So, with the advent of Waves 3-5, a bunch of ships from Armada Shipyards are now obsolete. But how good were the guesses? Let's see:

Arquitens (Imperial Light Cruiser):

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Hull, shields and base stats are almost spot-on, but defense tokens are way off.

Upgrade icons are also close (support, defensive retrofit).

Although the armament loadouts do diverge somewhat, the core concept of the ship (which caught some flak when I proposed it) is the same: a long-range broadside in a small, nimble package.

Interestingly, the unusual arc arrangement is exactly as I proposed.

Pelta-class Frigate:

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Here I completely missed the mark. The only good guess is that there would be some sort of fleet support upgrade icon.

E-Wing and Z-95:

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FFG's E-wing introduces the new Snipe ability (instead of Escort as I proposed), but for the rest it wasn't a bad guess: speed 4, hull 5, Bomber. Let's wait and see what the armaments are. Corran Horn was indeed the unique squadron. Interestingly, he's the only ace so far without an individual ability - just additional keywords.

The Z-95 on the other hand was a bit off. Wrong hull, wrong keyword, wrong ace choice. Maybe the armaments will be close, we'll see. Having said that, the ace ability I wrote for N'dru Suhlak is almost identical to that of Hera. Neat.

Lambda-class Shuttle:

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This was always going to be a tricky one. The Relay keyword is similar (but much more powerful) to Captain Yorr's unique ability. The Strategic ability seems to read something like: "When you activate, if you are at distance 1 of 1 or more friendly squadrons, you may move 1 of those squadrons anywhere within distance 1 of you." In any case, a squadron-oriented ability. So not even close to my fleet-oriented design.

It's cool too note that they've used Marek Stele for the TIE Defender. I had him for the XG-1 Assault Gunboat instead.

Liberty-type Star Cruiser:


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This one's a mixed bag. Obviously the general idea of a frontal attacker was a given, and the armament dice are almost identical. Both ships also have comparably poor maneuverability. But FFG went all-out with the offensive aspects (fully frontal shield arrangement, extra TL upgrade icons) where I went for a slightly more rounded design. Incidentally, note how close the point costs are! Also, Mon Karren's ability is exactially the same as that of the Savrip title for the Vindicator cruiser, but without the hull zone restriction.

Immobilizer Cruiser (Interdictor):


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This is probably the card where I've missed the mark by most, though the fact that Rebels introduced a whole new version of the ship (mine was based on the old 418 cruiser design) had a lot to do with it. Certainly in terms of its size and firepower. Of course, both the official and the Shipyards cards have new gravity-well upgrade icons, but the effects are quite different. We discussed having deployment-oriented abilities, but ultimately discarded the idea because the rules explicitly state that upgrade card abilities cannot be resolved during setup (!). The one common point between the two is the speed and maneuverability. The 418 and the combat refit also share four out of five upgrade icons, which I suppose isn't bad.

Gozanti flotilla:

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This was an odd one. Obviously the Gozanti (like the GR-75) was too small even for a Small ship base. But I hadn't decided what to do about it. One of the proposals was to have a "detachment" card representing several craft, exactly what FFG did with flotillas. And just like they eventually did, I gave it a Scatter defense token. The only other remarkable similarity is the use of a new support icon, although with one or two exceptions the official upgrade cards are quite different from the Cargo upgrades I proposed. Having said that, the Medical Team card in the Liberty cruiser expansion provides an effect akin to that of the Advanced Med Bay cargo card (discarding a face-up damage card with the Crew trait).

The same goes for the GR-75 Transport, although I never got around to making a detachment/flotilla card for it:

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Question: what now? Will you simply discard everything that's been published, or are alternate versions a possibility?

Well you gotta hand it to everyone. For all the input we came close on some and totally lost on others. Fantasy Flight does seem intent on new rules with each wave. Making mould breaking custom designs less of a shock. IMO. Where ya been Diablo?

Diablo, good to see you!

Welcome back to the land of the living DA. I for one am still completely up for continuing our ongoing work, and have continued much of my own on the new Kuat Drive Yards site, provided by FoaS. I look forward to what we can come up with next.

There is no limit to creativity. I look forward to new designs. FFG does not have control on creative licence for personal use, or for sharing with your friends.

I have a limited budget so your cards are great, cut and paste to a Excel workbook and print on card stock and there you go instant cards. I don't play in tournaments, no time, so I may get a chance to play FTF once in a while. So I have shapeways ships and your cards so I have fun. I have enough money I have save to get one of each of the new wave and that will be it. For $9.00 I am getting 3 decimators, So why would I want to pay FFG high sticker price if I just play by myself,with my son or an occasional ftf game.

Hi guys, thanks for the kind words. It's been a rough year so far and I simply don't have the time or the energy to pick up where I left off. I haven't even played the game since December, so any designs would be based on obsolete theorycrafting rather than actual experience anyway.

I'm still more or less up to date with new releases, and can post every now and then. But unfortunately Shipyards is on hold for now.

I have been trying to do what I can to keep designs moving in the direction first laid out. For instance, as soon as I saw Maarek Stele as a TIE Defender I moved to a made up ace for the Gunboat. Trying to keep the squadron relavent in the now shifting new squadron releases. Its always going to be a challenge to put aside the ideas already accepted in the custom world, but those are the breaks I suppose.

Don't let the idea of a 400 point max stop you. The shapeways models and your cards represent modifications to fighters and ships. So why are they not relevant..............the only relevant issue is that players are "limited" by the 400 point max like it is a government issued law. And that to break it is to go to jail...........Sheesh the only limit I see to a game system like Armada is game space. The issue of I do not want to buy more stuff because you can only have a "400 or 300" point fleet so I do not want to actually use my imagination and a little money to expand on it, because the Game Police will arrest me and throw me in the county jail is a crock of BS. The company is making the rule of 400 point max..................I would got to a tourney if we could have a 1000 point fleet. That makes more sense than a 400 point fleet any day. 400 point works for X-wing , but for capital ship combat that is a joke.............a fleet is more than two or three ships and a hand full of fighters.

Hi guys, thanks for the kind words. It's been a rough year so far and I simply don't have the time or the energy to pick up where I left off. I haven't even played the game since December, so any designs would be based on obsolete theorycrafting rather than actual experience anyway.

I'm still more or less up to date with new releases, and can post every now and then. But unfortunately Shipyards is on hold for now.

If it makes you feel better I played 4 games today

I sure like your Interdictor artwork better.

The way I see it there is still no reason why the Immobilizer 418 can't remain as a design with some updates. Make it the smaller production version of the experimental ship the official FFG version represents.

Don't let the idea of a 400 point max stop you. The shapeways models and your cards represent modifications to fighters and ships. So why are they not relevant..............the only relevant issue is that players are "limited" by the 400 point max like it is a government issued law. And that to break it is to go to jail...........Sheesh the only limit I see to a game system like Armada is game space. The issue of I do not want to buy more stuff because you can only have a "400 or 300" point fleet so I do not want to actually use my imagination and a little money to expand on it, because the Game Police will arrest me and throw me in the county jail is a crock of BS. The company is making the rule of 400 point max..................I would got to a tourney if we could have a 1000 point fleet. That makes more sense than a 400 point fleet any day. 400 point works for X-wing , but for capital ship combat that is a joke.............a fleet is more than two or three ships and a hand full of fighters.

After Wave 2 was released, I ended up painting +36 rebel squadrons = +400pts. So in order for me to play with all my reb-squadrons I would have to play a 1500pts rebel fleet, which whops! by the way, I can easily manage to field

FYI: No FFG police have by the way bothered to knock on my door with a search warrant for a maximum 400pts fleet

The way I see it there is still no reason why the Immobilizer 418 can't remain as a design with some updates. Make it the smaller production version of the experimental ship the official FFG version represents.

I am definitely for this.

I spent a lot of time an energy beating into people that, The Interdictor is not an Immobilizer...

So keeping the Immobilizer should make people happier.

Just make it smaller, maybe faster, maybe with the single slot... But point it less because its smaller. Problem solved.

I will post my take on it in a few minutes here.

Quick, but here is what I was thinking Immobiliser 418

I think this is the reason why I stopped doing my xwing cards... It felt like such a wasted time when they released the official ones. Although it was cool when we did the same For example, my Xizor and FFG Xizor had the same ability.

Hasn't stopped you from making wicked models Mel. On the card thing I really enjoy it. Sometimes I get dissapointed when a great idea is just left behind, but that just encourages me to come up with more. Also lets us see some of the more obscure stuff see the light of day. My current struggle is seeing that Thrawn shows up in Rebels, what ship will he be released with? You can almost Bet Cham Syndulla will show up as well.