I see how the first part of the Profundity title can be useful: drop a hammerhead in position to double-arc a ship and ram it, or drop a CR90B carrying SW7s or HIEs. And maybe those are enough. But there's a second part to the title: "At the start of any round, you may deploy the set-aside ship at distance 1. You may un-equip up to 1 Commander and 1 Officer upgrade cards and equip them to it (if able)." I'm struggling to think of a use for So the question is: What is this part of the title good for?
The Good
These use cases aren't a sure thing by any stretch (because I'm not convinced that there is a really good reason for using the second paragraph of the Profundity title) but for want of a legitimately good use, they might have to do. A card like Profundity forces you to give up more than just points and an upgrade slot. By setting aside a ship until halfway through the game, you're giving up a deployment and also likely giving up a ship activation for a couple of rounds. So a good use of Profundity actually has to be extra good in order to make it worthwhile.
- You want to re-enact the Battle of Scarif. Complete with Tantive IV, Leia Organa, and Capture the VIP objective. Congratulations, this is pretty much the only reason to use the second paragraph of the Profundity title with any frequency. Unless I'm wrong, which I'd love to be.
- You ignore the second paragraph of the title, but you found a way that the ability to toss out a small ship is worth the price of the title. As a bonus, there's another option that you'll rarely if ever use.
- You make Profundity tanky as ****, and then transfer a tanky officer to a smaller ship once Profundity has sponged up all the fire it can absorb. Now we might be getting somewhere. Maybe Major Derlin (or Damage Control Officer) forces the enemy to commit even harder to killing the Profundity, which rushes up into the opponent's face. Then Derlin on a 1-command small ship might help it survive one extra attack. You get Derlin with two health bars, like a video game boss fight. You could try it... but my instincts tell me that's cutting the points value of the card to a razor-thin margin. At the same time that you get more value out of a defensive upgrade, you're also buying a 7-point title for the privilege.
- You want to use Profundity to fine-tune your fleet to counter your opponent's list. You kit out multiple Hammerheads with different tool sets, for example one is an APT killer, one is a Flechette Torpedoes flak boat. You put Intel Officer on Profundity and then you get to choose each game, based on what your opponent brings, whether you want to set aside one or the other or neither. If you set one aside, you could transfer the Intel Officer onto the Hammerhead in question, either making the APT boat a little scarier to ships or else making FT boat a little scarier to ace squadrons. Is this consistently useful enough to be worth a 7-point title? Well... I guess you could try it.
- Lando's job is to protect the MC-75, but if Lando hasn't been used and you still feel confident that the MC-75 isn't in danger, then maybe the little ship can make use of him. This is a possibility, but I'd argue that Lando is more valuable if he protects a ship worth more points, like the MC-75, if you never find a need to use Lando to protect the MC-75, then either you're playing too conservatively or your opponent has screwed up big time.
- A future card makes this better. Maybe in the future we'll see some synergy that makes this good.
The Bad
There's some hypothetical version of these usages that could be clutch, but each one depends on the game unfolding "just so," and so I'd say it's a waste to build your fleet around.
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You rescue your commander or some linch pin officer card, just before Profundity explodes. A possibility on paper, but not a viable reason to take the title, in my opinion. It just is not efficient to spend points, give up a deployment, and give up one activation every round until you drop the small ship. Using it as an escape pod is treating the text as "When you lose, lose differently."
- If Profundity faces certain doom, it's completely unreliable that you would have the window of opportunity to deploy the smaller ship in time, except if your opponent's plan fails or if you are very lucky. You shouldn't go into battle with a plan that relies on either incompetence or luck.
- If Profundity faces certain doom, I don't see how saving just one commander and/or officer will save the game for you. You've just lost over a quarter of your fleet points. If you do the Profundity trick and your opponent tables you, you'll have to wonder if investing in something more reliable than the Profundity title might have helped you win, instead of just lose differently.
- Both of the above issues make this scenario exceedingly rare, and puts it more into the gimmick category, rather than a tactic. And it's an expensive gimmick, so even in the rare case that it helps you, you've still wasted points in all your other games when it did nothing for you.
- You decide to take an officer that would be valuable on the MC-75 and you give it to the smaller ship for no good reason. There's no smaller ship that hits as hard as an MC-75, so Intel Officer gives you more value by remaining on the MC-75. And there's no smaller ship that's worth as many points to keep alive as an MC-75 is, so Lando gives you more value by remaining on the MC-75. The timing window of Profundity dropping the smaller ship and moving the upgrade cards happens before either of the ships will activate, so you aren't increasing the times that you use the upgrades, you're just changing the platform on which you use the upgrades. And the MC-75 is pretty much always a more valuable platform than a small ship.
- You want to get the "another friendly ship" passive buff of an officer on ships around Profundity, and then get the buff on Profundity itself. Like Leia Organa or Toryn Farr. This seems no better than having that officer equipped to the small ship from the very beginning, and not setting that ship aside, except if you think your opponent will snipe out that flotilla, and only in the womb of an MC-75 can it be kept safe until it gets to the drop zone.
The Ugly
You should definitely not intend to use Profundity to try the following. They're either explicitly not allowed according to a careful reading of the rules, or else they're not clearly defined in the rules and attempting them during a game would certainly start an argument with an opponent, with you as the cheese lord arguing that "if it isn't specifically forbidden by the rules, then you can't stop me." If you used Jamming Field the broken way, don't get any ideas.
- Kitting out your small ship with one officer, because if it looks like you'll want a different officer for the situation at hand, at the time you deploy it, you can replace it with a different officer from Profundity. Doesn't work, because Profundity says "if able," which seems to clearly say that if the upgrade slot on the small ship is already occupied, you don't get to put something in its place.
- Putting your commander into a flotilla lifeboat in order to bypass the FAQ that says commanders can't ride in flotillas. Profundity says "if able," and commanders are not able to be equipped to flotillas.
- Making Profundity survive as a Rieekan zombie, and then moving Rieekan from Profundity to another ship so he can keep on doing his ability. Won't work. A destroyed Profundity kept in the play area by Rieekan is removed in the Status Phase, before Profundity would get to transfer the commander.
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Double-tapping a discard/exhaust officer by using it once on Profundity, and then equipping it on the small ship and using it again. I mean, when you "equip" an upgrade, don't you naturally equip it face-up and ready to go? Can't I use Lando or Walex or Hondo or Intel Officer or Adar Tallon, and then use 'em again on the small ship? 'Fraid not. Here's where the rules are kind of vague because unequipping/re-equipping are not mentioned in the rules before Wave 7. However, the rules lean toward disallowing it, even if it isn't explicitly covered.
- "If a ship’s upgrade card is discarded, it is flipped facedown but remains equipped for the purposes of scoring," (RRG p.13) implies that discarded upgrade cards are not considered equipped except for the purposes of scoring, so it's not selectable to un-equip from Profundity.
- "Upgrade cards are readied during the Status Phase" (RRG p.13) defines how to ready a card, meaning that nothing else will ready an exhausted card.
- Don't overlook the obvious timing of Profundity, which is used at the start of a round. Any exhausted cards would have been readied during the Status Phase, so there's no double-tapping of those.
