New Ships! Part 2

New Ships and Cards: The Empire edition

And so we arrive at the Imperials new Ship. The Onager, and the commander that follows with it, General Romodi.

I only smile when I shoot something behind something

The Onager class Star destroyer

Honestly I am not sure if I should call this ship good looking or ugly, but it certainly looks like no other Imperial ship before it. And I like how it looks...

Its a mix between an ugly duckling and something that wants to
murder ships in another galaxy far far away from where this is

The Onager is also a ship class completely unknown to me. And with the special ability of performing an ignition attack, apparently from its narrower potion of its front arc instead of a normal attack that reaches beyond long range. This sounds annoying for the opposing player and probably fun for the player flying this ship. How the ignition attack works in detail and if the range is unlimited is left for future reveals. My wild guess is that when an ignition attack is performed, you forefeit your normal attacks. Suddenly Blockade Run became more interesting if the range is unlimited. 

By judging from the previev pictures, this is a more specialized front arc ship that dont want to get other ships close to its sidearcs. Front arc with 5 shields seem like a reasonable amount for taking some hits but a glance at the sidearcs will make you want to place this ship far away from the action. Having just as many shields as a MC80 Liberty is a magnet for squadrons with bombers and black dice ships that wants to ruin the Onagers day. It has 10 hull so it is almost on par with the ISD and this will certainly help the ship stay alive.

Upgrade cards and defense tokens

The upgrade cards that comes with this ship is really interesting. Zooming in close on the preview picture reveals that 2 new formation titles that are unique comes in the pack. One appears to deal with different slots for upgrades and the other does something with the yaw value of the ship when a navigate command is excecuted. Also what is almost certain ist that the ship will have a Weapons Team slot, unless FFG puts a fix-card for another ship in this pack but I doubt that.

Salvo tokens also comes with this ship. Probably 2 for the ship and the 3rd is for Old man Palps.

Commander Beck adds interesting mechanics to the not-so-ofter-if-ever-used raid tokens. By spending her ability, two different token effects can be resolved, and only for 3 points. The downside is that the ship gets a matching raid token for each token effect resolved. This is a very interesting take on how Raid works. I can only imagine she stresses her crew so much they break down and needs to take a rest, as the next turn a dial needs to be discarded to clear the Raid tokens. This can in an emergency on turn 6 make a Nav and Engineer token to make a flagship get away and survive, but it is situational. 

General Romodi 

This Commander is very interesting. But who is he? A quick google on him returns he teamed up with Screed and hunted some Mandalorians and some space pirates to the Outer Fringes and upon returning to the Imperial Core Worlds he and Screed where regarded as heroes.

His main thing is that he wants ships to be obstructed. His card reads from the preview:

While a friendly ship is attacking a ship, if the attack is obctructed by a ship or an obstacle, the attacker does not remove a die (even if the attack is also obstructed by a card effect) and may add 1 red die to the attack pool.

I cry because I cost 26pts and do nothing against Romodi.

 So, besides being an awesome Commander for 20 pts, what does it mean.

• General Cracken got a hard counter. His ability is completely useless against this commander. An already not that frequently fielded admiral gets probably less fielded.
• Jainas Light will not benefint from hiding in an obstacle.

• Obstructing you own shots is suddenly something that is good for your attacks. Having a bunch of Arquitens obstructing eachother and rolling possibly 6 red dice out the side arc (3 from the arc, 1 from Slaved turrets or Enhanced Armamanets, 1 from a Concentrate Fire dial, and 1 from Romodi) can potentially be very nasty.

A very thematically interesting Commander. This dude gives no fucks that you are trying to take cover behind some rocks. From this man there is no hiding...