Archipelagon looks interesting! I don’t think he’s quite as broken as one of my locals thinks, but he’s definitely solid!
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I’m pretty excited for him. Dreadnought and Tides of War make figuring out if you want to go in on him first or second a bit of a puzzle, and his blast is just absolutely bonkers in the best possible way. He is still kept in check a bit by being slow, 10 HP, and a pedestrian, so I don’t think he’s broken or even S tier, but only time will tell. Very interested to get him on the table.
The units seem like they’ll make a solid faction core with the existing Tritons and buffs from either Leviathron or Anglax. I think I’ll probably find room for the Orca Huntsman even outside Triton heavy lists. The Sea Dragon seems like a nice flexible option, but I rarely find myself spawning cost-2 attacking units in Protectors. The Hatchling is just a weird little dude that I don’t think I’ll take in most lists, but he seems really good when you have a lot of Triton units around. I might change my mind on that as I get some games in though.
I think Archipelagon himself definitely asks some interesting questions. Those 10 health monsters though…oof!
I have a friend who is of the belief that Grizzi is broken, and that Archipelagon is insanely OP, so now I’m half-tempted to grab an Archipelagon ASAP just to make all his nightmares come true. 
(I just finished Grizzi on Saturday, and I’m the only person I know who even owns him, so nobody here has ever played against him yet, as far as I know, heh.)
The units: I love the look of the Orca Huntsman, and Scout seems like it has potential, but the SPD 5 pedestrian makes me wary.
As for the Kraken Hatchling and Sea Dragon: I want to love them, but I have absolutely no more room in my lists for COST 2 specialists as-is. I want to take them, but man oh man…
Action: Catapult strikes me as a very weird rule. I’m have a very hard time justifying why I would take this model over a Command Ape. Blitz is a strictly superior version of that rule. I guess the idea is to spawn something nearby using Beachhead, then give it an extra 4-5 spaces’ worth of movement? But man, that’s a lot of Action Dice… It seems like it would still be cheaper to spawn a Command Ape and Blitz the target.
I would take the Hatchling all day long just for Spike Shield (and maybe Beachhead), if only it was COST 1!
(So many good COST 2 specialist units in Protectors…)
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Catapult is costless, so a 2-cost Kraken Hatchling that can Beachhead out another Triton units is actually the same number of dice as a Command Ape. It is even better if you can get it from a Sun Industries Building or a Jungle Fortress for a single die while also not even occupying a spawn zone. I do agree that even with that in mind it probably doesn’t belong in lists that aren’t leaning pretty heavily into Tritons already.
The Orcas feels like the real winner to me. Scout and Tag on a Brawl attack are going to be useful in every game.
I missed the cost-free bit on Action: Catapult; that does indeed help quite a lot! I was fixated on parsing the movement restrictions. As weird as it might sound, I read (MonPoc) rules better off physical cards. (No problems with digital Warmachine! Just MonPoc. I agree: that is, indeed, weird.)
At any rate, that changes this guy into, essentially, an equal-cost push spawn, plus a bit of weird movement on top, which is okay. Not sure if it’ll replace Humusoid+Temple Giant as a way to efficiently secure a building during a spawn phase, but it is different.
Now if only I could justify including my beautiful (but of questionable efficacy) Ketos Crab in my lists! 
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I did not notice this until it was pointed out to me, but Catapult also does not specify “allied unit”, so you can do it to an enemy unit as well.
I actually spotted that originally. However, I filed it away under “the chances of it ever becoming useful are vanishingly unlikely”. 
If an enemy unit is in such a perfect position for this to matter, I believe I’d much rather just kill it and get the power die.
So, I listened to Emanuel and the other playtesters talk about these releases in Primecast 17. They were — and forgive me for condensing several minutes’ worth of discussion down to a sentence or two! — of the opinion that the Ketos Crab’s worth had increased with this set of unit releases, due to the Tritons spawn cost discount and the weird Actipn: Annex + Catapult shenanigans.
I’m going to say that I am uncertain if that will prove to be the case. Obviously, I don’t have the unit box and I have never played with the models, so take my thoughts with the requisite disclaimers.
So, I guess the optimal case is to secure (or mostly secure) the building with a Kraken Hatchling during a prior unit turn. During your current unit turn, you can Beachhead spawn something adjacent to the Crab. Bonus points, I suppose, if that spawn is what secures the building. 
I suppose the most logical spawn choice would be a Sea Dragon.
So, the Ketos Crab uses Annex and drags the Hatchling and Sea Dragon along for the ride, granting those units an optimal 6-7 squares of distance. The Hatchling can Catapult the Sea Dragon for 4-5 squares (depending on whether you have an Industrial Complex secured), and then the Sea Dragon itself can Full Advance for another 6-7 squares. That’s a total of about 18 squares covered for the cost of a building secure, one Action Die, and one Power Die.
I suppose you could then Metastasize an Orca out and pull some shenanigans there.
That’s a lot of movement!
Is there a broadly-applicable use case wherein I want to do this instead of the classic Command Ape + Draken Berserker combo, though? The Berserker combo takes less time and action dice to set up.
Hmm.
(Maybe I am getting hung up because I want the Ketos Crab to serve a role as a turn 1 junk building removal insurance?)
Just thinking out loud, so to speak!
What does anyone else think?
I don’t think it replaces the Draken Berserker + Command Ape combo, but it also isn’t doing exactly the same thing. Rather than getting a single unit far up the map for a double kill, you’re moving 3 bodies and potentially having 2 of them move again afterwards to more relevant locations. You also get to take out a building that your opponent might care about to boot.
Maren has used this tactic against me on Obliteration Boulevard and Downtown Beatdown to good effect by having the units securing the Ketos Crab move on to disrupt my secures and/or killing point holders. The reason it works so well on those maps is because they both have spawn zones that are relatively far forward and also adjacent to a building where you could potentially place your Krab.
Where was the Crab placed on the map? I am guessing on Obliteration Boulevard it was in the near side of the 3 B2B building cluster?
Correct, and on Obliteration Boulevard, on one of the buildings that forms the central donut with the far-forward spawn zone adjacent.
Hmm. I’ll have to give it some thought.
It seems like the Ketos Crab building needs to be in this hypothetical “go super, super hard on the unit game” proto list I have been kicking around.
Once upon a time (in late 2019) I had a local who (it seemed) just managed to flood the board with units and who (I felt) really swung the momentum of the game on the strength of his units alone.
Hmm.
I’m a firm believer that in games where no blunders are made the deciding factor tends to be the strength of a player’s unit activations.
I was able to purchase Archipelagon and the new Tritons unit box over the weekend. I am very pleased by the physical product and very much looking forward to playing with them too!