Star Wars: Armada

I got the overpriced FFG mats. One plain starfield and the Death Star thing. Because I figured if I was going all in, I may as well go all in.

I played a 200 point solo game this morning, I used Fab's Fleet Builder online to just cook up a match. It worked out really well, you put in what you have and it runs the numbers for you. It's great if you don't want to fuss with the building and just play.

I didn't use the objectives, so it was just a shoot 'em up. It was the Assault Frigate, an MC30c, and a couple of A, X, and Y Wing squadrons, one B-Wing versus a Gladiator and an Raider and several TIE squads including Vader leading a couple of TIE Advanced. It was a pretty cool matchup, the fighters got into their dogfights/screening positions, bombers got in a couple of good shots on either side. The Assault Frigate seems really good, it trundled out and banked starboard to bring those broadsides to bear on the gladiator but it just got tore up by that Raider- which is definitely a "charge in" ship. The MC30c got shot up early on too, two shield banks were down and it was just taking heavy fire from that Gladiator and the bombers, which were operating unmolested by turn 3. So it just wrapped up with an assumed Imperial win.

I haven't tried the MC80 (Home One) yet, but it looks like it is on par with an Imperial-Class Star Destroyer (that's the big one).

I think I want another Gladiator and another MC30c. But at this point, I am now in "wait for sale" mode. I did order another raider and two more fighter packs though because I'm weak.

Out of the wave 1 stuff, two Gladiators is pretty standard. Imperial builds are pretty limited without 2. One of everything else will suffice though.

Out of Wave 2, the must have is actually the Hero and Villain (or whatever they call it) pack. Best bang for your buck BY FAR. I played with an Imperial class SD, Vader was my admiral and I had Boba Fett, IG-88, Dengar and Bossk. It was a list made for the sheer fun of it, but I ended up cleaning house.

Yep, after last night I said "another Gladiator". Great ship. I also want another MC30C. That little bastard just about took out an ISD with some help from Han. I like the torpedo outfit for it.

The C90, on the other hand, practically just ran up to it and melted.

The Rogues and Villains pack is awesome. It's got all the bounty hunters, Han, Dash Rendar, Jan Ors and so forth. Teeeeeny little ships. But lots of bang for the buck to be sure.

I've practiced using 3 CR90's (with the blue dice) a couple times and I can't make them work. It takes a lot of finesse. If the Imperials have Gladiators it's really difficult. Something that I've noticed is that the 3 ranges for weapons are actually Normal, Short, and Knife Fight. It's really a bitch getting in blue range while keeping out of black. Or, I probably just suck.

P.S.
Somebody needs to make little range rulers with dowels connected to them so you can check Short range and Distance 1 a lot easier. I'd pay for that.

Still don't have wave 2. Jealous.

The new Cloud City playmat looks pretty sweet!

Josh Look wrote: Out of the wave 1 stuff, two Gladiators is pretty standard. Imperial builds are pretty limited without 2. One of everything else will suffice though.

Thanks! Super helpful advice I would never know.

Warning- Gladiators are GONE right now. I think I bought the last one in the world from Cardhaus last week. They will restock eventually though.

I didn't know about those new playmats...I'll get both eventually. Love that Death Star 2 one.

Yeah, Armada may be a "next couple months" thing for me so hopefully the out of stock stuff shouldn't matter.

Gotta buy stupid glasses this month!

I went into an FLGS (!!!) and they had the last remaining Gladiator for sale (not at scalper prices) in the world. AND it was $2 off MSRP. I'm weak.

Of course, I had to balance that out by ordering another MC30c.

But I got into a conversation with the store owner, since they had literally three Armada products in the shop (a core, a VSD and the Gladiator) and like a whole half-wall of X-Wing. He said nobody is playing it at all there, he's got 20 or so X-Wing people coming in but none of them wanted to spend to get into Armada. Invited me to come play there and made it clear that he did not tolerate "problem" gamers. We had a laugh about that, I told him about the hygiene rules I had in my store and shared a couple of anecdotes (like the time that dude tore my front door off...and went straight back to his Heroclix game).

Anyway, I set up a 250 point random game last night to solo, using the two Gladiators supported by Soontir Fel and another squad of Interceptors, a plain ol' TIE squad and fuckin' BOSSK. Rebels had an Assault Frigate (the "Space Whale!"), an Mc30c with the Scout setup, four squads of X-wings and one A-wing.

So the Gladiators rumbled on out, splitting to the left and right, trying to get a good broadside/crossfire across the middle of the board. The AF trundled out, using a couple of squadron orders to get the X-Wings into interdiction range. The TIES flew out to engage as well. Fuckin' Bossk went his own way to intercept the Mc30c, which was gunning up to flanking speed to go around and get behind the Gladiators.

So it went down pretty cool overall, the dogfights resolved in a pretty dramatic fashion- Soontir was fucking shit up with his counter ability, the X-Wings were just getting nailed every time they shot him. But he went down and the other Interceptors folded. So that freed up the X-Wings to shoot at one of the Gladiators, which had fumbled into an asteroid.

Lots of big broadside attacks (Admiral Ackbar RULES), an X-wing scored the coup-de-grace on one of the Gladiators but the other wound up drifting wide and kind of out of the battle.

But the big star of the show was fuckin' BOSSK. His stupid-ass flying stapler almost single-handedly put down that Mc30c. He can move and shoot during activation, so he wound up just harrying the shit out of it- every turn, going to where the shields were the weakest and nailing it. I had been putting some command tokens on it so it could focus fire and use the nav token to slow down, but fuckin' BOSSK took out the life support system. And then he just blew it up.

I didn't play with objectives, I just wanted to fly ships and shoot with them. I really like 250 point, 3x3 games. it's a little tough to field the ISD in that space, but that point range gets you two caps with a couple of upgrades and enough squadrons to make for a fun outing. About 90 minutes solo, so that's comfortable too.

Man, you are pushing me closer and closer to spending like 280 dollars at CSI.

90 minutes solo is very nice.

Well, that is a 250 pointer and not a 400 point "regulation" game...but I don't feel like it is lacking anything other than a larger scope and maybe some of the nuances of having more capital ships on the board. I think you still get very much the "full meal" in that range, especially for a solo outing. When I get my Death Star mat tomorrow, I'm going to try a 400 point solo game.

That 90 minute figure also accounts for using Fab's Fleet Builder to pull random picks...which is fine for me playing solo/casual. You still get to see some of the possible combinations that come up. Granted, fleet building is a big part of the game (especially in more serious play) so if you wanted to do that for a solo session that would add some time to it unless you did it in advance. I also have all of my stuff pre-assembled except for putting the ships on the stands, so setup isn't that long.

I kind of spoke too soon about it all fitting in the core box. I've moved the ships out to these small, drawer-style boxes I got from Birchbox. The squadrons are all in a box that fits inside the core box along with all of the bases and other components. So it's three boxes- the big Armada one and the two small ship boxes. Still a pretty tidy footprint and much smaller than my X-Wing stuff. Thinking about a small bead box for the counters.

The playmat is in a 3 foot long box rolled up, but it stores up under the shelf so it's all good.

But yeah man $280 will definitely get you going, I think that will get you one of everything. You could probably wait on the second C90/Neb B and VSD to start with...I went ahead and just got it all at once since I was blowing Funbux...truth be told, I feel like it was better spent on this than the Cthulhu Wars expansions I had planned on buying with it...because this is turning out to be better than X-Wing, and I thought X-Wing was the best miniature game I've ever played.

But it is definitely balls ass expensive...I look at that little Imperial Raider, which is about the size of a MicroMachine, and think "damn, $15". But the play value is so high and the quality of it all is so high that I actually- very grudgingly- am willing to pay a premium for it. It is, like I said, a luxury-class game. Owning it excites me in a way that few other games I own do. I'm like, proud of it or something. I got a friend over to play a little starter game over the weekend and I didn't tell him I had it all, I just said I bought the core. He showed up and I had them all laid out on the mat and he about flipped his shit. I felt like THE MAN.

I think some of it is because I waited to get it, I didn't get right into it at first, I let it kind of be out there for a while and I took time to decide on it. When I got that money from Everything Epic, it dawned on me that I could play the high roller and just get the whole thing.

And now I've spent like $75 over that. But I think I'm good until Wave 3, which I will probably wrangle from MM in exchange for a review.

The really scary thing is that I've kind of been looking at catching up with X-Wing too...

A big sell is that it's the only Star Wars fantasy I've ever really had, even as a kid. For most people, I think it's the force and lightsaber duels or it's the x-wing dogfighting. For me, it was always the cool fleet actions, but I think I'm in the minority.

Gary Sax wrote: A big sell is that it's the only Star Wars fantasy I've ever really had, even as a kid. For most people, I think it's the force and lightsaber duels or it's the x-wing dogfighting. For me, it was always the cool fleet actions, but I think I'm in the minority.

No, the giant space battle at the end of ROTJ is one of my favorite moments in the series. I love them Mon Calamari cruisers, finally seeing the rebels field something on the same size as a star destroyer was very fulfilling.

@Gary Sax, @metalface13

My people! SW fleets fights are where it's AT. Hope to play Armada at some point but 0 interest in buying to have sit unplayed on MY shelf. Maybe at a convention if I ever end up going to those again.

Yes, definitely. I loved the idea that the rebel alliance depended on non-humans for their best ships. It's another super cool little nod in the original trilogy to what the rebel alliance is all about and what the rebellion itself is about without really spelling it out.