What makes Norra special?

By Gottmituns205, in Star Wars: Armada

I keep seeing people say "where is Norra" and I'm curious...whats so great about her.

I mean this is my standard build for rebels:

3 B-Wing Squadrons ( 42 points)
2 X-Wing Squadrons ( 26 points)
1 Jan Ors ( 19 points)
1 Gold Squadron ( 12 points)
2 Y-Wing Squadrons ( 20 points)
1 Rogue Squadron ( 14 points)

Norra increases the damage potential of all your bombers.

Let's say your B-Wing rolls hit + hit/crit. Even with brace, it's still 3 damage (1 for crit effect, 2 for 3/2 rounded up).

And that's just one B-Wing

5 minutes ago, Gottmituns205 said:

3 B-Wing Squadrons ( 42 points)
2 X-Wing Squadrons ( 26 points)
1 Jan Ors ( 19 points)
1 Gold Squadron ( 12 points)
2 Y-Wing Squadrons ( 20 points)
1 Rogue Squadron ( 14 points)

But where's Nora?...

jk. She is perfect with blue dice bombers and Toryn. It lets you strip shields, dealing an extra 3-4 damage per ISD.

Simply put she helps you burn down shields very quickly. With you b-wing let's say you roll a hit CRIT on your black and on the blue a hit you have a pool of three damage plus a CRIT effect so you have 3 damage plus on damage on the shields that can not be redirected for a total of 4 damage plus reeking aces so there is that also.

So wait a sec....

black hit/crit = 2 damage + the critial effect + a standard blue

so basically it's four damage...

Edited by Gottmituns205
Just now, Gottmituns205 said:

So wait a sec....

black hit/crit = 2 damage + the critial effect + a standard blue

so basically it's four damage...

without a brace and if the ship has shields on the defending hull zone, yes.

That's why she's special

SOLD!

Wait, why can't the enemy brace?

4 damage without a brace. 3 with a brace. (2 + 1 damage to shields)

If they don't brace its 4 damage effectively. The thing I love about Norra is she's like APT's for shields. If you roll in with something like B-Wings or Gold, Y-Wings, whatever, and they brace any of that likely two damage down to one, if you have a crit, you still get to take out a shield. Same goes for redirecting. They redirect your bomber damage to another hull zone, the defending one still loses a shield.

7 minutes ago, Gottmituns205 said:

Wait, why can't the enemy brace?

They can brace.

But the "Additional" Shield Damage is like the Additional damage from ACMs... It is not affected by the Brace Token, as it resolves at the start of the Damage Step, before the Brace Token does. Which means it also can't be Redirected - as that happens even after Brace.

2 hours ago, Gottmituns205 said:

I keep seeing people say "where is Norra" and I'm curious...whats so great about her.

I mean this is my standard build for rebels:

3 B-Wing Squadrons ( 42 points)
2 X-Wing Squadrons ( 26 points)
1 Jan Ors ( 19 points)
1 Gold Squadron ( 12 points)
2 Y-Wing Squadrons ( 20 points)
1 Rogue Squadron ( 14 points)

Norra gives every squadron at distance 1 of her Ion Cannon Batteries, minus the need to remove command tokens first. It's a very strong upgrade, and she also gets a number of solid improvements on her own squadron hull to improve it. She loses heavy, gains an extra AS die, and of course also gets two defense tokens. and as a Unique, Rieekan makes her immortal too.

I'm hoping to have better luck with Norra in my future battles. She kinda got stomped in my first outing, my fault of course.

She also does extremely well in an X-Wing Swarm. Making 3 out of those 8 sides do two damage

Norra, Biggs, Jan, swarm of generic X-wings. Add TF and BCC on Bright Hope. Kind of makes X-wing escorts the multi-role fighters they're supposed to be.

23 hours ago, thecactusman17 said:

Norra gives every squadron at distance 1 of her Ion Cannon Batteries, minus the need to remove command tokens first. It's a very strong upgrade, and she also gets a number of solid improvements on her own squadron hull to improve it. She loses heavy, gains an extra AS die, and of course also gets two defense tokens. and as a Unique, Rieekan makes her immortal too.

Really makes you wonder why ship upgrades are so **** expensive in comparison eh? They both require extra costs to make work.

I just ran Norra...just by being there she helped a double tap 3 x B-wing spam (token) with toryn and BCC out right strip/**** a heavy tank build MC80....it was obscene

Couple those fighter friends with Yavaris and some BCCs to know the true meaning of disgusting.

It's Rebel witchcraft I say. It's revenge for all those days and games of Rhymer and Demolisher trashing the Rebels.

She's really solid. Ran her last weekend in a Rieekan list with Wedge, Luke, Biggs, Corran and Yavaris. She made sure that when my surviving squadrons went to bomb they did real damage.

Also the other nice thing is that she has three blue dice and isn't heavy. Which is great when you need to throw her into the dogfights, she can sort of carry her weight.

I used her at regionals in Milwaukee. I entered round 3 with 9 point because of a rather embarrassing stomping in round 2 (2-9 loss). My round 3 opponent brought 5 ships and no squads.

Having a Toryn/BCC backed Nora/Gold/Green/Dagger/Jan/X/X chew through them was an impressive sight. She added probably 3-4 extra damage a round.

That blender got got me a 10-1 to get back up to 6th.

Edited by Church14

Your are all forgetting that this character is useless when the deffender ship has no shields, and the real deal with imperial ships is within their hull, as for the rebels is within their shields. In my experience when B's get to atack a ship it has been long enough for my mark's II, corvettes, neB's and basically all the red rebel long distance dices, strip down most of the shileds out of their ships, making norra an overpriced Ywing at this point.

Edit: if youre planning for an alpha strike with Intel and fast bombers(haha!) on ships she could be worth it, still, 25% chance to trigger a skill is not enough in my opinion. I preffer squadrons with passive skills that grants you an immediate effect or bonus: keyan, wedge (ie). Basing a named squadron skill on probabilities (norra, ten numb...) is not worth. Specially when you have to invest even more points (toryn farr, BCC) to make this happen. Combos are good, expensive combos are a trap.

Edited by xerpo

I'm down for her because of the 3 blue AA dice, and non heavy. The ability is just icing on a cake.

I'm torn on Norra - really want to put her in my list but there are only three other Bombers and the real damage is done by the Yavaris triple/double tap so I'm thinking of taking Wedge instead.

My 134 pt squads
2 VCX ( 30 points)
1 Ten Numb ( 19 points)
1 Dagger ( 15 points)
1 Jan Ors ( 19 points)
1 Biggs ( 19 points)
1 YT-1300 ( 13 points)

Then either 1 Wedge ( 19 points) or 1 Norra ( 17 points)

Remember, you are paying 7 more points over a regular Y. You lose heavy, gain 2 brace tokens, and 1 blue anti-squad. That just about justifies the 7 point increase. The text is a bonus.

In a vacuum, she adds .25 damage to shots from X/Ys, and .5 to Bs/Scurggs during early shots. Given the prevalence of BCC, those go up a small amount. Toryn adds another small buff to average damage.

Gold Squadron gets a special shoutout for being particularly good for her text.

1 hour ago, xerpo said:

Your are all forgetting that this character is useless when the deffender ship has no shields, and the real deal with imperial ships is within their hull, as for the rebels is within their shields. In my experience when B's get to atack a ship it has been long enough for my mark's II, corvettes, neB's and basically all the red rebel long distance dices, strip down most of the shileds out of their ships, making norra an overpriced Ywing at this point.

Edit: if youre planning for an alpha strike with Intel and fast bombers(haha!) on ships she could be worth it, still, 25% chance to trigger a skill is not enough in my opinion. I preffer squadrons with passive skills that grants you an immediate effect or bonus: keyan, wedge (ie). Basing a named squadron skill on probabilities (norra, ten numb...) is not worth. Specially when you have to invest even more points (toryn farr, BCC) to make this happen. Combos are good, expensive combos are a trap.

That's okay, then the normal bombers just do what they're supposed to do: Deliver crits.

It's everything up until that point, which makes all criticals count as normal hits in addition to removing an extra shield. Ergo, she helps shields get stripped faster so normal crits can deliver face-up damage cards faster.

This is especially useful for ships with lots of shields if you have lots of bombers, against targets like ISDs. Afterall in the right conditions two b-Wing attacks with her will blow up a Raider.