Gorgeous artwork Diablo. I highly approve. Musings from my walk back to my apartment from work:

Lott Dod: Diplomatic Immunity: No ship may be fired upon until it has fired first.

He was a full senator. This gives his fleet an immense alpha strike capability, but doesn't stop the enemy from arranging as well as they can themselves before the shooting starts.

Nute Gunray: No ship may field more than one upgrade. All ships are costed at 80% of listed value, rounded up.

He was a cheapskate. This would be the first commander to have a direct effect on listbuilding, so I don't know if we really want to go this route. In effect, a 400pt fleet is actually now in the 480 vicinity, although closer to 460 in practice. My original number was 90%, but that is an additional pool of 40 pts max, where the original premise was is that a conniving commander can squeeze out an extra ship.

I really like the Gunray idea of immobile defense tokens, but I also really like the above idea. I suggest moving the blockade idea to Admiral Trench, who led the blockade of Christophisis (say that world five times fast).

General Kalani: At the end of a round, select an enemy ship. That ship may not refresh its defense tokens.

Thematic counter to General Kenobi

T-Series Tactical Droid: When attacking an enemy ship, if it has already been attacked this round, you may reroll one die.

This is intended to be a cheap throwaway commander, and not unique either, so T-Series Tactical Droid Officers are also available to such a fleet.

By my count that leaves Dooku and Grievous. Shot-in-the-dark ideas include, If at the end of your movement, you are side to side aligned with an enemy vessel, you may fire your side armament (Grievous), and I got nothing for Darth Tyranus.

**** it Gilad, I got spit al over my keyboard! 5 times fast.... not cool!

Seriously though, I love the new Gunray ability and fully endorse Trench getting the blockade ability.

Also love Dod's diplomatic immunity.

For Dooku, we could go - all friendly ships may add one blue to their A.S. attack for every enemy Jedi on the field.

Lott Dod: Diplomatic Immunity: No ship may be fired upon until it has fired first.

He was a full senator. This gives his fleet an immense alpha strike capability, but doesn't stop the enemy from arranging as well as they can themselves before the shooting starts.

This is cool but wording needs tightening up:

No friendly ship may be attacked until after a friendly ship has attacked.

This deliberately allows squadrons free reign against each other, and even enemy ships to fire at friendly squadrons too, but no capitals can fire at each other until Lott Dod gives the word.

This would allow a pretty tense build-up to the match. In fact, this should probably be a mission card.....

Hey guys, so I have some pictures of a 6.5 inch Providence next to a Victory to help give some idea on the scale proportion that a providence would be when Mel eventually makes model.

It, uh, looks like a dong in the top view.

It, uh, looks like a dong in the top view.

Not compared to the Lancer!

Some great ideas and inspiration above! Thanks guys.

A few brief notes:

-Until FFG sets a precedent, I would rather avoid abilities that affect fleet building (with the exception of adding upgrade slots to ships? there's a Venator title that does that - maybe I should get rid of it)

-Armada has extremely limited "system memory", so again I'd rather avoid abilities that hinge on that ("a ship that has been attacked this round", "until after a friendly ship has attacked", etc)

-The diplomatic immunity ability seems like a tough act to balance, but as suggested above it could form the basis for an excellent objective card. I've got the wording almost nailed down. Stay tuned!

-I love the Nute Gunray blockade and General Kalani's token lockdown (though the latter ability probably belongs on a commander rather than an officer... Trench?)

-The "throwaway officer" comment gives me an idea... again, stay tuned

one more note towards my photos. The Providence is 6.5 inches long or basically the exact same length as the venator that Mel produces or in for all intensive purposes in scale with the small version of the Providence.

I really don't know how big you would need to make the providence to feel right as a Large ship since she is a skinny one.

Here she is next to Mel's munificent.

Man....i love Recusants and Munificents, but the Providence is one ugly ship IMO. Cool, but ugly.

one more note towards my photos. The Providence is 6.5 inches long or basically the exact same length as the venator that Mel produces or in for all intensive purposes in scale with the small version of the Providence.

I really don't know how big you would need to make the providence to feel right as a Large ship since she is a skinny one.

Here she is next to Mel's munificent.

Im guessing you own a 3D printer. Where did you get the 3D image, and are you able to find a Lucrehulk? I think DA is right, if it is just slightly longer than an ISD it will still look right.

Well, it's supposed to be almost twice the length of an ISD. But with SWA's sliding scale, we might be able to get away with making it about 10-11 inches long. It might still look horribly oversized on its base, but I suppose we won't know for sure until we try.

Invisible Hand, Grievous' flagship at the Battle of Coruscant, was a normal model, only 1088m. The stretched version only appears in TCW, under Trench's command I believe. I'm ok with that model being a large ship, and leaving the Munificent a medium. That scale is excellent, and, without being in person, that looks like an excellent rendition of both ships. If we get a large version (something I'm actively pursuing), and it seems appropriate to consider the small one medium, we can do that. In the interim I vote we stay the course.

Ill make the Invisible Hand the larger version of the model. If I dont the three Separatist ships will be too similar in size.

Are there any home-brewed cards for Tie Defender and Tie Phantom squadrons around?

... to use this lil guys: http://www.shapeways.com/product/46MPFMYWY/armada-6x-tie-phantom-6x-tie-defender

Both the Phantom and the Defender have been avoided to date. The former has a cloak, a mechanic that we haven't attempted to deal with it, and the latter is a super-fighter, which, in order to faithfully represent, has to be OP, and costed to match. I would imagine when we finally build it (the Defender), it will be fairly similar to the ARC-170, extremely powerful, but also extremely expensive. Offhand I'd say you're looking at a 14-15 pt squadron, non-unique, packing along the lines of Speed 4, Hull 5, AS 2B2K+, Battery K, and potentially Escort for good measure.

For the Phantom, I did have an idea after seeing your request which is as follows:

Hull: 3

Speed: 3

AS: 3B

Battery: B

Cloak: If you have not attacked yet this round, you do not affect enemy squadrons and enemy ships and squadrons cannot fire on you.

Cost: At least 13

The astute commander will note that this wording allows a Phantom as part of a fleet with more squadrons than its opponent to never be attacked except by Counter. The even more astute commander will also note that this fighter, in doing so, cannot engage bombers, the traditional TIE role, only attack them, and cannot use Squadron Command except to move, wasting (in my opinion anyway) the entire point of a Squadron Command. You are welcome to try this, although I expect it may need a fair bit more work. This also isn't a rule easily applied to a full starship attempting to cloak, but we shall see.

All of the models that I have shown were printed out through shape ways. About 6 months ago before armada's core set even hit the shelf I decided I wanted to see if I could get working models going for the CIS (what can I say I love the CIS and have for 3/4 of my life.)

So since I had basically zero 3d modeling experience in actually designing them my self. I decided to see if it was possible to strip models from the various clone wars mods that have been produced over the years. Specifically star wars empire at war, Republic at war. Though the Pinnace model was pulled out of a separate mod where it was a SSD sized ship.

So long story short after 40+ hours of tinkering learning and just plain jury rigging I was able to get a decently printable and passable model. some of them came out better then others but that was all mainly due to the initial quality of the model in question.

I have since misplaced most of the files I was working with since I changed PCs and forgot to switch them to my portable hard drive.

Here is a link to my shapeways account https://www.shapeways.com/designer/mhtrex it has the 4 models that I pulled that I think came out the best. They are now up for public viewing and download if anyone would like to mess around with them.

I tested the Gozanti and GR-75 yesterday in a rebel convoy scenario..

It worked great. The GR-75 was the objectives and all three got through but the escorting fleet got slaughtered.

The two Gozantis made a good showing - both equipped with Repair bay Cargo upgrades. In the first part of the battle they provided support for several fighter squads and kept Howlrunner alive later they used squadron commands guiding bombers in on the GR-75 and in the end they attacked the GR directly with guns.

Lessons learned:

The Gozantis are great as is - they are flexible, cheap support ships with limited capabilities.

The GR-75 seems a bit thematically overpowered. It can go head to head with the Gozanti at close range and win as the GR-75 has one more redirect and one more front shield it is more survivable up close. My suggestion is to either completely remove all blue dice or leave it with only side attacks - removing the front and rear arch. This way will mostly only be able to perform one attack and it cannot have the same target in two archs at once.

As to Auxillary ships as a ship size:

I think that they cannot in any way work on small ship bases. They are simply much smaller than say a GSD or Nebulon using the the small ship base size. I have mounted mine on smaller (about 2/3 meaurements of a small ship base) bases made out of polystyrene boards. The alternative would be using them on squadron stands - but then they would in effect be a token and not a ship.

So to make them function within the game and thematically i have made these rules that we use:

Auxillary ships:

Auxillary ships move after all normal ships have moved in a new step between the Ship step and the Squadron step .

In order not to allow auxillaries to give a lot more activations in the ship phase and also to make them more nimble and able to react on the movements of the big ships (This rule works well)

Auxillary ships and overlapping: If an auxillary ship overlaps a regular ship the Auxillary ship is dealt one face-down damage card as per normal rules while the regular ship takes one damage. If an Auxillary ship overlaps another auxillary ship both ships are dealt one face-down damage card.

In order not to encourage a number of suicide GR-75. Also small ships make small dents.

Auxillary ships use maneuver dials as normal but can not store command tokens. They can only use the command dials directly.

Tokens makes them at bit too effective with some commands such as Squadron and engineering when using the repair bay upgrade. Thematically they have a very small crew (12 on the Gozanti) and should not have as efficient as command or crew a bigger warship such as a CR-90 or Raider.

I tested the Gozanti and GR-75 yesterday in a rebel convoy scenario..

It worked great. The GR-75 was the objectives and all three got through but the escorting fleet got slaughtered.

The two Gozantis made a good showing - both equipped with Repair bay Cargo upgrades. In the first part of the battle they provided support for several fighter squads and kept Howlrunner alive later they used squadron commands guiding bombers in on the GR-75 and in the end they attacked the GR directly with guns.

Lessons learned:

The Gozantis are great as is - they are flexible, cheap support ships with limited capabilities.

The GR-75 seems a bit thematically overpowered. It can go head to head with the Gozanti at close range and win as the GR-75 has one more redirect and one more front shield it is more survivable up close. My suggestion is to either completely remove all blue dice or leave it with only side attacks - removing the front and rear arch. This way will mostly only be able to perform one attack and it cannot have the same target in two archs at once.

As to Auxillary ships as a ship size:

I think that they cannot in any way work on small ship bases. They are simply much smaller than say a GSD or Nebulon using the the small ship base size. I have mounted mine on smaller (about 2/3 meaurements of a small ship base) bases made out of polystyrene boards. The alternative would be using them on squadron stands - but then they would in effect be a token and not a ship.

So to make them function within the game and thematically i have made these rules that we use:

Auxillary ships:

Auxillary ships move after all normal ships have moved in a new step between the Ship step and the Squadron step .

In order not to allow auxillaries to give a lot more activations in the ship phase and also to make them more nimble and able to react on the movements of the big ships (This rule works well)

Auxillary ships and overlapping: If an auxillary ship overlaps a regular ship the Auxillary ship is dealt one face-down damage card as per normal rules while the regular ship takes one damage. If an Auxillary ship overlaps another auxillary ship both ships are dealt one face-down damage card.

In order not to encourage a number of suicide GR-75. Also small ships make small dents.

Auxillary ships use maneuver dials as normal but can not store command tokens. They can only use the command dials directly.

Tokens makes them at bit too effective with some commands such as Squadron and engineering when using the repair bay upgrade. Thematically they have a very small crew (12 on the Gozanti) and should not have as efficient as command or crew a bigger warship such as a CR-90 or Raider.

Making a new step just for a few ships doesn't seem practical imo. Auxillary ships can work in the squadron phase I think or make it so you have to activate all ships or a certain number of ships before Aux ships in a ship phase setup? It seems too complicated.

Both the Phantom and the Defender have been avoided to date. The former has a cloak, a mechanic that we haven't attempted to deal with it, and the latter is a super-fighter, which, in order to faithfully represent, has to be OP, and costed to match. I would imagine when we finally build it (the Defender), it will be fairly similar to the ARC-170, extremely powerful, but also extremely expensive. Offhand I'd say you're looking at a 14-15 pt squadron, non-unique, packing along the lines of Speed 4, Hull 5, AS 2B2K+, Battery K, and potentially Escort for good measure.

For the Phantom, I did have an idea after seeing your request which is as follows:

Hull: 3

Speed: 3

AS: 3B

Battery: B

Cloak: If you have not attacked yet this round, you do not affect enemy squadrons and enemy ships and squadrons cannot fire on you.

Cost: At least 13

The astute commander will note that this wording allows a Phantom as part of a fleet with more squadrons than its opponent to never be attacked except by Counter. The even more astute commander will also note that this fighter, in doing so, cannot engage bombers, the traditional TIE role, only attack them, and cannot use Squadron Command except to move, wasting (in my opinion anyway) the entire point of a Squadron Command. You are welcome to try this, although I expect it may need a fair bit more work. This also isn't a rule easily applied to a full starship attempting to cloak, but we shall see.

Whats a K die?

B = Blue or Black?

In standard parlance, B would equal Blue, and K would equal Black, as K is a signature letter of Black that is not found in Blue.

Never heared about this. Why don't just write it out?

Never heared about this. Why don't just write it out?

The whole point of it is to save time while doing it... Imean, an ISD is what... Red, Red, Red, Blue, Blue, Black, Black, Black ?

RRRBBKKK is quicker, and has fewer potentials for spelling errors

In standard parlance, B would equal Blue, and K would equal Black, as K is a signature letter of Black that is not found in Blue.

Unless you play magic, where black is B and blue is U.

Unless you play magic, where black is B and blue is U.

Never heared about this. Why don't just write it out?

The whole point of it is to save time while doing it... Imean, an ISD is what... Red, Red, Red, Blue, Blue, Black, Black, Black ?

RRRBBKKK is quicker, and has fewer potentials for spelling errors

Meh, I better like: 3 Red, 2 Blue, 3 Black.