The raider is one of my favorite little ships, it's fast, has great speed two clicks and can really push out the damage. But they are very niche and to be honest harder work to play than their rebel equivalents ( CR90 A and B). But boy does the new wave give these guys a nice buff.

Raider ones have had a sudden increase in their spike damage with the very cheap external racks, this gives you up to five blacks and two blues from a single arc, or 6 blacks and three blues with a double arc, with rerolls on the blacks if you go for OEs, that's a big reliable damage spike for a 51 point ship.

There is also the opportunity to replace OEs with boarders, this reduces the reliability but allows you to put pressure on a brace before opening with a potential of two arcs with 3 black and 1-2 blue dice each on a 50 piont ship.

Then we have the raider two (or the red headed step child), disposable capacitors and the ion upgrade of your choice turns this slightly unfortate ship into a platform that can deliver up to 4 damage + 1 shield damage or 4 definate damage at long range, and you can add gunnery teams to do it again........ Making it a deadly long range sniper that still hurts at close/meduim range.

Im thinking of modernising my raider glad swarm.....

I'm also a big fan of the Raider. External Racks in particular for the Raider-I are going to be amazing (concentrate fire for 7 dice out the front? yes please).

I'm not a big fan of boarding teams on the Raider-I. Boarding Troopers only works on one defense token and Boarding Engineers will flip two cards but it's still asking too much to give up Ordnance Experts, who have huge utility with the Raider-I.

Disposable Capacitors are a tempting inclusion even on the Raider-I; I've mentioned in one of these other threads that I'm often positioning my Raiders on turn 2 and they're rarely at medium or close range unless the opponent is being recklessly aggressive but long-ranged attacks could at least contribute something for a cheap 3 points. They're obviously better on Raider-IIs, however. The main problem with Raider-IIs in my mind is they're still lacking a strong ion cannon and/or weapon team upgrade that really makes them sing compared to Raider-Is. I am kind of curious about trying out a Raider-II with Gunnery Team and Disposable Capacitors to see if a "one-shot pocket VSD" approach could be effective in the right fleet. Maybe?

1 hour ago, Snipafist said:

I'm also a big fan of the Raider. External Racks in particular for the Raider-I are going to be amazing (concentrate fire for 7 dice out the front? yes please).

I'm not a big fan of boarding teams on the Raider-I. Boarding Troopers only works on one defense token and Boarding Engineers will flip two cards but it's still asking too much to give up Ordnance Experts, who have huge utility with the Raider-I.

Disposable Capacitors are a tempting inclusion even on the Raider-I; I've mentioned in one of these other threads that I'm often positioning my Raiders on turn 2 and they're rarely at medium or close range unless the opponent is being recklessly aggressive but long-ranged attacks could at least contribute something for a cheap 3 points. They're obviously better on Raider-IIs, however. The main problem with Raider-IIs in my mind is they're still lacking a strong ion cannon and/or weapon team upgrade that really makes them sing compared to Raider-Is. I am kind of curious about trying out a Raider-II with Gunnery Team and Disposable Capacitors to see if a "one-shot pocket VSD" approach could be effective in the right fleet. Maybe?

Yep the racks on the raider one is the the nicest upgrade, re the raider two with disposables and ion I like the idea of Running a pair, although I'm not wholly sold and will need to play around to see if they are worth it, I think paying for gunnery teams may be a step to far, but you never know.

I'm thinking Raider 1 OE and ExRacks will be rreally good. That extra bit of spike damage will be great when making a screen of Raiders for your opponent to run into.

I haven't found a site though that let's you proxy for making lists...

17 minutes ago, Blail Blerg said:

I'm thinking Raider 1 OE and ExRacks will be rreally good. That extra bit of spike damage will be great when making a screen of Raiders for your opponent to run into.

I haven't found a site though that let's you proxy for making lists...

http://armada.fabpsb.net/gindex.php#etiquette

Fab's has everything released updated in the BETA side of things... Accessable by either adding the Hammerhead/Quasar to the collection, or jus tbuilding with the 'free' tag on...