Hu all. I'm an X-Wing player that is looking to pick up Armada. A friend and I decided to try it out, and I'm wondering if my planned purchases will give me a good footing for anew all-around Rebel fleet.

Core set X 1

Nebulon-B and corvette from my friend's core set

Assault frigate X 1

Fighter pack X 2

Home One X 1

MC30c frigate X 2

The questions I have are twofold:

1. Is it worth it, for both my friend and I, to get the wave 1 expansions for the core set ships (frigate, corvette, VSD)?

2. It looks to me like the Rebel ships are broadside armament based with decent star fighter squadrons- should I actually get the Assault frigate since it doesn't seem to quite go with the same style (having a decent chase armament)?

1) The expansions will have different cards, so yes.

2) I guess the answer depends on what cards are in the expansion. Personally, I will be getting at least one of everything in Wave 1, plus multiples to be determined at a later date.

Don't forget upgrades can drastically change battery armaments. It may not be considered to be the best investment in points, but a ship can be re-fitted to behave differently given the proper upgrade cards. I'm betting you could turn the MkII into a ship that behaves like you want.

I would suggest an assault frigate MkII for sure. It is going to be your Fighter mover and your Victory counter for quite some time until Wave II later this year. Even then it benefits from a good long range armament compared to other ships.

The Assault frigate is just so...ugly. like a balloon-animal spaceship a clown made. I wish it was either similar to the Nebulon-B or a Mon Cal cruiser.

There is a thread about physical model substitutes... Not sure what the consensus was, though.

I'm hoping for a Dreadnought Heavy Cruiser eventually- Katana fleet!

Well, either case, without the Assault Frigate you will be at a serious disadvantage until Wave II arrival later in the year. I used to hate it, after I saw the model at the convention I think it is really neat.

we actually have no real way to know whether or not rebels will be disadvantaged without the AF Mkii, though it's funny OP says it doesn't fit into the broadside style when the neb is so awful from the side.

Wave 1 is bringing a ton of cool ****, to the point where our experience with the coreset is basically going to be invalidated (outside of practice with the base rules)

*new squadrons to completely and irrevocably change the x-wing vs tie fighter dynamic

*new weight classes of ship for both the empire and rebellion, both of which play completely unlike any of the pre-existing capital ships (especially the gladiator)

*Mon Motha, who seems to fit far more with the base ships than Big-D

*new rebel upgrades that'll gel with Big-D far better than anything in the core (such as more bombers and the Salvation title)

and so on

I'm positive there's a way to work without the AF, or else FFG just isn't very good at its job It's just that, at the moment, the core set perspective is a very hazy glimpse to the future, especially to anyone playing 300 point games with only the core (Tarkin synergizes so hard off of liasons on two victories and Big-D doesn't synergize with jack apart from his pride and luke)

so eh, not convinced you'll need the AF (why you wouldn't want to get it anyway to play around with is beyond me)

I'll be putting an AF mkii on the table for sure, but I have plans for basically every possible permutation of capital ship

especially excited for the "Salvation" title and Raymus Antilles, they both seem crazy

I'm positive there's a way to work without the AF, or else FFG just isn't very good at its job

Well, Rebs certainly have a few different was to win as of right now:

- A slim victory by killing more points worth of squadrons than you surrender in squadrons (all capitals still intact at end of game)

- Win on objectives

- Somehow kill a Star Destroyer without losing your own caps

But the Assault Frigate represents our only near-term tool for winning an actual shootout/slugfest with SDs

again, we're only saying that because of the coreset

FFG handed rebels a very poorly optimized commander for the ships and upgrades given while they gave the Imperials the best man for the job...but only one ship to work with.

in addition to MM (the general really is an AF commander), we have new squadrons and new upgrades to sift through which will work much better for Big-D than what we were given in the core, not to mention new enemies (the victory will no longer be the only thing to worry about, not by a long shot) before we can go making blanket statements about matchups in Wave 1