Over the last couple of months, there have been a few new announcements with Wave III and Wave IV for Star Wars Armada. Wave 3 adds a new ship class called flotilla – which showcases the Rebel Transport, and the Imperial Assault Carrier While Wave 4 adds in the new Interdictor, and Liberty class cruisers. Both waves should really open up new strategies and synergies for your fleets!

FFG Image

Wave 3 brings us a new class called a flotilla. These are very unique, in that they perform like ships and move the same way, however if they overlap another ship, only the flotilla takes damage. The other new addition with flotillas is the Fleet Support upgrades, which will modify your fleet as opposed to the specific ship. This will help make builds more robust by increasing your ability to deal damage, or repair your ships. These new ships will add more to the thematic quality of the game, adding more diversity to the table, and liven things up as far as tactics. The Assault Carrier is not much of a combat ship, but if you can manage to keep it at range it can be used to support your squadrons and make them much more lethal, or you can use it to get close, and change the dials of an enemy ship (putting the very thinly armored carrier at risk). The Rebel Transport will most commonly been seen as a sort of “healer” using its abilities and upgrades to discard damage from friendly ships – hopefully long enough to turn the tides of the fight in the Rebellion’s favor.

FFG Image

Wave 4 adds two new ships to the game, the Imperial Interdictor class Cruiser and the MC80 Liberty Cruiser. The Interdictor is a medium based ship that is not featured many places but in the books and comics, and not seen in the movies. This ship essentially generates a large gravity field, stopping warping ships and fleets in their tracks for the perfect Imperial ambush. The ship will have unique abilities, and with the new upgrade cards it can field, it will stop enemy ships at the start of the game (reducing their speed to 0 at the deployment if within range), or used as an ability to stop a ship at range 1-5 for the turn. This should help your Imperial fleet position itself to setup nice broadsides and dictate where an engagement occurs. The Rebels get the iconic Liberty Cruiser, which is a very cool looking ship (any Battlefront players here?), but is also a heavy hitting large based ship. The Liberty is a close cousin to Home One, but instead of having a devastating broadside attack, the Liberty is design to attack from the front, with a hard hitting 7 dice forward arc. The Liberty also promises upgrade cards to compliment its more “head to head” style of play so the Rebels can charge straight into the fray opening up tons of options for you Rebel players..

All of the new ships look excellent (not surprising – it is an FFG product) and look like they will really change the meta of Armada games with a lot of new tactics and builds that will pop up. Look for these to hit sometime in Q2 and Q3 of 2016. As I delve deeper into them and more is released, look for some theory crafted builds for them, and upon release some actual battle reports! You can read the FFG articles on the new waves here, and here!