I'll Never Turn to the Dark Side: Screed

"I’ll Never Turn to the Dark Side” - Why I Won’t Fly Screed

Welcome to “I’ll Never Turn to the Dark Side,” a new series about cards (with a particular focus on Commanders) that I will never fly! Okay, but, we already have so much negativity, so why should you read about something based on that premise? Eh, bear with me. I’m actually not planning to focus on the negatives in this series. I’m not giving y’all names of cards that I think are terrible and so will therefore never play; it’s sort of the opposite, actually. I plan on picking out cards that I think have real value, but explaining why I personally am unlikely to use them.

Pic of me as I continue writing about great cards that I will never use...

Today, I’m writing about Admiral Screed. When I first started playing Armada, dice used to frustrate me, and I couldn’t understand the value of rerolls because “I’d rather just make the dice behave the way I want them to.” Childish, I know. Why play a game with dice if I’m coming in with the attitude of wanting perfect control? It’s because I did not yet have a handle on what to expect from my dice. I expected too much from red and black dice, and felt it was unfair that blue dice would always be useful when rolled against me. It was my first minis game and I was still blaming the dice for my losses rather than really having a solid understanding of why games were swinging against me and my fleets were getting burned to the ground. So naturally, Screed was an extremely inviting commander! What’s that? I have black crit effects I want to go off? Or blue crit effects? Or I want my red dice to behave so instead of two blanks, I can at least ensure a damage with a possible crit effect? Great! Screed is the right call for me!


His point cost and his in-game cost are beyond reasonable for what you’re leveraging, particularly when it comes to black critical effects such as Assault Concussion Missiles (ACMs) or Assault Proton Torpedoes (APTs), or a blue crit effect such as Heavy Ion Emplacements (HIE). So why is it that I will not fly him? Well, for starters, my attitude towards dice has changed as my understanding of the game has deepened. I no longer love or hate any particular type of dice. As fickle as red dice can certainly be, and while black dice can really disappoint one who is counting on APTs triggering off of 3-4 attacks of 4 black dice each (with rerolls!) and ends up not rolling a single crit, I’ve come to accept that as part of the game. The particularly good or particularly bad rolls have made the game that much more exciting for me. I think it’s what the designers had in mind, which is why there are dice involved in the first place. But as someone who chose this for my first miniatures game, I was expecting too much of the dice, as well as assigning them too much blame. I didn’t understand how one could overcome the need for extraordinary (or even average, honestly) dice through smart decisions, good command planning, clever deployment, and precise navigation.

But now that I’ve learned these things, I think I’ve started to resent dice fixing. Not rerolls, mind you! It’s true that Ordnance Experts “all but guarantees” that when Demo throws 4 or 5 black dice at you from its side, that it’ll get a critical effect to stick. But it’s definitely NOT guaranteed, and I’ve seen that go poorly. I’ve seen rerolls improve on the original pool, and I’ve seen them degrade the damage done by the attack as well. So it’s still dice chucking with all the risks and rewards that come with it. But there are some cards that ensure dice will behave exactly the way you want: Intensify Firepower! (IF), Turbolaser Reroute Circuit (TRC), SW-7 Ion Batteries, Sensor Team, Weapons Battery Techs….and Screed. So, why am I hating on Screed?


To be clear, I’m not hating on him. Not really. I think he’s a really good card who bestows a really powerful, fleet-wide effect. I don’t think he’s broken at all, because I think his points cost is reasonable, and his in-game cost of spending a die to change another die to a crit is reasonable. Absolutely. But I simply won’t be flying him because he feels too much like a “get out of jail free” card to me. He guarantees the crit you were looking for in each of your ship’s activation. And in the vast majority of cases, there’s not a damn thing the opponent can do about it. The vast majority of ships (barring the SSD) don’t boast Damage Control Officer. And I don’t see a lot of Iden Versio out there.


“So Chris, does this mean you refuse to use IF! and TRC on principle?”

Nope, can’t say that’s the case. I’ll fly those upgrades. Don’t like it when they’re used against me. Not at all. Lost my 4th game at GenCon last year when my opponent’s Scout MC30 JUST EVER SO BARELY got into red range of my Cymoon and was able to use TRC to table me. Without TRC, he does not kill my Cymoon, does not table me, and I go 3-1 on the day. I don’t go onto Day 2, but I end the day on a much higher note and probably get some additional swag. That sort of things sours me, even though I know he’s got the upgrade and I simply have to fly accordingly. But having those kinds of upgrades on a single ship don’t bother me as much as Screed does. That crit for every ship in my opponent’s fleet usually means quite a lot of special crit effects that I KNOW will go off, rather than simply counting them as LIKELY to go off (a la Vader or Ordnance Experts). And I just don’t really like that. It feels like a cheat to me. And, again, to be perfectly clear: I do not actually think it is a cheat. I really genuinely do not think that. But I FEEL as though I get cheated. It feels like a bit of an easy mode to me.


That is not a snipe at people who fly Screed. If you like the guy, then go for it! You’ve got all the reason in the world to love him and want to fly him! You don’t have to worry about investing in black or blue crit upgrades only to never see them go off just because your dice are cold. It totally makes sense to me! But much in the way that I’ll never fly Rieekan (see my first “I’ll Never Turn to the Dark Side” post!) because he cheats death for a turn and therefore gets to ignore forking for a turn because I can still activate in my ideal order (Go ahead, kill my MC30; it’ll still get you. It doesn’t even care. You killed Yavaris? Whatever, scrub; those squadrons will still double-tap your MC80 and murder it with gleeful ease.), I’ll never fly Screed because he just doesn’t care how my dice roll for one attack per activation. If I’m crit-fishing, Imma get it when I want it (again, barring DCO or Iden, neither of whom is particularly common at all). There’s no question about whether or not those crit effect will trigger, and for me, that ignores a rule of the game that I’m not particularly fond of ignoring. And that’s why I’ll never fly Screed.


-IratePooka