Hello everyone, you are very welcome here.
Today I am going to be talking about the Imperial Interdictor Cruiser for Star Wars Armada.

He straightened in his chair and touched a switch. The command room’s lights came back up, the holographic sculptures fading away. “We’ll need two more ships,” he told Pellaeon. “An Interdictor Cruiser to bring Skywalker out of Hyperspace where we want him and some kind of freighter. An expendable one, preferably.”
Pellaeon blinked. “Expendable, sir?”
“Expendable Captain. We’re going to set up the attack as a pure accident – an opportunity that will seem to have arisen while we were investigating a suspicious freighter for Rebellion munitions.” He cocked an eyebrow. “That way, you see, we retain the option of turning him over to C’Boath if we choose to do so, without Skywalker realising he was ambushed.”
Grand Admiral Thrawn to Captain Pellaeon, Command room aboard Chimaera, Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn.
The latest addition to my Imperial Starfleet is the Interdictor Cruiser, a cruiser class vessel used by the Imperial Starfleet to generate gravity well mass shadows; these mass shadows pull ships from hyperspace, or prevent them from entering it. In the excerpt above, Grand Admiral Thrawn outlines an ambush for Luke Skywalker made to look like an accident in order to outwit his unpredictable ally, the mad Jedi Joruus C’Boath. (Extended Universe, Legends stuff).
I did an unboxing video for the ship, which you can watch below.
There is currently no real rules mechanism in the game to say that an Interdictor prevents enemy ships escaping, though you could certainly create a scenario where the rebel fleet cannot leave until it is destroyed. I think that would be quite a fun game to play. Another, would be another one of Grand Admiral Thrawn’s stratagems. In the battle of Coruscant, he used two Interdictor cruisers to define a specific point in space, close to Coruscant Orbital Defences. The generated mass shadow pulled two Victory Star Destroyers out of Hyperspace on top of the Republic Golan Defence platform, which they were able to thump into tiny fragments. Again, I can see mileage in a game where the Imperial player is trying to get their Interdictor into a predefined part of the playing area, in order that they can act as a beacon for an Imperial Strike force to lock onto. Such as just past the Republic/Rebellion sentry line.
You get some interesting upgrades for the Interdictor cruiser, several to do with grav wells which can alter the terrain of the battlefield or disrupt enemy speeds.



However, taking it to its most simple I think I would probably take the Interdictor as a combat refit, give it the quadlasers to give it effective star fighter defence along with the Targeting scrambler and the Interdictor name. With a black and blue squadron dice, it becomes a reasonable anti-starfighter platform, with its targeting scramblers making it harder to hit than it should be which adds to the fact it has serious levels of hull armour and reasonable shields. For a cruiser type vessel, it packs a small punch and can keep up with the big boys in the fleet.


I think my next outing will probably have one of these ships along as an escort, as the rebel player does enjoy his fighters (rightly so). And even if he doesn’t swarm me with X-Wings and Y-Wings, and focuses on B-Wings and freighters (like the Ghost and Millenium Falcon), something that can reliably deal with even thesmall number of super punchy fighter class ships can only be a boon.


That’s a cool ship! So is Armada similar to the Fantasy Flight game Star Wars X-Wing?
It is made by Fantasy Flight and there are some ships that appear in both. The imperial raider and escort carriers are large ships in x wing and small ships in armada. The play mechanisms are different, armada adds command dials that adds a logistics element. Larger ships (like a star destroyer) have to plot their commands three turns in advance to simulate how commands are relayed on big ships. Smaller ships only have one dial making them more flexible. X wing is simpler in some respects but tgat isn’t to say armada is complicated. I like the miniatures for both but I prefer capital ship games. Admittedly I do want more fighters for my imperial fleet but they currently are out of stock
You are quite right. The Interdictor came up first in that (wait for it 😂) Legendary novel. Such a shame that those novels aren’t canon anymore, they were so incredibly awesome. Luckily though, Grand Admiral Thrawn is canon again, so that is really awesome 😊
As for this show, it looks amazing. I hate Fantasy Flight though, for continually bringing out stuff like this, and being responsible for the destruction of my wallet lol 😂😂 Great post 😊
There is actually a new(ish) timothy zahn book out called Thrawn. A bit of retroactive continuity to bring the character in line with Rebels. Not a bad book, though some of it felt like it was written under protest
Yeah, I can imagine how Timothy Zahn must have felt. His books single handedly resurected Star Wars at the time, and then Disney came in and said ” well….you did a great job and all, but your universe is now dead”. Years later…well your character of Thrawn is pretty amazing, but erm can you rewrite his story again? I would seriously be annoyed if I were him 😂
Yeah. Completely agree
You should look up the survival rates of Interdictor cruisers in the books. Hint: it’s not high. 😁
It’s a good choice to put in the game though!
I don’t recall them being destroyed loads in the Thrawn Books. Or the X Wing Books. Certainly not an inordinate amount