Star Wars Armada: Nadiri Starhawk Review

Tactics

The Starhawk is in many ways it is like a sledgehammer. Unstoppable yet unwieldy. The front arc especially is one of the most dangerous arcs of any ship 8 dice and 6 shields mean this will overpower any other large ships that stray into the arc and even if they escape this arc, they will wander into one of the 4 shield side arcs that still has 5 dice. This means the Starhawk behaves much like the Star Destroyers it was constructed from. This can create a challenge of sorts for Rebel players used to the broadsiding MC80s that tend not to need too much support, but for those who have experience with any Star Destroyers or other front arc ships using the Starhawk should feel natural.

Statistics Block

The ship itself has a high command value of 4, so good fore-planning is a must, as from the start the ship will already have its commands it will use in the second half of the game. This can be got around by using Transports with Comms Nets as these are fairly cheap at just 20 points. The Starhawk can also improvise as a carrier with a squadron of 3 but it is somewhat let down by the unpredictability of its commands. The engineering value is also good at 4 and this can go up to 6 with a token, the Starhawk does benefit greatly from gaining a token round 1 in engineering, navigate commands are also a good option as the option to change your speed on demand really helps especially if you intend to use the tractor beams of the ship to their best effect. The defence tokens are also interesting. As you would expect of a large ship the Starhawk has 4 tokens but this can be increased to 5 if you buy any of the titles for the ship although due to this they are eye-wateringly expensive, oftentimes being the price of a squadron! The brace carried by the Starhawk is exceptionally useful for defending against large attacks and should be reserved for them the redirect is also useful for moving shields around, annoyingly the contain is not as useful but still very helpful in preventing some critical hits resolving their effects. The salvo however changes the game a lot.

Salvo Tokens

The salvo token allows a ship to respond to an attack by firing either its anti-squadron armament (if attacked by a squadron) or its rear arc (if attacked by a ship), immediately following the normal rules of an attack. This means oftentimes attacking ships with these tokens can lead to chip damage that either drains tokens or shields slightly and very quickly adds up. If fighting against ships with salvo you should attempt to use an ion cannon critical effect to first exhaust or discard these tokens to prevent their usage as whilst the damage may seem small the effects of it are not and should not be underestimated especially as the damage can be seen as trivial or if not force you to expend tokens you would rather preserve to use later causing a much more dangerous attack to wreak havoc. These tokens can be exploited though, a ship carrying a salvo does so in place of another token such as a brace or redirect. So, these ships are often easier to kill than their peers.

Survivability

The Starhawk however has no such issues, 14 hull will absorb most attacks and makes killing the Starhawk a nightmare. Worse, as it is a large ship your opponent does not receive any points from attacking it until it is destroyed making it a less attractive target to attack and allows you to get more use out of it. The shields also complement this as they can often times hold assaults off for ages, but when they do fall do not expect to get them back as their large size makes replenishing them very difficult.

Firepower

The firepower is equally terrifying, gunnery teams on a ship like this are a must as the front arc can devastate most ships or even outright destroy small ships with just a single round of shooting, the side arcs too have 5 dice each and these allow the Starhawk to be more flexible with where it lets its prey fall as these too still carry great potential for damage and their wideness is where the gunnery teams upgrade really comes in handy as oftentimes several ships potentially with squadrons will all fall in the same arc due to its size. The Starhawk also has excellent anti-squadron fire power too! The mark 2 variant in particular has a red and a blue dice for this allowing the Starhawk to tear through squadron heavy fleets and the supplied Heavy Fire Zone upgrades further this if so desired.

Mobility

The mobility however is where the Starhawk falls short, like all large ships it struggles to move being only speed 2 with one click at each point, this allows the Starhawk to turn somewhat but it will need navigate commands to keep the narrow front arc on course and the low speed leaves the ship susceptible to being left behind compared to the Rebels much faster ships. This isn’t as bad as it may seem though as the Starhawk has a great trick up its sleeve:

The Tractor Beams.

Tractor Beams

The Starhawk, alongside the Onager is the second ship to have a superweapon upgrade, this (thankfully) functions much more like your regular tractor beams rather than like a Death Star as is the case with the Onager. These have the great benefit of allowing you to set a ship to speed 0 provided the Starhawk is too preventing your target from spending any defence tokens oftentimes allowing the Starhawk alone to do damage near the double digits. Needless to say when done correctly this can be exceedingly powerful allowing you to trap a ship at speed 0 and then hammer it with your front arc before speeding up again to ready the Tractor beams again, of course such a tactic requires proper setup and is risky as if it goes wrong the Starhawk can instead expose itself but the payoff when executed well is massive and the large shields in the front can save you most of the time if you are left vulnerable.

The Lone Wolf

Lastly there is Kyrsta Agate, the Commander included in the box. She is vastly different as her abilities are ship specific instead of fleet wise, i.e. she is akin to and functions like a regular upgrade making her well suited to fleets with one or two large ships. This comes with two benefits, firstly she is cheap for a Commander at just 20 points, allowing you to spend more of your points elsewhere, at 20 points however she brings some quite powerful benefits, the ship she is assigned to after deploying picks any defence token of its choice aside from Scatter, making the ship in question vastly more survivable and then this ship can discard a defence token to resolve its effect. This sounds less useful but can be handy to get around accuracies on large attacks and spend a brace for instance allowing you to spend a token when it is most needed or if you are at speed 0. This can come in handy but as your fleet gains no benefits outside of the ship she is on, this can leave you vulnerable if your opponent chooses to focus on other ships instead of the ship she is on. Especially if the ship has a low speed as then your opponent could attempt to hide outside its range to completely negate her and her abilities.

Is it Worth it?

At just under £95 when not on sale the set can be seen as very expensive, especially for an expansion for a game, as such at this price I would advise against the set, even with the excellent quality of everything contained within it. Another issue is that the connection to the stand at the base of the model is rather weak. Thankfully, the set is usually on sale for a lot less and at these discounted prices, the set is most definitely worth it, giving the Rebel Alliance a strong, central ship that can go toe to toe with any other capital ship and even give a Super Star Destroyer a run for it’s money alongside many other unique upgrades.