Special Modifications, Part 4: What Good are Snub-fighters Against That?

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?

What Good are Snub-fighters Against That?

Before we tear into Rebel generics, we need to hit pause. Squadrons don’t exist in a vacuum — they’re inseparable from a handful of critical upgrade cards and keywords that shaped the entire squadron game. I wasn't going to address this directly, but when writing the other entries, I realized that without addressing these tools first, any rework risks sounding half-baked, or worse, confusing.

This post is about establishing the baseline: the three most important upgrades, the most warping keywords, and a quick look at the economics of generics. Once that foundation is set, we’ll have the language we need to start cutting and tuning.

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The Big Three Upgrades

Yes, there are lots of upgrades that affect squadrons. But if you really boil it down, three cards tower above the rest:

Flight Controllers

• Currently: add 1 blue die to all friendly squadrons activated by this ship.

• Problem: rewards “ALL THE SQUADS AT ONCE” activations, where one carrier supercharges an entire wing, wipes out the opposition, and we're left wondering where the counterplay went.

• Fix: Cap at 3 squadrons per ship. This is consistent with modern design (see Sniper Ahsoka and other “max 3” caps). Now the card still rewards squadron commands, but encourages spreading activations across multiple ships instead of piling everything into one mega-activation.

Bomber Command Center

• Currently: aura reroll for bombers.

• Problem: a patch for single-die bombers being underwhelming. It works, but it’s clunky, repetitive, and warps design space.

• Fix: Total redesign. BCC becomes a Weapons Team/Offensive Retrofit double-slot Modification. Instead of rerolls, it adds 1 blue die to up to 3 bombers commanded by that ship. Basically Flight Controllers, but for bombing.

• Effect: No more reroll spam. Bombers get a direct firepower boost, but only when actively commanded. Few ships can take both FC and BCC; the Quasar-II (and Rebel Providence) can, but that’s fine — it’s a carrier by design. And since it can’t also pack Boosted Comms or Expanded Hangars, tradeoffs remain (well, the Rebel Providence could, but that ship has other issues).

Boosted Comms

• Currently: cheap, near-mandatory aura extender.

• Problem: lets carriers sit at the back, issuing commands from safety.

• Fix: Becomes more expensive and “Comms only.” Partially to make ship tags an integrated part of the game, but also to encourage ships to work alongside squadrons rather than away from them, as was the case in the early days. Some ships, such as the Quasar and Munificent, will still play at standoff range, and that’s fine as it's part of their carrier identity.

There are other cards that are important, of course, there are, but I just wanted to touch upon the three I feel are the most game-warping.

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Squadron Keywords

Keywords are the other half of the equation. Most are fine (Swarm, Escort, Counter). Others warp the game around them. Here are the ones we need to talk about:

AI

• Currently: “Add 1 die of a color you already have.”

• Problem: massively warps design space. A black-die droid bomber with AI? Instantly busted. Even the humble Vulture with AI is basically 1 blue + 2 black with Swarm out of the gate. Compare that to a TIE Fighter and… ouch.

• Fix: AI = Add 1 blue. Cleaner, safer, less abusive. I suppose AI was designed the way it is to differentiate it from other card effects, but it doesn't help the game. Make AI blue only, problem fixed.

• Example: Let's assume the Hyena is still a 1 die red bomber with AI: Battery 1. Not it chucks 1 red + 1 blue, instead of 2 reds. More consistent, lower roof, works with the revised BCC without breaking the game (said BCC would for example fit the Providence DN version, and be capped at 3 squads per activation).

Rogue

• Currently: full activation in Squadron Phase, but also commandable by ships.

• Problem: too efficient. They “rogue last, then command first” with no counterplay in between. It’s why Rogues are everywhere.

• Fix: Rogues cannot be activated by squadron commands (Han would still be an exception since his card text overrides the general rules). They still act independently in the Squadron Phase, but no more "double-dipping". This makes them good, but no longer no-brainer auto-includes, and might even affect the price of some generic rogues.

Intel / Grit

• Grit is currently too weak. Allowing one move while engaged is fine, but it rarely comes up.

• Fix: Stackable Grit, up to 3. Suddenly multiple sources matter, and Intel becomes worth fielding again, even in the guise of multiple generics (which obviously need some rework themselves). Squadron fights loosen up, but don’t revert to the “no-counterplay” of old Intel.

• Alternative (not preferred): Grit = “may move even while engaged.” But this is dangerously close to old Intel, especially for fast squads, and I’d avoid it.

Dodge

• Currently: useless against flak. Which makes squadrons like the Delta-7 eternally overpriced.

• Fix: Dodge works against flak too. Suddenly it’s a real keyword, and priced squadrons can justify having it. (No, Deltakin doesn’t get to keep Dodge under this fix. Sorry.)

We could also discuss stuff like Assault (let CRITS be spent), Cloak (what about Dodge added to squads with Cloak?), and that damn Strategic, but let's do that separately as they don't impace the overall squad game to the same extent.

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The Economics of Generics

A quick reminder of the numbers:

• 400-point game = 134 squadron points max.

• In practice, most fleets bring 60–80 points of true generics, sometimes up to 100. Rarely the full 134.

• “Generiques” (uniques without defense tokens) blur the line — stronger than generics, not ace-capped, and often crowd out the true baseline.

• The ace cap (4) was bolted on because aces were too cheap compared to generics. Ideally, everything should be costed properly so no cap is needed. In practice, the cap is probably here to stay — but we design toward the ideal of a cap-less game.

And here’s the key point: generics need to be slightly cheaper.

• Mass is their value. They only shine when you can bring enough of them.

• Aces are better in small numbers; generics are better in bulk. But only if bulk is affordable.

• GAR and CIS proved this: better generics → more mass → healthier squadron game.

• In the 2022 VASSAL Fantasy League (450-point fleets, 150 squad cap, cheaper generics), people actually brought lots of generics. And they were good. Not broken, not oppressive — just viable through numbers.

What does “slightly cheaper” mean? Think of a Rebel Y-wing dropping from 10 to 9 points. Not a huge change, but if every generic across the board receives that same nudge, suddenly there’s room for more mass — enough to feel impactful. It’s about making squadrons worth taking in numbers, instead of as filler behind aces.

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How Low Is Too Low?

One fair question: how cheap can squadrons go before things break?

Take the Z-95. It’s 7 points today, and it’s definitely not dominating. That tells us one of two things: either it needs to get better at the same price, or it can drop to 6 without causing issues. With only 3 hull and middling firepower, Z-95s live and die by mass. Even at 6, the sheer number of squad commands you’d need to keep them relevant acts as a built-in limiter.

What about TIE Fighters at 7 points? Same story. Fragile, dependent on commands, and only scary in a swarm. Cheap doesn’t automatically mean good — not when a single flak volley or squadron counterattack can wipe them out in chunks.

So while we need to be careful at the bottom end of the scale, there’s good reason to believe that 6–7 point generics wouldn’t break the game. If anything, they’d finally deliver on the fantasy of true swarms — overwhelming in numbers, but brittle and heavily reliant on carriers.

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Where This Leaves Us

With upgrades streamlined, keywords clarified, and the economics of generics rebalanced, we now have the foundation we need.

The principle is simple:

• Generics get slightly cheaper across the board.

• Aces may get nudged upward in some cases, but the ace-vs-generic gap widens even without this.

• Carriers still matter, but they no longer supercharge “all the squads at once,” and we encourage the "combat carriers" to head into the thick of the action.

• Keywords open design space instead of closing it.

Next Up: We’ll finally put this to work by rebuilding the Rebel lineup from the ground up — starting with the most iconic fighter of all: the X-wing.

Special Modifications, Part 2: Concentrate All Fire

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?

In Part 1, we looked at defense tokens — one of the most important and iconic mechanics in Armada, and the way the game’s entire combat system revolves around denying their effective use. ECM, Intel Officer, XI7s… all part of a long history of token suppression that has shaped Armada since Wave 1.

This time, we’ll continue down the same road: dice modification and defense. Specifically, why Armada’s “unlimited rerolls” are a mixed blessing, and why some defense tokens are vastly stronger (or weaker) than others.

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Unlimited Rerolls: A Blessing or a Curse?

The GOAT of card games

One of Armada’s design choices is that dice can be rerolled as many times as you want, as long as you have the effects to do it (as opposed to X-Wing, where a die can only ever be rerolled once).

On the surface, unlimited rerolls sound great. More consistency, more reliable damage, more control over dice. But in practice, they’re not exactly elegant — and sometimes they’re downright excessive. Dice modification is already the single most important part of Armada’s combat math. Layer unlimited rerolls on top of that, and it can start to feel like you’re just cycling the dice until you get what you want.

Anyone remember the old days of stacking Bomber Command Centers? Squadron rerolls upon rerolls upon rerolls. Theoretically balanced by opportunity cost, but in practice, it was just boring and oppressive. No one misses those times.

Personally, I think Armada would be healthier — and more interesting — if each die could only be rerolled once per side:

• The attacker gets one reroll in the “Resolve Attack Effects” step.

• The defender gets one reroll in the “Spend Defense Tokens” step.

That’s it. One and done.

This wouldn’t remove rerolls from the game — far from it. It would keep them impactful, but stop the abuse and over-layering that sometimes creep into Armada’s dice system. Now, there are many other dice modifications in Armada, and those would persist, so the change isn't as big as you might think. But there would be some knock-on effects that would have to be accounted for, cards that need rewording or redesign, that sort of thing. But overall, I think it would create a more elegant system with better design space.

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The Power (and Weakness) of Defense Tokens

Not all defense tokens are created equal. 

One is overpowered, one feels like filler, the rest sit somewhere in between. This isn’t a strict tier list — aside from Scatter, which sits on the throne uncontested — but rather a look at what each token actually brings to the table, and how they might (or dare I say should) have been designed differently. Please don't take these ramblings at face value: we're deep into "what if" territory here, and any changes to tokens would have to be thoroughly playtested!

Scatter – Canceling all damage is simply too much. It’s the reason Scatter aces have always been disproportionately hard to deal with. 

If Scatter instead canceled up to three dice or reduced total damage by three (a “Kit Fisto” style effect), it would still be incredibly potent but not 100% proof against unlucky spikes. It could even be combined with Brace or the reworked squadron Evade (see below) to provide additional options.

With all of this in place, you’d still have to fear Shara and Ciena, but at least there would be a crack in their "armor." Flotillas would become somewhat more susceptible to long-range fire (but not all that much) and could no longer laugh at massive close-range black dice volleys (a good thing IMO, we don't need flotillas blocking Demo anymore).

Brace – Honestly, Brace is fine. 

It’s powerful, consistent, and always relevant. Cutting damage in half is a cornerstone mechanic, and it feels right where it is, perfectly appropriate for both ships and squadrons.

Evade – On ships, Evade found its equilibrium after Armada 1.5. Keep as is.

But on squadrons? Evade makes no sense at all. A better design would be:

• Always cancel 1 die, regardless of range.

This would make squadron Evade actually relevant, instead of the limp afterthought it is today, without making it overpowered. It even combines with Brace — and the original Vult Skerris Scatter/Evade combo could have worked!

If you wanted to make squadron Evade even better:

• Either: Make them cancel 1 additional die if the attacker is a squadron (the dice pools are much larger). 

• Or: Let squadron Evade affect an extra die (vs any attack) only if you discard the token (mirroring the vs larger ships effect of ship Evade). I think I like this one the best.

Redirect – Redirect is useful, preventing the enemy from drilling through shields to get at your hull, but it is clearly weaker than Brace. 

If Redirect had a weakened Expert Shield Techs effect baked in — move the damage or reduce it by 1 to a minimum of 1 — it would feel like a real choice without completely invalidating chip damage. A little tweak that would have done a lot to bring Redirect into parity.

Actually, if the old Empire and Rebel ships were reworked to have the same token suites as their CW equivalents (Salvo instead of redundant Redirects), you COULD do the full EST as the alternate effect. It would make Obi-Wan suck a lot less — and Luminara would still be a potential problem. Probably too strong. I prefer the first option. Maybe with 3-point EST?

Salvo – I have a love-hate relationship with Salvo. 

It brought fresh new dynamics into the attack/defense dynamic (by making defense attack), but also created some situations where small and/or weakened ships WILL NOT ATTACK because attacking is worse than not attacking. That's... not ideal. Yet Salvo (and Ignition) does bring something to the game, so it's not all bad!

But let's put the "is Salvo good for the game" question aside and just accept that it's a thing.

Salvo gave Clone Wars-era ships teeth, but it also left Civil War-era ships looking dated and lame without it. If Salvo had been part of Armada from the start, the entire defensive landscape would have been designed differently. Dropping it in midstream created an imparity that needs to be addressed.

So my solution for Salvo is not to change the token effect but to rework the old ships, swapping a Rediect for a Salvo where appropriate. And add ship "keywords" while you're at it. You hear that, ARC?

Contain – The odd one out. It technically works, and it can be useful, but it’s not up there with the rest of them. It’s always the one you swap out when upgrades let you. Damage Control Officer got dropped to a mere 3 points, but it still struggles to justify an officer slot.

Back in the Fantasy League of 2022, we tried beefing it up by making it work like EST Redirect — reduce incoming damage by 1. That turned out to be too strong in conjunction with other defense tokens and upgrades. 

A better idea might be this:

• Alternate use: reroll a die with a crit icon.
  

This way, Contain has some utility even before shields are breached, while still keeping its original purpose intact. It’s not flashy, but at least it would feel worth spending. And if combined with the "one reroll" rule, it can't be layered with Evade, PDIC, etc.

If you wanted to beef it up some more, consider an Evade-style discard effect:

• If defending against a smaller ship, discard to cancel that die.

It's an interesting concept. Even though I'm not a big fan of making big ships better at fortressing, I think a one-use Brunson could be agreeable.  

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The ARC perspective

All of this is mere speculation and theorycrafting, of course. But if there was ONE thing I would love to see make it into the game, it's a change to squadron Evades. Sure, Scatter is OP, but it's well ingrained in the game by now, so fine, leave it.

But squadron Evade? It really could use a bump, and I think my "always cancel a die" makes perfect sense. And it would be the icing on the cake if you could discard the effect and add an additional die.

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Squadrons and the Token Divide

Ace squadrons get defense tokens. Generics (and non-ace uniques) don’t. That gap is HUGE, and it has defined Armada’s squadron game since day one.

Now, taking defense tokens away from aces isn’t really an option. If Tycho, Ciena, or Maarek lost their Scatters and Brace, they’d leave the table far too quickly and stop being worth their points. 

So the obvious solution seems to be the reverse: give all squadrons defense tokens.

But that way lies madness.

If every generic squadron suddenly had tokens, the entire ship–squadron interaction would break. Ships would have a much harder time thinning the squadron herd, bombing runs would be far deadlier, and every piece of anti-squad tech in the game would need a redesign. Not only that, but you’d have to give each generic its own individual card and track which tokens belong to which model. Messy, slow, and very un-Armada.

And the knock-on effects would be even worse: the squadron command system and ship command values are all balanced around the idea that you’re fielding a mass of generics. If those generics suddenly became fewer but a lot tougher, the whole subsystem would collapse. Squadron commands would be much less relevant, and the careful balance between ships and squadrons would unravel.

So no, you can’t just slap tokens on everything. The split has to remain — unless you’re willing to completely redesign Armada from the ground up.

Which leaves us with one real path forward: we need to take a long, hard look at the base generics themselves. Make them useful. Make them correctly costed. Ensure that when taken in quantity, they offer real value compared to aces, instead of being disposable filler.

The Clone Wars factions actually succeed here — to some extent. Most of their generics are more competitive and better balanced than those of the Civil War era. That’s the model to learn from.

And that’s where we’ll head in Part 3.

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Wrap-Up

Unlimited rerolls and uneven defense tokens are two sides of the same design coin. They both show how Armada’s core rules are solid, but sometimes aren't finely tuned enough, tilting too far toward “more” instead of “enough.” Rerolls became stackable to the point of excess. Some defense tokens became indispensable while others became jokes.

Would changing these mechanics fix the game? Not without a massive redesign. But thinking about how they could have worked differently gives us insight into why Armada feels the way it does — and how small design choices ripple outward for years.

That’s what Special Modifications is all about: pulling at the strings, seeing where they lead, and imagining how the game might have played if those strings had been tied differently.

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Up Next

In Part 3, we’ll stay with squadrons and ask a simple but important question: what should the “base” generics of each faction have looked like? Their costs, their stats, and their lack of tokens set the stage for everything that followed — and maybe not always in the best way.

Stay tuned.

Special Modifications, Part 1: Defense Tokens Under Siege

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?

And where better to start than with the most important mechanic in the whole game: defense tokens.

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Defense Tokens Under Siege from Day One

Defense tokens are one of THE defining characteristics of Armada. They’re what let a Star Destroyer soak up punishment, and what give a CR90 at least a chance of dodging a heavy broadside. And it accomplishes this WITHOUT making the CR90 infinitely evasive or the ISD oppressively tanky.

In Armada, defense tokens are a finite resource. You only get so many braces, so many redirects, so many evades. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. If you don't overspend, they can last the entire game, but if they get pressured, you'll be forced to discard and will eventually be out of tokens. And as well all know, a ship with no defense tokens is in big trouble.

Because of this defense mechanic, part of Armada’s combat isn’t about damage output. It’s about denying your opponent the ability to spend defense tokens or mitigate their effects.

This sounds great on paper: Limited defense that can be overstrained by concentrated attacks. A damage mechanic that doesn't revolve purely around damage, but also around stopping your opponent from stopping part (or all) of that damage.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, in actual play, problems show up immediately, including but not limited to:

• A single accuracy locks your brace.

• XI7 Turbolasers make your redirects half-useless.

• Intel Officer forces you to discard rather than just exhaust a token.

So already in Wave 1, we had fleets firing IO + XI7 at ships with ECM, or a Demolisher triple-tap with IO, skipping accuracies altogether and relying on raw damage. Defense tokens, already a limited resource, were in deep trouble because they either could not be spent at all, had minimal effect, or had to be discarded immediately.

So, something DID go wrong. Unless you think that this was part of the design plan all along. I'm pretty sure the concept of defense token mitigation was discussed, and some cards created to address (and counter) this, but I don't think the SCOPE of anti-token tech was fully realized until it was a bit late to change the fundamentals.

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Exhibit A: Electronic Countermeasures

Enter Electronic Countermeasures (ECM).

This is the defining defensive card of Star Wars: Armada. Why? Because it restores the ability to use a limited resource.

For years, every ship that could take ECM — especially if it had a brace — did. Period. The card was so central that it basically erased the rest of the defensive retrofit slot from consideration. Yes, I'm exaggerating for effect, but not by much.

• ECM had a soft-counter in Intel Officer since wave 1.

• The Empire got Minister Tua specifically to give their vulnerable ships ECM access.

• In Armada 1.5, it finally got nerfed with a refresh cost.

• Don't forget how insanely popular Agate was (and still is) when she was released. An extra Brace on any ship, AND a built-in ECM-ish effect? Yes, please!

Exhibit B: Denial is the Name of the Game

The theme — you don't get to use your tokens — only grew as the game expanded:

• Sloane could strip tokens directly.

• Avenger punished exhausted tokens.

• Overload Pulse lured new players before they realized the timing killed it.

• Thermal Shields arrived later as a cheap alternative to ECM, IO-proof but problematic in other ways.

• Boarding Troopers are everywhere today for the same reason: because denying tokens wins games.

To me, the implications of ECM are clear: denying the defender the ability to use a limited resource (defense tokens) was too strong right out of the gate, and has continued to be so until this very day. Which is a shame, since the idea of defense token mitigation being a viable strategy is a good one. 

And this skew has knock-on effects:

• Ships that don't have a defensive slot are disproportionately punished, as they don't even have to means to try and avoid token mitigation.

• Small ships are disproportionately punished, since they rely heavily on their few tokens to survive. They also frequently don't have defensive slots, and even if they do, they either don't have the tokens to justify ECM or ECM is too expensive for the chassis.

• Squadrons chipping at ships, which SHOULD be a key way of getting around defense tokens, become less desirable when there is so much tech to get around defense tokens. And 1.5 squadrons (bc of the intel nerf + PDIC) are much less able to get through to ships anyway, so this threat is much reduced.

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Our Fantasy League Fix

Back in the VASSAL Fantasy League of 2022, we tried an experiment:

Step 4 of the attack sequence:
The defender may spend 1 readied defense token that has been targeted by an [ACC] icon. If it does, discard that token instead of exhausting it.

Basically, we gave every ship a mini-Agate effect.

I can already hear the protests: “Do you want to make ships even more tanky??”

Well, yes — but only to a point.

• This does make ships tankier, but only once per attack and once per defense token.

• It doesn’t make ECM/Thermals ships dramatically stronger; they’d still want those upgrades, as the benefit is still stronger.

• The real winners are small ships and anything without defensive retrofit slots. Your Raider gets to brace once against a big hit. It still might explode, but at least it gets a fighting chance.

The limits kept it reasonable:

• Only once per attack.

• Only green tokens.

• Tokens are discarded after use.

• Accuracy is still powerful; tokens are still finite.

So no, it didn't break the game. But it shifts the emphasis — away from “sorry, your tokens don’t matter” toward “you’ll get one shot at survival.”

Such a change would, of course, require a thorough rebalancing and possible redesign of any card or effect that spends or exhausts a defense token. Sloane could not exist in her current form. Boarding Troopers are definitely not a 3-point card. Maybe Overload Pulse finally IS the GOAT?

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Why Bother?

Because this is what Special Modifications is all about: looking at what might have been, pulling and prodding the rules, exploring alternate concepts.

Would I expect ARC to implement something like this? 

No — it’s far too drastic a change, with too many knock-on effects, for a living game!

But it is, I think, a superior design in that:

• It makes defense tokens feel relevant for all ships, not just the ECM-capable.

• It opens up new design space for upgrades and objectives.

• And most importantly, it improves the experience of playing Armada.

We’re all grognards now, used to token denial. But imagine being a new player, constantly told that your defenses are irrelevant. That’s true NPE right out of the box.

Could something like this ever come back? Not officially, but perhaps in the future, another Fantasy League might dust off this idea and see what happens. After all, the whole point of “special modifications” is to test the system and learn from it.

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Up Next

Defense tokens aren’t the only shaky pillar holding Armada together. In the next installment, we'll continue discussing defense tokens, and the relative weakness of some of them, and the rather OP nature of others. If we have time, we can have a look at defense-adjacent stuff like stacked rerolls. Stay tuned.