Star Wars Armada: Rogues and Villains

Han Solo, Boba Fett, and a handful of the galaxy's most notorious rogues and villains race to the battlefield in the Rogues and Villains Expansion Pack for Star Wars: Armada!

You’ll find eight irregular squadrons, including some of the Star Wars galaxy's most recognisable freighters, patrol craft, and bombers, each of which can be represented in your games by either a non-unique squadron card or flown by an ace. Like the squadrons from the Core Set and the first wave of expansions, these come unpainted, but are presented in colours that complement their fleets.

Rogues

Star Wars: Armada is a game of massive, intergalactic space warfare. You assume the role of either fleet admiral, assemble your fleet, and engage your opponents in strategic battles, the outcomes of which may help shape the course of the Galactic Civil War and the fate of the galaxy. That means, among other things, that you want your fleet to remain orderly and reliable. There are chains of command that must be followed. You assign orders to the ships in your fleet, and their commanders and crew must then carry out those orders.

Starfighter squadrons, meanwhile, are invaluable tools, but as fleet admiral, you can't be bothered to communicate with every pilot in every fighter. Instead, you leave it to your ship commanders to assign orders to those squadrons at the appropriate times; whenever you want the most from your squadrons, you need your ship to reveal a squadron command within medium range of the squadron or squadrons you want to activate. At those times, they can both move and attack. Otherwise, your squadrons need to wait for the squadron phase and are limited to either moving or attacking; on their own, they can't do both.

That is, most squadrons can't do both. The Rogues and Villains Expansion Pack, however, introduces squadrons with the Rogue keyword, and these squadrons can both move and attack during the squadron phase, as though they had been activated by the squadron command. Accordingly, these Rogue squadrons, like Dash Rendar in his Outrider, effectively carve out a unique space within the game – fitting into the gap between your capital ships and your standard starfighter squadron.

Villains

You'll find more than just Rogue squadrons in the Rogues and Villains Expansion Pack; you'll find plenty of villains, and more than just Boba Fett. The expansion's four Imperial squadrons account for the majority of the bounty hunters that Darth Vader called onto the deck of the Executor and ordered to hunt for Han Solo and the Millennium Falcon.

IG-88 enters Armada with a unique ability befitting his identity as an Assassin Droid. He can ignore the Escort and Counter keywords on enemy squadrons. This means that if he wants to eliminate a squadron, he doesn't have to bother with any other squadrons that might be flying as its Escorts, and he won't have to worry about that ship firing back at him with the Counter ability. Instead, he can just focus on blasting it with his lasers, and if enemy ships fire at him, he can process that response, as well, returning fire with his Counter 2 ability. Finally, IG-88 has the Rogue keyword so that he can hunt his prey through the stars, wherever they go, even if their travels take them far from the Empire's capital ships.

Meanwhile, the relentless Trandoshan bounty hunter Bossk also arrives to Armada in the Rogues and Villains Expansion Pack, and he heads to battle in his Hound's Tooth, a custom YV-666 squadron with four black anti-squadron dice, an anti-ship battery of one blue die and one black die, and seven hull points. In his Hound's Tooth, Bossk can both dish out and survive a beating, whether he's battling another squadron or a starship. Furthermore, his Grit keyword allows him to ignore lesser opponents who would keep him from his prey, and if he suffers any damage, he only becomes more lethally single-minded in his efforts. If he ever has fewer than six hull points remaining, Bossk adds a blue die to his attack total, permanently set to yield an accuracy result.

Catch Your Foes by Surprise

The Rogues and Villains Expansion Pack comes with eight miniature squadrons, four for the Rebellion and four for the Empire, all of which can be fielded as unique or non-unique squadrons. Taken all together, these irregular squadrons introduce a whole new arsenal of tricks, keywords, abilities, and possibilities, and learning how best to make use of them will play an important part in your future Armada fleet battles.

How will you make use of these new squadrons? Will you treat Rogue squadrons almost as though they were lesser ships? Will you rely on squadrons with the Intel keyword, like Dengar and Jan Ors , to see that your bomber wing delivers its payload on target? Or will you call upon only a few new squadrons like IG-88 and the YT-1300 to ensure the superiority of your fighter wing?

This is not a complete game experience. A copy of the Star Wars: Armada Core Set is required to play.