The Imperial Interdictor Cruiser

Hello everyone, you are very welcome here.

Today I am going to be talking about the Imperial Interdictor Cruiser for Star Wars Armada. 

This post is about the Imperial Interdictor Cruiser in Star Wars Armada
An Imperial Interdictor, and Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn – where it was first seen. (I think)

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.

The Interdictor Title allows the ship to refresh any exhausted upgrade
The Interdictor name, handy little ability – works well with the targeting scrambler I would say
The Imperial Interdictor comes with one Admiral, Admiral Konstantine, and three officer upgrades. Admiral Titus, Commandant Aresko and the Flight Commander.
Admiral Constantine, and the officer available with the Interdictor. Konstantine, Titus and some of the other upgrades work well for messing with an enemy ship’s seed
The Imperial Interdictor has 4 advanced technology upgrades. The G7-X Grav Well Projetor, the Targeting Scrambler, the G-8 Experimental Projector and the Grav Shift Reroute.
The Experimental technology upgrades have two options for interfering with an opponent’s speed, one for terrain and one that makes the ship harder to hit

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.

The Imperial Interdictor has two builds, Suppression and Combat refits. This is the suppression refit.
The suppression refit has room for more experimental technology, sacrificing some weapons and shields.
The Imperial Interdictor has two builds, Suppression and Combat refits. This is the combat refit.
The combat refit sacrifices experimental technology upgrades in favour of better armaments and shields/

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.

The Imperial Interdictor comes with three weapons upgrades, the Quad Laser Turrets, Leading Shots and MS-1 Ion Cannons
Ion Cannons are always fun, and leading shots I can see being quite useful when the dice are against you. ANd Quad lasers are just good for anti-starfighter
The Imperial Interdictor has two crew upgrades, the engineering team and the fighter coordination team.
The engineering team really adds survivability to an already tough little ship, and the fighter coordination team is just handy for getting squadrons into or out of combat.

 

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8 thoughts on “The Imperial Interdictor Cruiser

    1. 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

  1. 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 😊

    1. 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

      1. 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 😂

  2. 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!

    1. I don’t recall them being destroyed loads in the Thrawn Books. Or the X Wing Books. Certainly not an inordinate amount

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