After playing a around with Palpatine here are my thoughts on the senate https://nichurz.wixsite.com/mysite/blog/go-for-papa-palpatine

I see three (major) problems with Palatine as admiral.

First you need to force your opponent to use the tokens when you use Palpatine. It has to hurt if he does not discard the tokens.
Second you have to make some use of it on the next turns or with the next attack on this turn.
And third, you need a wide area of attacks in case he has many ships/squadrons. It does not help when your ISD is removing one evade tokens from one CR90 when he has 6 of them. This means you need a multi ship list against a MSU, and a hard hit list against tank ships.

And this second part might be the problem sometimes. He might just discard the tokens and fly away, out of your range. And in this case you could not profit from this discared tokens. Or he might just remove the threat (killing the Demo, before he has a chance for another attack).

This is why i find squadrons with palapatine still the best use. You can force him to use the tokens, and you can make use of it on the next turn. No matter if it goes against ships or squadrons.
BUT at this point i was thinking what does Palpatine give me that Sloane is not doing already (and better)? Palpatine allows me to use black dice, while Sloane make the best profit out of blue dice. But for the cost of 11 more points, and limited to once per game for one turn.
And you are not even preventing him from using the effect of the defense token (as Slone does).

From my view he is to specific. There are too many factors that are important for him to work (basically the same you also said). And you are giving up way to much in exchange. For nearly every list where you could use Palpatine, there is another admiral that might be better. Vader for the rerolls, Jerjerod for the agility, Thrawn for the commands, Screed for the crits, ...

Palpy MSU with lotsa Arquitens seems like a logical choice to me. Similar to the Ackbar Guppys, you can hurt the opponent from afar, guaranteeing that you'll haver several turns to hurt them.

1 hour ago, Norell said:

Palpy MSU with lotsa Arquitens seems like a logical choice to me. Similar to the Ackbar Guppys, you can hurt the opponent from afar, guaranteeing that you'll haver several turns to hurt them.

@duck_bird got work done with a mix of Arqs and Decimators. It's certainly doable, though pretty hard to fly.

He's a slow burn admiral in a nuke mans game.

Could be that someday Armada changes away from nuke damage, but that problem lies in the activation system so my guess is Palp will be pretty binder fodder you pull out when you want to play a beer and pretzels game with a buddy while quoting Return of the Jedi.

Which is still better than Tagge.

I think he could be pretty good in campaigns, especially in RiR. First, you have small task forces, so you have to focus your fire on fewer ships. That's what Palpy likes. Then you have a big epic battle where you have a wide selection of targets with many ships to shoot at those targets. That also what Palpy likes.

I think that Palpatine's point cost is only restrictive in a 400 points game where the opponent has a wide selection of possible fleets to bring either a big ship or many small.

On 10/1/2019 at 8:13 PM, Tokra said:

I see three (major) problems with Palatine as admiral.

First you need to force your opponent to use the tokens when you use Palpatine. It has to hurt if he does not discard the tokens.
Second you have to make some use of it on the next turns or with the next attack on this turn.
And third, you need a wide area of attacks in case he has many ships/squadrons. It does not help when your ISD is removing one evade tokens from one CR90 when he has 6 of them. This means you need a multi ship list against a MSU, and a hard hit list against tank ships.

And this second part might be the problem sometimes. He might just discard the tokens and fly away, out of your range. And in this case you could not profit from this discared tokens. Or he might just remove the threat (killing the Demo, before he has a chance for another attack).

This is why i find squadrons with palapatine still the best use. You can force him to use the tokens, and you can make use of it on the next turn. No matter if it goes against ships or squadrons.
BUT at this point i was thinking what does Palpatine give me that Sloane is not doing already (and better)? Palpatine allows me to use black dice, while Sloane make the best profit out of blue dice. But for the cost of 11 more points, and limited to once per game for one turn.
And you are not even preventing him from using the effect of the defense token (as Slone does).

From my view he is to specific. There are too many factors that are important for him to work (basically the same you also said). And you are giving up way to much in exchange. For nearly every list where you could use Palpatine, there is another admiral that might be better. Vader for the rerolls, Jerjerod for the agility, Thrawn for the commands, Screed for the crits, ...

Pretty good theme tho. Palpy couldn't take down the Rabble because they were everywhere (MSU) so he had to set the Endor Trap to concentrate their forces(Large ships) so that he could destroy them. I see him as an anti-large ship commander and (ironically) as an SSD killer?

On 10/2/2019 at 1:17 AM, Norell said:

I think he could be pretty good in campaigns, especially in RiR.

The only problem there is that you don't use standard commanders in Rebellion in the Rim.

Of course, you could use home-cooked rules for your campaign, but that would change its flavor significantly.