If Armada moves to a digital system where the points of cards can be re-balanced, what Commanders would you like to see lowered? Upped?

I think I would:

up Rieekan, by 4 - arguably top tier Admiral

lower Sato by 4 - a bit expensive for what he does with his trigger mechanic

lower Madine by 2 - overly expensive

lower Leia by 8 - way too expensive

up Jerry by 5 - too cheap

lower Tarkin by 4 - helped by the Sovereign title, and cards fixing cards locks them into each other, lowering cost may have Tarkin hitting the table more without the need for Sovereign.

lower Thrawn by 2 - paper tiger at his current point value (I still love him though)

lower Vader by 4 - the ships and cards available now has Commander Vader taking a backseat

lower Tagge by 5 - who?

I agree with most of that but would not touch Vader at all. He is worth every penny with cymoons and to some extent arquitens

Vader's pretty absurd. However, 4 points is pretty much nothing for the ships he's best served on. Cymoons don't really care about how much vader costs, so long as they can keep their essential upgrades (gunnery teams and whatnot). His ability is just inherently strong in the right matchups, and garbage(ish) in others.

Vader's probably worth 50 or more in a Cymoon list against, say, double MC080s. But against Rieekan aces he might as well not be there. Thus his current points seem about right.

Tagge should be free - his opportunity cost in the admiral slot is enough...

Opportunity cost is such a thing... even at 34 points with Sovereign why would you ever take Tarkin in a serious list??

I think all the commanders plus 30 points should drop.

On the Imperial side, you have GREAT cheap commanders - Motti, Sloane, Jerry, screed and soon Piett all have fantastic effects that work in a variety of applications and have insignificant costs to activate. They are also cheap enough that you can throw in whatever upgrades you need to defray any weaknesses or optimise their strengths

Whereas the 30 point plus commanders - are all quite specialised in their effect. With Darth for example, hes MOSTLY only there for Cymoons and Arquitens - any other ship build and you may as well take a cheapy and buy ordnance experts or leading shots for your shooters.

So by me - Tarkin, Darth, Thrawn and Palp all down to 28 points max. Because even then, the cheap commanders are still better in many applications.

Rebels have the problem in that their generals are pretty much all expensive specialists. Ackbar, monmothma, madine, sato et al are all both expensive and demand a particular build. Rebels only cheap generalist is Dodonna, and his main ability is that he only costs 20 points. So for me I would again have none of the rebel generals more expensive than 28. Maybe leave the zombie lord at 30

Here's my list:

Raddus- I've always felt he was too cheap. You can comfortably increase him to 30 to make his value closer to his peers.

Ackbar- Depsite the cost, he's always been worth it. No change.

Rieekan- With the nerf to him, I think he's actually fine. I think it's just early commanders are inflated.

Mon Mothma- Early Commander that has bloated a bit. She was worth it back in the day. Now you've got Rieekan and Cracken competing. I'd drop her to 26 to basically make her and Cracken work for different types of MSU.

Cracken- He's fine, if boring.

Garm- I'd drop him to 20. All token-based commanders are badly inflated.

Leia- The ultimate overpriced Commander. 30 points seems right.

Dodonna- Everyone's favorite cheap choice. Fine as is.

Madine- He got majorly edged out by Raddus. Drop him down to 26 at a minimum. I'd argue that being an equal cost to Jerjerrod is justified. I consider his command limitation to be a near equal to the damage cost of Jerjerrod, who effectively gets to do a super nav AND another command. Madine is locked into just the nav command if you want to get use out of him.

Sato- He's feeling closer to good with each passing wave. His problem is the hard counter of evades and Brunson. A drop to 28 I think is a decent sweet spot?

Vader- He's used frequently, but I think that's more because of the types of ships he enables than overall value. A point or two drop would be worth considering. 34 points.

Tarkin- He Leia and Garm. 30 points.

Thrawn- He's the most successful Commander of the Regionals season. No adjustment needed.

Ozzel- He's actually pretty good in the right hands. It's more the MSU that he enables that's having problems rather than the Commander itself. No change.

Jerjerrod- Fantastic value. No change.

Motti- Same. No change.

Sloane- Same. No change.

Screed- He still works for certain builds. I don't think he needs any adjustments.

Tagge- Drop to 20 and now you've got a solid reason to take him over Motti. Possibly scary on an SSD.

Konstantine- Is there any fixing this guy? Even at 20 (the lowest FFG will go), it's hard to get value out of him. He's really the only one I see that couldn't be made right with a points adjustment.

Konstantine would be more desired...if they changed how tractor beams work and have them all activate at start of a phase, either ship or sqn phases and remove the I can negate it by having a token (yes you can when you activate and use the token to speed back up). the current method just makes the overpriced modification not worth taking...so that there is no way to combine his effect with anything besides G8.

My personal preference for tractor beam would be like EWS...works out a single hull zone to med range (maybe long range)...any ship (friendly or enemy) smaller than you (not same size) gets reduced in speed by 1 if you want it to be. when entering the zone of effect...so if for some reason they stay in it twice then reduced again even to zero...so keep your speed up. I would raise the price if this was the method ever used. And of course obstructions would break the beam.. Very thematic....constant effect and might actually get seen on a table.

setup cost: how difficult is it to pull off the effect in game

List cost: what upgrades/ships/squads are required in the list to pull off the effect

Payoff: how good is the effect

Let's do dodonna:

Setup cost: literally nothing. If you're planning on shooting ships you're good.

List cost: literally nothing. If you're planning on taking ships and squads(nearly all rebel squads are bomber) you're good.

Payoff: game changing crits that can easily turn the tide of the game

20 points....

Let's do Sato:

Setup cost: fairly involved, you need to have a squad near a target in order for him to even work, then you get an effect that is not great on It's own, but can be decent depending on other upgrades

List cost: fairly hefty as squads are mandatory and yet you need to also fit in enough ships to benefit from the effect then some meaningful upgrades that can make that effect pay

Payoff: long range crits are sorta meh sorta ok... Increasing the odds of black crit effects up close is also just ok with WAB being the exception... changing into blues for more accuracy against floats? Sure... Overall the payoff is medium...

32 points...

It seems to me there's a problem here. Dodonna is more useful and easier to use except he is the cheaper option by far. And Sato is less useful and far harder to use yet he is quite expensive. I think on this basis they could swap points costs and dodonna would likely still be the better general.

16 hours ago, SkyCake said:

setup cost: how difficult is it to pull off the effect in game

List cost: what upgrades/ships/squads are required in the list to pull off the effect

Payoff: how good is the effect

Let's do dodonna:

Setup cost: literally nothing. If you're planning on shooting ships you're good.

List cost: literally nothing. If you're planning on taking ships and squads(nearly all rebel squads are bomber) you're good.

Payoff: game changing crits that can easily turn the tide of the game

20 points....

Let's do Sato:

Setup cost: fairly involved, you need to have a squad near a target in order for him to even work, then you get an effect that is not great on It's own, but can be decent depending on other upgrades

List cost: fairly hefty as squads are mandatory and yet you need to also fit in enough ships to benefit from the effect then some meaningful upgrades that can make that effect pay

Payoff: long range crits are sorta meh sorta ok... Increasing the odds of black crit effects up close is also just ok with WAB being the exception... changing into blues for more accuracy against floats? Sure... Overall the payoff is medium...

32 points...

It seems to me there's a problem here. Dodonna is more useful and easier to use except he is the cheaper option by far. And Sato is less useful and far harder to use yet he is quite expensive. I think on this basis they could swap points costs and dodonna would likely still be the better general.

Great analysis. Even Leias debuff isnt as wonky as Sato's, you get dial+free token, but cant use other tokens. She's still too expensive for what she does but doesn't become less useful

Raddus, I would amend his ability where he can't deploy on obstacles. It would make the drop a little more difficult and a little easier to defend against with a fighter screen.

55 minutes ago, mhd said:

Raddus, I would amend his ability where he can't deploy on obstacles. It would make the drop a little more difficult and a little easier to defend against with a fighter screen.

yes please

Isn't it part of the basic ruleset that you are not allowed to deploy (ie, setup) overlapping anything? (other ships, squadrons, obstacles).

I remember a ridiculous devils-advocate thread from waaaaaaay back (before many of you youngster's time!) where someone lampooned the notion that because the rules didn't say so, a player could deploy overlapping their own ships. This resulted in a series of hilarious "stuff on my ship" photos, similar to "stuff on my cat" type shots. Those were some great times.

EDIT: Here we go, found it. The good times begin on page 5.

EDITx2: It was Lyraeus. Naturally.

@Truthiness has the right of it.

The one I’m most got to comment on is madine, having pioneered the early successful Madine lists, but now having switched to Raddus. He has basically been edged out, but being able to take a few more points in upgrades, squadrons, or bid would certainly increases his competitiveness.

many commanders can be fine in the casual games, but there’s a lot of tight granularity in games between two great players at a major event, and there, every little point is necessary.

Cracken I think needs a tweak since he's essentially unseen at competitive play. His preferred fleet (MSU) is a bit weak right now. If he was say 20 points it might help bring the style back. Or keep him current cost but extend his ability to just being obstructed, so it he is helpful against fighter lists.

Rather than modifying point values, there are quite a few abilities worth modifying.

Here's my list:

• Raddus - No deploy on obstacles
• Ackbar - Only add one red dice, no restrictions on shooting from front/rear arcs. I love Ackbar's ability, but it has entirely hamstrung the ability of the designers to give the Rebels any kind of broadside ship. Tone it down a bit to open up the design space.
• Garm - Have him give tokens on turns 4 and 5 or really any other additional turn. Heck, how about 2 chances to use his ability per game on any turns you choose. Kinda like a token version of Thrawn.
• Sato - Back in the day Sato was spoiled with a wording that made it seem like you could switch out the dice after you rolled your inital attack pool. Given he has the hardest ability to trigger some more incentive to actually use it seems like making his ability a little stronger would be in order.
• Tagge - Kinda like Garm some flexibility on the turn his ability gets used is all he needs.
• Konstantine - Yeah, I don't know, it needs a timing switch of some kind.

36 minutes ago, shmitty said:

• Tagge - Kinda like Garm some flexibility on the turn his ability gets used is all he needs.

That way you could Tagge your time on engaging.

I'll see myself out.

@shmitty seems to have had this very idea:

http://www.steelstrategy.com/2019/01/if-you-could-redesign-some-armada.html