Wave 8: Executor Arrives

“If you will not be turned, you will be destroyed.”

   –Emperor Palpatine, Star Wars: Return of the Jedi

"Something huge is coming to Star Wars™: Armada. Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce the Super Star Destroyer Expansion Pack!

This expansion pack arrives to swell the forces of the Galactic Empire with the first ship of an entirely new class—huge ships. The pre-painted, beautifully sculpted Super Star Destroyer miniature within this expansion is the largest miniature yet created by Fantasy Flight Games, measuring over 24 inches from tip to tip.

Of course, such a huge miniature serves as a stunning reminder of Imperial might on the battlefield—and it’s also a fully functional warship that you can add to your Imperial fleets. With four unique ship sheets, an assortment of tokens, and twenty-four upgrade cards, including iconic commanders like Admiral Piett and Emperor Palpatine, any rival fleet will tremble to face the might of your onslaught."

The Executor SSD was FINALLY announced at Gencon 2018, which was promptly shared on the forum, and an article was released the day after! The article is full of the usual errors, inconsistencies and weirdness, such as toting that the SSD sports six SHIP TOKENS, when it's clear they mean DEFENSE tokens. Monkeys and typewriters and all that.

Some of us have been waiting for this for a LONG time. Others, the oh so faithless, never expected this day to come at all. Well, what can I say? I was right, and you were wrong. I told you so. And so forth.

It's a big ship, both in size and in upgrade content: There is the actual model of course, which really is huge, two large bases and two double sided ship tokens to go with the 4 ship cards included. There is also 24 upgrades in the pack, plus the usual assortment of dials and tokens (including a SCATTER token) and whatnot. 

As a Huge ship (it's a new size, separate from Small, Medium, and Large), the SSD comes on TWO large bases. The cardboard ship tokens fill both bases, plus a space between then. The actual model is much bigger than that, as shown in the image below. Even on Armada's sliding scale it's going to look... HUGE!

These puny Destroyers do not concern me.

If you try it out, this baby won't fit into the deployment zone without going radically sideways. Since that would be a 100% crippling and lame restriction, my guess is the SSD gets a special deployment rule. The simplest would be to just require it to touch the edge, but I guess we won't know for sure for a while.

Since the SSD is Huge, not Large or Medium or Small, don't expect to be running stuff like Pryce or Strat Adviser on it. Complain/fantasize all you want, but if you search your feelings, you know this to be true.

The SSD also has many other special rules (there may be more, unspoiled):

The SSD can pass like a SAdv each round. 

It can shoot THREE times (instead of the usual TWO).

It moves from the REAR base (supposedly said in the FFG presentation, see form thread above). This makes a LOT of sense, as otherwise the ass would swing so insanely wide.

When it resolves a command dial, it resolves it as a dial+token.

It has SIX arcs, with two new aux right/left (the rear ones) arcs. These arcs have separate batteries and shields. And no, they are NOT side arcs, but aux arcs. So Enhanced Armament and that Ion thing only Aresius uses will only work on the regular side arcs, not the aux arcs.

It has SIX defense tokens too. Two each of Brace, Redir and Contain. Not a special rule as such, but special enough to warrant mention. There is no Defensive Retro, but it CAN take Tua in one of THREE officer slots. Wow. Tua + AP or EWS, Brunson and DCO anyone? Goes well with 22(!) hull and 20 shields total.

It's speed 2, but can't turn without a Nav command. And of course Moff Jerry will make it turn on a dime.

Command 4 is just massive. Thrawn will be really useful, same with the new Admiral Piett. Liaisons with or without Tarkin. Skilled First Officer. Even Support Officer (but a huge "maybe" there).

Squadron 5 is huge, with the option of squad 6. Which will actually always be 6/7 because of the SSD dial+token rule. Sloane alpha with SEVEN squads anyone!?

Engineering 4 is good, but not exceptional.

There are 4 ship cards, two of which can be used in normal 400 pt games (1 has been revealed). The other two are presumably for "epic" place, worth points values greater than 381, so that you can't legally field them. How many points I don't know, but I think I see 5 red/5 blue on the front arc of the ship token and maybe 4 red/3 blue/1 black on the side there.That's just massive. I assume other values like hull, shields, etc. will also be increased. Are we looking at 500 points or more?

The upgrade card lineup is huge, 24 cards, but many of them are not new. The only new ones seem to be commanders (2), officers (6), and titles (4). Of these, only Palpatine (commander) has been fully revealed. Much squinting has also revealed (most) of the text of Piett (commander), but we'll look at that in another article. The rest of the cards you can make out the title of or guess based on the image.

That SCATTER token... it's for me dumb-ass!

Commanders:

• Emperor Palpatine
• Admiral Piett

Officers:

• Admiral Someone (I think it's Piett in the pic, but can't tell for sure)
• Commander Someone (referencing my SWCCG cards I think it might be Brandei or Gherant)
• Darth Vader (says Darth and has him choking someone, so has to be the 4th Vader!)
• Director Krennic (director and White uniform, has to be)
• Emperor Palpatine (says Emperor, so has to be)
• Lira Wessex (says Lira, so has to be)

Misc:

• Boarding Engineers (meh)
• Flight Controllers (so you can by SSD instead of VSD lol!)
• HIE (good)
• Point-Defense Reroute (oh great!)
• Quad Turbos (so so)
• RLB (ok)
• Vet Gunners (sure)
• XI7 (a little too late lol)

Fleet Commands:

• All 4 (ok, I guess)

Titles:

• Ann-something (probably Annihilator)
• E-something (possibly Eclipse)
• Executor (a given really, plus I think it's the rightmost of the 4 in the pic)
• R-something (possibly Ravager)

Thanks to Ironlord for help with those titles. 

What not to like (unless your a pure Rebel player that is) about the Executor? I can't for the life of me find any reason to hate on it. This is 100% pure joy.

And the bad news? This baby isn't being unleashed upon the galaxy before Q1 2019. And knowing FFG that's just an estimate. I just hope there isn't a long delay this time, because it's been a while since wave 7 hit the shelves, and this rate of expansions is just horrendously slow.