Post by Fadril Adren on Mar 21, 2016 20:28:56 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.
Imperial Fighter Squadrons
In battle, the Empire deployed swarms of TIEs to neutralize enemy squadrons and safeguard its larger Star Destroyers and their superior firepower. These easily recognizable starfighters were designed for speed and maneuverability, rather than durability, and the aces who flew them through many battles quickly earned intimidating reputations for their combat skill and fanatical loyalty.
The Imperial Fighter Squadrons Expansion Pack for Star Wars: Armada introduces an array of eight starfighter squadrons, evenly split between four different types of fighters. By adding these TIE advanced, TIE interceptor, TIE bomber, and TIE fighter squadrons to your fleet, you’ll be able to swarm your foes, protect your capital ships, and send the Rebellion’s hopes down in flames.
Imperial commanders are taught to take advantage of their superior numbers and firepower to overwhelm their foes, and this strategy relies in large measure upon the Empire’s seemingly limitless supply of TIE fighters.
In Armada, your standard TIE Fighter Squadron costs just eight of your 300 fleet points. For that investment, you gain a battery armament of one blue attack die and, more importantly, an anti-squadron armament of three blue attack dice. As one might expect, this makes it an extremely efficient anti-fighter unit, especially when you take into consideration its Swarm ability, which allows it to reroll one of its attack dice whenever it attacks a squadron engaged with another squadron.
Typically, that “another squadron” would be another TIE Fighter Squadron, but if you have a few fleet points to spare, it could just as well be "Howlrunner" or "Mauler" Mithel . These TIE fighter aces both cost roughly twice as much as a standard squadron, but in fleets that want to make short work of enemy fighters, they’re still a bargain. Both add considerable damage potential, and they also gain tremendous resilience from defense tokens that allow them to halve the damage from one attack and completely ignore the damage from another.
You can also add resilience to your fighter squadrons by upgrading to the TIE Advanced Squadron . The TIE Advanced Squadron features five hull and can shield your other fighter squadrons with its Escort ability. Squadrons with Escort prevent squadrons they are engaged with from performing attacks against squadrons without Escort.
Of course, the TIE Advanced is also the starfighter flown by the legendary Sith Lord Darth Vader . Drawing upon the dark side of the Force, Darth Vader adds an extra black die to all of his attacks against enemy fighter squadrons, and whenever he scores a result, he adds one extra damage to his damage total.
Meanwhile, if you’re looking to race your fighters across the battlefield as quickly as possible, you may wish to consider investing in one or more TIE Interceptor Squadrons . With a speed of “5,” this starfighter squadron is as fast as they come, and for just eleven fleet points, its pilots can Swarm their foes, roll four blue attack dice, and gain Counter 2.
The Counter X keyword allows a squadron to attack any squadron that performs a non-counter attack against it, using an anti-squadron armament of X blue dice. Accordingly, your foe might wish to pick apart your other squadrons first, but Soontir Fel ’s unique ability punishes anyone who pursues this strategy. Then, because Soontir Fel and your other TIE Interceptor Squadrons all have the Swarm keyword, they can have their Counter attacks further boosted by “Howlrunner.”
While most Imperial fighter squadrons excel at engaging other fighter squadrons, TIE Bomber Squadrons do not. They have the Heavy ability, which means they do not prevent engaged squadrons from attacking ships or moving. Instead, TIE Bomber Squadrons gain the Bomber ability.
Normally, when fighter squadrons attack a capital ship, they ignore all results other than . However, ships with the Bomber ability add their results to the damage total and can even resolve critical effects. This means that, at just nine fleet points, the TIE Bomber Squadron can be an impactful addition to any fleet, as its battery armament consists of one black die which, with a little luck, can deal two damage in a single attack.