Star Wars: Armada

Gary Sax wrote: Ugh, crowns are so damn expensive!

Dentists need to buy games too!

Armada Fleet Exchange:

Alright, I have a unique problem in that I play about half of my Armada games solo. I have a lot of fun, very relaxing in the evening. It's a great game to play solo since it has little critical hidden information besides orders, and I never remember what I plotted anyway.

My issue is this: I like to play 300-400 point games, but often it's to test an interesting fleet build with one side. The problem is that when I create the OTHER side, I automatically sort of unconsciously counter plan against what I've just created which kind of ruins the blind-ish build stage. So here's my plea---drop a 300 or 400 point Imperial fleet in Fab's builder if you're bored and upload the .pdf (my collection is: 111111221111111110). You can even sketch out a two sentence strategy if you're feeling it. If you want, in return, just say what side and how many points and put in your code for what you have in your collection in Fab's and I'll create one. I may be the only one who engages in such madness so maybe this won't work.

You'd be doing me a huge service!

So this didn't go well.

Hopefully someone got sacked for that imbroglio!

Ha ha, love the Outrider-"I'm getting the fuck outta here!"

Luckily it was solo so I didn't suffer the humiliation against anyone else. Lesson learned: you don't have to come in hot, but you also don't want to crawl in at speed 1 with everyone or the enemy is going to surround you.

There's a fascinating tension in the list building aspect of Armada WRT taking more ships and throwing dice vs. upgrading ship and executing some very specific plan. In the above picture (300pts) I heavily modified a list where transports were healing the Liberty and the liberty had extra forward and rear dice and did nasty crits---it has two turbolaser slots so it can make red dice very ugly. Then I had my wife pick Imperial ships by how much she liked the pictures. Which was great because it had a strong "my mom explains Lord of the Rings" quality, since she's not into Star Wars:

"Ok, now pick a few of these fighters, they're on the smaller cards. Go ahead and pick the a character card if you want, they're on the top, you don't have to just pick the ones with pictures of fighters."
"Hmmm... well, I don't trust anyone who has a mask on, I wouldn't want them flying my ships."
[eliminates Vader, Rhymer, the other Tie guy]
"And between these other two guys, I don't like this guy with the beard [Soontir Fel], he's too slick and hipster, so I guess I'd pick this lady. Oh, and take a few of these fighters [interceptors], they're all pointy and I like that."

So then you put stuff on the board and you realize that the Imperials have an entire additional big ship than the rebs and what that means---in the above picture, the Gladiator maneuvered around the fleet and the Raider just melted the transports last turn. It's pretty valuable to simply have more plastic.

As another tactical thought, I'm not sure how I feel about the ramming system. Two ships that run into each other basically stop in their path close to the other ship and both take 1 damage. But they only temporarily slow down, they speed right back up to ram again the next turn---not to mention that the other person's ship will also ram your ship on their turn as well. On one hand, it does a pretty good job of simulating a sort of melee between two ships. Once they get locked up, if they're facing each other, it's virtually impossible to get them disengaged. On the other hand, I do wonder if it could create some gamey stuff of locking up other player's ships by just ramming them. Anyone have any experience with it?

I set up a 200 (actually 199/201) point game over the weekend (solo, of course) using only basic ships plus the squadron boosters- no upgrades. So, a Victory II with seven Tie squadrons, two Tie Advanced and two Tie Interceptors (each ship type had one special hero, so Darth Vader etc) versus the two Rebellion ships plus six X-Wing and two Y-Wing squads. Luke was in there as the only Rebel hero.

No strategy, no tactics. Squadrons flying off and tackling the wrong kinds of enemies. It was still pretty fun to play through and see what happened. The support frigate exploded in a way that was unavoidable I think- it took critical damage that meant it took a further damage each time it moved at speed >1, and with the two command tokens, there was no way to slow it in time so it took the last damage just from moving. After six rounds the Star Destroyer was barely dented, the rebel squadrons all but wiped out.

I'm getting the sense that the right upgrades, synergies between ships, and actual tactics are required. I'm looking forward to figuring some of this out.

Also I seem to have lost one of the rogue space ships. Luckily not one of the iconic ones like Slave-1 or the Falcon, but still annoying.

Sounds fun! The core package of the game is odd. The two rebel ships in it require a TON of finesse.

The list you ran is super fighter heavy so my guess is that there were some critical decisions about engagement/escort/heavy that decided a lot of things. The fighter game is more subtle than it first appears. Screening is incredibly important.

I didn't want to crack the second box yet, but throwing in a second star destroyer and the Home One would make a different game. I'm guessing the tutorial game is effectively much fewer points. I thought that 200 would be a small game but I was piling in more fighters to make up the numbers.

I also think some other objective scoring would change the game- this was just a pewpew session.

I honestly still haven't engaged the objectives, but solo and with the other guy I play with there's no dancing around the outskirts or anything.



So that last picture was taken at the end of turn four, I almost didn't play it out... but this ended as a rebel win 164-160! Close thing, though, the Nebulon has 4 hits on it so almost went down.

The Liberty is a BEAST. The Nebulon and corvette are so cool but so subtle... I feel like every rebel fleet needs at least one brawler in it to anchor all the tricky maneuvers and squad stuff you'll hope to do with the smaller rebel ships... and base box doesn't really give you any. The big difference maker was the liberty had two hits healed by the transport and then queued up two vital engineering orders for 4 more shield regens---it survived till turn 6 with no defense tokens left before the gladiator vaporized and and flew through the wreckage. DO NOT sleep on the engineering order like I did my first 8 games or so!

Also, Nebulon with Yavaris is rough if you can get it positioned. That Nebulon created two turns of double b-wing shots on the ISD. Rebel fighters swept 2 ties, 2 interceptors and Howlrunner off the field, losing only two a wings. Dash Rendar is really cool, his stats are great and his special power is hilarious---basically get balls deep in the biggest engagement you can. Rogues and Villians is definitely the highest value thing you can get, most of the base and specials in it are fun, tons of variety.

I am deeply in love with this game. Best time I've ever had with minis. Too bad it only really starts to play like gang busters with a relatively big investment.

Good news! I found that tiny dark grey spaceship on the dark grey blanket on the ottoman. I also ordered an MC-30 frigate and Assault Frigates for some more variety.

Nice. Right now I have one of everything and 2 fighter packs. I'll get the next wave when it comes out, but I was thinking of this first for more variety

x1 Raider
x1 Gladiator
x1 Assault Frigate or MC30 (or both)

Dunno yet. It'll be a ways off.

Yeah I'm already getting that LCG tug with the fighter packs giving two of each type, and really wanting more. I just saw the Corellian Conflict expansion which looks like a nice way to play a campaign game.

Had my buddy over, we played another 300 point, no upgrades or terrain game. Duel to the death. It still works in this "primitive" playstyle. I LOVE Armada! Nail biting

I ran an interesting list---Home One, 2 Nebulon B Escort, 1 B-wing, 1 Y-wing, 2 A-wings and Han Solo. Let's get this out of the way first---Han Solo is a badass. Only surviving rebel fighter at the end. Killed a tie fighter, interceptor, and an advanced and got a black/blue shot off on the imperial star destroyer. Anyway. I lost but my gameplan ran just right---came within 2 hits of killing the ISD and winning the game. It's hard to describe what happened geometrically, but basically my opponent and I set up like this:

BIG EMPTY SPACE Gladiator | ISD | Raider | edge

Neb / Neb / \ Home One

It worked perfectly mostly, though turn 2 saw two fucking collisions between nebulons and Home One as Home One cut across. We vaporized the Gladiator and came so, so close on the ISD. I put the ISD exactly where I wanted---two front arcs from Nebulons at close range and a blue broadside from Home One, but the rolls weren't as I hoped and I queued up some unnecessary engineering on Home One when I really needed concentrate fire. Home One pored in broadside after broadside every turn. On turn 6, I got the ISD down to literally no shields on any side and 9 hits, but could not get to 11. I lose because his Raider slipped around behind my Nebulons at speed 4 and his ISD got one front shot at each of Nebulons on their front (not a bad thing; Nebs have 3 shields on front which is a lot for their cost). They survived but were weakened enough that they both got destroyed in their weakened state while in the side/rear arc of the ISD. My fighter game was WEAK and my opponent wisely decided that the imperials just need to fend off rebel fighters with other fighters. So in the end I had Home One and Han and he had a couple fighters, the raider, and the ISD (with literally 0 shields and two hits left, grrr!)

One strategic thing that we discussed afterwards was that if you have y-wings or b-wings you should probably just be ok with them hanging close to a decent flak ship and waiting for your opportunity in turns 4-6 for bombing. Jumping them ahead is just dumb, even with an X-wing with escort you're just going to lose the fighter game brutally which can sink you.

Anyway, I wish my buddy would play using upgrade cards, terrain, and objectives but it's a testament to the game that I still savor playing the game even in this rudimentary (in some respects) form when we get the game out. The basic mechanics, like the orders system, just works. It's important enough to have a concentrate fire or engineering at the right time that you really feel like you can win and lose the game based on planning.

Hastings going out of business, I picked up most of what they had left for armada at 70% off. Starter, assault frigate, cr90, gladiator. Got a buddy lined up for tomorrow to try it. Went by the flgs to try and pick up some fighter packs, but turns out they don't carry any armada stuff at all. So just tie fighters and xwings for now

I can't believe there would be anything left at Hastings considering they started liquidating almost two months ago.