It's More than Just Gaming

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.