Commander Leia and existing command tokens

By itzSteve, in Star Wars: Armada Rules Questions

55 minutes ago, durandal343 said:

Yeah, I was fairly strong on that view. Then I was beaten into submission by the masses :)

This seems like something that will be argued across the Armada table by people who haven't visited the Ministry of Love (joke! no offense! I really appreciate the help!) so I still feel that it could be more clear, but acknowledge that making every card extra clear for everyone in the world is an impossible job...

To be fair, I do think there is a strong argument for your conclusion.

You are spending the dial as if you had a token, but you can't actually spend what you don't have . I will concede that you cannot do: (dial + token) + token but you can just as easily argue that the text is written to give you the effect of spending a matching token, without actually spending it because you know, if you had spent the token, that's the effect you would have gotten (depending on token).

13 minutes ago, durandal343 said:

Well there I'm not sure I agree because Raymus, who does a similar thing, costs 7 points for this to happen on just one ship. As upgrades go he's on the higher side so this effect must be seen as valuable by the designers/playtesters.

And I feel it's better than Tarkin because you don't have to pick just one command token, it can be customized for each ship you have.

Nah, worse than Tarkin because Leia requires you to guess 3 turns in advance (on the big ships) what effect she has. Planning for a super-squadron activation in three turns, but all your squadrons are dead/out of range? Leia has no effect. Planning for a critical navigate command, but enemy slicer tools change your dial to something useless? Leia has no effect. etc. Heck, even crits break her. Leia is super easy to render useless. (And I'm not sure I'd even make the comparison to Raymus, who at least gets you that token , which is useful for a lot of other token-related things - such as using things like the Weapons or Defense Liaison, or powering up the Fleet Command upgrades turn after turn. Leia's only effect is to supercharge the plotted dial, that's it. IMHO, that's good, but not amazing. And she's priced at 'amazing'.)

In contrast, Tarkin lets you react to the turn at hand - unexpectedly need to do repairs? No problem, he's got you covered. Suddenly lost your carrier, so need your other ships to activate your squadrons turns before they could set a dial to do so? Not an issue. etc. To the extent I see much value in Tarkin (and he's certainly over-costed compared to Thrawn), it's that ability to react to unexpected events. That's easily most of his value, and Leia works the exact opposite.

Edited by xanderf
1 minute ago, Warlord Zepnick said:

To be fair, I do think there is a strong argument for your conclusion.

You are spending the dial as if you had a token, but you can't actually spend what you don't have . I will concede that you cannot do: (dial + token) + token but you can just as easily argue that the text is written to give you the effect of spending a matching token, without actually spending it because you know, if you had spent the token, that's the effect you would have gotten (depending on token).

I've come to the conclusion that I was wrong there. But it wasn't without really really analyzing it and thinking about it and hurting my brain and stuff. And then having it explained over and over to me because I just was not getting it. I can easily see how people would get this wrong and feel like they got it right.

2 minutes ago, xanderf said:

Nah, worse than Tarkin because Leia requires you to guess 3 turns in advance (on the big ships) what effect she has. Planning for a super-squadron activation in three turns, but all your squadrons are dead/out of range? Leia has no effect. Planning for a critical navigate command, but enemy slicer tools change your dial to something useless? Leia has no effect. etc. Heck, even crits break her. Leia is super easy to interfere with.

In contrast, Tarkin lets you react to the turn at hand - unexpectedly need to do repairs? No problem, he's got you covered. Suddenly lost your carrier, so need your other ships to activate your squadrons turns before they could set a dial to do so? Not an issue. etc. To the extent I see much value in Tarkin (and he's certainly over-costed compared to Thrawn), it's that ability to react to unexpected events. That's easily most of his value, and Leia works the exact opposite.

Huh, well maybe that's why Leia is a Rebel commander and Tarkin is Imperial. I normally would use Leia on MSU type fleets because more dials = more Leia power. And normally with those fleets I don't have to plan quite as far ahead because I'm dealing with ships that have lower command values.

I can see what you mean about reacting though but if you have a variety of dials Leia works in synergy with those whereas Tarkin does not. I mean a repair token is great but it's not going to save that ISD.

Where I've really wanted to use Leia is on Yavaris fleets so that I don't have to put Raymus points on soon-to-be-dead Yavaris. When I'm making that choice it effectively puts Leia down to 31 points so more value.

By the way is the CC restriction on using duplicate Commanders/squadrons (e.g. Vader) applicable to tourney play?

Would I be able to field Commander Leia and regular Leia's card or no?

6 minutes ago, Warlord Zepnick said:

By the way is the CC restriction on using duplicate Commanders/squadrons (e.g. Vader) applicable to tourney play?

Would I be able to field Commander Leia and regular Leia's card or no?

No you can't field two of the same unique in 1 fleet or in 1 campaign faction

1 hour ago, xanderf said:

Well, the other thing is that the superdial + same existing token interpretation makes Leia worth 38 points.

Leia as only dial + token is VASTLY overcosted. As bad as Tarkin, who has a similar effect and cost - although Tarkin was a wave-1 commander, so at least had the excuse of being early in efforts to guesstimate points on things.

Experience playing against her (paging @geek19 ) has shown she can be used pretty competently but you really need to build your fleet around her ability or she'll be wasted. Generally lots of small ships, nothing more than Command 2 and generally lots of Command 1.

I think she's better than Tarkin (poor guy) for two reasons:
1) Each ship gets to choose which fake token it gets (which has to be paired with the dial, mind you, although it is optional) based on its current-turn needs rather than giving the same token to your entire fleet.
2) Her ability recommends itself to fleets with numerous cheap ships, so you can gain the buff several times a turn. Lower-Command Tarkin ships generally need upgrades or additional purchases (like Boosted Comms and/or Relay and/or Comms Net) to be able to off-load the Tarkin tokens they don't generally care about so they can free up their bucket for next turn; higher-Command Tarkin ships benefit more directly (by being able to bank up tokens that aren't useful the turn they gain them) but are more expensive and thus Tarkin's benefit doesn't go as far with them. So effectively your "shallow bucket" ships need a plan (that costs more points, usually) for maximizing their utility with Tarkin and your "deep bucket" ships can struggle to maximize the token benefit because they're more points for only one bucket. Leia doesn't work well with deep bucket ships and prefers numerous shallow buckets to make her ability meaningfully trigger (by having the right boosted command for the right situation) and to minimize the downside (your Command 1 ships aren't usually stocking up a bunch of tokens anyways, so her downside is fairly minimal for them).

Edited by Snipafist
clarification
58 minutes ago, Warlord Zepnick said:

By the way is the CC restriction on using duplicate Commanders/squadrons (e.g. Vader) applicable to tourney play?

Would I be able to field Commander Leia and regular Leia's card or no?

The restriction is on cards with the same name and the "unique" dot [RRG 13 Unique Names].

So, for example:

Swm27-leia-organa.png

Leia-organa.png

Or:

Darth-vader-commander.png

Darth-vader.png

68kefhd.jpg

2 hours ago, xanderf said:

Nah, worse than Tarkin because Leia requires you to guess 3 turns in advance (on the big ships) what effect she has. Planning for a super-squadron activation in three turns, but all your squadrons are dead/out of range? Leia has no effect. Planning for a critical navigate command, but enemy slicer tools change your dial to something useless? Leia has no effect. etc. Heck, even crits break her. Leia is super easy to render useless. (And I'm not sure I'd even make the comparison to Raymus, who at least gets you that token , which is useful for a lot of other token-related things - such as using things like the Weapons or Defense Liaison, or powering up the Fleet Command upgrades turn after turn. Leia's only effect is to supercharge the plotted dial, that's it. IMHO, that's good, but not amazing. And she's priced at 'amazing'.)

In contrast, Tarkin lets you react to the turn at hand - unexpectedly need to do repairs? No problem, he's got you covered. Suddenly lost your carrier, so need your other ships to activate your squadrons turns before they could set a dial to do so? Not an issue. etc. To the extent I see much value in Tarkin (and he's certainly over-costed compared to Thrawn), it's that ability to react to unexpected events. That's easily most of his value, and Leia works the exact opposite.

Yeah, definitely don't use big ships. I don't want to say you're doing it wrong, but you say that you love Tarkins ability to react to the turn at hand. What's stopping you from running command 1 ships that can react super well to the situation at hand with her ability? Because that's how I run her.

Follow up: when do you see slicer tools? I'm like the only one using it here in our meta. And I don't know what you mean about how crits break her. Like, crit Structural Damage breaks Motti, but no one complains about THAT.

All your Tarkin examples are basically Leia for small ships. Unexpectedly need repairs? Leia lets you repair a face up on any small base ship. Get stuck in a bad spot? Jump your speed by 2 to get out of the front arc of that ISD. Need squadrons activated? Even your CR90 is squadrons 2, as good as a flotilla.

Seriously, she's super good at reacting to whatever you need right now.

30 minutes ago, geek19 said:

Yeah, definitely don't use big ships. I don't want to say you're doing it wrong, but you say that you love Tarkins ability to react to the turn at hand. What's stopping you from running command 1 ships that can react super well to the situation at hand with her ability? Because that's how I run her.

Follow up: when do you see slicer tools? I'm like the only one using it here in our meta. And I don't know what you mean about how crits break her. Like, crit Structural Damage breaks Motti, but no one complains about THAT.

All your Tarkin examples are basically Leia for small ships. Unexpectedly need repairs? Leia lets you repair a face up on any small base ship. Get stuck in a bad spot? Jump your speed by 2 to get out of the front arc of that ISD. Need squadrons activated? Even your CR90 is squadrons 2, as good as a flotilla.

Seriously, she's super good at reacting to whatever you need right now.

And don’t forget Raymus-free 3 squad Yavarising!

14 hours ago, durandal343 said:

And don’t forget Raymus-free 3 squad Yavarising!

And Salvation with an extra die and a reroll from concentrate fire while keeping the officer chair open for a Skilled First Officer or Intel Officer.

There's a surprising number of uses for her, honestly. I just strongly recommend keeping her to Command 2 or less on everything. Those Command 2 ships love some Skilled First Officer so they can get just the right boosted command on two back-to-back turns for a very cheap price.

Edited by Snipafist
25 minutes ago, Snipafist said:

And Salvation with an extra die and a reroll from concentrate fire while keeping the officer chair open for a Skilled First Officer or Intel Officer.

There's a surprising number of uses for her, honestly. I just strongly recommend keeping her to Command 2 or less on everything. Those Command 2 ships love some Skilled First Officer so they can get just the right boosted command on two back-to-back turns, too, for a very cheap price.

Dammit, stop making me want to play Leia now, I have stupid Dodonna plans to master for Regionals!

5 minutes ago, geek19 said:

Dammit, stop making me want to play Leia now, I have stupid Dodonna plans to master for Regionals!

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