They're running out of ships for the Resistance and FO factions and I'd wager not much more will be made for that era, lore-wise.
So it wouldn't surprise me, if AMG eventually released the unmodified Whisper.
Well; there's been a while of a delay, but we've finally got more reveals from this set of ships; three more unique Y-wing pilots. And I have to say... I wish these pilots were Scum, because their effects feel much more at home there. The Resistance has always felt like a halfway house of pilot effects from all the Light side factions + Scum, unlike the First Order with their somewhat established identity... let's just show what I'm talking about.
Corus just straight up feels like a Scum pilot ability. he ability to just steal tokens from any ship; allied or enemy, as long as they are within range and firing arc? He just wants to get up close and personal and yoink green tokens left at the end of the turn. Or get Swarm Tactics'ed so he can steal sooner.
C'ai; on the other hand, has an ability that feels like it would be right at home in the Rebel range. Not much we can really say about it; fly through allies, get extra evade actions. Not bad for the sluggish Y-wing platform.
Then we have Wilsa. This ability feels more like something we'd find on a First Order or Empire ship. Possibly Scum. The ability to just turn off charges after dealing critical damage is incredibly potent coming in there on an i5 pilot. If she rolls hot with a double-tap build, she could trigger twice, though the chances of that are slim.
Given that Corus is flying a dangerous turret/munitions ship, stealing a focus for double mods could be terrifying. And it's not just action economy, it's stealing, meaning now that green won't help her foe on defense or offense. I agree that swarm tactics is a great idea -- even if she bumps and doesn't fire, robbing the enemy of their reinforce/focus/evade/calc token could be brutal to them. This is totally a scum ability, their faction was robbed. :D
C'ai is alright. An evade token isn't thrilling on a 1-agility boat but it's not exactly hard to trigger.
Wilsa presents a very interesting choice... some ships would rather strain themselves than lose a charge, while others would willingly give up every charge they have to avoid a strain. That said, having to deal a faceup damage card is tough, and many charges will have been long spent beforehand. Maybe if she has marksmanship and plasma/proton torps, and/or she's fighting a TIE Bomber or other shieldless victim, but it's not straight-forward.
IMO the big value of Wilsa is simply the consistent strain punishment... many ships don't have charges on upgrades to spend in the first place, so they just have to take the strain. She follows every crit-card-dealing attack with a strain to make the next ally's shot punch through, maybe even finish the target.
Very true; Wilsa has one of the more interesting abilities because of that choice, and I really did neglect to think about the power of that in my comments. There's a lot of interesting interactions and meaningful decisions to make when Wilsa's ability triggers against any ship with heavy tokens.
I still think Wilsa and Corus have abilities that feel more at home in the Scum range. Partly it's my distaste for the Resistance lacking a gimmick or "thematic identity" in their range, but these abilities feel much more in-line with the interactions we see in the Scum range.
Scum started out with a great identity of its own, and then the other factions got jealous. :D
New toys? New toys. Granted, only one of them for me; but point stands.
Honestly; there isn't much to say about any of these at this point. The ship & crew are mechanically, quite simple.
Dread has probably the most interesting reload trick we've seen so far; since depleting everything in his bullseye when he reloads is a tasty little bonus for refreshing his heavy power. Especially with this new Ordinance Tech gunner. Reload into white Target Lock is a very crunchy combination.
The third upgrade here is the new toy for us all... and... uhh... we don't actually know what it does yet. It's a launched mine of some kind? Possibly along the lines of connor nets, I guess. I don't know, it's really hard to evaluate before we know what the missiles do.
Finally; I feel like I need to address the elephant in the room - the question marks hanging over the Star Wars games right now. To my understanding; AMG have let go of most of the Star Wars development team - last week there was six people left that had continuity of work from FFG to AMG; and I don't know if those numbers have changed since. Armada has already been put into maintenance mode (no new content in development at the present time), and there is confirmation from former developers that there is one more wave of content for both X-Wing and Legion that was developed during Fantasy Flight's control of the games... and beyond that, things are very much up in the air. I'm not entirely sure what is going on there; but between AMG's rather terrible website design (still almost purely focused on Marvel Crisis Protocol despite having the Star Wars licence most of the year) and the new announcements coming out on Facebook and Twitter - aka the only Star Wars news lines we have from them - have a picture looking murkier than a fluff piece about the Yuuzhan Vong.
Now, I'm not being a defeatist; nor an alarmist. The content that the former developers mentioned included "ships they have been trying to get into the system from the start of 2.0"; which is a very good thing. We know the Razor Crest is also confirmed from the old livestreams, and with a new "Ministravaganza" in early September; we can expect at least some kind of annoucement around then. Still... I felt that the wiki should at least be aware of the current news floating around, especially when this post didn't really give me much to discuss; these cards aren't exactly exciting or groundbreaking.
Yeah I'm pretty much on the exact page as you on AMG at this point. I've, for a while, considered the fact they STILL haven't done anything about their website pretty worrying. they've fire the developers and announced armada's stagnation (no no the sky is not falling. Trust us... rolling my eyes). Then there' the point they refuse to acknowledge the error with the whisper bases and give any sort of assurance they'll have a solution for it. I'm a diehard pessimist and things aren't looking good.
Honestly; the worst part is games like Legion, Armada and X-Wing are some of the few actual competitors to the Games Workshop systems that exist. Armada and X-Wing are, admittedly, closer to historical wargames of naval and air battles of the world wars and earlier; but with a much more accessible and modern view point than... historical battles. Meanwhile Legion is here as one of the few games connected to an established sci-fi IP that could be considered in the same league as things like Warhammer 40k; to the point where some of the larger 40k meta sites such as Goonhammer have run articles discussing it. The Star Wars licence was likely making profit, especially Legion and X-wing since Armada was stuck with extremely long periods of no releases; and I don't believe sales were super high because of that.
Even today; the Legion rules reference update sheet for the upcoming wave (the wave in question was delayed without public announcement) was incorrect, and one of the former developers corrected it on twitter. FORMER EMPLOYEES taking the time to correct the information. That doesn't exactly bode well.
They also aren't communicating about things with the player base. They don't publically announce delays or product cancellations; whereas most other game development companies do so when they can provide timelines or answers. The reveal cycles for the Star Wars games under AMG have also been terrible - after a wave releases, we have to wait months before there's any remote evidence of new stuff coming out, and it's still from the FFG days. There's less transparency than even Games Workshop can claim to have; and GW are rather notorious for hiding the truth and not acknowledging mistakes for as long as possible.
Do I blame the global pandemic? To some degree, yes. Do I blame Asmodee? Immensely. Do I blame AMG? Ehhhh.... honestly; at this point I want the games continued by a company outside the Asmodee group.
OK; I'm not going to touch the revealed sculpt for the Razor Crest; we'll save that for a Ministravaganza post. That will be when we find out if/when there is more X-wing content coming out after this next wave, or if it's just going to be Organized Play support while they wait to hire more developers. Either way; we've got some new things to talk about; and once again only one of the three that I personally am invested in. Anywho, enough talk. Have at them!
Zorii comes out swinging with a modified version of Lieutenant Sai's effect - as long as she has the action on her action bar; if an ally flying at range 1 does it, she can do it too, but she performs it as red. Could be nice if she's got a blue maneuver dialled in; so she can perform a target lock alongside a lower initiative ally, then clear the stress and Focus for the double-mod. There's a nice bit of play with this, as far as I can tell.
Aftab Akbar, on the other hand, feels like a decent pilot for this ship. After all; it's a Y-Wing with a lot of red on the action bar, and a fair bit of red on the dial. As long as he only has one stress on him after performing a red move or red action, he can cleanse it by swapping it for a Strain. "Oh no, I'm rolling no defense dice!" Except you were only rolling one anyway, so... it's an option at least.
And finally; the gift Scum has been waiting for... Babu Frik. The cupholder-sized Illicit option that holds a comparison to Contraband Cybernetics in potential use, at least as far as the stress plays you can make. Get an unwanted red or orange token? Give it to Babu. He holds it for up to two turns, then you get hit with it. I can think of a lot of ways this could be used. Think you can use the incoming tractor token in a couple of turns? Set it aside; then enjoy your free systems phase boost or barrel roll later on. Want to instantly fire your reloaded munitions? Give Babu the Disarm; enjoy having two turns to spend your charges, then take a double-disarm turn when he hands it back for a second reload. It lets you control and telegraph your incoming debuffs, and that in itself is a massive boon. My best friend, who mainly plays Scum and Seperatists, viewed it as being an alternate Contraband Cybernetics; but after having a day or two to actually digest the card, I'm seeing the power that Babu Frik offers a lot of lists, especially Scum.
In regards to Babu Frik and Tractor tokens, I can see a lot of questions from players coming up: who actually assigns the token to the ship? The owner or the enemy? Why does it matter? If it's the enemy, you may rotate your ship 90 degrees for a stress.
What do you think?