The Upgrade Files: Case 03 – Offensive Retrofits

If Weapons Teams are prized and Defensive Retrofits are precious, then Offensive Retrofits are… the grab bag. This slot is where FFG/AMG tossed in all sorts of odds and ends: squadron toys, gimmicks, and a few powerhouse effects. Some are staples, some are pure binder fodder, and some are cards you wish had never been designed in the first place.

Let’s go through them one by one.

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Advanced Transponder Net

Useless. This was made with pre-nerf Intel in mind, but once Intel got smashed to bits, ATN became not just binder fodder but full trash compactor food. Yes, you can dream up some corner-case scenario where it does something, but realistically: no. And it’s a modification, too. Hard pass.

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Boosted Comms

A strong effect that’s been around since Wave 2. It detaches squadrons from their carriers by extending command range, which typically favors fast squadrons the most. At 4 points, it’s fine, though it looks pretty cheap next to Expanded Hangar Bay at 5. Probably deserves to be 5 or even 6 points.

If Armada had universal ship keywords, this card would probably be “Comms Ship only,” but in practice, that’s already where it lands. A classic that still works.

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Disposable Capacitors

Good card, modestly priced at 3 points even as a one-shot effect. It was created specifically to prop up struggling ships (Raider-II, Victory-II, etc.), and in that context, it works.

But that’s exactly the design issue: ships shouldn’t need band-aid upgrades to function. Every new small/medium ship design has to account for the existence of this card. In an ideal world, the reliant hulls would get a cost drop, and DCaps would creep up a point.

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Expanded Hangar Bay

Perfectly useful, perfectly costed. Nothing to see here — move along.

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Flag Bridge

A great little design: medium or large flagship only, modification, but free and grants a Fleet Command slot. Zero cost for high flexibility, offset by strong restrictions. Leave it exactly as it is.

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Flak Guns

They do their job, the cost is right, no fuss. Leave as-is.

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Hardened Bulkheads

A weird one. At 5 points and limited to large ships, it’s rarely seen. Why not mediums too? The effect itself is fine, but the size restriction makes it awkward. Drop to 4 points and open it up a little — suddenly it’d see at least some play.

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Phylon Q7 Tractor Beams

Manipulating enemy movement is powerful but hard to balance — lean too far and you get oppressive NPEs. As-is, Q7s feel maybe not overpriced but certainly clunky. If they worked like the Interdictor’s G8s (exhaust when an enemy moves, but with a refresh cost), they’d be much more useful. A less invasive change would be to drop Modification. 

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Point-Defense Reroute

Kind of useless. There are better, cheaper ways to flak. Yes, there are some corner builds where it synergizes with other upgrades, but those are the exception. Either rework it into something meaningful, bin it, or drop it to 2 or 3 points and accept it as binder filler.

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Proximity Mines

Not sure mines were ever a great idea in Armada, but the card itself works fine. If you’re going to keep mines in the game, this is a fair implementation.

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Quad Laser Turrets

Same problem as Point-Defense Reroute: too marginal, too niche, too expensive for what it does. Rework, bin, or cut to 3 or 4 points.

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Rapid Launch Bays

The new version is more balanced but less flexible. No more Flight Commander tricks, but now there’s counterplay and no Squadron dial requirement.

At 6 points, with squads set aside rather than deployed, it feels niche or even overcosted. Not bad, but not common either. One of those cards that looks great in theory and ends up dusty in practice.

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Reserve Hangar Deck

Still a great card. The bump from 3 to 4 points was deserved, even if it hurts generics a bit more. It was usually tied to Tri-fighters and TIE Interceptors anyway, so fine.

The bigger issue is wording: it should clearly say friendly squadron. If it doesn’t, ARC should fix that yesterday. Resurrecting enemy squadrons is just bad design.

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Hyperspace Rings (GAR only)

Why, FFG, why? Scout is already a weak keyword, so why tie this to it? As-is, the card is useless.

Better version: squadrons with Scout gain speed 3 (unless they already have higher). That would actually give ARC-170s a neat niche. Right now? Trash compactor.

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SPHA-T (GAR only)

I hate this card — not the design itself, but the way it forced the Venator to be built around it. Look at the Venator dice pools, then at the ARC Imperator variant with no Offensive slot. It’s all because of SPHA-T.

That said, unless you want to redesign the Venator from the ground up, the card has to stay. Within that context, its cost and limitations are correct.

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B2 Rocket Troopers (CIS only)

Pretty great — but only with TF's black-dice-on-raid shenanigans. For other CIS fleets, not worth it even with the secondary anti-squad effect. Consider dropping to 6 as the “TF tax” is very much real.

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Hyperwave Signal Boost (CIS only)

The CIS equivalent of Hyperspace Rings: underwhelming and awkward. It lets you use AI in the Squadron Phase to add dice. You can even “activate” zero squadrons, which technically works and is somehow more useful as a stall tactic than the intended design.

If you're using Legacy content, you could even take Vultures just for stalling so your Rogues go last. I’m 110% sure that wasn’t the intent, but here we are.

How to fix it? Let it fully activate squadrons in the Squadron Phase, but balance it with restrictions (modification, refresh cost, maybe no AI bonus if you move and attack). But that’d be a wall of text on a card. As-is, it’s just bad.

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Verdict:
Offensive Retrofits are the ultimate mixed bag. Some are timeless staples (Boosted Comms, Expanded Hangars, RHD), some are niche but fine, and some are hopelessly dead cards that need either radical reworks or the trash compactor. The slot itself isn’t as universally valuable as Weapons or Defensive, but the right card in the right fleet can make or break a strategy.

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Next Up: Defensive Retrofits — the true crown jewels of upgrade slots. From Electronic Countermeasures to Thermal Shields and everything in between, we’ll look at how this slot defines entire archetypes.

The Upgrade Files: Case 01 - Boarding Teams

Following on from my objectives review series, it’s time to point the scanner at another part of Armada’s ecosystem: upgrade cards.

Like objectives, upgrades are one of the game’s great levers for fleet identity and playstyle. They shape what a ship can do, how it fights, and even whether it survives the trip. And, also like objectives, they’re not all created equal. Some are timeless workhorses, others are clever tech choices, and a few… well, a few have been sitting in the binder for years waiting for a home that never came.

This series will go slot by slot — not by faction, set, or release wave. Each post will take one category of upgrades and look at:

• Where each card stands now — common, niche, or forgotten.

• Why it’s in that spot — meta shifts, points changes, design limitations, or just plain competition.

• What could be done — the light touch of a points tweak where possible, a wording update where necessary, and in extreme cases, a full rework or “retirement” into the trash compactor.

The goal isn’t to make every card “the best ever.” ARC themselves have said they’re not aiming for that either. The goal is to make as many cards as possible interesting enough to consider. If you see one in a fleet list and think “huh, that could work,” then we’ve done our job.

Points changes are the preferred tool — low effort, high impact. If that doesn’t get the card where it needs to be, we get creative. And if even creativity can’t save it… well, that’s why the trash compactor is there.

We’ll start small with a short category — one that’s unusual, influential, and historically a little spicy: Boarding Teams.

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Boarding Teams

(Not an official term, but everyone calls them that)

Boarding Teams are a small but distinctive group of upgrades. They’re all Weapons Team + Offensive Retrofit dual-slot cards, and while the second slot isn’t as universally valuable, the Weapons Team slot is one of the most hotly contested in the game. That means every Boarding Team comes with a significant opportunity cost — you’re giving up Gunnery Teams, Ordnance Experts, or other heavy-hitters to bring them.

They’re also limited in availability: two generic cards, three unique Rebel cards, one unique Imperial card, and nothing at all for CIS or GAR.

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Boarding Troopers

This is the baseline against which all the others are judged. In many ways, it’s the only Boarding Team — outside of Vader for Imperial fleets — that sees consistent play.

Early on, BTs were fairly rare (outside BTA), but as the meta shifted toward tanky brawlers, their value soared. Yes, they require both close range and a squadron command (dial or token), but when they hit, they hit hard. Flipping brace (or every token the defender has) before a big shot isn’t just a solid offensive play — it can also serve as a defensive deterrent, creating a no-fly zone around the ship.

At 3 points, they’re an outright steal even with the dual-slot tax. In the current tanky big-ship meta, 4 points is a fair price — maybe even 5 in a vacuum — but 4 keeps them accessible while still acknowledging their impact.

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Boarding Engineers

The runt of the litter. At 2 points, they’re cheap, but even on a Dodonna Hammerhead (where they should make sense), they almost never see play. They share BT’s limitations, but add an even bigger one: the target has to already have facedown damage cards. By the time you can use this, you’re probably already winning — and “win more” tools rarely make the cut.

Yes, you can ram to get the facedown damage, then trigger them, but that’s still a lot of work for minimal payoff. You could drop them to 1 point, and they’d still probably collect dust.

If they had a secondary effect, they’d be more interesting. Or rework entirely, to maybe hand out a single face-up damage card from a draw equal to your engineering value instead of the current mass-flip. That’d be a potent change, though, and a very different card. As it stands, their fate is: go to 1 point, add a meaningful secondary effect, completely rework them… or send them to the trash compactor.

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Darth Vader (Boarding)

Imperial unique. A very useful and flexible card that still sees a moderate amount of play. The effect — ditching an upgrade of your choice — is undeniably strong.

The catch is platform choice. In theory, any Imperial brawler could use him, but in practice, the Raider is the best home — and Raiders aren’t exactly thriving in the current long-range, pass-token era. Larger ships tend to want those slots for other upgrades.

At 3 points, Vader is a steal. You could argue for 4 or even 5 on effect alone, but his uniqueness and the “Vader tax” (you can’t use any other Vader card) keep him balanced. He’s good where he is.

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Cham Syndulla

Rebel unique. Cham’s been through the points wringer — originally 5, now down to 3 like Vader. He’s not objectively Vader-good, but unlike Vader, you’re not giving up other Cham cards to take this one. That’s a big difference.

His effect — swapping the target’s command stack — can be devastating… in the right matchup. Against an SSD, a triple-command ship, or a pure carrier without dial control, he can wreck a game plan. But outside those scenarios, he’s mostly a mild annoyance.

Too niche for my tastes, but not overpriced. He exists, he works, and in certain pairings, he’s brilliant. Just don’t expect him to shine every game.

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Jyn Erso

Rebel unique. Four points of (almost) useless.

She can assign two raid tokens — in a faction that generally has little use for raid — and only if the target doesn’t already have raid. That’s an oddly specific condition. The one big exception is if you’re running the new ARC General Draven commander — then she might have utility as part of a focused raid build.

Her secondary effect — stealing a victory token if the target has one — sounds neat, but in reality, there aren’t that many objectives where it will swing points meaningfully.

At the very least, the “no existing raid” limitation should go, and the cost could drop to 3. Honestly, though? She needs a full rework into something cool. Keep it raid-based if you like, but make it suck less.

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Shriv Suurgav

Rebel unique. Slightly worse Vader — he can’t discard some upgrade types — and costs 1 point more at 4 points. But he’s not a Vader, so there’s no opportunity cost there.

Shriv is fine. He does his job, and if generic Boarding Troopers go up to 4 points, he’ll be in a comfortable spot.

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Verdict: A surprisingly polarized group. Boarding Troopers and Vader are great, Shriv is fine, Cham is situational, and Jyn and Engineers are either niche to the point of irrelevance or just plain bad. The dual-slot tax means they need to really do something when they trigger, and right now, only a few of them consistently deliver.

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Next Up: We’ve looked at the double-slot oddballs; now it’s time for the mainline Weapons Teams. From meta staples like Gunnery Teams to the cards you only see when they fall out of a cereal box, we’ll see which ones are still firing on all cylinders — and which need a visit to the trash compactor.