Star Wars: Armada

I think Fantasy Flight is making an effort lately to appeal more to their casual players and away from the tournament types, at least in the miniature space. The tournament players aren’t going to be happy with just one new ship a year and the stagnant meta, but casuals should be pretty happy with the new campaign that gives them a new way to play with their old stuff.

Similarly with Imperial Assault. No new products announced for a year, but new campaigns and cooperative raid missions are coming out on the free app.

X-Wing’s success and popularity as a tournament game probably led Fantasy Flight to force too many designs into that mold, and now they’re finally adjusting. More cooperative LCGs and products for the kitchen table types.

I was surprised to see this and also surprised and sort of pleased to remember that (even if completely unnecessary) it wouldn't take a whole lot to catch up from wave 2. (While at the extreme end, the Interdictor is only $16 on Amazon.) I'd just sort of gotten things set up to play IA again, and then hovered at the edge thinking about the commitment of a campaign and getting anxious about my tactical skills, and then Armada swarms back up. (I'm not buying any more Armada till I play some more, though.)

Has anybody painted their Armada ships? Malloc's fb feed has some painted Armada ships and they look decent. I'm at least thinking about base coating and then shading my squadrons at some point even I do no other detail work with my nothing skills.

I haven't and have seen more online about repainting X-Wing but I would think some shading and drybrusing would work pretty well.

Alright. The new separatist and republic starters are out but literally no one is talking about them on BGG. Maybe they're talking about them on Reddit.

What is the central conceit of both sides gameplaywise, if you've played this? I think the Separatist fleets look great, Galactic Republic I could go either way on since they're clearly just intended to be Empire origin designs from the Clone Wars TV show.

Also, this big box of upgrade cards; does anyone know if these have cost changes on them or other big changes or is it just a nice thing they're doing to put them in smaller format in one place so you don't have to buy all the release? I have most of the Armada releases up to about Chimaera/Profundity, I'm tempted to hoover up a few of the older ones. The Onager looks cool.

On the FFG forums there was a list of card text changes.

But that has been lost forever.

OH WELL.

Maybe you can find it here: ffg-forum-archive.entropicdreams.com/

I’m pretty sure a bunch of volunteers archived the forums before they went down.

n815e wrote: On the FFG forums there was a list of card text changes.

But that has been lost forever.

If you saw them, was it a pretty big deal? Is there any reason to track this down? I don't play tourney or anything so I don't think I care but if it's some really huge big deal...

Honestly, if you aren’t playing in tournaments or with strangers, you could probably pass them. I think it was mainly balance adjustments or wording changes.

I have a set, but I haven’t compared them or played with them.

I glanced. The pass tokens are a really important idea.

The upgrade card pack does basically three things: It incorporates errata--until they get corrected again, of course--and it obviates the need to go to specific ship packs to get specific cards and it standardizes the card size. It also standardizes the presentation of rules in some ways in alignment with the newer style, notably refreshing (which sometimes occurs automatically and sometimes incurs a cost). It's well worth getting, I think, esp. for newer players who don't have a lot of ships, but good luck finding one at this point. I'm sure it's being reprinted, but when is anyone's guess. Maybe it'll show up with the wave 10 ships in April?

BGG hasn't really ever been a central place for Armada discussion, and the nuking of the FFG forums has scattered people. (Good plan, that.) I think you mostly have to go to individual forums, social media, YouTube channels, etc. for info.