Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Armada Commanders Wave 1 - Rebel

Previously, we talked about Imperial Commanders - what they did and when to use them.  Now we are going to discuss their Rebel counterparts.  As before, the Commanders represent the Flagship officers of your list.  You can only chose one, and by chosing one you are locked out of utilizing any others.

General Dodonna

Dodonna is the lowest costed commander, for either side - coming in at 20 points.  His fleet-wide ability is that if an enemy ship is dealt a faceup damage card, you get to look at the top 4 cards of their deck and select which one the critical hit will be.  

If you want the most out of General Dodonna, you need to plan ways of dealing critical hits and faceup damage cards - more than you normally would.  The obvious synergy is with Dodonna's Pride, the Corvette Title that allows you a faceup damage card in exchange for cancelling all other damage. Luke Skywalker is another - being able to ignore shields, and bomber lets you drop crits directly onto the hull.  With that said Dodonna doesn't descriminate between ships and squadrons - any build so long as it can land criticals will be improved by him.

Garm Bel Iblis

For just 5 points more than Dodonna (25 points total), Garm fills up your fleet's command tokens to full on the start of the first round and the start of the fifth.  Unlike Dodonna, his ability is better the more high command ships you have to fill up with tokens.  Corvettes would only get one, but Assault Frigates would fill up 3 tokens each.  This gives you a significant action boost in the early game and the mop-up portion, and competes directly with Tarkin for number of tokens handed out.

The drawback is that because you can't have multiples of tokens, you can wind up with more than you need.  How many of you bank your command on turn one?  Can't really do that if Iblis has already maxed out your token supply.  On turn 5, are you really going to use all the tokens that just popped up?  Do you already have some banked from Turn 4?  Oh well, don't get all your tokens. Took a Corvette?  Too bad!

Mon Mothma

Mon Mothma is the most expensive of the Rebel Commanders, coming in a 30 total points, and 10 more than Dodonna.  However, with that in mind, she takes the Rebel's biggest defensive token, the Evade, and makes it significantly better.  All evade tokens can be used at medium range to cancel one die (normally long range only) and can be used at short range / distance 1 to force a reroll (normally medium range only).  This is big, as every rebel ship out at this point has at least one evade token (the Corvette has two) and the Imperials really love to get into medium / close range for their shots. Being able to force a Screeded die to reroll a hit/crit is huge, as is straight up cancelling a mid-range hit/hit from red dice.  It means all your ships can be that much more survivable.

The drawback is that you are giving up a full 10% of your list (4% or so if you count Dodonna as the baseline) for this defense boost.  And you are turning away a lot of free tokens / critical effect boost. And anyone with an Intelligence Agent on their ship can neuter your expensive commander for a mere 7 points.

Well, that's it for the rebel high command.  Feel free to comment to let me know what you'd like to see me cover next.  Until then, fly casual!

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