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Terrifying, methodical, precise. Like an anaconda the Interdictor stifles rebellion piece by piece, till the fires of resistance are quelled and yet another system falls to the Empire. The Interdictor brings an assortment of new tools to Admirals in Star Wars Armada from scrambling targeting sensors at critical points, to withstanding withering amounts of firepower and even pulling asteroids together to create impenetrable screens that dash any would be Han-Solos. The Interdictor allows the Empire to make victory all but inevitable, without even firing a single shot.
Contents
The Interdictor Expansion set comes excellently packaged as with all Fantasy Flight Games Products in a large box with artwork of the Interdictor lurking above a water world and the model itself proudly displayed in a large viewport. Upon opening the box is filled with all the required cardboard tokens and dials (18 in all) needed to field the Interdictor, the upgrade and ship cards (14 upgrades and two profiles for the ship) a base, stand and of course the model itself.
The pre-assembled model is cast in crisp detail and includes plenty of panel lines and greebleing, all already painted and washed in a grey scheme with some digital camouflage, this is great for those who dislike painting or lack an airbrush as the pre applied basecoat means this stage of painting can be skipped but for those who enjoy painting this scheme can be painted over if desired.
Additionally, with just a few quick processes such as dry-brushing certain areas, great detail can be added rapidly with relatively little effort bringing the ship to life. A further more precise wash could be added to panel lines to accentuate them further and clean up the few lines that were missed in the initial wash. That said even without these processes the ship still looks amazing as is on the table.
The various tokens and cards that go alongside the ship help it too. All pieces of cardboard are of good quality, well printed and are double sided, this goes for the cards as well which all include artwork, alongside well thought out descriptions making them easy to understand and read at a glance. The upgrades and Admiral center around a ship that would play havoc with speed dials and all complement the ship in this regard, curiously some fighter upgrades were included despite the Interdictor’s low squadron value of two, but these would pair well with other imperial ships from the Victory and Imperial classes of Star Destroyer to the Quasar Carrier as they certainly open up new opportunities.
Overall, the contents of the box are of great quality and I was pleasantly surprised to find quality this good in a relatively cheap expansion box.
Tactics
The Interdictor has two hulls, and aside from specific lists, sadly there just doesn’t seem to be a reason to pick the Combat Refit aside from niche uses. Whilst both are strong, the Suppression Refit is stronger, as whilst the Suppression Refit loses a black flak dice and cannot fire with obstructions at long range (it only has one red dice in its front, left and right arcs), it is 3 points cheaper and it gains an extra Experimental Retrofit slot. This makes the Suppression Refit much more powerful as the
Experimental Retrofit upgrades are unique to the Interdictor and the main reason why you would choose it over a Star Destroyer especially as they tend to cost similar amounts once upgrades are added. Whilst it is a shame to lose the black flak dice, that extra upgrade slot and the opportunities it offers are just too good to pass up on even when offered with better dice, especially as the Interdictor lacks the turbolaser upgrade slot needed to take full advantage of the extra red dice but has a ion cannon slot whose best upgrades for the Interdictor may need blue criticals to trigger their effects so having even just one more blue dice can greatly increase the value derived from these powerful upgrades.
Maneuverability wise the Interdictor is sluggish, whilst the Interdictor has an extra click at speed two over the Victory, two clicks is still poor. Worse, being restricted to speed 2 hurts when you want to chase down a ship or just push that little bit further to get those blue dice into range and devastate your targets, however the strong side arcs do compensate slightly for the bad turning. Sadly, navigate commands are a must on this ship to really allow it to turn to make the most of its double arc potential and bring a respectable amount of firepower to bear.
The statistics however are great, especially for a de-facto large ship, a command value of 2 allows you to get the right commands at the right time and really aids the Interdictor in damage control, its squadron value isn’t as great though, squadron 2 is a bit lackluster for a ship this big but when you have a colossal engineering value of 5 with a support team slot as an upgrade. 8 engineering with a token is no joke and really allows this ship to bounce back healing the front arcs shields up to full and wiping away a point of damage in a single activation can make killing this ship surprisingly difficult enabling it to act as a sponge for damage when your opponent mistakes the seemingly vulnerable support ship for an easy kill only to find it unnaturally durable.
Sadly, Kuat Drive Yards must have been on a budget for once, as fire power is heavily lacking for a ship of this size, 4 dice irrespective of their colours in the front arc is subpar for a ship costing 90 points and after what are effectively necessary upgrades the ship will rise to around the cost of a Star Destroyer, so it is a real shame that it lacks here, that said the ship does have an ion cannon upgrade and when paired with the Suppression Refits 3 blue dice the Interdictor could be used to strip away shields with Heavy Ion Emplacements or ruin defence tokens with Overload Pulse or a similar upgrade to leave the target vulnerable to your ships that do have lots of dice, and whilst these upgrades are expensive at 9 and 8 points respectively, given the Interdictor’s stubborn refusal to die it is unlikely these upgrades will be lost before they can cripple more than one ship.
Survivability wise the ship is very strong but has a few weaknesses, on one hand the stellar engineering score of 5 base makes it very hard to kill especially when paired with the low command of 2 allowing engineering commands to be delivered almost at will. 9 hull allows you to survive the first few rounds of shooting especially when paired with the well-rounded shields (3 front, 2 for all other arcs) and great engineering. It is however somewhat let down by its defence tokens: whilst a brace and redirect are great allowing you to reduce the damage on a single arc substantially, two contains will rarely see usage that said, you could try to use the damage control officer upgrade to expand their scope but even then, they still aren’t the most useful. Meaning you only really have a redirect and brace, so save them for when you direly need them.
Now to the main event the Experiment Retrofits, these upgrades are what make the Interdictor so unique, the first is the G7-X Grav Well Projector this allows you to place a token anywhere before the fleets deploy and force the ships that set up nearby to be speed 0, stopping them getting into the fight properly and preventing them from beginning to grow a pool of tokens underneath their ships, it pairs well with objective based games especially in tandem with the Grav Shift Reroute this unique
upgrade allows you to place a token to move any obstacles distance 2, this allows you to effectively move the goalposts when objectives are on obstacles or create screens to block off certain routes to objectives elsewhere. This is possibly the best upgrade for the Interdictor as whilst appearing weak can make a game substantially easier to win, allowing you to ensure the map always suits you and never your opponent. The G-8 is also unique and is a lot like a tractor beam but this one can slow to speed 0, this is major as it is one of only two cards that can do this (the other being the Starhawk’s tractor beam) albeit only during the manoeuvre meaning that your opponent can still spend defence tokens. Lastly there is the Targeting Scrambler, this is non-unique and is a very competitive card letting you force your opponent to re-roll 4 attack dice when targeting a nearby friendly ship. These last two are best used when paired with the ships title which allows you to ready an exhausted card whenever a ship activates, allowing you to make much better use of these and frustrate their most crucial rolls.
Because of this the Interdictor is therefore best suited to mid-range fights where it can be in range with its blue dice and experimental retrofits and ideally take some of the punishment away from allied ships allowing your fleet to be much more survivable, but still out of range of black dice, it is very much a support ship that can draw fire when needed and it excels in this role. But, be careful as it is easy to draw too much fire and go down before being able to force an engineering command through.
Should you buy it?
The Interdictor makes for a great expansion set for Imperial players; a low price point coupled with a high quality and competitive ship, carrying unique upgrades mean this set is a great starting point for those wishing to further expand their Imperial fleet. For those who have larger collections the Interdictor offers something that is just a little bit different from many other Imperial ships, and its inclusion opens up many new playstyles and opportunities previously inaccessible bringing a new, layer to Star Wars Armada.
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