So most of the other wave 3 threads seem to be talking about happy/sad with the overall product. This thread is ONLY for talking about strategy with wave 3. No complaining/wishing/etc.

First off: Gozanti Cruiser. 1 shield all around, 3 hull, 1 blue each out of front and sides no rear. 1 blue anti-squad. Unknown movement and cost. Presumably it will follow rebel/imperial pricing trends and be a little more than the GR-75.

The obvious first usage is setting up activations for the last in/first out hit. This should be the primary factor driving the price point. Demolisher is a powerful card but not so powerful that you would fly just it and 10 of these. A rock/paper/scissors/ should develop where adding these to get one more activation than your opponent is ideal. However, getting lots more activations is most likely wasted, and equal or fewer could be downright punishing. Considering rebels will most likely bid cheaper per ship only ups the gamble.

Support ships. We've seen a few support modes and they seems to work like the Redmption title affecting everything within a certain distance. Don't think these effects will be powerful enough solely on their own. My hunch is you will need to use one of the other usages here.

Anti-squadron ships. Highly dependent upon purchase price, these may be the best way to saturate the field with 1 blue die anti-squadron shooting. 20 points per blue die would be cheaper than anything else the imperials have.

Pocket carriers. With 2 command these are equal to raiders with expanded hangers. They don't have the firepower of a raider but are far cheaper and want to stay further back like carriers mostly should. Tarkin would be a big multiplier. The main question is what upgrade symbols do they have. Flight controllers and extended range being the two I'm looking for.

Others thoughts on this and the other cards?

I'm intrigued by the differences between the individual ships. I mean, the pricing for AA is that blue is more costly than black if I'm not mistaken, and the black-die Gozanti-class cruiser might be interesting in comparison to the Assault carrier variation which is sporting blues. I mean, I imagine that it may come at the cost of a squadron point, but using it as a cheap floating monitor to protect a VSD carrier could be an interesting price point in comparison to the ISD carriers. Of course, most of our standard upgrades are speculation right now, so I'm not sure what to say.

Assuming the Cruiser is less pricy than the assault carrier, it might be a sensible and cheap activation for ISD-based fleets where Raiders might otherwise be filling that role. Likewise, I guess it can act as a nice bumper pad to keep ships from floating off the table. The flotilla takes a damage card but not the ship. Situational, but it's something at least.

The G75's are almost certainly cheaper: the armed/combat retrofit version has no port and starboard battery despite having Nebulon-b style arcs, and the transport version was noted to be completely unarmed (against capital ships) so that's going to be interesting. I'm not even sure where to start speculating on something like that.

The unarmed one basically asks the question: How much are you willing to spend per activation in order to out activate Demolisher lists?

I've seen 15 point bids for first player. If this ship is in the range it will pose a challenging question of what is better.

I'll be getting 2 packs of Gozanti's and 2 packs of GR75's.

I love the concept and the execution, and they will look fantastic as part of the fleet. Having 2 of each will give real flexibility with activation advantage as well.

Agent Kallus seems to be anti Reikan and anti Dengar/Rhymer/Vader. Do we see enough of these lists to run the agent on a Glad2?

Bomber Command Center. For 8 points plus the cost of the Transport, bombers reroll vs ships.

In a Rhymer ball we're talking rerolling black dice so it ups average damage by .25 per bomber and gives the option to increase variance by rerolling hits hoping for the hit/crit.

Whether that is worth it we'll need to see costs.

On the rebel side, imagine a GR-75 with bomber command, Yavaris, and some x-wings and b-wings. Two Yavaris b-wings alone have at least .25 additional average damage per attack or the option to fish for the accuracy or crit on the blue die if the black is fine. The extra ship helps with activations. You can even throw Nym in to fish for his special.

I'm thinking of an AF2 with flight controllers to run my escorts, and 3 or 4 GR-75's for the Bombers

Completely agree with all that's been said - the biggest advantage I can see is the activations, but this has already been mentioned. Just to say that it's a great topic - pleased to see we're moving on from deciding whether or not we like the new ships, and now working out what they can offer.

Bomber Command Center. For 8 points plus the cost of the Transport, bombers reroll vs ships.

In a Rhymer ball we're talking rerolling black dice so it ups average damage by .25 per bomber and gives the option to increase variance by rerolling hits hoping for the hit/crit.

Whether that is worth it we'll need to see costs.

On the rebel side, imagine a GR-75 with bomber command, Yavaris, and some x-wings and b-wings. Two Yavaris b-wings alone have at least .25 additional average damage per attack or the option to fish for the accuracy or crit on the blue die if the black is fine. The extra ship helps with activations. You can even throw Nym in to fish for his special.

I think this is a great addition to the Imperial fleet. I've often pondered over the merits of taking a Rhymerball vs a Raider, and have tended to favour the latter (both for activations and what I feel is greater reliability). The addition of Gozantis with Bomber command means I don't lose out on the activation, and give the bombers greater potency. Win win!

I wonder if there will be a support mod that can help the VSD with its maneuver table.

I wonder if there will be a support mod that can help the VSD with its maneuver table.

A towing ship upgrade card!

So far, I have seen the speculation that these cost between 20-30 points, the true usefulness will be dictated by where those costs truly lie, and the upgrade slots (if any) aside from the fleet support cards. Using these as activation bumps alone my not be enough to justify the cost of a ship that 5 TIEs can shred in a round. The best defense against the new Flotillas seems to be mass squadron lists, where that scatter token is only negating a single die just to keep the it alive.

So far, I have seen the speculation that these cost between 20-30 points, the true usefulness will be dictated by where those costs truly lie, and the upgrade slots (if any) aside from the fleet support cards. Using these as activation bumps alone my not be enough to justify the cost of a ship that 5 TIEs can shred in a round. The best defense against the new Flotillas seems to be mass squadron lists, where that scatter token is only negating a single die just to keep the it alive.

And the biggest benefit of these flotillas is to Squadrons.

Its basically FFG giving two massive fingers up at the amount of ship only fleets around. "We gave you squadrons, now use them"

So far, I have seen the speculation that these cost between 20-30 points, the true usefulness will be dictated by where those costs truly lie, and the upgrade slots (if any) aside from the fleet support cards. Using these as activation bumps alone my not be enough to justify the cost of a ship that 5 TIEs can shred in a round. The best defense against the new Flotillas seems to be mass squadron lists, where that scatter token is only negating a single die just to keep the it alive.

And the biggest benefit of these flotillas is to Squadrons.

Its basically FFG giving two massive fingers up at the amount of ship only fleets around. "We gave you squadrons, now use them"

I don't disagree one bit! I just feel it is silly to discuss how best to utilize these little guys, without discussing the best defense against them. Especially if you want them to survive, instead of popping like soap bubbles.

Speed and maneuverability may make them truly worth while just as an activation buff or as cheap objective ships.

Most Wanted will see alot more table time if the Flotillas can hit speed 4, or 3 with exceptional maneuverability. "Your objective ship is your slow ass MC80, while mine is this naked Gozanti Flotilla. Go catch him!)

I think there is an interesting role as an expendable handbrake for your larger vessels. You can position and then ram your own flotilla to essentially reduce speed for free (well for the cost of 1 damage to the flotilla). Not something I would personally do as it is a bit gamely but expect to see it.

It is only a temporary speed reduction.

So far I have been unimpressed by Rebel repair builds, mostly because there's usually too much damage being dealt to keep up with.

I wonder if a Repair GR-75/Redemption/Projector Experts build is more viable now?

From the news blurb, it would seem that the Gozanti flotilla is geared more towards squadron aid, making the VSD more relavent again (possibly), and the GR75 seems to be geared more towards capital ship survival. Seems as though FFG is trying to define how each side approaches the game, by accentuating more viable tactics.

If you are looking at just activation benefit, with these being so soft, kiss 10-0 goodbye. Not like the Wave 2 setup makes that easy. Haha

From the news blurb, it would seem that the Gozanti flotilla is geared more towards squadron aid, making the VSD more relavent again (possibly), and the GR75 seems to be geared more towards capital ship survival. Seems as though FFG is trying to define how each side approaches the game, by accentuating more viable tactics.

Remember, the Fleet Support cards that come with the Gozanti can also be used on the GR75, so I don't really see either expansion as pushing that faction towards certain tactics/builds - lets face it, most people will be getting both for the cards anyway). I only play rebels and mainly play squadron heavy, so I'm really excited by the new possibilities the transport offers for squadron support (I'll be getting the Gozanti cards ofc).

If you are looking at just activation benefit, with these being so soft, kiss 10-0 goodbye. Not like the Wave 2 setup makes that easy. Haha

Yes and no. Yes they are easy to squish if in range. But who says they're in range. Obviously if you are using them as support they need to be somewhat close depending on the support card. But used as activation they can be anywhere on the board. So an additional layer of strategy comes in on positioning your activators in such a way as to be able to punish the enemy if they either go en masse for the activators or if they split off a small chunk in order to do so. Plus 9-1 is very possible unless you went bonkers with them.

The G75's are almost certainly cheaper: the armed/combat retrofit version has no port and starboard battery despite having Nebulon-b style arcs, and the transport version was noted to be completely unarmed (against capital ships) so that's going to be interesting. I'm not even sure where to start speculating on something like that.

It's probably worth noting that the transport we can see the base of (with fore/aft weapons, but no broadside) is "Armed GR-75", meaning that the "GR-75 Combat Retrofit" that we see on the card is different version. It may well be that the Combat Retrofit is unarmed, or it could be that both versions have at least token weaponry.

I'm pretty sure it'll have blue dice only to avoid people spamming them with Ackbar....

Talk about a real "death from 1000 cuts"

Just noticed that in the description (that I'd originally glossed over) it explicitly says that there's a Combat Retrofit or a Medium Transport, with the medium transport having no anti-ship capability.

I'm guessing that Armed Transport was just a placeholder name for the Combat Retrofit. Either that, or the Combat Retrofit is not the unarmed version (to match the X-Wing version IIRC). Either way, I can't see FFG arming both versions when they make a point of one of the versions being unarmed. They like to put mistakes in all of their articles, but not that big a mistake, surely?

Aye Neko, I was just going to say that there's a weird placeholder name for the G-75 being 'armed' but not a Combat retrofit, where as the Nebulon B has a similar title on card and ship token. Yep, it seems that it might be a weird 'mistake'

But you might be right in a sense. The G-75 unarmed transport version is noted as being "the first ship in Armada to have no inherent ship-to-ship combat capability." But i'm guessing by that wording it could certainly have some point defense for anti-squadron.