Star Wars: Armada

Star Wars: Armada is the new fleet scale strategy game developed by Fantasy Flight Games with a similar rules system to X-Wing but on an entirely separate scale which prevents any form of crossover.

Where X-Wing focuses on dogfighting between individual starfighters, Armada is more about larger scale battles between capital ships and squadrons of fighters.

Compared to other tabletop strategy games, Armada has a relatively low entry cost and upkeep requirement. While players can go "BIG" with the hobby, there is very little need to do so, and games can be played between only one or two capital ships and a few squadrons of fighters, all of which come pre-painted with only minor assembly required. Not only that but the range of models is not exactly staggering; so even for those collectors who need to buy everything in the range, will have everything they need relatively quickly.

Gameplay

At a glance, anyone who has played Star Wars: Empires at War on the PC will immediately feel familiar with the gameplay. Your fleet is built up of a mix of capital ships and squadrons of fighters to an agreed value of points. Upgrade cards are available for you to customise your capital ships, and variant squadrons are available to allow your to field unique fighter squadrons.

Your fleet requires at least one Capital Ship, nominated as your flagship and must be equipped with a "Commander" upgrade character (separate upgrade type from "Officer") and you cannot spend more than a third of your points cost on squadrons. This means you cannot re-enact a battle where nothing but starfighters take on star destroyers, which might disappoint someone trying to forge a narrative. But from a mechanical perspective it makes sense since starfighter do not have the same range of actions as capital ships and can only move OR shoot unless specifically commanded otherwise by a capital ship, so it would be a really one-sided game.

Rules Summary

The player with the lower points value is always considered to be taking the initiative, anyone who has played tabletop wargames probably knows that getting exact points balance between players is uncommon unless you have a large selection of low value units/upgrades to make up the difference. So the player taking the initiative gets to choose who goes first. First player gets to move first on all the turns and phases, which is a pretty big advantage, except he has to choose from the second player's objectives, which always favor the second player. So either fill up to the point max and try to fight your way out of bad objectives, or build a smaller, more specialized fleet, and hope you can go second.

The game then goes through a series of phases where both players take turns making actions before moving to the next phase, starting with the first player. But if either player runs out of things to do, the other player just then completes all of his moves.

• Command Phase - both players issue orders to their capital ships in secret, which when turned over an be activated immediately or saved as a token until a later turn. Though a ship cannot save an order that they already have waiting, and cannot accumulate more unused order tokens than its command value. But you can use a token even when it is the same order that you've just performed (essentially performing it twice), giving you more bonuses.
  • Navigate - You ship gets to turn more sharply when it comes to make its move and can also adjust its speed. If you saved this order til later you only adjust your speed. This becomes a somewhat essential order because your capital ships have to move at whatever their speed is set at unless you can adjust it.
  • Squadron - You can activate some nearby starfighter squadrons and immediately get them to move and attack, in contravention of the normal rules for starfighters, making this one of your most effective orders to use especially if your starship has a good squadron control value. If you saved this order for later you only activate a single squadron.
  • Repair - You ship gets to redistribute its shields around itself, or recover shields. If your ship has a high engineering value you can also repair hull damage. If you save the order token you give yourself more engineering points and can therefore fix more in a given turn, or fix yourself while your ship does something else.
  • Concentrate Fire - You get to add dice to one of your attacks, making you more deadly. If you saved the token you can then reroll an attack dice instead.
• Ship Phase - Your ships get to make an attack from two of your firing arcs, the range and attack strength is dictated by the attack dice and a target gets to react if it has any defensive options which are dictated by the ship's/squadron's profile, like ignoring/reducing the damage or rerolling it. When firing against squadrons, your ship does not use it main guns but instead uses its AA value that is the same across all arcs, but still counts as firing from a particular arc. Just like with the Star Wars Roleplaying Game the system comes with its own dice which tell you the result. You either
  1. Miss
  2. Hit and score a point of damage, reducing the target's shield, or it's hull if it has no shield on that arc.
  3. Accuracy - The attacker gets to negate one of the defender's defensive options.
  4. Critical Hit - Unless specifically stated, only Capital Ships can cause critical hits on Capital Ships, otherwise it does nothing. Critical hits are damage effects drawn at random that cause persistent penalties on the target unless they can get rid of it through a repair order.
  • It should be noted that of the three types of attack dice are all D8s, but there is a statistical difference between them: Short ranged dice (Black) have no accuracy results, 2/8 sides have nothing on them, but 2/8 have both Hit and Crit on the same side for extra damage potential. Medium range (Blue) ALWAYS do something, having 2/8 accuracy results and 2/8 crits. Long range (Red) have 2/8 misses, 2/8 crit, 1/8 accuracy and 1/8 double Hit, so are the most variable.
  • After the attacks have been resolved, only then do you move the ship and you have to move it at whatever speed it has been set at, unless you adjusted the speed with an order. When you make the move, your ship profile also tells you when you can take turns and at what angles.
• Squadron Phase - Now you get to activate any squadrons that were not already activated by your starship orders, they can only move OR attack, and no matter what attack dice your squadrons have available to them they can only ever make attacks at close range. But squadrons can move in any direction at any speed up to their maximum, so they have the advantage of mobility over a capital ship. If enemy squadrons ever move into close range with each other they become engaged which essentially means they are trapped in a dogfight and can only make attacks on each other and cannot move away. Like capital ships, squadrons have two separate attack profiles depending if they are attacking other squadrons or against capital ships, but are generally not going to be that great against a capital ship unless you have a lot of them attacking said capital ship at once. On the other hand, the average capital ship's anti-squadron weaponry tends to be weaker than its primary weapons, and since capital ships are less maneuverable than squadrons they can be easily outflanked.
  • Just remember that squadrons can never suffer a crit (just causing 1 damage) and no matter what dice they have for attack, they can only make those attacks at short range.
• Status Phase - Basically a clean-up stage, you reset your capital ship's defensive options if you were forced to expend them, and you de-activate the squadrons in play so you can keep track of what has been used or not.

Factions

Right now there are only two factions, Rebels and Imperials, though like in X-Wing there could be room for the addition of third party factions, although admittedly that becomes less likely when you consider the scale of the wargame, being large ships rather than small ones. Though they could squeeze in the Zann Consortium if it came to it. But right now we only have two to work with.

Rebellion

Rebel ships are quicker and more maneuverable than those of the Empire, but in a straight up fight will lose one-on-one fights against Empire capital ships, so are supported by higher quality starfighter squadrons.

Capital Ships

• CR90 Corvette B - Your cheapest capital ship, and actually has a hull value lower than the X-Wings, but at least it has two shields on every facing except the rear and can evade fire which is good a longer ranges, as well as having an engineering score of two to fix itself if the worst should happen. It quite literally is your poorest capital ship, with only a command and squadron value of one so you can't accumulate order tokens or use it as a command ship for activating allied squadrons, furthermore it only has weapon ranges out to medium (blue) so it really has to depend upon its maneuverability to get into vulnerable enemy defensive arcs, especially since it's ability to evade only really gets worse the closer you get to the enemy. Slap an ion cannon upgrade on it, though, and suddenly all those blue dice are an asset instead of a liability.
  • CR90 Corvette A - A upgrade to the B Corvette, for only five points. The difference though is that it has red dice in its firing arcs, giving it a range out to maximum which therefore allow it to trade blows at distance with other capital ships and maintain its evasive edge. It also trades its ion cannon upgrade slot for turbolaser upgrades.
  • Dodonna's Pride (Corvette Title) - If you crit with a blue dice, you can choose to discard all of your dice and just deal a single critical damage card to the attacker. Good if that attack was only going to bounce off of the enemy shields anyway. However the problem with that is that it still leaves the shields up, but at least it gives you the tactical option. Does even better if you have the ship's namesake somewhere in your fleet when you can then pick the critical result for maximum effect. Consider slapping this title on a CR90B with Leading Shots for near-guaranteed crits through shields.
  • Tantive IV (Corvette Title) - Makes the ship more of a support vessel, where if it was going to gain a command token, you can give it to a friendly ship within range 5 instead. Like Princess Leia this upgrade is fairly situational but it probably more useful than she is.
  • Jaina's Light (Corvette Title) - Two points for the ability to ignore overlapping obstacles and to be able to shoot through intervening obstructions without penalty. Two points well spent, especially in bigger messier games with lots of stuff on the table top.
• Nebulon B Support Refit - Your first taste of real capital ship, it is slower than the Corvettes of course, but it has comparable firepower out to longer ranges. But it has poorer side shielding traded against superior shields to the front and rear, so keeping it in optimal positions becomes critical. From a command perspective it is superior to the Corvettes too, capable of accumulating two order tokens and doing more with an engineer order. Three red dice and three shields in the front arc means you have the firepower and defenses of a Victory-class Star Destroyer from the front, but the massive side arcs with only one shield and no redirect means it'll die if flanked. More than any other ship, a badly flown Neb-B is a dead Neb-B.
  • Nebulon B Escort Frigate - Another straight upgrade to the Support frigate. For a mere six points you get an increase to your AA fire, making it better against TIE fighters as well as a one point increase to your squadron value, meaning it works better alongside your allied starfighter squadrons. This frigate is essentially a lynchpin for your forces and is highly recommended.
  • Salvation (Nebulon Frigate Title) - Makes your front arc that much deadlier. Crits count as Hit + Crits. Slap it on a Support Refit for a cheap sniper ship.
  • Yavaris (Nebulon Frigate Title) - Squadrons you activate get to shoot twice if they stay still. Roll her in after your fighters have blobbed together and watch enemy squads evaporate. Unfortunately she can't take any real squadron upgrades, except for Raymus Antilles who makes her Squadron value a de facto 3.
  • Redemption (Nebulon Frigate Title) - Makes the ship an engineering hub for the fleet, whenever a friendly ship within range 5 resolves a repair order they gain an extra engineering point to spend. This can be a lifeline for Corvette ships who have such small engineering values that they cannot repair hull points without otherwise spending a token and resolving the order at the same time.

• Assault Frigate Mark II B - Less a "frigate" and much more comparable to a Victory Star Destroyer. Although they have less Hull points than the Star Destroyer, they have the same Command/Squad/Engineering values so make a great centerpiece for your fleet, as well as being one of the few vessels that have four shields on the front arc and still having a top speed of three so you can outrun Imperial vessels. However, it's front/rear weapons leave a little to be desired and from those arcs can be easily outgunned by nearly any other capital ship, despite having a meaty four dice on the broadsides.
  • Assault Frigate Mark II A - The upgunned version of the Assault Frigate, gaining a blue attack dice on the front and rear arcs as well as on its AA guns. The downside is that it lost a point of squadron command to fit in all the extra guns, so it is more of a battlecruiser than a fleet carrier.
  • Gallant Haven (Assault Frigate Title) - Squadrons at distance 1 take one less damage from attacks. Keeps your squadrons safe from the TIE deathball that Imps love to throw at you. Consider using it to cart B-wings into battle.
  • Paragon (Assault Frigate Title) - If you hit the same ship twice, you get to add a black die on the second hit regardless of range. Useful for a gunship-built AF.
• MC30c Scout Frigate - Wave II
• MC30C Torpedo Frigate - Wave II
• MC80 Assault Cruiser - Introduced in wave II, these are the rebel big boys, with broadsides as powerful as the front guns on the Victory destroyers. It also has two dice for AA capability and a butt-ton of defensive abilities including four shields on the front and sides and eight hull points.

Special Upgrades

• Mon Mothma (Commander) - The leader of the Rebellion provides a defensive bonus to all of your capital ships when they use the Evade reaction. Basically it improves the range brackets, allowing you to discard an incoming attack dice at medium range, or forcing a re-roll at short range. Best used with multiple CR90s.
• General Dodonna (Commander) - Has the potential to be very powerful. In effect he allows you to choose the critical result each time you inflict damage upon an enemy by looking at the top four damage cards and throwing the rest away.
• Garm bel Iblis (Commander) - Max out your command tokens automatically at the first and fifth rounds. Works better with the bigger command values, and thus the bigger ships, of course.
• Leia Organa (Officer) - Cheap, but relatively situational. Whenever her vessel reveals a command dial, she allows you to change the top command dial of a friendly ship within range 5 to the same dial. It's has the sensation of being useless because Rebel Capital ships have smaller command values than Imperial ones, particularly on corvettes, so the command stack will be small enough that when you issue an order to the stack there is a greater sense of immediacy anyway since you'll issue orders as you need them. However if an unexpected situation pops up during the turn she can allow you to exploit it, by allowing you to repair unexpected damage or exploit a particularly good round of attacking, all depending upon what her own ship is doing of course. So even if you only use her once she'll have justified the three points you spent on her.
• Adar Tallon (Officer) - One of your squadrons activated by your ship gets to unactivate after it moves and shoots. Combine with Yavaris, and an ace squadron, and you can watch Wedge paste entire enemy fighter wings or Farlander roll out six black dice at essentially medium range. Absolutely amazing.
• Raymus Antilles (Officer) - Doubles your pleasure. Basically, he distills your orders to the max by simply giving you the command token whenever you reveal the dial so he becomes fantastic if you need to radically change your ship's speed, do damage or repair your ship. He does even better on vessels with higher command values so you can keep those tokens for whenever you need them, as well as spending the dial on the intended effect.

Squadrons

• X-Wing Squadron - Your "basic" squadron, but is probably weight for weight one of the best squadrons in the entire game; there is very little that X-Wings cannot do. With four blue dice against enemy TIEs they are one of the best anti-squadron attackers around; and despite having only a single red dice against enemy capital ships, because X-Wings have the "Bomber" rule they do regular damage on crit rolls and are allowed to resolve critical effects rather than only causing damage on "hit" icons meaning that they have some high damage potential against any enemy target of your choosing. Also, with the "Escort" rule and their five hull points they can effectively tank hits intended for your other more specialist squadrons. In fact, with the benefits of being a squadron rather than a starship (ignoring crit results and generally being unaffected by accuracy results) they are more resilient than some rebel capital ships and are more likely to survive the game. In the end, they come in the starter box, and in the rebel fighter booster pack, therefore you have no excuse not to field X-Wings in support of any/every other squadron you field.
  • Luke Skywalker - your first unique character squadron. Much better than regular X-Wings for a couple of reasons. First they cane use defensive tactics to brace against incoming hits, allowing you to reduce incoming damage by half, unless your opponent can roll "accuracy" to remove it. He also ignores shields on enemy capital ships, applying his damage directly to the hull. His capital attack dice are black rather than the normal red for X-Wings, meaning his squadron cannot roll "accurate" himself, not that it actually matters, since a single "accurate" result doesn't do any damage by itself. So it's even better being black because the best result is Crit plus hit, meaning he inflicts even more damage directly through enemy shield values. The Force is strong with this one.
  • Wedge Antilles - Much like Luke, Wedge gets the same defensive tactics, and rolls black against capital ships. However his real bonus is against enemy squadrons making him a much better dogfighter rather than ship-hunter. He adds two blue dice (six total) against enemy squadrons that have already been activated so it pays to have Wedge wait until later in the turn and attack exposed units of opportunity, being virtually guaranteed to destroy weak-ass TIE fighters in one go.
• B-Wing Squadron - Straight up bombers rolling blue & black against capital ships, they just as resilient as X-Wings and have the same firepower as a regular TIE fighter, so on paper they look pretty good. However, they are slow as HELL, being the s-l-o-w-e-s-t of any squadron currently available. This can be a critical failure if you position them incorrectly during the initial game set-up, as they will spend much of the game chasing their target around the table and will struggle to justify themselves by the end of the game when your X/Y-Wings could have got there earlier and done more damage over time. One good use for them is to keep them in command radius of your capital ships and use them as picket fighters. They move at a rate similar to your own capital ships when issued a squadron order will gasp forward on the offensive, making for good defensive screens against enemy fighters/bombers as well as being a fantastic extra punch when your own capital ships get into a melee with your enemy. If you were just looking for Independent bombers you should go for combinations of X/Y wings instead.
  • Keyan Farlander - King of bombers, may re-roll his attack dice against capital ships if they have no shields in the ark you are attacking. If your strategy centers around bombing ships into oblivion rather than trading blows with Capital ships, you want him on side. And you are the Rebels, so YES you will be using fighters over Capital ships.
• Y-Wing Squadron - Faster and more resilient than B-Wings and like them are also bombers, but with poorer attack rolls. They are also "Heavy" fighters, which is a bit of a penalty, because your opponent's squadrons can disengage from you or attack targets outside of the engagement at his leisure and because they aren't great in squadron dogfights, you really should keep them accompanied by at least one squadron of X-Wings to mop up any TIE fighters that they will inevitably fly into, or get your A-Wings to fly forward to interdict those fighters and give your Y-Wings a free pass to enemy capital ships. The cheapest of the Rebel fighters, though, and with a whopping 6 hull are amazingly beefy even unsupported (though their pitiful anti-squadron dice means they won't be doing anything for the game if they get locked up.)
  • Dutch Vander - Special Y-Wings that are better at dealing with enemy squadrons rather than Capital Ships, they have one extra attack dice in a dogfight engagement and if they attack an "un-activated" squadron they cause it to become activated, rendering it useless to your opponent for that turn. If it was already activated they do one extra point of damage instead. Dutch is a good trolling tool and like the other special characters can brace against impact and reduce incoming damage.
• A-Wing Squadron - Exemplary interceptor craft. They have a top speed of 5, meaning you can move them pretty much anywhere you need them, making them like superfast TIE fighters with a smidgem more resilience. Although they have a poorer hull strength and damage potential than the X-Wing, they have the "Counter 2" rule, which is essentially a free attack of two blue dice against any squadron that attacks you, even if you have been destroyed. Now that's not a rule you want to have to rely upon since you'll always want to try and attack first rather than be attacked, but at least it forces your opponent to take a big risk when attempting to attack them. Even though they don't have Bomber, their black battery die means they can finish off damaged ships in a pinch.
  • Tycho Celchu - A-Wings with no statistical difference, but for the defensive abilities of being an Ace pilot, including one Scatter defense token, and the special ability where his squadron can move or shoot out of the engagement freely. Sort of like an inverse "Heavy" rule, so your enemy cannot trap you in position for any longer than you want him to. He's fine without squadron command, use him to lock up incoming bombers early, and then peel him away once the rest of your fighters get there.

Imperials

Imperials are characterised by big, heavy, slow and expensive capital ships accompanied by cheap squadrons of virtually expendable TIE fighters.

Capital Ships

• Victory I Class Star Destroyer - What you get right out of the core box. Has hull, command, squadron and engineering points out of the wazoo so it makes a good centerpiece for your forces, as well as having 3 Shields on the front and side arcs. The problems with it are obvious though, it steers like a cow and plods along like it just doesn't care, so if it gets out-maneuvered it could be in trouble as it's shielding on the rear is only one point strong. It also suffers from a range imbalance with its weapons, having blacks mixed with reds, meaning it is fantastic at short range, but poorer at medium>long ranges, comparable to the Rebels Nebulon B frigates at those distances. It's also not that fantastic at dealing with enemy squadrons, having only a single blue dice, but that's why you've got TIEs.
  • Victory II Class Star Destroyer - the upgraded version improves the firepower considerably, replacing those black dice with blues, giving the Victory I an impressive presence out to the medium range. Don't expect to use the front arc very often, but six dice at medium range is scary enough you can just swivel it to deny entire regions of the board.
  • Dominator (Victory Title) - You can reduce up to two of your shields from any of your hull zones to add that many blue dice to an attack. This becomes a risky venture, particular if it's early in the game since you have to explicitly order your ship to get those shields back. Though you can find use for it late game if you know you can demolish an enemy ship in a single barrage of firepower, and you won't have to worry about reprisals.
  • Corrupter (Victory Title) - Rebels look at this with envy. When you issue an order to Bombers, they increase their speed by one. If you've got TIE bombers, then you'll want this as it increases your reach and allows you to better exploit openings in your enemy's fighter screens. Combine with Rhymer and your bombers now have an obscene alpha strike radius.
  • Warlord (Victory Title) - Can be helpful, when you attack, you can replace a single "accuracy" result with a "hit" result instead. So if you have a bad roll and end up with more accuracy than you require it allows you to do more damage. This also applies to anti-squadron shooting, where those accuracy results do sweet FA. So in essence the Warlord is more reliable. For those red dice, it CAN turn accuracy into double hit. Consider Sensor Team for reliable two damage on one of your anti-ship shots.
• Gladiator I Class Star Destroyer - Smaller, faster and more maneuverable than the Victory class and arguably more maneuverable than the Nebulon B frigate since it can turn twice at speed 1 and is actually comparable to the Nebulon B Escort version in terms of command/squadron/engineering points but with even better shielding, making it a good option for lower point games, or as a supporting ship to a Victory. It is however poor at medium>long range, only having short ranged attacks on the sides, but even then it has four black on each side, making it more deadly in close engagements than a Victory would be. Slap Assault Concussion Missiles on it. Just do it. Engine Techs is also amazing at letting it chase down ships into black range and flick itself into proper position with a two-yaw final maneuver.
  • Gladiator II Class Star Destroyer - the upgunned version of the Gladiator, replacing one of those short ranged dice on the sides with a long ranged red one. It gives it a little more bite at distance so thankfully it can't just be sniped by your enemy any more. It also has the AA capability increased meaning it can deal with enemy squadrons better than most Imperial Capital ships.
  • Insidious (Gladiator Title) - Black dice (short range) can be used up to medium range, but only when your ship fires at the rear zone of an enemy vessel. As much as this sounds like a poor upgrade, it can make quite a difference, particularly because Gladiators have a majority of black attack dice anyway, so are otherwise mostly useless at mid ranges, and because they are fairly quick and maneuverable, so you can actually make an effort exploit this upgrade.
  • Demolisher (Gladiator Title) - You can perform one of your attacks AFTER you execute your maneuver. It cannot be understated how much of a difference this makes, since normally you have to shoot BEFORE you move. For ten points this can massively change the way you plan your tactics and position with this ship. Bear in mind this attack is still subject to the normal rules, so you cannot fire from one arc, move and fire from that arc again. But either way your threat radius for the vessel expands remarkably. Combine with Engine Techs, and you can now even fire in the middle of your effectively speed-4 move if you wanted to.
• Raider Class II-Corvette - Wave II, comparable to the CR90 Corvette. Fast but with virtually no long ranged firepower and not very great support abilities, what it does well is as an anti-fighter gunboat, creating a threat to those high value rebel starfighters that annoy you so much.
• Imperial I-Class Star Destroyer - Wave II
• Imperial II-Clas Star Destroyer - Wave II

Special Upgrades

• Grand Moff Tarkin (Commander) - You wish you were as good as Grand Moff Tarkin... he fukken rawks!. At the start of each ship phase, pick an order, any order, then every ship in your fleet gets a token matching that order. That's absolutely fantastic. However there are two drawbacks and one of them isn't his fault. The first is that he costs such a buttload of points that if you don't fully utilise him properly you may find that he wasn't worth taking, which leads to the second problem. In order to utilise him fully you need MOAR capital ships; but since you play Imperials, you are unlikely to have loads of capital ships because they cost more than the Rebel ships. In small games he's just not worth it, but in bigger engagements his value and usefulness increases exponentially.
• Admiral Motti (Commander) - Good for your survivability, because he increases the hull strength of each of your capital ships depending upon their size. "Small" ships (ie: Gladiator Star Destroyers) gain +1 Hull point, while "Medium" ships gain +2. Meaning your Victory Star Destroyers now have ten hull points. Large Ships gain +3 hull points, so you'll get nigh unkillable Imperial Star Destroyers, but Wave II isn't out yet. Motti is still a good option though, and is probably better than Tarkin for general use in games, since the effects are immediately beneficial.
• Admiral Screed (Commander) - For the offensive, once per activation (ie: can apply once to every single capital ship each turn) a ship can remove one die from it's attack pool and change another to a die with a crit face. Now because the "attack pool" refers to the dice both before and after they have been rolled, you can inspect your dice and decide if you want to remove any die that resulted in a miss result to change a different one to a crit. Of course this becomes somewhat situational, because if you've already rolled a crit in the pool there is no point adding another unless you also rolled two or more misses: one to remove from the pool, and the second to change to a crit and score a point of regular damage, therefore mileage may vary depending upon the number of dice you get to throw at a given attack. Black dice, though, have Hit + Crit faces, and Screed CAN change dice to those. Use with a Gladiator, use with upgrades that give alt crit effects, watch Rebel scum cry.
• Wulff Yularen (Officer) - One-use, if you spend a command token you can exhaust him to get that command token right back. Yeah, alright.
• Admiral Chirneau (Officer) - Useful depending upon what's going on on the tabletop. Whenever your ship issues a squadron order, he allows you to move those squadrons out of an engagement albeit at speed 2. That allows you to get ships out of a gunfight and attack something else in the same activation, so can be really useful if you have TIE bombers stuck in an engagement right next to the starship they are meant to be bombing, or if you have a different target in mind. Otherwise if all you're doing is getting TIE fighters out of an engagement and not attacking anything then its kind of a wasted effort.
• Director Isard (Officer) - When your ship reveals it's command, you get to look through the command stack of one enemy ship. For three points this is incredibly useful, since knowing in advance what your enemy is going to do can radically change what you might also do that turn. For example, if your enemy is going to repair the turn after this one, then you might want to finish that ship off before he does. That being said, most of the Rebel starships have small command stacks, so the information has a limited lifespan, particularly on corvettes where all your opponent has to do is simply activate the ship after you look at it and any planning goes out of the window.

Squadrons

• TIE Fighter Squadron - Your cheap throwaway unit. They are faster than most Rebel starfighters except for A-Wings, but have very little hull points and their attacking score is pretty average. But they do well in support of each other due to the "Swarm" rule, allowing them to re-roll attack dice if they are engaged in a dogfight alongside another squadron.
  • Howlrunner - Ace TIE fighter who can add a blue dice to their attack pool whenever a friendly swarm (ie: other TIEs) within distance 1 are engaged. This leads to some cool positional play where they can also get better at attacking capital ships, since Howlrunner doesn't need to be engaged herself. She also can use the "scatter" defense and completely negate incoming damage, unlike most Rebel heroes who can only reduce it.
  • "Mauler" Mithel - Gets free damage on enemy squadrons by moving into engagement with them. Note that this does not count as an attack, and the damage just happens automatically so he can make all the difference in dogfights against enemy aces.
• TIE Interceptor Squadron - Give the middle finger to pretty much anything the Rebels can throw at you. Is just as fast as the A-Wing, being speed 5 and with the "Counter 2" rule for retaliatory strikes, but has the damage capability of an X-Wing which coupled with the "swarm" rule making it a dangerous proposition to get engaged with. On the flip side, the TIE Interceptors are just as flimsy as their vanilla cousins, so can't really hold their own in slugging fest against X-Wings or other heavier fighters.
  • Soontir Fel - Support him, he should NEVER go alone. If he gets into an engagement, and one of the enemies in that engagement does not direct their regular attack against him, he automatically does 1 point of damage against them. Obviously this means that he can become the primary target as you opponent would not want to suffer damage for their own stupidity, but at least as an ACE he gets the defensive tactics, if you support him with TIE advanced squadrons (which your opponent must target first) he can do very well.
• TIE Bomber Squadron - Just as fast as regular TIES, but with the hull strength of an X-Wing. Unfortunately the have no other purpose than to be capital ship hunters. They are Heavy Bombers much like Y-Wings, you your opponent can just ignore them or trap them in engagement if he was so inclined, and they only roll one dice against squadrons or capital ships, so they don't have a great damage potential. But they're your basic bomber craft, so you at least have the potential of critical damage against enemy ships with them, rather than having to rely upon your star destroyers doing all of the work
  • Major Rhymer - Rhymer and everyone around him get to shoot ships at blue range with all of their normal anti-ship dice. Suddenly a TIE bomber blob looks like a threat similar to a Gladiator Star Destroyer all by themselves. Throw in Corruptor and Admiral Chirneau, and now the bomber blob is next to impossible to screen, difficult to lock down, and can teleport and dump a fistful of black dice into a ship's rear.
• TIE Advanced Squadron - Cross a regular TIE fighter with an X-Wing and this is what you get, the speed and firepower of the TIE fighter were the resilience and "escort" rule of the X-Wing, meaning you now have a space-superiority fighter that does well supporting squadrons of any other type (see Soontir Fel), making sure they get to their destination without being picked off. Important to note that unlike the rest of the anti-fighter TIEs, it lacks Swarm, meaning you'll want to season TIE blobs with them, not spam them.
  • Darth Vader - Improved firepower over the regular TIE Advanced, and adds +1 damage on attack dice for any crit rolls he makes, which normally only do regular damage to other squadrons since you can't crit them, so he's got quite a high damage potential. Strictly speaking the bonus damage would also work against Capital ships too, but he doesn't have the bomber rule and his attack rolls against them were pretty low anyway so there is no point throwing him at anything other than enemy starfighters.

Shared Upgrades

Officers

• Defense Liaison - 3 points gets you the ability to spend a token to change your dial to Navigate or Repair. Useful for objective runner ships that need to do a lot of fancy flying.
• Weapons Liaison - Same as above, except for Squadron or Concentrate Fire. Potentially useful on carriers that want to be near the frontline.
• Veteran Captain - 3 points gets you a free token once per game. Cheap, but still overcosted unless you really need that token for a specialized build.
• Intel Officer - Pricy, but well worth it. On one of your shots, you can pick a defense token that your opponent has to burn if he wants to spend it. Great on your heavy hitters.

Offensive Retrofit

• Expanded Hangar Bay - Squadron +1. Auto-take for any carrier.
• Point Defense Reroute - Reroll crits when shooting at squadrons at close range. Okay for Rebels, unless facing a Rhymer-ball where this does nothing, and meh for Imperials, who have crap anti-squadron anyways and are shooting much tougher squadrons.

Defensive Retrofit

• Advanced Projectors - Redirect now lets you shuffle damage anywhere. Good in theory, but still vulnerable to X17s and Intel Officers.
• Electronic Countermeasures - Keeps one token unaffected by accuracy. If your list's flagship is fairly squishy (corvette / Neb-B spam), slap this on it to keep it safe.

Turbolasers

• Enhanced Armament - Boost your side arc shots by one red die. Expensive, so put it on something that'll last the battle.
• H9 Turbolasers - Flip a hit or crit to an accuracy face. Decent at ensuring damage goes where you want it to.
• X17 Turbolasers - Redirect defense tokens can only shunt one damage. Amazing at ensuring damage goes where you want it to. Highly recommended when playing Rebels vs. Imps.
• XX-9 Turbolasers - Flip the first two damage cards instead of one. Combine with Dodonna on the Rebel side for picking out exactly what debuffs you want to slap on the enemy.

Ion Cannons

Blue dice abilities.

• Leading Shots - Cheap, spend a blue die for a reroll on anything you want in the attack pool.
• Ion Cannons - Rolling a crit means you burn one command token of theirs, or one extra shield if they don't have any. Great for limiting options.
• Overload Pulse - Blue crit means you exhaust ALL defense tokens, though they get to use them against this attack. Turns enemy ships into punching bags for the rest of the round.

Ordnance

Black dice abilities.

• Assault Concussion Missiles - Amazing upgrade that hammers both adjacent hull zones for one damage each on a black crit. Weakens Redirect, can't be Braced, and if you're rolling black dice they can't Evade anyways.
• Expanded Launchers - Two extra black dice in the front arc. Decent enough, but the ACMs are usually more flexible (work on side arc shots) and more cost-efficient.

Support Team

• Engine Techs - If you Navigated this round, even through a token, you can do a speed-1 maneuver at the end of it. The amazing maneuverability this gives you cannot be understated. Find ways to keep a Navigate token on your ship, and this upgrade will do wonders.
• Engineering Team - You get one extra point when you Repair. Useful enough.

Nav Team: Your Nav tokens can be used to yaw instead of change speed. Good for ships that are fast enough but turn badly.

Weapons Team

• Flight Controllers - Squadrons you command get an extra blue die in their anti-squadron roll. Another good reason to keep your carrier close to the dogfight. Imp players love this for four/five dice + swarm reroll + Howlrunner bonus die alpha strikes.
• Gunnery Team - You get to shoot twice with one arc, but only against two different ships or squadrons. Looks amazing on paper, but really lures your ship into getting focused down by two other ships. Has a small role for assault carriers that can fire their good arc at the enemy ship behind the dogfight, and then use anti-squadron to help win the dogfight itself.
• Sensor Team - Slightly worse, slightly cheaper H9 Turbolasers unless used on big ships. Once a round, spend a die to turn a die into accuracy.