can enhance its attacks, allow it to move between attacks, and improve its accuracy.
Less powerful and less resilient than the Victory-class, the Gladiator-class Star Destroyer is also less expensive, costing either fifty-six fleet points for the Gladiator I or sixty-two fleet points for the Gladiator II.
And while it’s not as powerful as the Victory-class, the Gladiator-class – in many ways – features a better balance of strengths. Instead of the Victory’s six forward-facing attack dice, the Gladiator features four, but it can also fire four dice from both its left and right hull zones, as opposed to the three dice that the Victory fires from its sides.
Simultaneously, the Gladiator trades away one of the Victory’s redirect tokens for an evade token, reducing its ability to rely upon its shields for protection, but increasing its ability to evade attacks at long range.
Perhaps more importantly, the Gladiator is a faster and nimbler ship, with a maximum speed of “3” – as opposed to the Victory’s maximum speed of “2” – and a command rating of “2.” The reduced command, of course, limits the number of tokens your Gladiator-class Star Destroyer can store, but it also means that you’ll be able to react more swiftly to your opponent’s tactics.
Its increased maximum speed is also important because the Gladiator features no medium-range blue attack dice. Instead, it features a hefty dose of potent, close-range black dice, so any admiral fielding a Gladiator-class Star Destroyer will want to find a way to race it into position to fire as quickly as possible.
One of those ways may be to take advantage of the upgrades and titles that appear in the expansion. Engine Techs nearly double the efficiency of your navigation commands, and though the Demolisher title doesn’t directly add to your ship’s speed, by allowing your Gladiator-class to fire after moving, it greatly increases your ability to get into position to fire at the target of your choice as early as possible.
Likewise, by increasing the range of your black attack dice from close to medium whenever you attack the rear hull zone of an enemy ship, the Insidious title also adds to your range and maneuverability. Moreover, if you happen to equip your Gladiator-class with Expanded Launchers, you could fire as many as four of those black dice at medium-range.
Finally, the Gladiator-class Star Destroyer Expansion Pack comes with a commander upgrade of its own, Admiral Screed, who presents an interesting alternative for Grand Moff Tarkin or Admiral Motti.
“Once per activation, when a friendly ship is attacking, it may spend 1 die to change a die to a face with a crit icon.”
The fact that you can use Admiral Screed’s ability once per activation means that you can apply it to each capital ship in your fleet. However, activating it requires the sacrifice of one of your attack dice. In the case where you roll two blanks, the decision to sacrifice one of them to turn the other into a critical result is a relative no-brainer, but those situations should be relatively rare. The blue attack die has no blank faces, and the red and black attack dice have only two blank faces each.
Still, Admiral Screed’s ability can come in handy even if you don’t roll blanks. For example, the face of the black attack die that shows a CRIT result also shows a HIT result. If you sacrifice one HIT result to convert another HIT result to a result of HIT plus CRIT, you lose no damage but gain the opportunity to trigger a critical effect.
Moreover, guaranteed CRIT results can greatly increase the potency of your upgrades can potentially offset the cost of losing other dice results, even standard hits. With Admiral Screed aboard your flagship, you can guarantee a black CRIT result for your Assault Concussion Missiles or a CRIT blue result for your Victory-class Star Destroyer’s Ion Cannon Batteries.
In certain situations, you might even elect to give up the raw number of damage cards that you force onto your opponent’s hull in order to turn the first two of them faceup with the XX-9 Turbolasers found in the Victory-class Star Destroyer Expansion Pack.
The Imperial Fleet Is Yours to Command
The rules for fleet-building, along with the Star Destroyers and upgrades from the first wave of Armada expansions, ensure that you will be able to enjoy a range of Imperial fleets as diverse as the citizens of the galaxy they will help you conquer.