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| Guess who is escorting whom? |
Welcome back to Special Modifications!
Han Solo once said he’d made a few “special modifications” to the Falcon. Some good, some bad, all of them interesting. That’s the spirit behind this new series: exploring nonstandard Armada. Not just fleet lists or tournament meta, but the underlying strings that hold the game together. What if the designers had pulled them differently? What might have worked better? What happens when you tinker with the system in ways it was never quite built for?
⚠️ Important note: don’t confuse this series with the Squadron Files. We recently covered Empire squadrons there as well — but the scope is different. Special Modifications is design-theory territory: tweaking fundamentals, exploring alternatives, and asking “what if.”
If you haven’t read the earlier squadron-focused entries, you’ll want the groundwork from here first:
The Empire’s Flaw: Specialization
Where Rebels field robust, slower, more generalist craft (because they must fight with whatever they have), the Empire can afford to specialize. On paper, that’s a good idea: fast interceptors, heavy bombers, cheap fighters, and so on.
But specialization only works if there’s room in a single fleet for squadrons to complement each other. You need a fighter screen to punch holes, bombers to deliver payloads, and enough overlap to make both meaningful. CIS actually pulls this off well: elite Tri-fighters, cheap but nasty Vultures, and terrifying Hyenas. It’s almost an exact copy of the Empire’s blueprint — but executed better, because lessons had been learned.
So tweaking Empire isn’t copying CIS. It’s more like restoring the original template, which CIS itself copied. (And yes, both factions ended up with their own meaty, overpriced outlier: TIE Advanced and Belbullab. Almost too funny.)
The Sloane Problem
We can’t talk Empire squads without talking about Admiral Sloane.
We recognize why she exists — but also the pitfalls. One commander, and one only, turns anti-squad fighters into ship-killers and better dogfighters. The same squadrons with Sloane and without Sloane are almost unrecognizable. Sure, all commanders change how fleets behave, but not to this extent.
So what do we do? For Special Modifications, the squadrons come first. Sloane must fit them, not the other way around. Maybe she can survive unchanged. Maybe she needs a tweak or two. Maybe she just costs more. That’s the benefit of hindsight.
And if Sloane isn’t the only potential problem — say, Howlrunner under new dice pools — then the upgrade changes, not the squadron baseline. To illustrate, at the very end of this article, we'll reimagine both Sloane and Howrunner as they might appear in the Special Modifications context.
TIE Fighter
TIEs have always been portrayed as fast, deadly, and disposable — and that’s exactly how they should feel in Armada. Speed 4 and hull 3 work fine. What doesn’t quite work is their role. If anything in the Empire deserves the Escort keyword, it’s the humble TIE Fighter, not the overpriced Advanced.
So let’s make them escorts. Yes, escorts with hull 3 will melt quickly. That’s the point. They’re throwaway bodies, and you can field a lot of them. It makes sense both in design and thematically.
Their dice also get an update. Instead of the boring uni-blue pool, let’s give them 1 red + 2 blue anti-squadron dice. Higher ceiling, fewer auto-accs, more identity. Anti-ship stays a single blue, partly because it differentiates them from CIS Vultures.
Cost: 7 points.
They gained Escort, sure, but their survivability didn’t improve, and we're cutting generic costs across the board, remember?
Three TIEs at 21 points give you 9 hull across three bodies. Compare that to two Rebel X-wings at 22 points with 10 hull. The X-wings edge out with bomber value, but the TIEs aren’t pushovers. That’s the kind of balance you want.
TIE Interceptor
The Interceptor is Empire’s A-wing: fast, fragile, deadly. But it is also the "elite" upgrade over the TIE Fighter, just as the B-wing is the elite Rebel bomber.
The Squit we have is pretty close to the goal, actually. Speed 5, hull 3, Counter 2 all stay. You might argue that Swarm could go — this is an elite squadron after all — but this is the Empire, and swarming TIE Ints just fit too well.
So the question becomes: what dice?
The fix is to give them some real punch: 1 red + 2 blue + 1 black against squadrons, plus a single red anti-ship. The red battery is swingy, but it occasionally spikes for 2 damage, which is something to play with. It differentiates the Squint from the upcoming CIS Tri-fighter, and has the potential to do 2 damage with a single attack which I find thematically appropriate
Cost: 10 points.
Matches A-wings and sits just below the X-wing. They hit harder on AS offense, but fold quickly in return fire — classic glass cannon.
TIE Bomber
TIE Bombers are interesting. Speed 4 is quick for a bomber, hull 5 is respectable, but as a one-die bomber with almost no anti-squad firepower? That’s rough.
We don’t want to turn every bomber into a two-die monster. So they keep their single black anti-ship die. But we can at least give them a fighting chance in squad combat with a red + black anti-squad pool. Not stellar, but not zero.
Cost: 8 points.
Faster than a Y-wing but with less hull and arguably weaker anti-squad. For one-die bombers, hull is more valuable than speed — alpha strikes aren’t an option when you’re only tossing single dice. Keeping them very cheap is what makes them viable in a faction heavy with low-hull AS options.
TIE Advanced
Ah, the Advanced. A unit that has always struggled to justify itself. Too expensive, too weak offensively, and awkwardly slotted as an “escort” that isn’t good at it.
Let’s change that. Drop Escort, and give it Screen. Instead of throwing itself in front, the Advanced hangs back, forcing you to chew through it before you reach the bombers. That fits its lore as a prototype starfighter — tougher than a TIE, but not as disposable.
To make that role matter, it needs real anti-squadron firepower. Three blue + one black matches Vader’s statline and feels right for a “premium” chassis. Anti-ship stays a single black.
I did consider using Snipe instead, but it didn't feel right to spam an E-wing knockoff right out of the gate. I suppose if you take off 1 blue AS and Screen, then add Snipe 3, it could work if the cost came up a bit. But I'd rather not.
Cost: 10 points.
Same as the Interceptor, slightly less than an X-wing. A strong fighter, but awkward to slot. Useful as a screen, but not the centerpiece of any plan.
Example Rework: Admiral Sloane
Instead of “spend the defender’s defense tokens,” Sloane becomes a more grounded boost, providing rerolls and other dice fixing. Rolled an ACC against a ship? Turn it into a HIT or (or HIT/HIT if it was a Red die). Rolled an unwanted CRIT? Reroll it.
Here are two different versions, one banning Rogue squadrons, the other simply requiring a Squadron command. Pick whichever you like; each is restrictive in a different way.
Sloane still encourages using AS-focused fleets, but without giving lowly TIEs superpowers over capital ships. She’s useful, but not game-warping. In terms of cost, I feel that squad-centric commanders should have a power level that lets them be cheap; otherwise, fitting enough squads becomes an issue.
If we compare her to ARC Draven, she doesn't hand out raid or anything, but there also aren't any limitations on the rerolls, and she gets to outright turn ACCs into HITs. So many 24 isn't too far from the mark?
Example Rework: Howlrunner
Civé Rashon, callsign "Howlrunner," was a female human pilot who led Obsidian Squadron. She flew a TIE Fighter under the callsign of Obsidian Leader. Or so Wookieepedia tells me. Let's take that, the old Howlrunner design, and combine it with the reworked base squadrons.
Other Regular Squadrons
The Empire has two more regulars outside the core four, and they deserve a quick look.
TIE Defender
The Defender is fine. Honestly, it probably doesn’t need much change at all. It’s fast, tough, and versatile, and already plays like the “premium” option it was always meant to be. If anything, I’d suggest limiting it to 2–3 per fleet (same thought as the E-wing on the Rebel side) to keep them rare and stop them from overwhelming the table. If we wanted to get more experimental, you could imagine a multi-die non-bomber variant — an interceptor-tank hybrid rather than a strike craft — but even without that, it works.TIE Phantom
This one’s trickier. Right now it’s a weird, expensive oddball with a uni-blue armament and a niche cloak gimmick that doesn’t quite pay off. At minimum, it needs Dodge to reflect its theme. From there, I’d rework its dice to give it more universal utility — something like a red + black non-bomber battery, backed up by a more varied anti-squad pool instead of the old blue spam. The Phantom should feel unique and slippery, not like a clunky TIE Fighter reskin that costs twice as much.
Wrapping Up
Empire squadrons were always meant to be specialized. That idea still works — but only if the generics are priced right, the upgrades fit around them, and their commander doesn’t break the game in half.
With TIE Fighters actually pulling escort duty, Interceptors as fast strikers, Bombers as cheap payload carriers, and the Advanced as a meaty screen, the Empire finally has a generic lineup that works on its own terms. No need to hide behind Sloane, though she could still shine in her reworked form.
Next Up on Special Modifications: The Clones and Jedi that protect the glorious Republic.
