Armada early unboxing!

Thanks to the great job Crabbok does of covering Armada, FFG have him some early copies of the Profundity and Chimera expansions which he unboxed for us!  Let me start by saying the models in the videos look just fantastic. The Chimera paint job is awesome. We also learned the Raid effect can be cleared in two ways. The first is to have a token of the matching type and discard it, or to discard your top command dial to remove all Raid tokens. This makes it a far more palpable mechanic I think vs the worst case thinkers where you were locked out of a command forever. This possibly also means token generation becomes more important. So Garm Bel Iblis and Moff Tarkin might see more table time.

Let's work our way through all of the new upgrades that we got revealed.  Sorry for no pictures on this, at least until the wiki gets updated. 

Neutral:

Strategic Advisor: 4 Points, Large Ship Only, When it is your turn to activate, exhaust this car to pass your turn. This is probably one of the biggest upgrades to come in this wave.  The pass mechanic rules have been hotly debated, but FFG as found an elegant way of letting ships that feature a large ship keep up in the arms race for activations.  In the officer's slot there is a bit of competition in both factions, but I think we'll see the advisor fairly often over running a third Gozanti or transport.

Early Warning System: 7 Points, Defensive Retrofit, At the start of each Ship phase, you may pick a hull zone and place a chaff token.  Attacks against that hull zone are obstructed.  Remove the token at the end of the Status Phase.  A huge boon for ships of all sizes against squadrons especially.  A bunch of Bombers parked in front of your ISD?  Chaff makes them all move and allows you to likely get away instead of overlapping.  This also puts a crimp on ships trying to plink away at damage from afar with one or two red dice.  

Hardened Bulk Heads: 5 points, Offensive Retrofit, Large Ship Only.  When you overlap or are overlapped by a ship of a smaller size class, deal one fewer facedown damage card.  ISD brawlers are going to love this if they aren't taking a boarding team (Kuat's likely?).  ET MC80 Home Ones will also love to ram your Vic 1 twice and take no damage from it.  This is going to be a fun one I think.

Heavy Ion Emplacements: 9 points, Ion Cannon.  On a Blue crit, exhaust this card to deal one additional damage to the hull zones shields, as well as 1 damage to each adjacent hull zones shields.  I'm excited and twining at this card.  Interdictors I think will love it to add more bit to their barrage, and with D-Caps they get it at long range!  Sadly though, it has no effect the target ship has no shields in those hull zones.  And its 2 points more expensive than ACMs that are always effective.  Maybe it could find a home in a Sato MC80 Liberty Star Cruiser variant, where the Mon Cal weapons team can re-roll all those Blue dice?

Ordnance Pods: 3 Points, Ordnance, Medium or Large Ship only.  At the end of your attack, you may exhaust this card and perform an attack from a  hull zone with one black die against squadrons, even if you have already attacked.  Oh boy, this is a fun one.  Similar to Impetuous, but you get the whole arc to sweep with a black die.  MC-75 likes this, Kuat probably likes it, and Vic 1s I think love it.  With the last several waves having such a boost for squadrons, this is an excellent boost to flak that has been sorely needed.  If you have Ordnance Experts, this is basically an extra damage to everyone each turn they stay in range.

Imperial Only:

Soverign: 4 Points, ISD title.  At the start of the ship phase, you may exhaust this card to discard 1 command token from up to 3 friendly ships at range 1-5.  If you d, those ships gain a command token of any type.  Of course Tarkin's flag ship helps with tokens.  Does it make Tarkin good enough to take as a commander?  Maybe.  But it certainly helps with matching up the correct Raid token.  It competes with several other very good titles though, so we'll see if it gets any use.

Captain Brunson: 5 points, Officer.  While defending at range 1-2 of an obstacle, you may exhaust this card to cancel one die.  This is a niche use officer, who might see some play in a fleet that is running Interdictors or Salvage Run as an objective.  Overall though she might be tough to use.

Instructor Goran: 7 points, Officer.  While a non heavy squadron is at range 1-2, it gains Counter 1 or increases its counter value by 1.  An interesting boost for fleets that might use a smaller fighter cover to help kill more stuff as a road block near a ship, he could be paired with Stronghold to make those TIE Fighters far more prickly to punch through.

Gar Saxon: 23 points, Gauntlet Fighter, Brace, AS of Blue Blue Red, Anti Ship Blue Black, Assault, Rogue.  When an enemy ship with Intel or Relay at range 1 activates, they take 1 damage.  Holy crap.  This guy will likely find himself a place in a lot of smaller squadron fleets for his ability to help shut down Relay ships very quickly.  Assault is better with Blue Black, since you still have a chance at damage as well. 

Rebel Only:

Aspiration: MC-75 Title, 3 points.  When you deploy, you may move shields to up to 2 hull zones from other hull zones.  The maximum shield setting is 6, and you cannot regenerate shields while any hull zone has more than its typical maximum.  This is an interesting title, especially with Admiral Raddus on board.  You deploy the MC-75 late, and beef the facing hull zone shields up to max to keep from getting edged out.  Its not a must take title, but I like it.

Bail Organa: 7 points, Officer, Medium or Large Only.  After deploying, pick a round token.  At the start of that round, if you are second player you must activate first.  If you're first player, gain 2 command tokens.  The counter to Governor Pryce, Bail has you jumping the order of everyone else.  This could be the key to getting out of an arc early, or whacking a couple of ships before they escape.  Like Pryce, he telegraphs what you want to do, and going first can be more dangerous than going last a lot of the time I think because you don't know the board state as well.  But, with Raid, the chance at those tokens is nice.  

General Draven: 3 points, Officer.  While attacking a squadron with Counter or Intel, add 1 die of any color to the attack pool.  The Kallus of the Rebellion!  This is going to be a bit of a heavy hitter I think, largely because Jan Ors is so powerful for rebels, and the aforementioned Imperial officer that adds counter to everyone.  Its a big blow against Sloane lists as well, and the typical favorite A wing Aces of Shara Bey and Tycho.  

This wave is going to likely mean a huge meta shake up, with new Raid mechanics and passing abilities with activation shenanigans.  The Gauntlet fighters will likely ensure squads being a must have, but there's a lot of squadron hate going on there so it might mean a medium fighter CAP is now the best way to counter those Aces lists.