So I have been doing some thinking, and while the CR-90 will be awesome with Ackbar and possibly Enhanced Arms, or Slaved Turrets, the Raider seems... well... useless. I mean I guess the idea is for the rebel or opponent to ignore it, but with the broad side of any rebel ships I don't see the Raider having much of a chance. What are some builds or options for it? Is there hope for it? Or is it card fodder?

I see some uses:

-ACM/APT boat (screed!)

-OLP boat on Raider II (more screed!)

-expanded launchers piranha spam (5 blacks on a CF with 50% accuracy chance?)

-conga line Imodium AD (fast road block)

Or, the Imperial activation order filler.

the CR-90 is not really awesome with Ackbar

even with EA, they're farting out 4 red dice and 1 blue; hardly the stuff of legends. They can do as much on their own (without any upgrades) by leveraging their amazing nav chart to bring two of their arcs to bear (only it's 3 red and 2 blue)

the CR-90 is just awesome in general. It's fragile, but punchy, fast, and cheap.

the Raider, though, I have no idea. Seems like the GSD will just keep its mantle, apart from some anti-squadron duty

if it's anything like CR-90s, though, then you have to leverage the amazing nav chart and not be anywhere near scary broadsides

I'm going to have to make this a thing:

How To CR-90:

Step 1, find the enemy's weak arc

Step 2, lampray

basically, forget about the dice. CR-90s live and die depending on how well you fly them

I don't doubt the Raider will be at least slightly similar

The raider will rely heavily on activation advantage, and if leveraged correctly will become an impressive gunboat (especially with screed olp/apt crits)

4 Raiders throwing out APT damage in conjunction with Star Destroyers will be brutal.

I believe the Raider will fill an important role as the cheapest available ship for purposes of gaining an extra activation. This alone may prove critical. Aside from that it has many uses as an Ion cannon/overload pulse pod, which previously had to go the Vic-II. Thus freeing up that Vic to do the hard hit post defense token sap.

Other than the anti-fighter role I think it makes a cheap support ship to pair with a VSD or ISD.

So I have been doing some thinking, and while the CR-90 will be awesome with Ackbar and possibly Enhanced Arms, or Slaved Turrets, the Raider seems... well... useless. I mean I guess the idea is for the rebel or opponent to ignore it, but with the broad side of any rebel ships I don't see the Raider having much of a chance. What are some builds or options for it? Is there hope for it? Or is it card fodder?

I'm not sure the idea was ever that your opponent ignores it. Maybe idea is it threatens your opponent's fighters, meaning if they care about those fighters they need to deal with your Raider. Yeah, it might not take many shots, but that's shots that aren't being directed against your heavy hitters, flag ships, etc.

I will admit, it is an adorable (so tiny!) outlier of a ship when thinking of just exactly how it will support

those are always the most fun ships to work with

funny thing, though, the Offensive Retrofit upgrade is devoid of anything useful for a Squadron 1 ship apart from Tractor Beams (which will only affect small ships); even Point Defense Reroute is ironically pointless on a ship with black anti-squadron dice. Quad-lasers for counter 1 are, imo, the very definition of underwhelming

so we're working with an Officer, Weapon's Team (gunnery, ordnance, ruthless maybe), and Ordnance/Ion

1.) Anti-squadron boat

Raider-1 (44)

*Ordnance Experts (4)

*Impetuous (4)

[52]

lightly specialized (only 4 points goes entirely into anti-squadron) with a decent punch; cheaper than a naked GSD

Throws essentially 4 damage onto an enemy squadron of choice.

2.) Skreed's Pride?

Raider-1 (44)

*Assault Proton Torp (5)

[49]

imperial-coated D's Pride without the drawback? getting awful close to gladiator territory, but that's still four dice out the front.

3.) Moar Skreed

Raider-2 (48)

*Overload Pulse (8)

[56]

the ion cards:

Leading Shots --> not enough dice in general to be worth it, imo

SW-7 Ion Batteries --> not enough blue dice to justify, imo (ideal carrier would be ISD-2 with Avenger)

Ion Cannon Batteries --> now this is interesting. Could be devastating combined with tractor beams to keep most enemies at speed 1-2 without a token to stack with nav commands; the extra shield damage is always nice against the large, heavily

shielded ships

[53 points]

Overload Pulse --> the easy money, Skreed's been looking for something other than a VSD-2 to bear this thing for a while now

[56 points]

NK-7 Ion Cannons --> uncertain about this one (defender chooses which token to discard). This'll hurt GSDs and Fatties if they already dumped their evade, but you're going to be going through a lot of crap before you hit the all important brace of large ships. Seems like something you need to run in multiples to get a good punch out of, and if you're running multiple ships then you're already benefiting from OLP. Maybe needs further testing?

[58 points]

4.) Ordnance?

Assault Proton torpedoes (49 points total): probably the ideal ordnance card, if any. The Raider is going to be competing hard with the GSD, and it's not going to win any prices for being less powerful in every capacity other than it's nav chart. APTs are, at least, cheap and potentially devastating.

Assault Concussion Missiles (51 points total): why aren't you running GSDs? You ran out of points or something?

Rapid Reload (52 points total): brings you up to blackblackblue side batteries...not exactly quaking in fear here. Once again, GSD.

Expanded Launchers (57 points total): mini-stroyer with blackblackblackblackblueblue. I'm actually not sure about this one. If there was any ship (other than Demolisher) that could overcome the hard limitations set on Expanded Launchers, it'd be the Raider. **** thing's fragile, though, and clocking in at one more than a naked GSD.

Maybe Vader (commander) will like it? It's a bit suicidal, but it hits like a VSD

I don't have a ton of analysis to throw out. I'm more excited for the Raider than any other wave 2 ship for what it does regarding the maneuvering/table control capabilities of the Imperials. I was not taking imps to an event when AFs were so elusive and shooty.

I would also throw this out there:

Cheap ships that can block other ships always have value. Perhaps the goal with the raider is not to survive, but rather, to disproportionately harm the other guy with its death. It's a similar theory to using suicide bomb tactics in actual warfare against superior opponents.

I'll be trying mine out likely as a little brother to the Gladiator (... let's be honest, the Demolisher).

I think it has a lot of possibilities with Screed either for proccing ACMs or Assault Proton Torpedoes (Raider-1) or Overload Pulses (Raider-2). It has amazing maneuverability at speed 1 and 2, where non-Demolisher Gladiators can find themselves hitting and then having trouble getting close enough to really mess things up with their black dice in later turns.

The combination of blue and black dice seems potentially potent. I've learned with Gladiators that you can pump out tremendous amounts of damage but the lack of anything approaching a reliable accuracy result can make Braces remove a fair amount of the sting. Having decent odds of locking down Brace certainly has my attention.

Plus if/when squadrons become a thing, the title upgrades can really help its intrinsic flak to thin the squadron herd at a reasonable cost. I don't like wasting Star Destroyer attacks trying to whittle down robust Rebel squadrons with just a single blue dice and the Raider can help there.

In terms of commanders, I can see...

• Screed. Already mentioned, but I think Screed can make these guys shine when given crit-dependent upgrades.
• Tarkin. In a larger fleet, the more ships you have the stronger Tarkin becomes. Handing out tokens like candy allows the Raider to reliably choose Concentrate Firepower or Engineering while Tarkin can give them Navigate tokens to slow down if necessary or Engineering tokens to transfer rear shields forward (as they lack Redirect tokens).
• Ozzel. In a fleet where you want everything to start at top speed and then decelerate upon engagement (ISDs, Raiders, Gladiators), Ozzel has a lot to offer, in my opinion. And he's cheap. Raiders love going from speed 4 to speed 2 with minimal hassle.

What does lampray mean with the corvettes? Maybe I'm just overthinking it.

What does lampray mean with the corvettes? Maybe I'm just overthinking it.

before you got to sleep, you click the little light on the nightstand beside your bed and you commune with the lord so that he may protect your immortal soul

from what, you ask?

probably the thing whose name I can't spell right

By Lamprey in this fashion, he means get into a weak section, and *stick* there... Just Chewing away. Chewing. Chewing. Chewing.

I plan on adding two of them to my current 300 point triple glad list. blue//black is extremely reliable compared to the red/black we're used to and its the cheapest ship around with two anti squadron dice. Their cheapness lets them be added to a lot of different builds and its more shots that your opponent has to blow defense tokens on. They also make a nice carrior for upgrade cards that work best when spammed like NK-7 Ion Cannons, Intel Officer and ACM.

Fickle, no love for Quad-Laser cannons on Impetuous? Too specialized?

Now I will have nightmares!

Fickle, no love for Quad-Laser cannons on Impetuous? Too specialized?

myes

also kinda pants, imo. Counter 1 is literally a coin-flip, and not working against ships makes it reaaaaaaaallly corner-case and situation

plus, you're firing an almost guaranteed four damage into some poor ****'s face. He shouldn't be alive for you to counter anyway

Now I will have nightmares!

you're welcome!

Interesting. One got through the Swear Filter.

Interesting. One got through the Swear Filter.

must have gotten a leak

it didn't lampray away the lamprey

When I saw the lamprey pic, for a moment, I thought I was in the Arkham Horror forums.

But why make the Raider? It's to establish some sort of continuity between and X-Wing and Armada. A reminder that FFG, as a company, can deeply influence LucasFilm when there's money to be made.

But that lamprey. *shudder*

Just purge virus counters, you'll be all right.

For the one I used in Sullust, I aimed it to try paralleling the MC30 my opponent was using. Ultimately it ended up as some kind of guided space missile, double-arcing into the side and then ramming the enemy ship. I ended up loosing it, but the rest of my fleet (An ISD, two VSDs) managed to carry the day just fine.

So how I think you're supposed to use your Raider is just like that- blaze them in and either try to ram your enemy like a giant torpedo or trail them and blast away at close range.

In the very least it's more ships for the enemy to shoot at, and ignore at their own peril.

It is the ship i am least excited about. Clearly not in a position to judge as yet but if its primary role is anti squadron then i would rather just take squadrons and as a fly up and 'smack in the mouth' kind of ship i would rather take a Gladiator. I will get one just to get the cards and ship variety. I do agree that it provides the Imps with a cheap ship that you might just take as another activation.