Welcome back my friends to another edition of the Chewie Awards. After a one wave moratorium in which I was too busy fathering children to write these, I’ve returned to shower imaginary hardware on inanimate objects.
Once again, this wave’s Chewie Awards have been opened to a collection of community luminaries and contributors, all sharing one common qualification: they were willing to help me do this. I’ve been fortunate in the past to get some excellent voices in the selection process, and this wave was no different. Shmitty, Biggs, Ard, and Truthiness return and are joined by first time voters Gil, Jotto, Snipa and Alzer. This wave I abstained from the voting, as I felt that I was little too far removed given that I’m just now coming back after a brief hiatus, although I will settle any tiebreakers.
The Chewies are about looking at the wave that has concluded, so only upgrades, ships and squadrons released through RitR are eligible for consideration, so this is the one place in Armada where the Onager will not be showing up. Nor are we considering how previous upgrades or ships may fare in the future thanks to access to new toys (so Agate AFMK’s mean nothing to us). Without further ado, lets jump into it!
Best Offensive Retrofit
Winner: Boosted Comms
Boosted Comms has been a dominant force in the squadron game since it was released, significantly increasing the range at which squadrons can be commanded. While its omnipresence wavered slightly in the pre-nerf relay days, with Relay toned back down to reasonable levels it is once again an auto-include for heavy squadron fleets. In a meta now largely dominated by family size dice pools, it is imperative that the squishy and commonly used carriers like flotillas and the Quasar are able to hang back from the firing lines, and Boosted Comms allows them to do so while still contributing to the fight what you brought them to do. Boosted Comms brought to you by Verizon, they can hear you now. They can hear everything.
Honorable Mention : Disposable Capacitors, which significantly increase the offensive potential of ships such as the Interdictor, Vic 2, Raider 2, and Command Pelta by allowing an extra round of shooting on approach.
Others Receiving Votes: Advanced Transponder Net, Reserve Hangar Decks
Best Defensive Retrofit:
Winner: Electronic Countermeasure’s
The only unanimous victor in this wave’s process. Once again, the heavy haymaker meta means you need to be able to access your defense tokens, particularly your brace. If you have a defensive retrofit, you take ECM’s. If you are an Imperial player, and you don’t have a defensive retrofit, you take Tua and then take ECM’s.
Honorable Mentions : Nope.
Others Receiving Votes : What part of unanimous…?
Best Limited Ship Upgrade (Fleet Support, Fleet Command, Experimental Retrofit)
Winner: Intensify Firepower!
For a single concentrate fire token, you can turn one of those blank die into a hit, for every single shot you take. Dice fixing is always valuable, and IF takes the guesswork out of it. It will improve your floor on those fickle red dice shots, allowing you the flexibility to avoid investing in other means of dice fixing. Or not, if you like, just go for broke and fix all the dice, even the ones that aren’t broken! I’m not here to tell you how to live. Over the course of a game that damage adds up considerably, and usually you can start the engine going as early as round 2 and run it through the rest of the way. Here’s a quick hypothetical. You start her up on turn 2 in your fleet containing three combat ships, maybe on ship gets a shot at the enemy. Turn 3, all your ships fire once. Turn 4, 2 ships fire. Turn 5 and 6, lets say you get one shot each round as things die or disengage. These are pretty conservative numbers, and you are looking at 8 damage from this 6 point card, assuming you rolled a blank on each. And if you didn’t, you would have if you hadn’t brought IF! Just a great, extremely efficient global effect for your fleet. This blurb brought to you by the non-partisan think-tank Peltas not Paperweights , a subsidiary of Shmitty Ideas .
Honorable Mentions: Comms Net. Its ubiquitous. Almost every fleet generated has a comms net flotilla somewhere in the backfield.
Others Receiving Votes: Blank. I could have fixed this if I had brought a Pelta.
Best Officer (Generic)
Winner: Intel Officer
In the haymaker meta, the rise of ECM’s has brought us back to an old favorite when it comes to token stress. IO is a consistent, effective tool in helping to overheat the token suite of your beefier targets. It was also very often taken on the most popular SSD Ravager builds, since such builds usually did not have enough damage sources to naturally overwhelm an opponent’s tokens, IO allowed those builds to pressure them anyway. You wanted to brace? Go ahead. There it is…and I-O-my-god its gone! It’s gone, but the Ravager still remains.
Honorable Mentions: Hondo Ohnaka, friend to all, when your fleet needs tokens he’ll answer the call! Cheap, flexible, and now 100% scruple-free!
Others Receiving Votes: Expert Shield Techs
Best Imperial Officer
Winner: Captain Brunson
Captain Brunson rocks! In that she loves rocks. She wants to be near them at all times. They complete her. Actually, it’s weird, and we’re all a little worried about her. She’s started to name them. We try to stop her and she just…negates our dice. Just refuses to accept that nice hit/crit we offer as only a gentle Admonition. She has to know she’s making the Stormtroopers nervous. And she’s seemingly everywhere. I bet they’d demote anyone else if they started flying so close to Asteroids and Debris fields, but not her. Nope. She gets put on the big ships, and the little ships, and the HUGE ships, and whatever ships command decides it wants to live the most.
Honorable Mentions: Governor Pryce is Right. Brunson may have won this round, but that was fueled some by a period where the SSD was extremely prevalent, and Pryce doesn’t work with the SSD. Also, one panelist straight up refused to vote for her. But the Meta, she is a-changin’, and when it comes to laughing, Pryce always goes last.
Others Receiving Votes: No one. But I miss Chirpy. Don’t you guys miss Chirpy? Wave One Chewie Award Winner Admiral Chirpy?
Best Rebel Officer
Winner: Lando Calrissian
Do you feel lucky? Of course you do, baby! A dose of Billy Dee keeps away the REEEEEEEE when your opponent rolls 4 natural red double hits. Or ****, uses fourteen different forms of dice fixes to drop them on your lap. Whatever man, Lando’s re-roll’s keep your boat afloat. One of the best defensive upgrades the game has seen, the only problem with Officer Lando is Squadron Lando.
Honorable Mentions: Toryn Farr. Offensive re-rolls for your squadrons and ships. She’s suffered some from the fall of Rebel Ace-hole lists, but still an excellent card.
Others Receiving Votes: Leia Organa, Walex Bissex
Best Weapons Team
Winner: Gunnery Team
This is the first instance in which I as Grand Leezar of the Chewie’s must exercise my phenomenal TIE breaking might. There was the bad kind of three way in this category, but I’ve leaned Gunnery Team as it is the default SSD upgrade in the weapons slot, and the SSD was heavily represented in the data from the period these awards cover. Gunnery Team is all about area denial, making it that much more difficult to oversaturate a ships firing arc, as well as allowing ships with dominant arcs to have the opportunity to get extra mileage from them.
Honorable Mentions: Ordinance Sexperts, whose ability to get a strong handle on your big black die continues to satisfy, but it’s won a lot and MSU is in a bad place. Darth Vader (Boarding Team), is a phenomenal card but it isn’t nearly as prevalent as either of the above, and not only because its faction locked. (As a side note, in the future you should expect to see a multi-slot upgrade category, as we see more and more of them released.)
Others Receiving Votes: Weapons Battery Techs, Catiken & Shollan
Best Support Team
Winner: Engine Techs
Gotta go fast! Engine Techs has been one of the top contenders in this slot since wave one, and in a game where success is predicated on how well you can maneuver it’s not hard to understand why. This card simply gives you significantly better control over how your ships move around the play area. There wasn’t really a discussion on this, so much as 7 people pointing at the obvious and one person trying to keep selling his coaster or gold recommendation.
Honorable Mentions: Nav Teams. Yes, Shmitty, we get it. We’ll take it out of our binders. We promise.
Others Receiving Votes: None, although Auxiliary Shields Team was mentioned in discussion.
Best Ion Cannon
Winner: Heavy Ion Emplacements
Once again, I must wade into the ring and settle things. The debate in this category came down to two cards, HIE and Leading Shots. Increased damage potential vs. dice fixing. I chose to go with the boom in the room, but there were excellent arguments for both. As one panelist mentioned, HIE is a great card but it’s “something you build around, whereas LS enables other stuff.” And it’s an excellent point, however I find two other arguments more compelling. First, there are now a whole bunch of ways to mitigate your bad dice rolls, particularly the red dice that LS has traditionally been used for. Additionally, while LS does enable some other stuff, HIE significantly increases the combat potential of ships such as the Interdictor Suppression Refit and Raider 2, and just yesterday, HIE bought me drugs. So, both are enablers.
Honorable Mentions: Leading Shots. Still a great card, and a way to get rerolls on those big dice pools. Dice fixing is always valuable. Also, unlike the winning HIE, it isn’t completely nullified because your opponent brought DCO. But it’s won this category a lot.
Others Receiving Votes: This vote split the room fifty-fifty. But ICB’s was also mentioned in passing as good Ion Cannon critical upgrade, although it simply doesn’t get the same representation as the other two cards mentioned.
Best Turbolaser
Winner: Linked Turbolaser Turrets
Versatility wins the day here. There was an overwhelming sentiment in our panel that this is the direction we would like to see anti-squadron upgrades go, where it still maintains a useful global effect in the even that you should run into a squadron-less list. When it comes time to choose which turbolaser you need to do the job, slot Linked in.
Honorable Mentions: H9 Turbolasers. Get those accuracies! Bypass those tokens! Toggle those ECM’s! …wait, no…
Others Receiving Votes: None.
Best Ordnance Upgrade
Winner: External Racks
A tight race that gets decided by pure efficiency, and the prevalence of DCO/Capt. Brunson in the tournament season making it difficult to make the powerful ordnance critical effects stick. For three points, External Racks finds itself on a lot of different ships, from quick strikers to slow plodders that want a little bit of extra hedgehog. When opposing ships get too close, a dose of Ex Rax gives them a case of the runs away.
Honorable Mentions: Assault Concussion Missiles. Do you have side shields? Not anymore.
Others Receiving Votes: Another two-horse race. * cries in Assault Proton Torpedoes*
Best Generic Imperial Squadron
Winner: VT-49 Decimator
The most expensive generic squadron in the game, the Decimator is more than a meme. Or, so I’m told. There wasn’t a ton of excitement from our panel for this vote, as the Imperial squadron game loves aces, but the synergy with Advanced Transponder Net and Ruthless Strategists as well as having Rogue and strong dice were enough to push them across the line.
Honorable Mentions: TIE Interceptors. Squints haven’t seen a lot of generic love but with the advent of Reserved Hangars they have a newfound viability as a low cost minimal fighter screen. Doing the job of actually intercepting enemy fighters. It’s a brave new world we live in, folks.
Others Receiving Votes: Jumpmaster 5000, TIE Bomber, TIE Defender (HM)
Best Generic Rebel Squadron
Winner: YT-2400
The rebels got a little more love from our panel thanks to having a better overall selection of generics, but the YT-2400 was far and away our winner. It really doesn’t have any weakness, possessing good speed, attack die, hull and adds command flexibility in rogue. The frisbee is a great little do it all squadron that simply glides by the competition.
Honorable Mentions: X-Wings, for their synergy with Jan Orrs and Biggs Darklighter.
Others Receiving Votes: A-Wings, because they are totes adorbs.
Best Imperial Ace (NSFW, as is tradition. Continuing to read is implied consent in most States. Seriously, this is all sex jokes. None of them are funny.)
Winner: Maarek “Lexington” Steele
Aw yeah, this TIE Defender Ace never leaves you unsatisfied. Standing atop the pinnacle of the Emperor’s Triangle* alongside Moan-a Kee and Colonel “Double Tap Dat Ace” Jendon, this bad boy gives you what you need to get your blue bomber ball to explode all over the face of the competition. If what you see on the first roll doesn’t do it for you, flip it over and get what you so critically need.
*Its a drinking game!
Honorable Mentions: Colonel “Double Tap Dat Ace” Jendon
Others Receiving Votes: No one else was voted for, but FleshSaber and Valen Rudewhore popped up in discussion.
Best Rebel Ace (Still a lot of innuendo)
Winner: Jan Scores
Always in the middle of the action, Jan Scores helps her many paid escorts to take it as hard as the enemy can dish it out. By lending out her sweet, sweet favors to any rebel who needs to brace for impact, she lets them last as long as they need to keep enemy squadrons from running rampant in her Admiral’s backfield. Jan throuples well with YT-1300’s and SeX-Wings, and they in turn keep her nice and safe. Because Jan Scores ALWAYS uses protection.
Honorable Mentions: “Right” Hand O’ Calrissian
Others Receiving Votes: Hand Solo
Best Imperial Ship
Winner: Super Star Destroyer Assault Prototype
It’s long, it’s strong, it’s down to get the friction on! The SSD-Assault defined the pre-wave 8 meta. Even if you didn’t happen to come up against one, you needed to have a plan for how you would handle it. If your fleet couldn’t handle a Ravager Assault SSD, then your fleet was obsolete.
Honorable Mentions: Quasar Fire 1-Class Cruiser Carrier. Too many words, too many squadrons commanded, two ship.
Others Receiving Votes: Imperial Star Destroyer Kuat Refit
Best Rebel Ship
Winner: MC80 Liberty
This vote was all over the place. Rebels got shellacked over wave 7 and our panel was all over trying to decide on the best rebel ship. The Liberty wound up winning, although neither variant was specified. Largely, it was Mon Karren’s ability to lock token use in an SSD shaped meta that wound up allowing the Liberty to win, but discussion was all over.
Honorable Mentions: Modified Pelta-Class Command Ship. This actually only received one vote, and one vote with a /s. But I’m giving it the Honorable Mention because it’s funny and it grants access to Intensify Firepower.
Others Receiving Votes: Assault Frigate Mark 2-B, MC-30 Torpedo Frigate, MC75
Best Imperial Ship Title
Winner: Ravager (SSD)
The Assault variant of the SSD was a predominant shaping force in the wave 7 meta, and being a major component in making that ship work, Ravager ravaged the competition for the Chewie. Just keep feeding it delicious Conc Fire tokens and it will keep the murder-go-round running.
Honorable Mentions: Chimaera. Command your fleet with all the commands. Intensify Entrapment Action, Maximum Follow Me!
Others Receiving Votes: Demolisher, Squall
Best Rebel Ship Title
Winner: Admonition
If you brought an MC30, it had Admonition on it. Combined with Lando, Admonition is simply one of the strongest defensive options in the game, and the ship is just obnoxiously tanky, particularly for a small base.
Honorable Mentions: Mon Karren. What a lovely complement of defense tokens you have their Mr. Ravager. It would be a shame if you could only use one of them.
Others Receiving Votes: Jaina’s Light
Best Imperial Commander
Winner: Moff Jerjerrod
More than just a patch for the VSD. Moff Jerjerrod most prominently featured in Ravager SSD fleets, but he appeared in all kinds of Imperial fleets. He’s inexpensive, and he grants maximum yaw where its most valuable, which makes him and the fleets he flies extremely flexible, as in doing so he allows some command freedom from usually all-important Navigation dial. Run JJ, and redouble your efforts to succeed!
Honorable Mentions: Grand Admiral Papa Smurf
Others Receiving Votes: Admiral Sloane
Best Rebel Commander
Winner: Admiral Raddus
Blue fish, best fish! Apparently being able to deploy after the game has begun is a valuable ability. Who would have guessed? Raddus was the most successful rebel commander in the wave 7 meta, warranting a rare non-FAQ rules post from FFG to drop out of hyperspace and rework him. He remains an effective weapon though, as even post “nerf” his strong showings have continued.
Honorable Mentions: Zombie Lord Rieekan, General of the Undead Hordes of Kara’Thun
Others Receiving Votes: None. Blue Fish, Death Wish all that’s left of your pitiful Rebellion.
Most Improved Card (Spinning Coasters into Gold)
Winner: Damage Control Officer
A permanent seat on the three-officer SSD earns DCO her place. DCO being a mainstay meant that you couldn’t rely on powerful critical effects such as HIE, ACM or APT’s to help quickly pile on damage. Her effect was always acknowledged as being worthy of inclusion, but on single officer slot ships the opportunity cost and the possibility of being dead points usually left her an also-ran past, but with multiple officer Chonkers out in the wild, DCO is ready to have her time in the limelight.
Honorable Mentions: Raider 2. DCaps and HIE let it pump some damage out, and Corvus help’s you get it where you can leverage that shot.
Others Receiving Votes: Ketsu Onyo, Point-Defense Reroute
Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio?
Winner: Assault Proton Torpedoes
Once the Lord-High King of Ordinance upgrades, APT’s have seen a sudden and precipitous fall from grace. Already facing competition from the cheaper but still effective External Racks on ships that couldn’t expect to see multiple black dice shots in a game, APT’s were pushed off the ledge by the rise of DCO.
Honorable Mentions: XI7 Turbolasers. The slot has simply become too competitive.
Others Receiving Votes: Quad-Battery Turrets, Yavaris
The Jar-Jar Award, A WTF Were They Thinking Moment?
Winner: Commander Gherant
Opportunity cost and restriction make him completely useless. Don’t waste your time!
Honorable Mentions: Chart Officer. For 2 points and an officer slot, maybe just don’t fly into rocks.
Others Receiving Votes: That was all, although I will continue to vote for Targetting Beacons. Why does this objective exist? Can anyone tell me?
Edited by Madaghmire