I have been comparing Admiral Screed and Grand Moff Tarkin.

For 9 points less Adm. Screed guarantees an additional critical. He sacrifices Adm. Tarkin's ability to push a needed command token out to your ships.

I am debating whether or not this is a good trade: What are your thoughts?

Tarkin is def expensive. 35 points is half a star destroyer, that said (i know another x wing reference brace yourself) in x wing movement was key, I have a feeling command tokens will be just as important here. Additionally we all know the star destroyers have a larger stack for slower in game reaction time / tarkin remedies this. Seems to be worth the cost..

Screed on the other hand costs less, in fact just enough for another tie squadron or a good upgrade. With the ability to ensure crits at the cost of an attack die. I really need to go look at the dice again to see what the ratio of miss / hit / crits is before i can further speculate.. ha.

It is worth mentioning that both of these cards benefit from having more ships under your command. Long story short, I think I might try both.. haha

Tarkin I can see using when I wanna run 3 Vic's his ability will help add some flexability. As for Screed he will be my go to guy for high DPS fleets. I played around with the FFG Dice program on my phone and his ability it was just like wow!. Espcialy with those black dice having a Hit and a Crit facing. Get that XX9 Turbo laser upgrade and Screed in a fleet and the Rebels are gonna be running for the hills.

XX9 Turbos on my flagship Vic II and Assault Concussion Missiles on my GSD II escort. Armada commanded by Adm. Screed, of course ;-)

Just need to decide how I am building out my fighters, and that will determine my 3rd Cap ship

I think points scale will also play a big part, to get the most out of Tarkin you want to be running multiple ships (not just with high command stacks though, as tokens work well for any ship to increase the effectiveness of commands). It doesn't say within a set range, unless the rulebook specifically states a default range for all commander abilities from the flagship of each fleet.

at 300 points will players get enough out of Tarkin to justify him? possibly, but at 500 or 600 points? Very likely. Works in thematically then as he would be see commanding larger fleets

When the Raider Swarm becomes a thing, both of these fellows will shine. Fleet-wide bonuses for lots of small stuff could be pretty scary.

Screed could also be pretty devastating against fighters, as he would seriously boost your caps' ability to hit the sneaky little buggers.

Screed could also be pretty devastating against fighters, as he would seriously boost your caps' ability to hit the sneaky little buggers.

While I'm all for this idea, his ability is that you have to give up a dice to use it, so doesn't do squat unless you're using 2+ dice. Since only 1 in 4 of our current Imperial ships have 2 dice, this isn't going to do much for us in the way of warding off fighters this wave. Who knows, maybe that's why they changed both Vic SDs from 2 anti-fighter dice to 1.

Oh crap, I thought that said "once per turn" on screed. Dayum.

Screed's my go to guy for fleets with fancy criticals that need to get em to happen every activation then. Maybe I'll take a Victory 2 with an overload pulse to make Wes Janson feel inadequate.

Screed is good, but i think there will be some learning to do regarding when to use or not use his ability. He decreases overall volume of fire quite heavily, and if you dont roll any blanks you'll need to think carefully about whether to take the full roll, or sacrifice part of it.

Screed is actually incredibly powerful because he gaurantees you a critical hit on your opponent with which to trigger an additional effect. i.e. want to ionise your opponents defenses? Doesnt matter if you roll only two blue dice, just roll them and remove one and the other will get to change to a crit regardless of the result. Want to use your assault concussion missiles? Just roll, take one away and its a gauranteed damage against multiple faces.

The are Screed is weak in is against fighters - as critical results class as misses against fighters. So unless there is an upgrade card along the lines of "Anti fighter lasers - on a blue critical result deal 3 damage" or something, then you are better not using his abilitiy there.

So he is a bit of an oddity, by doing less damage, you open up abilities that do more damage lol

The way I see it it will depend heavily on your ship loadout as to which commander will provide the best "value".

Tarkin favours lots of unmodified ships (to give as many command tokens as possible) whilst Screed would be better on a fleet using lots of weapon modifications to ensure they can use their special abilities every time they activate

2 possibilities here: 1) I roll all my dice, then remove one to upgrade another so that it shows a crit. OR 2) roll one less dice, then promote one to a side showing a crit...

Which way is correct?

I had thought that rolling = attacking. Which would mean I get to roll all my dice, then trade one out after I see the rolls.

Going by thae article, it's #1. You roll them all, then discard one if you wish to upgrade one.

Yup, I agree that you would roll all your dice, but then just know you are going to take one away and make the other a crit.

(unless you naturally roll a critical, in which case Screed would only help where you had 3 or more dice and would rather have two critical hits for damage instead of activating an ability - since we can only resolve one critical ability per attack).

Edited my prior post to reflect the correct usage

Oh crap, I thought that said "once per turn" on screed. Dayum.

Screed's my go to guy for fleets with fancy criticals that need to get em to happen every activation then. Maybe I'll take a Victory 2 with an overload pulse to make Wes Janson feel inadequate.

I think ill be using screed to activate the critical hit special abilities like the overload pulse and a few other critical hit abilities that i plan to outfit my fleet with. I want to try for a dps fleet. And i think running two VSD's and a GSD will work out pretty nice. And I gotta have Howlrunner as my ace for my squads. Shes going to be just as cool in this game as in that other game .

Tarkin's ability is much more poweful, if you have enough ships.

Screed gives you 1 crit. Tarkin's ability could give you extra manuevering ability, or the ability to activate a couple squadrons, or the ability to move/recover shields, or the ability to reroll attack dice.

With a small fleet, Screed might be the advantage. But with a larger fleet, Tarkin's ability wins out by giving you more potential power, but also by giving you a lot more flexibility.

In this game Im not sure yet what would qualify as a small fleet vs a large fleet. At 300 points for a standard game as well probably tournament size game. I was playing around with numbers on building a fleet at a 300 point list a GSD II and two VSD's I & II

came up to 222 points without upgrades or fighter squads. It makes me think that builds are going to take much more planing out. And with upgrades I want to liad out my capital ships with all the cool stuff but dont think that will happen...

probably need to load out ships with upgrades that will play to your strategy the most and bite the bullet with other upgrades that would help you out but are not as critical in helping you. For me I would want things that would help raise my damage output

Well, there's also the objective selection bit too, you want your fleet to be at least able to perform the majority of them, and especially good at the three you select. There's alot that is still unknown about that factor

Tarkin's ability is much more poweful, if you have enough ships.

Screed gives you 1 crit. Tarkin's ability could give you extra manuevering ability, or the ability to activate a couple squadrons, or the ability to move/recover shields, or the ability to reroll attack dice.

With a small fleet, Screed might be the advantage. But with a larger fleet, Tarkin's ability wins out by giving you more potential power, but also by giving you a lot more flexibility.

What you arent seeing here is what that 1 crit can do for you (on every attack). Simply have it as a face up damage card isnt bad, but when you combine it with powers like http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/star-wars-armada/news/wave1/Overload-Pulse.png Overload Pulse, where on a blue crit (which Screed gives), you exhaust all your opponents evade tokens, then on your second attack (or next ships attack) your enemy has to either take the full damage value or burn their evade tokens permanently. That is far more powerful then giving each ship a concentrate fire token to re-roll a single dice IMO.

Tarkin's ability is much more poweful, if you have enough ships.

Screed gives you 1 crit. Tarkin's ability could give you extra manuevering ability, or the ability to activate a couple squadrons, or the ability to move/recover shields, or the ability to reroll attack dice.

With a small fleet, Screed might be the advantage. But with a larger fleet, Tarkin's ability wins out by giving you more potential power, but also by giving you a lot more flexibility.

What you arent seeing here is what that 1 crit can do for you (on every attack). Simply have it as a face up damage card isnt bad, but when you combine it with powers like http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/star-wars-armada/news/wave1/Overload-Pulse.png Overload Pulse, where on a blue crit (which Screed gives), you exhaust all your opponents evade tokens, then on your second attack (or next ships attack) your enemy has to either take the full damage value or burn their evade tokens permanently. That is far more powerful then giving each ship a concentrate fire token to re-roll a single dice IMO.

YES!!!!! see im glad someone else notices the joy of the Screed/Over load pulse tactic. I see many sad faces in the future when I use this combination.

I suspect that being able to guarantee activation of Critical driven special effects is going to be very handy for dps driven fleets...

I would like to bring up that this ability works awesome with black dice because it lets you choose a hit+crit side (I believe they mentioned this in the article and no one mentioned it yet)

Can you take more than 1 commander?

I remember reading you MUST have 1 in your fleet, but don't remember reading if you can only have 1.

Can you take more than 1 commander?

I remember reading you MUST have 1 in your fleet, but don't remember reading if you can only have 1.

A commander is roughly equal to 3 upgrade cards or 3 fighter squadrons. Taking 2 is going to be pricey.

Interesting idea though.

I daresay Tarkin is well worth 3 upgrades. Not sure if Screed is...

Can you take more than 1 commander?

I remember reading you MUST have 1 in your fleet, but don't remember reading if you can only have 1.

A commander is roughly equal to 3 upgrade cards or 3 fighter squadrons. Taking 2 is going to be pricey.

Interesting idea though.

I daresay Tarkin is well worth 3 upgrades. Not sure if Screed is...

Agreed with all the above. So far all the reveals have talked about selecting a commander or referred to your commander in the singular sense. I'm sure we'll receive clarification, but I'm not under the impression that multiple commanders are a thing. This may be thanks to future balance issues if you had commanders with overly complimentary abilities?