Chimaera - the best ISD title?

By Norell, in Star Wars: Armada

I'm looking at thia card woth astonishment. It's just too great to be true. I can change my fleet commands in any turn, totally confusing my opponent? And I can do it more than once? I can equip it to an ISD II as well?

Who cares about the Rebels, I'm converted. All hail Emperor Palpatine! O7

Seriously speaking. Is this tittle really as good as I think it is? Like Demolisher good. It gives such flexibility and it would make every fleet sign not only with Thrawn but also with any token generating card like Tarkin. Yup, even the grand moff gets a huge boost with this title.

I would have to play around with it to see plus there are other titles coming in this wave that we don't know, I think the title has its place, but I played Avenger before it was cool and it's strong as well, I'm excited to see the other titles, as a side note chimera costs 9-10 points because you have to pick a fleet command card so it's going to make ISDs even more expensive not to mention you may want to put wulf yularen on him too it can get pricy

It seems good but it's expensive. It's nine points total to get the title and a 5 point fleet command equipped and you will also need a token support apparatus (minimum Wulff Yularen). Past that you need a fleet that can leverage the fleet command upgrade(s).

There are the immediate opportunity costs of using Chimaera instead of another title. That also applies to anything else sitting in a one-of slot (officer if you're using Wulff and/or commander if you're using Tarkin) to support the fleet commands. Then there is the matter of actual points costs: the Chimaera seems prone to getting rather expensive and to get mileage from those fleet commands you'll likely want other cheaper ships in support so you don't get too bloated.

Don't get me wrong, I think it could be pretty neat with the right fleet, but it's far from plug-and-play. You need to build a whole fleet around it and be willing to accept the sacrifices it requires to make it work consistently.

Even though it doesn't explicitly say it either way, I assumed (on first glance) you could make the change of card only once.

Gods knows they've had long enough to play test iit, so if it is multiple use I assume it's not overpowered.

2 minutes ago, ISD Avenger said:

Even though it doesn't explicitly say it either way, I assumed (on first glance) you could make the change of card only once.

Gods knows they've had long enough to play test iit, so if it is multiple use I assume it's not overpowered.

Best argument for 'single use' is a use of those Fleet Command upgrades I'm pretty sure everyone has already forgotten, as nobody ever uses. IE., you can already discard any Fleet Command upgrade for its immediate effect, no tokens needed.

So, I mean...think about that. Even if you only ever wanted one, with that title...forget tokens, just discard the card every single turn, and then re-equip it the next to immediately discard again for its effect.

That's obviously WAY too powerful to be just a 4-pt title.

RAW, it's ambiguous, sure. RAI, it's pretty clear - each command can only be equipped once, when discarded, it's gone.

(Still, this almost bumps Tarkin up to Thrawn levels of power. Put 'Chimaera' on a ship in your fleet, and you can switch at will to whatever fleet upgrade you feel the turn calls for, Tarkin a command token over to it for another turn or two of use, before switching to something else if you want.)

The ISD has some fine titles, though. I never thought anything would bump 'Relentless' from play until Boarding Troops came out and made 'Avenger'+BT an epic thing. Now 'Chimaera'? No, I don't think it replaces either of the others - it just gives the ISD three REALLY GOOD TITLES .

Doesn't compare to Avenger. With OP on a nearby ship it is almost unstoppable. With BT it IS unstoppable if you don't exhaust or discard it before it gets to close range.

Avenger is more plug and play. If someone figures out a power combination train to send tokens to Chimaera that the rest of the fleet can abuse, it can work. I wouldn't be surprised if it's taken more for putting a fleet command upgrade on an ISD-II for Intensify Firepower.

33 minutes ago, xanderf said:

Best argument for 'single use' is a use of those Fleet Command upgrades I'm pretty sure everyone has already forgotten, as nobody ever uses. IE., you can already discard any Fleet Command upgrade for its immediate effect, no tokens needed.

So, I mean...think about that. Even if you only ever wanted one, with that title...forget tokens, just discard the card every single turn, and then re-equip it the next to immediately discard again for its effect.

That's obviously WAY too powerful to be just a 4-pt title.

RAW, it's ambiguous, sure. RAI, it's pretty clear - each command can only be equipped once, when discarded, it's gone.

(Still, this almost bumps Tarkin up to Thrawn levels of power. Put 'Chimaera' on a ship in your fleet, and you can switch at will to whatever fleet upgrade you feel the turn calls for, Tarkin a command token over to it for another turn or two of use, before switching to something else if you want.)

The ISD has some fine titles, though. I never thought anything would bump 'Relentless' from play until Boarding Troops came out and made 'Avenger'+BT an epic thing. Now 'Chimaera'? No, I don't think it replaces either of the others - it just gives the ISD three REALLY GOOD TITLES .

Since you need to discard it for chimera you cant discard it for the fleet command effect, right?

1 minute ago, Xeletor said:

Since you need to discard it for chimera you cant discard it for the fleet command effect, right?

Ah...good catch on that, yeah. So I guess you couldn't get infinite use of the upgrade, then.

Hmmm. Well, okay, that opens the can of worms back up. Discarding a 5-pt card that is the only reason to take a 4-pt title (and then breaks it as a result) without needing a token doesn't feel...super useful, at all.

How do you deal with it pricepoint when killed? Do you count the cost of the Fleet Order the ship has from the beginning or the one he has last before dying?

I suspect that the command juggling part of the title will only get a little use, maybe once in a game at best. It's certainly not especially difficult to pull off with a comms net Gozanti, though I question how worth it building such a combo would actually be.

The ability to fit a Fleet Command on any ISD type, on the other hand? That is pretty **** good, and I expect to see it get some pretty solid use in a lot of fleet builds.

We still have the 7th fleet star destroyer and the Sovereign to see yet

Just gonna leave this here, where this has all been hashed out (if not conclusively)...

1 minute ago, Ardaedhel said:

Just gonna leave this here, where this has all been hashed out (if not conclusively)...

Thanks! **** since yesterday so many threads arrived about it! Hard to follow up, sorry my bad!

4 minutes ago, Ritalbringer said:

Thanks! **** since yesterday so many threads arrived about it! Hard to follow up, sorry my bad!

No harm no foul, man! :)

We’re good at hashing things out quickly.

Edited by Drasnighta
2 hours ago, Norell said:

I'm looking at thia card woth astonishment. It's just too great to be true. I can change my fleet commands in any turn, totally confusing my opponent? And I can do it more than once? I can equip it to an ISD II as well?

Who cares about the Rebels, I'm converted. All hail Emperor Palpatine! O7

Seriously speaking. Is this tittle really as good as I think it is? Like Demolisher good. It gives such flexibility and it would make every fleet sign not only with Thrawn but also with any token generating card like Tarkin. Yup, even the grand moff gets a huge boost with this title.

Nope. Avenger is still the best title.

Fleet commands aren't good enough to make Chimaera overpowered, but its certainly a competitive title. 4 points to allow any ISD to equip fleet commands is very nicely priced. I mean its 10 points total for giving every attack your ships make vs other ships a guaranteed 1 hit. Definitely worth it especially if you don't use any other reroll mechanics and even then probably worth it: how often does it happen where you don't roll any blanks or accuracy that won't affect anything due to for example ECM, even after rerolls.

The added flexibility of allowing you to switch out fleet commands (though practically perhaps not that useful) is just icing on the cake.

I think Chimaera may be a little over-hyped at present. I think it will be solid, but not fantastic. Could be wrong though.

For what it is worth, I like Relentless, with SFO. Basically because I don't know what I'm doing setting dials half the time, and this gives a command 1 ISD for 3 out of 6 turns, with 2 of them in the middle of battle, when needed in a pinch.

I'm not going to call it the best, but it certainly is potentially very powerful. It also has some extraordinary synergy with a few of the less powerful Imperial units.

I want to see what Sovreign and especially 7th Fleet do.

Currently, my ranking for best Star Destroyer title is Devastator, Avenger, Chimera, Relentless. And that's just because I'm a little biased and also because Chimera feels a little too specialized without being specialized enough. Like the Interdictor, you'd have to build your entire fleet around its abilities to be effective.

I still prefer Relentless over the other titles. 2 command is nice.

I'm not super thrilled about Chimaera. I look at cost effective the fleet commands can be, and I don't think they are great with Imps because of how few ships you can run. Rebels can easily get 5-6 ships and some squads with a fleet command and have them all benefit from it. Imps struggle to do that because you have to spend 119 points minimum to run Chimaera with a title. 20 points for Ozzel and you now have 261 points left for the rest of the fleet. That's not a lot of room to make a fleet based around a fleet command. The only one that would really work is AFFM, but Imp squads are already fast and don't really need a speed boost.

The main fleet command for the Imperials is intensify firepower, and I can run that with a Cymoon. Still, the title bears thinking about, in certain builds.

Honestly, based on what we've seen so far this wave seems to all fit together. I don't think we'll truely understand the full value of C himera until they reveal what the duplicate titles are. Highly expecting some form of task force titles that either make ISDs cheaper, or let them be run naked, more efficiently.

Edited by Darth Sanguis

Don't be fooled. Fleet upgrades are balanced around their 6-5 point cost and you are paying 10 for them.

And then you can't run Avenger + boarding troopers.

Don't we first need to fully understand HOW to properly play Chimaera? As usual, the card itself doesn't cover all rules possibilities. I know they are haggling it out in the rules forum, but I don't have it in me right now to dive into that. Hah

Even so, Avenger + Boarding Trooper still seems, by far, a more powerful title.