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:
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Where each card stands now — common, niche, or forgotten.
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Why it’s in that spot — meta shifts, points changes, design limitations, or just plain competition.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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