Sometimes good things come in small packages!
Today’s article is the Republic’s counter superweapon to the Separatist's Subjugator-Class Heavy Cruiser I did in my last article, the IPV-2C Stealth Corvette.
Although this ship is MUCH smaller than the Subjugator, its cloaking device was very effective at keeping it out of danger and letting it evade enemy ships so it could get supplies through blockades or land devastating blows to enemy ships.
So before this ship evades our sensors, let’s get stuck in!
The Overall Design:
This ship was a pain at first for me. Its size is smaller than the small ships in Armada but bigger than the Flotilla ships in the game. I decided to make this ship a small ship as it was more heavily armed than the Flotilla ships we have.
This ship also has a successor so similar it doesn’t really deserve a whole new ship pack. This Modified IPV-2C Stealth Corvette was Tarkin’s personal star ship, the Carrion Spike, and was a little larger and better armed than the missile only IPV-2C Stealth Corvette, so the two cards for this ship will depict both ship types.
The Armaments, Shields And Hull:
The Stealth Corvette was small compared to most ships in the game, so it’s quite weak with only three hull and only one shield per section except the front. The modified variant does get a slightly tougher hull value at four, however, it’s still rather flimsy.
For armaments, the Stealth Corvette makes sole use of missiles, giving it only black dice. It does get a blue die in its anti-squadron pool to show its light anti-fighter cannons.
Again the modified variant gets a slightly better hand, changing out two of the black dice in each pool for a red and blue die to show the additional turbolasers and ion cannons it used.
The Defence Tokens And Manoeuvres:
This is where the Stealth Corvette starts to shine! To help this ship evade its attacker, its manoeuvre options are numerous, as it was described to be able to outmanoeuvre even starfighters. Even if you can’t get out of the defender’s arcs, its defence tokens will make up for it.
The first variant is much better than modified with two scatter tokens as its stealth systems will allow it to easily evade any damage if the attacker is not accurate enough. The modified variant does lose one of those for an additional salvo token, however, this is because of its slightly larger size.
The Command, Squadron And Engineering Values:
Because of this ship's smaller size and because it’s not a flotilla, it does have very high values here, with it being the first ship in the game to have a zero value. The modified variant does have better values, thanks to its larger size and it being a command ship for Tarkin.
The Upgrade Slots:
The consistent slots for both of the variants are the defensive retrofit slot to equip the ship with extra ways to avoid damage and the superweapon slot for the Cloaking Device. The standard variant has an additional defensive retrofit to double down on being hard to hit, as well as a missile and support-team slot. The modified variant goes a little more aggressive with an offensive retrofit and a turbolaser slot alongside an officer.
The Upgrades:
Cloaking Device:
This is the core of this ship, however, it is also limited to one ship per list thanks to cloaking tech being so rare in the Star Wars universe and because it would be very powerful to have an entire fleet of hard to hit ships. The cloak does not make it impossible to be shot at as your opponents could guess where you are and shoot blindly. However, because they are shooting blind, they can only use half the dice in their attack pool. Black dice are the exception because the missiles can track the ships magnetic signature, however as the ship has heavy missile armaments, it will wish to decloak at that range to cripple its opponent.
This card forces you to not be the first ship to activate if possible to prevent you from attempting to be the last ship to activate and decloak one round, then be the first during the next round and recloak before you can be shot. It also requires engineering tokens as the cloak is hard to operate correctly.
Prototype Stealth Ship:
When creating this ship, I was inspired by X-Wing’s version of cloaking where you are still able to be shot, but harder to hit and reposition after decloaking to show the ship wasn’t exactly where your opponent thought it was. I translated this into the prototype’s title by letting you execute a speed one manoeuvre. This is not only good for running away, but also allowing you to get closer to an opponent for a more devastating strike!
If your ship doesn’t have a cloaking device on board, don’t worry as this ship uses more stealth systems than just a cloak. So because of this, it can use its scatter tokens to evade and move!
Carrion Spike:
Tarkin’s personal ship, the Spike lets the Imperils and a potential First Order faction bring this ship into battle under Tarkin or Terex's (who got his hands on the Spike during the First Order era) control.
This title also allows this ship to maintain multiple of the same token to help you activate your cloak more efficiently. It also pairs well with Tarkin’s abilities in both the Empire and Republic.
It could be used to help you use other upgrades like Electronic Countermeasures more often too, making it even harder to be hit.
Anakin Skywalker:
As the pilot of the Stealth Corvette, I felt it was fitting to let Anakin lead it into battle here as well.
His admiral card shows his unusual form of warfare where he depends on his skill to win alone. Not teamwork, not tactics, just, go get them and hope for the best.
Because this lone wolf sort of strategy is demonstrated in the episode the Stealth Corvette is shown in and because it suites this ship's style so well, I made Anakin aid friendly ships and squadrons who are away from the rest of the fleet. The rerolls also hint towards his future, thanks to Vader’s admiral card doing similar things.
Spark:
The newbie clone who joined the crew of the prototype stealth corvette last minute, Spark was the one to pick up on Trenches open communication. Because of this, and the stealth pilots requirement to be good at picking up on subtle communications, his ability lets you gain command tokens from other ship's revealed command dials.
This is especially useful for activating the Stealth Corvette’s cloak more easily as you can gain repair tokens without needing to set repair commands.
Tracking Torpedoes:
Although these are what Trench used against the Stealth Ship, I thought I’d put them in here as well. As these torpedoes can follow targets that are even experts at evading normal missiles, if the defender spends a chosen defence token, the missiles will sneak in some additional damage through.
This means even if an enemy ship scatters, you can push through some damage. Combined with Intel Officer, this can help lock down a pair of defence tokens.
Ironically this missile would be VERY effective against the Stealth Ship its self.
Proximity Missiles:
As the Stealth Ship depends so heavily on missiles, I wanted a way to give you a boost to your missile range.
I get why missiles have such limited range, but I like the idea of missiles designed to be launched and left as a makeshift mines.
This card allows you to do this by placing Proximity Mines in one of your attack arcs instead of performing an attack.
This could be problematic if it was infinite as you could just fill the board with mines, so I limited it to four times per game.
Flares:
This was a must-have upgrade for this pack as it was prominently used in the episode.
These flares are able to draw away incoming missiles and protect smaller ships from potentially crippling damage.
My design requires you to spend a salvo token as it’s a sort of counter-attack so it felt right.
Of course, it only counters black dice, however, on the Stealth Corvette that’s all you need as your cloak will protect you from the rest!
The Example Build:
IPV-2C Stealth Corvette: 36
Prototype Stealth Ship: 10
Cloaking Device: 8
Electronic Countermeasures: 7
Consular Armed Cruiser: 37
Radiant VII: 1
Parts Resupply: 3
Acclamator I: 66
Admiral Yularen: 24
Flight Commander: 3
Expanded Hanger Bay: 5
Flag Bridge: 0
Mercy Mission: 0
Acclamator I: 66
Nevoota Bee: 5
Flight Commander: 3
Expanded Hanger Bay: 5
Luminara Unduli: 23
4 x V-19 Torrent Squadron: 60
5 x BTL-B Y-Wing Squadron: 50
Total: 400
This list lets you re-enact the blockade of Christophsis by using the Stealth Corvette’s hard to hit nature to get it to the other end of the board with the Mercy Mission supplies. While you do this, the bulk of the fleet engages the enemy using overwhelming squadron numbers to cripple the opponent.
The Radiant VII lets you keep your Stealth Ship supplied with repair tokens so you can easily recloak or ready the Electronic Countermeasures upgrade.
If you want to pull an Anakin and take on an opponents ship on your way, you can easily get close enough to the enemy to cripple them with your missiles.
The Conclusion:
I when I made the Subjugator for my last article I was determined to create a Republic superweapon ship as well. Although this ship is much smaller than classic superweapon ships, it really is a useful part of any fleet, and an interesting concept for Armada.
I was tempted to allow you to go completely invisible, however, that’s rather hard to pull off and could be less fun to play against.
I’m not one hundred percent behind the idea of using two scatter tokens on this ship, however, I felt it was really needed to show this ship hard to catch nature.
As normal, feel free to use my cards to relieve the citizens of the Republic from Separatist oppression!
Thank you all for reading,
Watcher Leader out.
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