After skipping Wave 6 (too many other games, too little time) I received today Wave 7 and what makes this even better; tomorrow I get to play.

I intend to give a go with the following:

ISD Cymoon 1 Refit (112)
• Grand Admiral Thrawn (32)
• Strategic Adviser (4)
• Gunnery Team (7)
• XI 7 Turbolasers (6)
• Spinal Armament (9)
= 170 Points

Arquitens Light Cruiser (54)
• Turbolaser Reroute Circuits (7)
= 61 Points

Arquitens Light Cruiser (54)
• Turbolaser Reroute Circuits (7)
= 61 Points

Gozanti Cruisers (23)
• Comms Net (2)
= 25 Points

This gives me 5 activations (incl. Strategic advisor) and leaves me 83 points for some squadrons, initiative and perhaps other upgrades.

Without any Armada games under my belt for a year I'd lean to some 'Rogue' squadrons but I am open for suggestions in any direction.

How would you spend the remaining points?

Moar Arquitens. MOAR! Or some squads (aggressors or Generic TIEs), if you want to be safe. Or, you can ditch the Heavy Turbolaser Turrets (not too prevalent these days) and swap out the Spinals for Quad Battery Turrets. Then you could fit a third TRC Arq and Ciena and Valen.*

*And also Needa.

5 minutes ago, The Jabbawookie said:

Moar Arquitens. MOAR! Or some squads (aggressors or Generic TIEs), if you want to be safe. Or, you can ditch the Heavy Turbolaser Turrets (not too prevalent these days) and swap out the Spinals for Quad Battery Turrets. Then you could fit a third TRC Arq and Ciena and Valen.*

*And also Needa.

One tiny problem with More Arquitens. I 'only' own 2 of them.

[edit]

I should perhaps have mentioned that I own each and every expansion once except fighters I. (that I own 2. And only one of Fighters II. Just to be funny)

Plus 2 of the Assault Frigate and the Arquitens.

Weirdo. Well, another Comms Net Gozanti and 5 TIEs w/ Howlrunner is a decent screen, leaving you with 12 points. Needa shaves off two more. Swapping out HTT with XI7s doesn't save points, but it's probably gonna be helpful. What about Intensify Firepower? Might give you even more dice flexibility and control. That leaves a 4 point bid.

What makes XI7 better than HTT? Sure they can spread the damage out but I'd rather see damage spread out than reduced.
What am I missing?

Because heavies don't stop them from reducing, just spreading AND reducing. This leads to 3 problems -

1. With heavies, I can say, ok, I'll brace only this shot (your heavies do nothing) and then redirect only this next shot. Ultimately, if you want to conserve tokens that is PROBABLY what you would be doing anyway, and heavies has accomplished nothing.

2. It does not synergize well with accuracies. Because if you have even 1 acc, then the brace is always the first token to get locked down. And if you use heavys and get an acc, you can lock down a redirect and invalidate your turbolaser slot (as now all they can do is brace for full effect) or acc the brace and ALSO invalidate your turbo slot.

3. Since it still lets them reduce damage by 1, you need to be dealing a huge amount of damage without an acc to make the upgrade worth while. 2, 3, 4, 5 damge are all essentially unaffected, and it's a tall order to deal more than 5 damage in one shot from a platform that can't generate accuracies and has a turbolaser slot.

Essentially - XI7's just DO something. You can't play around them, any time you redirect it will be ineffective. While more times than not Heavy Turbos will go all game without a single use, and even then, probably not game making.

Also consider that there are quite a few ships without braces that live and die by their redirects (MC30/CR90/Arquitens/etc).

Got it. Will swap HTT for XI7. Thanks!

Intensify Fire on the ISD. Needa and Brunson on the light cruisers. Hand of justice maybe as the flagship has no defence slot.

fighters of Bossk & Zertek then add a few TIEs or Tie-Ints

Intensify Firepower, Needa on an Arquitens, another Gozanti and push both up to Assault for the long range w/ free Intensify, and then Ciena/Valen as the cheap'n'dirty screen. Use Thrawn to hurl Concentrate commands to feed Intensify and throw unexpected guaranteed 1 damage plus whatever you get from concentrate from the Gozantis and 3 guaranteed per turn from the Arquitens.

About like this (Support Officer is a proxy for Strat Adv): http://armadawarlords.hivelabs.solutions/print_text_export.php?token=162037&key=a6536c7126f8a4242dcd284fb0fb8a07

If you want more upgrades, feel free to eat into the bid, although with 6 activations you can play to the Cymoon last-firsting.

Heck I might even give this a try, looks fun.

I own 'only' a single stand of Gozanti's....

(But this sure looks good!)

In that case, perhaps this variant? http://armadawarlords.hivelabs.solutions/print_text_export.php?token=162052&key=ad1e09da6a163921633d90a01bb7782a

I think this ends up being a bit weaker, since you lose the ability to activate all of your squadrons in a given turn and lose the Intensify damage, but gotta make do with what we have .

Montferrat here is either Montferrat or a proxy for Brunson (My preference).

In the end I went with:

ISD Cymoon 1 Refit (112)
• Grand Admiral Thrawn (32)
• Strategic Adviser (4)
• Intensify Firepower! (6)
• Gunnery Team (7)
• Spinal Armament (9)
• XI7 Turbolasers (6)
= 176 Points

Arquitens Light Cruiser (54)
• Turbolaser Reroute Circuits (7)
= 61 Points

Arquitens Light Cruiser (54)
• Turbolaser Reroute Circuits (7)
= 61 Points

Gozanti Cruisers (23)
• Comms Net (2)
= 25 Points

Gozanti Cruisers (23)*
• Comms Net (2)
= 25 Points

Squadrons:
• Howlrunner (16)
• 4 x TIE Fighter Squadron (32)
= 48 Points

Total Points: 396

My opponent tried:

MC80 Star Cruiser (96)
• General Dodonna (20)
• Intel Officer (7)
• Gunnery Team (7)
• SW-7 Ion Batteries (5)
• Spinal Armament (9)
• XI7 Turbolasers (6)
MC30 Torpedo Frigate (63)
• Foresight (8)

2x CR90 Corvette A (44)

(not sure about upgrades. Leia on one of them.)

Squadrons:
• VCX-100 Freighter (15)
• Tycho Celchu (16)
• E-wing Squadron (15)
• Rogue Squadron (14)

Long story short; I out-activated him on top of having nothing short of amazing dice.

This resulted in a complete rout for the rebels.

Only one corvette with Leia alive and running away.

Zero Imperial casualties. Some shields. A few hits here or there of the Tie fighters. But *nothing* destroyed.

Thrawn is AMAZING.

Or at least; he seems that way when your dice are on fire.

[edit] *= I borrowed one Gozanti.