Editing Armada/Tactics/The Galactic Republic (section)

==Why Play the Republic==

The Republic is the straightforward and tough team.  Half the Republic's ship cards have both turbolasers AND ordinance slots, and three of those can use boarding teams as well; and [[rip and tear|not a single one of their ships has ion cannons]].  The Grand Army likes to get in close and bust face.  The Republic's two heavy hitters, the Acclamator and Venator, stand around the Victory in terms of power and durability.  They can't expect to take on an ISD or a Starhawk alone.

But they won't have to, because the Republic's squadron game plays a bit more like the rebellion.  Republic fighters make the tradeoff of being tough like the rebels with slightly worse anti-squad dice (but good anti-ship dice).  Their ace abilities are more like those of the empire, focused around swarming and cooperative boosting.  Through various methods republic squadrons can gain snipe, assault, counter, swarm (and make it work against ships), free readied defense tokens, auto-obstruction, and even free anti-ship accuracies.  If the republic ''forms voltron'' they can become a dangerous anti-everything blob.  

Thus the Grand Army likes the [[StarCraft|Protoss]] ''deathball'' style of play, as a big concentrated fist of doom punching its way straight through the enemy.  They need to get close to get use out of their black dice and boarding party friendly builds.  But with their high squadron values and squadron friendly titles and officers they'd rather be commanding fighters.   With the exception of the Consular, GAR ships are particularly bad at maneuvering, so a methodical advance is better than a full speed rush.  

Lastly, the GAR favors going wide over going tall.  Their base hulls are exceptionally points economical but aside from carrier builds they don't have a lot of upgrade synergies.  If the choice is between spending 50 points on bling, or another small or some fighters, they generally like having more friends.