DO I WANT... a LAAT/i Gunship expansion pack?

In the last blog I looked at whether the Xi Shuttle expansion pack made for an attractive purchase, mainly for First Order players but also for players of other factions who might be looking for some of the new neutral upgrade cards.  Today it's the turn of the fat boi LAAT/i Gunship.

For fans of the prequel trilogy of movies and the Clone Wars cartoon series the Low Altitude Assault Transport (or LAAT to it's friends) is an iconic ship and one that a lot of players have been looking forward to adding to their collection ever since the Republic faction was announced last year.  Let's find out if those guys are going to be pleased or disappointed.

Is the LAAT good?  Do you want to buy one?

PILOTS

There are four different pilots for the LAAT Gunship and your entry level pilot is the generic 212th Battalion Pilot for a pretty hefty 51pts.  That makes the LAAT the most expensive basic ship in the Republic fleet but is there another similar ship in the game that we can benchmark that cost against to decide if we think it's too much?

Warden Squadron Pilot - 2/1/6/3 - 38pts 

The basic K-Wing has a pretty similar stat profile to the LAAT with just one less health point over all, and not only that it has the same 'bowtie' turret arc and is also on a medium base.  It makes the Warden Squadron Pilot the best comparison ship for the LAAT but it's 13pts cheaper!  Well unlike the K-Wing the LAAT comes with a powerful ship ability that allows friendly ships to reroll their attack dice and along with the extra health point (only 3pts for Hull Upgrade on a 1 agility ship) that reroll ability is  the main thing that you're paying for with those extra 13pts over a Warden Squadron Pilot.

Is that good, though?  I think there's two questions to ask there: if we say the hull point is 3pts then is +10pts about right for that ability?  And do you actually want this ability?

1. We can compare the 13pts against other similar rerolls effects.  The closest neighbour is Sinker's ARC-170 which is even in the same faction, and Sinker is 12pts more than a basic ARC pilot.  Drea Renthal is 19pts more than a basic scum Y-Wing for a reroll ability, Howlrunner is whopping 24pts more than an Academy TIE and Captain Jonus is 18pts more than a basic TIE Bomber.  Those 13pts we're paying for on the LAAT don't seem too bad compared to those guys, although it's worth noting that the LAAT's ability is charge based while the others work for any number of attacking ships.  Which leads us on to...
   
   
2. Do I want the LAAT's reroll ability?  The fact that the LAAT's ability is so similar to Sinker in the ARC-170 really helps showcase that the two ships have different purposes.  Sinker rerolls 1 dice for any number of attackers while the LAAT rerolls 2 dice but you're limited by the number of charges you have on the LAAT.  This means Sinker is perfect for supporting large numbers of ships with 2 red dice while the LAAT is an expert at supporting a smaller number of ships (as it's charge based) with bigger guns (imore dice = more chance you need to reroll multiple dice).

So, is 51pts good value for the 212th Battalion Pilot?  Yes, the +13pts over a Warden Squadron Pilot is reasonable for a health and reroll ability IF you're playing the right type of squad to really showcase the LAAT's rerolls.  If you want a more classic 'force multiplier' effect on lots of attacks you probably want Sinker instead as the two have very similar costs.

But what the baked-in cost of those rerolls does mean is that the LAAT can't just be a cheap support ship or crew carrier because its always got that unavoidable cost of the rerolls thrown on top.  It's great that the LAAT has lots of slots for crew and gunner upgrades but when it starts at 51pts you need to be extremely careful about how much extra cost you load onto a ship that ultimately only has 1 green dice if the opponent decides they want to kill it.

So far I've talked a lot about the generic 212th Battalion Pilot but there are also three named Clone pilots for the LAAT which bring extra abilities to play.  These pilots are only a few points more than the generic LAAT so you don't need much from their abilities to make them worth bringing, but do they add much?

Hound is almost certainly the weakest of the named pilots.  His ability allows you to pull Deplete and Strain off friendly ships but the Republic isn't a faction that has a lot of effects that will Strain or Deplete your ships.  I think Hound likely sits on a shelf until a point where the metagame sees your opponents bringing lots of Strain effects, then comes in as a spoiler against that strategy.

Warthog is probably the most obviously good upgrade on the 212th Battalion Pilot and for just +3pts you gain some protection against being 'Initiative killed' - that is, being destroyed in the engagement step before you get to fire.  If Warthog's ability means you get even one good extra shot off in a game it could easily be worth those +3pts so if you're bringing a lot of low Initiative pilots you should be thinking seriously about taking the upgrade to Warthog.

I think Hawk is the trickiest LAAT pilot to get value out of but also probably the pilot that can add the most value if you work out how to unlock it.  Repositions are usually a high value ability and being able to move into a new position ahead of for your next turn can be used to upset opponents plans - maybe barrel roll onto the spot where your opponent wanted to K-Turn into, or boost forward so you don't get blocked yourself, even just use it to turn that arc around another 90 degress.  Strain is a small price to pay for that, especially when you can follow it with a blue maneuver immediately.  The Range 1 restriction is a problem but it's worth noting that Hawk can always use it on himself even if no friendly ships are nearby (and that means he's the only LAAT who can reposition at all).  Hawk's going to take a while for players to work out but there's massive potential in this ability - just ask Guri players how good Virago can be and Virago stresses you instead of just a strain!

UPGRADES

As well as the LAAT itself the expansion pack comes with LOADS of brand new upgrade cards that may be a good reason to buy it.  So let's look at those guys too...

Hey everyone, it's the moment we've all been waiting for... freaking YODA is in the game now!  

Oh, he's a bit rubbish?  Really?  Oh dear.  

This implementation of one of the biggest badass iconic Star Wars character seems to have been a bit bungled in my opintion.  Yoda is the first crew we've seen to add 2 Force points to a ship, which is great, but everything else about him is underwhelming.  He brings a Purple coordinate action which is pretty mediocre (we've had that for over a year on Chancellor Palpatine and it's not really done much).  Once the ETA Actis Interceptor arrives he'll be a bit more useful helping with their purple maneuvers but that's not great either - you're effectively moving force points around to where there's greatest need and that's quite similar to Emperor Palpatine, but Yoda is both more expensive than Palpatine and moving force in anticipation of need is worse than Palp's ability to use it from afar.  I think Yoda needs to drop a few points in price to really make sense, but even then he's going to be disappointingly dull.

It kind of cements how naff Yoda's design is to see Aayla Secura get a similar purple Coordinate action but as a linked action after a Focus.  The trouble with a purple Coordinate is that you're effectively losing action economy (it costs you your action and a Force point to add +1 action to another ship, so you're down a Force point) so making it a linked action really helps make it a playable option.  All the card text about bullseye arcs can be mostly ignored, I think, and that linked Focus-Coordinate is what Aayla is for.  I still have a fundamental issue with whether the Republic faction actually needs extra coordinate action support vs other forms of action economy, but at least Aayla is trying to be helpful unlike Yoda.

Kit Fisto and Plo Koon are two Jedi masters with very similar profiles - both have similar cost for one Force point, with similar purple defensive abilities (Plo Reinforces, Kit Evades) and similarly wordy but mostly rubbish character abilities.  They're both cheap enough to be worth playing for the Force point alone if you can spare the points, Plo Koon is better at defending the ship he's on and making opponents fire at something else, Kit Fisto is better at protecting nearby ships and making people fire at the ship he's on... that's the main difference.  Unfortunately they also both share the same basic problem - why would you pay so much for a Jedi when you could buy two great Clone crew cards for the same cost?

Wolfpack is the card you should probably be playing instead of a Jedi and it's my pick for best card in Wave 7 (Automated Target Priority is good but it's no Wolfpack).  Strain tokens are a small price to pay for getting target locks to fuel your revenge attacks with, and the sheer amount of action economy this card turns out can be phenomenal.  Wolfpack is Range 0-3 so covers most of your ships and there's no limit on the number of times you can do it per turn.  Why spend 16pts on Aayla Secura to get action economy when Wolfpack can offer more action economy for a quarter of the cost?  A lot of the time the answer is going to be: "I didn't, I played Wolfpack instead".  The one thing I'd caution is that Wolfpack definitely works best with Warthog on the table as Wolfpack really incentivises the enemy to focus down and kill a ship in one turn, especially if they kill it thanks to the Strain token you took and before you get to attack and benefit from that target lock. 

Ghost Company's points cost is baffling.  It has an identical ability text to the Rebel's Bistan gunner and also gives your ship a linked Rotate-Focus action... for 5pts while Bistan costs 10pts.  Pow.  Er.  Creep.  Ghost Company is a great upgrade and again shows how you can get much more bang for your upgrades buck by spending it on Clones than you can on Jedi.  On the plus side Ghost Company also combos really nicely with other Clone crew like Clone Commander Cody or "Fives", but on the downside I think playing Ghost Company means carefully balancing the threat levels in your squad.  The more you load your LAAT up to power Ghost Company the more likely you are to make it the enemy's first target... which means you're probably going to start taking Reinforce actions not Focus which then turns off Ghost Company's bonus attacks.  There's a balance to strike there.

"Fives" is like a walking, talking version of the Automated Target Priority upgrade that comes in the Xi Shuttle.  I like ATP a lot and I like "Fives" too, though not as much for two main reasons: firstly if you put it on an ARC-170 you're rolling 3 red dice not 2, so you're less likely to miss a shot, and secondly a focus token is better than a Calculate token but it's not 3x better but "Fives" costs 3x more than ATP.  I like "Fives" because he's pretty cheap to include and let his upside trigger now and then to get value but I totally have him down as a luxury upgrade and I think I'll wind up cutting him from squads quite often.

We've had three really good Clone crew cards in a row so now it's time for a bad one - Clone Captain Rex seems to be a really niche upgrade card.  He needs to sit on a support ship that's supporting some acey ships that are good at getting bullseye shots (like Jedi, for instance) but which also really benefit from free Focus actions and don't mind getting Strain (so... not like Jedi after all, then), oh and he needs to be firing at the target before his friends do in order to trigger his ability.  So ideally he wants to support ships with lower Initiative than him but who are good at getting bullseyes.  That's a Venn diagram with not much overlap in the middle and it leaves Rex in an awkward spot.

The new Suppressive Gunner is a neutral upgrade that any faction can take and it's actually pretty interesting.  With a built-in effect for a focus result on your attack it provides a 'hands free' benefit that allows you to spend your actions on something else and still make your attacks more painful and that's valuable.  Your opponent gets to choose what happens - damage or Deplete - so it's a small effect but it could be worth paying for.  Because the opponent is often likely to take a Deplete there's a couple of things to think about when looking to use Suppressive Gunner or not - it's best on a ship with high Initiative that can Deplete the enemy before they fire, and it's best against opponents with low ship counts as you're Depleting a greater % of their damage output each turn.  It's far from a slam dunk upgrade to put on every ship but I think it could find its spot in a few places, like Scum Han in his Millenium Falcon.

The new Multi-Missile Pods (MMP) come in both the LAAT and HMP Gunship expansion packs and it's basically an alternative to Barrage Rockets for most purposes.  The main upside is that you gain a 180 degree firing arc, but it's worth remembering that MMP are best with ships that can Calculate rather than Focus.  Most ships won't want MMP for that reason so it's not an obvious upgrade outside of using it on Droid ships, but it is a brand new upgrade card in this pack.

The last new upgrade is Deadeye Shot and like Multi-Missile Pods it's got a very similar rival upgrade already in the card pool: Marksmanship.

Pros vs Marksmanship: effect ignores green dice

Cons vs Marksmanship: requires opponent to already have a facedown damage card, requires you to have a hit result to spend,  Marksmanship could have been a damage AND a crit not a damage OR a crit.

I think MOST of the time Marksmanship is better.  Deadeye shot is good if you've only got 2 red dice and would struggle to deal damage past 3 green dice anyway, but in most normal situations I'd take Marksmanship instead.  And TBH most of the time I'd actually take half as many Crack Shots over either card.

CONCLUSION

So at the top of the article I asked two questions: is the LAAT Gunship good?  Do you want to buy one?

The LAAT is an expensive ship at 51pts but with that powerful reroll ability you get a lot of ship for your points investment and it can certainly be a powerful addition to your squad.  I think you need to be very aware of not loading too many points into upgrades on your LAAT though - there may be a host of slots that all look inviting to add Jedi and clones and missiles etc into but you have to be mindful of keeping the LAAT cheap enough that it kind of blends into the background - you're not far off paying Upsilon Shuttle points for this thing and First Order players can attest to just how fast they can go down when the opponent decides to make it happen!

Do you want to buy one?  Moreso than with the Xi Shuttle for First Order I can give the LAAT sa hearty thumbs up recommendation.  It supports a wider range of the common Republic ships than the Xi does, and it comes with a bunch of great clone crew and gunner upgrades that will buff your existing ARC and Y-Wing ships.  The Jedi may grab headlines and look flashy with all their force points, but I think it's the raw efficiency of the clones that you'll fall back on time and again.

Do you want to buy two?  Hell no.  They're too expensive in points to want to field two, there's diminishing returns on the reroll ability and, ironically for a bunch of clones, all the best upgrade crew are unique.  Unless you're a painting fiend intent on remaking all the Clone Wars paint schemes you almost certainly don't want two but you definitely want one.

If you're not a Republic player there's a few bits and pieces in here - Suppressive Gunner, Deadeye Shot and Multi-Missile Pods but I think they're all pretty niche use and aren't really demanding you come and pick them up.