It has been a little bit since I have done one of these and well in all honesty its because I'm running out of "Bad" cards I have found that most cards in the game are falling into the "ugly" category "good, but only sometimes/under the right circumstances." I mean I think NK-7 Ion Cannons might find a home once commander Palpatine arrives I mean its expensive but NK-7 Intel officer and Palpatine sounds pretty crazy.
Victory II (85) • Intel Officer (7) • Disposable Capacitors (3) • Quad Battery Turrets (5) • NK-7 Ion Cannons (10) = 110 Points
Anyway lets dive into it the Good the Bad and the Ugly
The Good
So SW-7 makes it so that no matter what you roll on your blue dice you can always have it be damage it you want it to be it works well on ships that have a lot of blue dice, and pairs well with both Caitken and Shollan and Veteran gunners. Some base builds kinda look like this:
Imperial II (120) • Veteran Gunners (5) • SW-7 Ion Batteries (5) = 130 Points
MC80 Battle Cruiser (103) • Caitken and Shollan (6) • SW-7 Ion Batteries (5) = 114 Points
you could also put it on a Raider II or a CR90B, for consistent damage. It is not a bad upgrade and is rarely seen. This is because of leading shots, and in some places Heavy Ion Emplacements, it is definitely worth it if you have some source of dice mitigation. Some may ask why would you put it on an ISD-II well that way you can put advanced gunnery in your objectives, I like a build like this:
Imperial II (120) • Veteran Gunners (5) • Electronic Countermeasures (7) • SW-7 Ion Batteries (5) • Quad Battery Turrets (5) • Chimaera (4) • Intensify Firepower! (6) = 152 Points
you could make Quad Battery Turrets DTT if you want to. SW-7's are a good upgrade but need a build/ship they fit into they are still a solid choice if you are bringing blues in toe as you have 100% chance to damage with them, when Director Krennic comes out it will only get better on the ISD.
The Bad
Okay so Dodonna's Pride as a new player it seamed super cool and I really wanted it to work, but its just bad. so you have to cancel all attack dice to get this ability to trigger, and lets be honest you are putting this on a CR-90 B so you probably want some way to get the crit you could take leading shots Toryan Farr is also an option, but what if we took SW-7's we could get 5 damage very consistently. If we take Dodonna's Pride and we get it to trigger twice we get two damage where it counts, but 5 damage vs 2 even though shields is a little lackluster, as your other ships still have to get though said shields. We also have to raise the question why not take Heavy Ion Emplacements in place of Dodonna's Pride if we get max damage with that its effectively 8 damage, so why are we not taking that? if we did not have to cancel all attack dice it would be great it has some very niche uses it could be effective with Dodonna depending on the crit you pull, and if you really need to get some damage to the hull to finish off a ship.
I can find kinda one build that is kinda useful maybe so here it is:
CR90 Corvette B (39) • Engine Techs (8) • Leading Shots (4) • Dodonna's Pride (6) = 57 Points
So this is the suicide runner its a weird first last thing you fly it in screaming and ram then use Engine techs to ram again 2 damage so far, activate next round fish for the crit with leading shots if we are going for damage to hull we hope for structural damage and if we take Dodanna we might be able to get 2 so that would be 4 damage so we are up to 6 damage so far, then ram and ET we die and are up to 8 hull damage. Its best case scenario but it could be at the very least interesting. We could add blast doors to not die, but eh just more points on a suicide mission.
The Ugly
Okay so this card is actually not that bad, first its cheep, and it gets around one of the most ubiquitous cards in the game ECMs.
So I have come to really hate this card, even though I still use it in most of my lists. By its existence it devalues accuracy's in the game, so we don't see H-9s, and Home One or everyone favorite hero of the empire Captain Jonus; I would love to see these more often but with ECM in the game its not likely to happen. ECM only works once because of exhaust unless you are running Interdictor tua ECM Tagge cheesiness,
Interdictor Suppression Refit (90) • General Tagge (25) • Minister Tua (2) • Interdictor (3) • Electronic Countermeasures (7) = 127 Points
but that still devalues accuracy's enough. In fact believe it or not this card is meta defining, at least that is what I believe everyone plays to counter this card. what counters this card small amounts of consistent damage, squadrons, MSU, etc.
There are very few cards that just get rid of this card and well MS-1 Ion cannons is one of them. If there where some cheaper ion platforms this card would probably see a lot of play. As is it is niche, but it does counter one of the most prevalent cards in the game and so it gets a spot in the ugly slot.
So that is it for this volume of The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. What are some cards that you think are not seen very often and what category do you think they fall into? Have a great week everyone!
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