Is it me or have the FFG guys played a blinder with wave five in getting some of the old guys back on their feet. A few of these wave five prophylactic cards may just see some of the old boys giving the new kids a run for their money.

My favs:

1) MK2 Assault frigates, now I loved these guys and in wave one and early in wave two,they worked as wise old "jacks of all trades". But let's be honest against some of the newer boys they were somewhat lacking in the " lets blow some stuff up department". But now pair these guys with sato add in OE and ECM flavour with xi17, xx9 or TLRC and they just got nasty.... Long range 3 black dice with rerolls and a red you can turn to a double, crit or accuracy (depending on your turbo lasers) and you have nasty damage with great dice mods at long range. Drive in front of me now you young whipper snappers......3 rerolling black dice in your face....suit you sir.....

2) MC80 assault, there's was never much reason to take this ship over the command version, more money, less fighter activation..... Why o why did I want 2 defensive slots over expanded hangers.....come on FFG. Well now two defensive slots is the new black... ECM and Reenforced blast doors.... Yes please,my MC80 just effectively got the same hull as an ISD...yippee

3) VSD this was the most tired old boy of them all. He was a right old fighter in his day (core and wave one) . Now the Poor lads knees had gone, he just couldn't keep up and that nasty glass jaw......But suddenly he can dance and twirl with the girls, best of all, that glass jaws just been sorted with an ECM graft... Come on if you think your hard you big ISD you.....who's ECMed up now.

4) unfortunately the FFG doctors not been so helpful with old Neb..... Sato helps a bit, but with no rerolls for the black dice it's not as good as could be... So we can now mitigate one damage from shots on the weak side.... Not sure I'm encouraged to let this guy out without Yav or Sally to keep him steady.

So any other buffs I've missed ? Any models you dustin off come wave five.....

Advanced projectors on the Assault Cruiser with ECM. With all the new toys I've noticed less XI7s. AP buy you a bit of extra time against fighters, Demolisher, and may actually get you more health than the blast doors.

Sato makes the Salvation Nebulon-B's front arc potentially horrific. Black hit+crits are 3 damage each and you can get 3 of those per turn (plus a red dice you can use TRCs to flip to a crit). Seems pretty good to me.

Nice summary write-up, but I have to agree with sniper here that a Sato-Salvation has a huge threat potential even though the black dice are a bit flickery. DTLs might help a bit to average the damage out, and you have good ol' raymus to get CF tokens whenever you CF.

I disagree somewhat with the predicted renaissance of VSDs, which is one of the bitter pills for me. It is a unique officer upgrade which means it competes over a very valuable slot, you can only ever have it once in your fleet which denies the return of larger VSD fleets, and most guys I already spoke to about the new wave will likely place Mrs. Tua on an ISD-I. Its sad that FFG still did not manage to give new life to the iconic workhorse of the empire on a larger basis.

Sato makes the Salvation Nebulon-B's front arc potentially horrific. Black hit+crits are 3 damage each and you can get 3 of those per turn (plus a red dice you can use TRCs to flip to a crit). Seems pretty good to me.

O yes very much agree, Salvation was buffed, but salvation has always been at least close to top draw, sato is more like the cream on the top for this title, instead of the crutch that was needed for the Neb B in general.

Jerjerrod was made to make VSDs competitive again. Tua is just a nice little addition. Take a Vic at speed 2 and compared 0-1 to 2-1 turns. You will want to play Vics again.

Jerjerrod was made to make VSDs competitive again. Tua is just a nice little addition. Take a Vic at speed 2 and compared 0-1 to 2-1 turns. You will want to play Vics again.

Yes... It's made the VIC shiny and new again

Jerjerrod was made to make VSDs competitive again. Tua is just a nice little addition. Take a Vic at speed 2 and compared 0-1 to 2-1 turns. You will want to play Vics again.

Yes... It's made the VIC shiny and new again

I tried it. Whipping around on CR90s is a delight.

Sato makes the Salvation Nebulon-B's front arc potentially horrific. Black hit+crits are 3 damage each and you can get 3 of those per turn (plus a red dice you can use TRCs to flip to a crit). Seems pretty good to me.

Yeah this is going to be one of the first lists I try outside of my CC campaign. I think 3 Nebulon B's with some turret upgrades, a metric ton of A-Wings and a Assault Frigate for some added weight could be interesting. I do agree with the poster though, it really is a gamblers list with virtually no dice manipulation available, DTT's maybe but in general I agree that the Nebulon-B is still very much a "wishful thinking" add for any list as a shooter. Your praying to the dice gods and sure sometimes it works out, but I think there are better ways to make use of Sato.

I think Corvettes might be more suitable and you can get more out of it. You can replace the Neb-B's and if you go light on upgrades (which really you don't need any on the corvettes in a list like this) you can squeeze in a MC-30.

I agree though, Wave 5 has done a lot for some of the older ships.

Problem I see with lists like this is that you end up with a weaker (auto pick Yellow Objective).

I would like to praise wave 5 for the introduction of Snipe.

I was getting a little annoyed at Jan Orrs being so good and an almost auto-include. 2 X wings would protect her while she lent them braces and intel available until she died. I had to try to kill her off using Mauler or IG88 or just chew through the bracing escorts the hard way.

Snipe now means she is vulnerable. The escorts are not a guarantee and I now see more fleets where she isn't present, even in reasonably strong fighter builds. Jan and Dengar are still good but no longer no-brainers. Sadly the Imperials are limited to only one source of Snipe but what a shot! Potentially able to get up to 6 blue dice and a reroll.

If only there was more than one squadron in the Imperial arsenal with Snipe.

I'm still struggling against Jan and her devious ways.

If only there was more than one squadron in the Imperial arsenal with Snipe.

I'm still struggling against Jan and her devious ways.

Armchair admiraling here, but what about Jendon plus Saber for a double tap?

Advanced projectors on the Assault Cruiser with ECM. With all the new toys I've noticed less XI7s. AP buy you a bit of extra time against fighters, Demolisher, and may actually get you more health than the blast doors.

spam engineering commands if you don't need squadron commands and that thing just won't die.

4) unfortunately the FFG doctors not been so helpful with old Neb..... Sato helps a bit, but with no rerolls for the black dice it's not as good as could be... So we can now mitigate one damage from shots on the weak side.... Not sure I'm encouraged to let this guy out without Yav or Sally to keep him steady.

Personally, I don't think they need too much of a fix. If you learn to fly them, they can take a beating. However, I will happily concede there are more efficient choices. A TRC90 is faster, cheaper, and more durable with the right commander than a TRC-Neb. The problem is Salvation is still a solid buy, and Yavaris is as good as ever. It might be hard tweaking the vanilla ship without overpowering the titled versions.

You kidding? Sato makes Neb Salvation disgusting.

Spinal Augment for 4 red dice, Consc Fire, put a squad by the target so you can make it 2red 3black instead (Consc Fire adds black instead of red), and laugh as that ISD has no evades to cancel the immense amount of hurtin flying into its butt. No rerolls unless you had a banked token sadly so it can bomb of course but i had this thing take out half of an ISD in one shot lol

4) unfortunately the FFG doctors not been so helpful with old Neb..... Sato helps a bit, but with no rerolls for the black dice it's not as good as could be... So we can now mitigate one damage from shots on the weak side.... Not sure I'm encouraged to let this guy out without Yav or Sally to keep him steady.

Personally, I don't think they need too much of a fix. If you learn to fly them, they can take a beating. However, I will happily concede there are more efficient choices. A TRC90 is faster, cheaper, and more durable with the right commander than a TRC-Neb. The problem is Salvation is still a solid buy, and Yavaris is as good as ever. It might be hard tweaking the vanilla ship without overpowering the titled versions.

Maybe a new title then?

4) unfortunately the FFG doctors not been so helpful with old Neb..... Sato helps a bit, but with no rerolls for the black dice it's not as good as could be... So we can now mitigate one damage from shots on the weak side.... Not sure I'm encouraged to let this guy out without Yav or Sally to keep him steady.

Personally, I don't think they need too much of a fix. If you learn to fly them, they can take a beating. However, I will happily concede there are more efficient choices. A TRC90 is faster, cheaper, and more durable with the right commander than a TRC-Neb. The problem is Salvation is still a solid buy, and Yavaris is as good as ever. It might be hard tweaking the vanilla ship without overpowering the titled versions.

Maybe a new title then?

Salvation and Yavaris are quite good and that's enough to run two Nebulon-Bs in your fleet without much trouble. Redemption is... weird, but you can build a fleet around it. It won't be top-tier, but it will be janky for some one-off fun.

If there's ever an officer or support team that adds a Redirect token to a ship I think you'll see a lot less complaining about Nebulon-Bs. It's the big vulnerable flanks that turn people off.

4) unfortunately the FFG doctors not been so helpful with old Neb..... Sato helps a bit, but with no rerolls for the black dice it's not as good as could be... So we can now mitigate one damage from shots on the weak side.... Not sure I'm encouraged to let this guy out without Yav or Sally to keep him steady.

Personally, I don't think they need too much of a fix. If you learn to fly them, they can take a beating. However, I will happily concede there are more efficient choices. A TRC90 is faster, cheaper, and more durable with the right commander than a TRC-Neb. The problem is Salvation is still a solid buy, and Yavaris is as good as ever. It might be hard tweaking the vanilla ship without overpowering the titled versions.

Maybe a new title then?

Salvation and Yavaris are quite good and that's enough to run two Nebulon-Bs in your fleet without much trouble. Redemption is... weird, but you can build a fleet around it. It won't be top-tier, but it will be janky for some one-off fun.

If there's ever an officer or support team that adds a Redirect token to a ship I think you'll see a lot less complaining about Nebulon-Bs. It's the big vulnerable flanks that turn people off.

Yes and an upgrade card that gave a ship +1 shield to each flank would be used by many other ships not just Nebulons.

You kidding? Sato makes Neb Salvation disgusting.

Spinal Augment for 4 red dice, Consc Fire, put a squad by the target so you can make it 2red 3black instead (Consc Fire adds black instead of red), and laugh as that ISD has no evades to cancel the immense amount of hurtin flying into its butt. No rerolls unless you had a banked token sadly so it can bomb of course but i had this thing take out half of an ISD in one shot lol

It is very good but its a 67 point ship with no redirect that rolls 2 red 3 black ONLY when fighters are the right position, a well timed Concentrate fire, archs in the right place on a ship with thin front ark that blows up at the first sight of a flanker. I mean I get there is firepower there but there is a lot of potential firepower there if you get lucky, its a gamblers ship.

I will take a naked Assault Frigate for an extra 5 points, give you a free shot and I guarantee you that you will pop long before I will. There are far better ways to spend those kind of points than gambling that you will get lucky and roll a hand full of critical hits. With 2 red your chances of rolling an Accuracy are slim at best (we are talking 1 in 8 on each die) so the most likely sequence of events is that you will always be facing a braces and evades.

Your absolute max damage is 12, braced down is 6 and thats assuming you roll all crits or double hits and your not facing an evade.

Its really not that good. Doing big blast damage is pretty meaningless if you can't shake down defenses and grant it with some good timing, using Salvation as a quasi flanker you might gets some looser pot shots if you bring him in late, unfortunately the Neb B has so many weaknesses (side archs, no redirect) and in a Bomber rich environment a Neb B is always one activation short of getting mopped up.

Salvation looks better on paper than it actually is. Don't get me wrong I don't think its a terrible choice (Its a fun ship to play) but at 67 points, pretty much any other way you spend those points will be more effective. MC30, 6 Y wings, chip in an extra 5 points for an Assault Frigate ..

Neb B's can get strong in a Spam, but I have never seen Salvation pay for itself. The only version that can really pack a wallop over the course of a match is Yavaris and that takes some real skill to fly well.

I see Salvation pay for itself consistently. Turbolaser Reroute Circuits and Intel Officer mean it's consistently tossing 4+ damage downrange (and often more with Concentrate Fire). It's preferred prey is ships with a single Brace and no Evade, which describes most medium to large ships. It can do all right popping Scatters off flotillas as well.