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I HAVE BEEN WAITING SO LONG FOR AN ARTICLE!!! And this one is pretty good. I really just want to set a star destroyer down on the table so bad.

Just one?

I know that the dials have been discuses in videos from gen con but reading about it made it easier to understand. I am an avid x-wing player and this single mechanic shows how truly different the games are and had really made me more interested in this game and more certain than ever that both x-wing and Armada can survive together, my wallet, not so much

Finally, something.

I agree that they're taking efforts to distinguish this from X-Wing. Flying high command ships will be more difficult as you have to try to guess what commands you need to come out when. At least the tokens provide some flexability.

It makes the big ships powerful but unwieldy, and small ships fragile yet direct. Looks to be well balanced.

So the Victory II is setup for long range engagements and the standard Victory I is more suitable for up close stuff.

Nice to know what the tokens do. It will get crazy once you have multiple capital ships and you have to track all those commands. This game is looking fun.

One does wonder why they put the 'selected' commands in the BACK part of the dial, though? Surely, having the arrow point towards the 'open' end of the dials, where you'll use your thumb to spin them, would have made more sense?

That is, if you wanted to take a look at the set of commands you have queued up, it'll be really tricky doing it now - they'll be in the dark back corners of the tokens. On the opposite side, though, you could just tilt the stack sideways and glance at the sequence you have lined up...

Nice to know what the 'tokens' do. Makes that first turn nice to store somthing up for later.

One does wonder why they put the 'selected' commands in the BACK part of the dial, though? Surely, having the arrow point towards the 'open' end of the dials, where you'll use your thumb to spin them, would have made more sense?

That is, if you wanted to take a look at the set of commands you have queued up, it'll be really tricky doing it now - they'll be in the dark back corners of the tokens. On the opposite side, though, you could just tilt the stack sideways and glance at the sequence you have lined up...

It would not surprise me if there was a rule that said you cannot look at your stack after it is set. I don't know why this would be a rule, but I could see it.

This also explains the Engineering Value and how Repair works (not a surprise they work together but the details are nice) which I believe is fairly significant news

WOOHOO!! They finally threw us a bone!

Nice to see that the squadron command has been confirmed as both move and attack. I can see dedicated carrier ships in the future easily.

Repair feels a little... lacklustre to me.

Interesting ramifications about some commands being more or less effective on some ships while others don't vary.

Concentrate Fire is just as good with a victory as a CR90. Both can get 1 bonus dice on 1 attack or 1 reroll with the token.

Navigate I think will also be of equal use to all ships as it has the same effect regardless of ship.

Squadron and Repair are really tied into a ships stats. I honestly can't see doing the repair action that often with a CR90 for instance, but I would feel really tempted to start with that action on a victory to build up the token that will repair 1 shield.

I could see a lot of squadron rating 1 ships taking squadron as their first command in the game however. It will make literally no difference to them wether they do that one as an action or a token! Nah, they would be better off probably with some other action...

The squadron command was known for certain to grant movement and attack since the demos at GenCon. This was clearly explained in the demos, including the videos posted. Any speculation otherwise was based on balance assumptions that ignored the known facts. I mean did people think the demos were run wrong? The game developers themselves were running the demos.

Anyhow, I like the new info about saving up commands. It was hinted at before and now we know how it works. I like it. Makes repair and concentrate fire not useless when the situation changes, and gives an option in case you don't want to activate navigation, oflr the off chance your only squadrons in range are taken out.

Repair might feel lacklustre if you're flying Corvette's, but when you're flying big ships you lack the bodies to absorb damage, so being able to live to fight another round is quite crucial.

Also note how the article says any one damage card. This includes crits.

Actually, Repair could be very important depending on how many redirect tokens a ship has (or whatever the tokens to spread damage among shields is called). So, the bigger ships will probably use the 2 and 3 pt options, while the smaller ships with less action tokens will use the 1 pt option more, since they can't inherently spread the damage out as well.

I think I would almost always bank a repair at the start especially on the Imperial big ships, I do not foresee navigate being incredibly useful and I feel having an "extra" shield banked would really come in handy early

I'm almost leaning toward Concentrate Fire. A reroll is handy, especially since the Destroyers seem to move their damage around anyway.