Armada: Wave 5 revealed today!

Wave 5 brings all the boys to the yard.

That's right baby, Phoenix One is coming to Armada.  That means that they're going back and taking the Rebel ships and putting it in Armada.  This also means that big bad Grand Admiral Thrawn will most likely also come to Armada!  Great day for all Armada fans out there for sure.

You can check out the official announcement here.  We will most likely see these by the end of the year, hopefully around the November and December timeframe.  Hmm.. where to actually start with this review?  I'm not entirely sure.  There's a bunch of squadrons that have been spoiled here, with the likes of the E-Wing, X-95 Headhunter, Hera Syndulla and her Ghost, as well as some new key words like Snipe and Strategic.

Imperial Squadrons also get some fancy new stuff like the Phantom, the TIE Defender, the Lambda shuttle, and the YT-49 Decimator.  These also come with some cool new keywords like Relay, allowing the Lambda to essentially relay squadron commands outside a ship's command range, and Cloak because well, there's the Phantom.  We can't really see any of the stats here, but if you zoom in and look closely, you can see some expected designs:  The Ghost and Decimator have a good amount of health and put out a solid amount of firepower as well.  I can't wait to see what some of these keywords do once more of the cards and abilities are spoiled.  Right now the tease article is just too strong for us to get a true depiction how these squadrons will preform and how they will price compared to the seemingly endless amounts of squadron options in the game.

When it comes to the ships, I think everyone will be really excited for what's to come for both Rebels and Imperials.  For Imperials, we see the Arquitens-class light cruiser that has 3 reds on the side and 4 defense tokens on a small base.  Yes, you're reading that correctly:  An Imperial CL with long-range firepower which seems to beg for TRCs as the auto-include.  Another card that been spoiled is Moff Jerjerrod.  A really weird name, but he has arguably one of the most interesting rules for an Imperial commander.  He allows friendly ships to suffer 1 damage to change the first yaw value of its current speed to 2.  That means VSDs might make it into the meta again because of their ability to rapidly turn with almost Rebel-level maneuverability.  Personally, I think this is one of those gimmick commanders that will find his way into casual-play as there are much more solid options in the lineup.

Fortunately, I don't feel the same way about him as I do my man Commander Jun Sato.  Sato has one of the most ridiculous abilities I've seen on a commander in a long time.  This is what the card says since there's no zoom in on the card just yet:

While a friendly ship is attacking a ship at distance 1 of at least 1 friendly squadron, the attacker may replace up to 2 dice in its attack pool with an equal number of dice of any color.

Let me tell you why this is good, compared to say, Darth Vader.  Not only is cheaper, but..

• This trigger does not sacrifice anything whereas with Vader, you must spend a defense token.  Sato just needs a squadron nearby.
• Sato can not only influence bad rolls (blanks), but he can replace them with any color, therefore allowing you to fish for accuracies with blue, or look for more damage and effects with blacks, or any combination thereof.
• This means that he can bypass range restrictions e.g. Turning blank reds into black dice that can be rolled while shooting from long range.
• This also means he can satisfy crit effects like APT from long-range.
• Vader, does not add more damage whereas Sato can.  Replacing blank reds with possible hit/crits blacks is a huge spike in damage, especially when effects also trigger.
• Sato, universally increases the damage possibility of virtually all Rebel ships without firing restrictions (like Ackbar).

The only real downside to this is that it kinda forces you to take squadrons.  If you don't, or if all of yours get killed, Sato's card text might as well be blank.  Honestly though, who doesn't take at least some squadrons these days?  Do yourself a favor and play a little more defensively with them.

On top of this, the Phoenix One will also have the ability to take a new Fleet Command upgrade.  There are three unique ones right now outside of the current title, but I can't really make out what they say.  It looks like: Shields something, All Fighters something, and Entrapment something.  This most likely means that the Phoenix One will be a pure command ship that can throw out battle-altering effects similar to Ackbar's Home One.  I am ALL about that kind of play.

What do you guys think?  What are you most excited with the Wave 5 announcement?