SSD - Initial Impressions

It was an epic weekend of Armada in Little Rock, and the battle reports for both games will be coming soon! In the meantime, however, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the SSD, how to play it, play against it, and where it sits in the Armada meta. This weekend I played against the Assault Prototype variant and the Executor II Variant, and have some general thoughts based on those experiences.

Auto-Includes On An SSD

If you want to fly an SSD, There are some upgrade cards that might as well be stapled to it, as nine times out of ten, you will want them. First up:

 - Leading Shots (Obvious, maybe you can skip if you have Ravager/Krennic/IF)
 - Quad Battery Turrets (Everything is going faster than you, and this works in every arc)
 - Gunnery Teams

This might as well be stapled on as well:

 - Comms Net Gozanti (at least one)

The officer slots have less flexibility than I initially thought, as there are some pretty clear best choices for them. Obviously there is room at the margins, but you should think long and hard if you don't include the following:

 - Damage Control Officer (5)
 - Defense Liason (3)

Honorable Mentions:

 - Captain Brunson (5)
 - Commander Vanto (7)
 - Captain Needa (2)
 - The Senate (3)

So, why these? It ties to why you would bring an SSD in the first place.

Why Bring An SSD?

This will make more sense in a moment, but I after some reflection I think the SSD is a passive ship. You don't really generate a win condition so much as you lay down a challenge to your opponent and stand ready to capitalize on their mistakes.

What do I mean by this. Well, you essentially tie up 250-330 points of your fleet build in a single ship, presenting your opponent with three options:

1. Try to ignore the SSD, score points off of objectives and your other fleet elements, and win that way (this only allows for something akin to a 7-4 MOV at best).
2. Try to get you to half health and score win a bigger victory off that.
3. Try to table you and completely commit to your destruction.

Because the check doesn't come until the end of round 6, option 2 is not very viable. SSD's are stealthily even tankier than they initially appear, because best practice seems to be running engineering commands for the last three turns in a row, recovering 6 health. So you need to do effectively 17+ damage to the hull, not just 11, to even score half points off it. At that point, you might as well be gunning all in to kill it consider it a consolation prize if you end with it at half health.

As the SSD player, you force your opponent into this either-or decision, and in a tournament format where you want to have any hope to advance, the latter is the only real option. However, the SSD also punishes mistakes in positioning, mistakes that are more likely to occur if you opponent seeks to destroy you. What do I mean by this? Well, unlike most Armada ships, where half of the battle is trying to delicately maneuver them to double-arc opponents and overpower them with firepower, the SSD can essentially never maneuver to make this happen. You are at the mercy of your opponent's moves. If they double-arc themselves, congratulations, you just got a free kill. If they never do, your job grows exponentially harder.

With this all this in mind, defensive builds on the SSD designed to deny your opponent points and lengthen the time it takes them to do decisive damage to the SSDseems to be the way to go. This gets us to the four counters to SSDs, and how your default officers help deal with them.

SSD Counters

1. Crit Effects

Crits are proportionally devastating to the SSD in line with its massive point cost. In particular, you would like to really avoid HIE crits and APT crits, as these undermine you immensely. DCO is your ultimate insurance policy. You may not need it every game, but you will be glad when you have it.

2. Command Dial Screwage

This is not an original observation, but command four and the resultant risks of having the wrong commands queued up make the generic officers that offer dial control much more appealing on the SSD. Additionally, you really need to worry about Slicer Tools, Cham Syndulla, and the like. If you are depending on spending the back half of the game recovering health, you don't want anything to interfere with that. Take Defense Liason as a cheap insurance policy against this.

3. Squadrons*

SSD flak is no joke. I saw both variants take down nearly a dozen squadrons between them over the weekend. But, Hubert's Executor-II also perished largely to B-wings piling in its arcs and overloading it two damage at a time

So where does this leave us? Well, it's a mixed bag, thus the asterisk. So obviously like most big ships the SSD is vulnerable to lots of small attacks that overheat defense tokens, best delivered by squadrons. However, the heavy flak combined with the red flak on two of the variants means that if you have a squadron that is three speed or slower, you probably will need to spend one turn in the flak before even making contact with the target. The damage adds up quick and squadrons on their own will quickly wilt beneath the firepower, especially with so many anti-squadron upgrades available to the SSD.

Rebel squads are actually worse hit by the SSD as Y-wings and B-Wings are speeds 3 and 2 respectively, and struggle to get in attacks before being flak'd to oblivion. I have to say the SSD and the existence of Transponder Net might be a stealth buff to TIE bombers and Lancers, as their Speed 4 is suddenly more at a premium in a world where red-flak is becoming more commonplace and you have to dodge around enemy heavy squadrons.

A final note is that as an SSD player, you can quite legitimately go with no squadrons and theoretically be okay, especially if you have upgrades like Kallus, QLTs, Annihilator and the like. However, if enough bombers get into range and importantly, spread out over your arcs, you will star t taking hits. Squadrons are just asterisk'd as counters to the SSD because squadrons alone quail, and can only succeed in conjunction with other elements to distract the SSD.

4. Side Arcs

This is where it all comes together. The side and auxiliary side arcs on the SSD are enormous, and even large ships can comfortably sit in them. Importantly, it is not difficult to sit in one where you are double-arcing the SSD and it is not double-arcing you. The front, and the areas at the border of it's firing arcs are death for basically anything, but lots of ships can comfortably sit inside one of the SSD's side arcs, especially at red range, and pitch tons of dice from double-arcing while the SSD can only respond impotently. The size of the model means its really easy to focus fire the thing down, as most ships on your side should be able to get into range to kill it.

Building A SSD Fleet

Mitigate damage, that is the name of the game. Specifically mitigate damage from your counters and draw the game out. If your opponent is diving in to kill you, they will eventually mis-position a ship, or you will land a third or fourth round of flak that just wipes a half-dozen squadrons. Time is on your side, but give yourself more of it. DCO negates crit-effects, DL negates command dial screwage. The rest of your build should focus on rectifying your other two vulnerabilities. Squadrons can effectively be countered by loading out the SSD. As for the side-arcs, this weekend settled for me what the best escorts for the SSD are, and they are raiders and gladiators. These ships are here as true escorts to clear enemy ships out of your SSD's side arcs when you can't effectively kill them with the SSD.

Here is an example build using Demolisher as a sweeper:

Name: Example Thrawn Fleet

Faction: Imperial
Commander: Grand Admiral Thrawn
Assault: Blockade Run
Defense: Contested Outpost
Navigation: Solar Corona

SSD Command Prototype (220)
• Grand Admiral Thrawn (32)
• Damage Control Officer (5)
• Emperor Palpatine (3)
• Commander Vanto (7)
• Intensify Firepower! (6)
• Take Evasive Action! (6)
• Gunnery Team (7)
• Quad Laser Turrets (5)
• Leading Shots (4)
• Quad Battery Turrets (5)
• Executor (2)
= 302 Points

Gladiator I (56)
• Ordnance Experts (4)
• External Racks (3)
• Demolisher (10)
= 73 Points

Gozanti Cruisers (23)
• Comms Net (2)
= 25 Points

Total Points: 400

Notice I have elected to use Thrawn as an Admiral as my counter to command dial screwage.

This is also the part where I point out that "Take Evasive Action" is essentially a Nav Teams for a ship that doesn't have a support teams slot, and your standard navigate action plus token will now allow you to have a yaw value of two at speed 1 without JJ. Food for thought.

This fleet can be easily redone to have two torp raiders, or you can swap to Piett and get one torp raider and one light artillery raider. Of course you are vulnerable to all-in bomber fleets, so you should bear that in mind with a fleet like this. As a rule, you should always take one of the SSD titles, as they are all really solid (except for Eclipse), and inform the "type" of SSD you are running.

In terms of taking the SSD to tournaments, if you are confident that more opposing lists will be hedging themselves, have unclear win conditions, or played by less skilled players, the SSD is a really strong way to capitalize on an opponent's mistakes. The ship presents a massive challenge to your opponents that they will have to rise to or lose.

Concluding Thoughts

If you are playing Armada in the near future, you need to be prepared to fight an SSD. To that end, make sure you list includes at least one of: bombers, command dial screwage, and crit effects, alongside ships that can comfortably sit in an SSD's side or side auxiliary arcs. More importantly, when you go into a game with an SSD, decide immediately if you will seek to destroy it or run away from it. There can be no middle ground.

If you fly an SSD, you can not completely overcome the more passive style of play it encourages, but your list should lean into the strength's of the SSD, short up its weaknesses, and create opportunities to take advantages of an opponent's mistakes.