Octopus Overlords

Well I did it. I ordered the base set. Should be here by tomorrow.

I had my first 300 point game last night and had a lot of fun. It's a totally different experience having so many ships and squadrons on the board compared to the 180 point games you're limited to with just a single core set. The Wave 1 expansions really can't come soon enough.

We were mainly just trying to see how the bigger games played out, so we had as many things as possible on the board with fairly limited upgrades added.

The Imperial side had two Victory Star Destroyers, the Howlrunner special TIE squadron, and 8 or 9 regular TIE squadrons.
Rebels (me) had two Frigates, two Corvettes, Luke's X-Wing, and 3 regular X-Wing squadrons.

We played with the "ambush" objective card, which meant two of my ships had to start in the center zone of the play area while the other two had to be further away in the normal starting area.

I ended up losing, having spent too much time ineffectually chipping away at both of the VSDs, and only taking out handfulls of TIEs here and there. Luke took too many risks early on and got blown up by TIEs before he did much of anything. My fast capital ships literally flew circles around the VSDs, but I got careless with my late-game maneuvers and put my Frigates in range of the VSDs' Forward Firing Arcs of Doom. Unless I destroyed a VSD, there was no chance I'd catch up in points after losing both Frigates.

It's really hard to shake the deathmatch mentality from X-Wing:TMG. I With just 6 rounds there's just not enough time to do everything, and I was wasting time shooting at both VSDs as well as the TIEs. I should have made a clear plan about what I wanted to destroy for points, get that goal finished, then get the hell out of dodge before I lost too many ships of my own.

For instance, I could have just picked one of the VSDs, gone all out to take it out, then fled. Even if I lost two ships, the points from the VSD could have kept me in the lead pointwise. I could have stayed completely out of range of the VSDs from there on out. Only his TIEs would have been able to keep up with me, and they're generally only a threat to my X-Wings and not my big ships.

This session also made me more impatient than ever for the squadron expansions to arrive. More variety for the big ships would be great and all, but it feels like the game is really missing something in its current state with the lack of bomber squadrons. The X-Wings are multi-role, pretty great at shooting TIEs and kinda ok at shooting Star Destroyers. The TIEs are purely anti-fighter, and so once they're done with the X-Wings they just become ineffectual at anything but dying and giving the Rebels more points. I really want to see what it's like to have bombers slowly headed into to do big anti-ship damage, with fighters & interceptors using their Escort abilities to keep them safe en route.

Still loving the game!

Chrisoc13 wrote:Ok. I'm more and more likely to pick this up, but I don't feel a huge rush right now, in fact it might be a few months. So that is good to know, I will likely either buy just the core set soon to get a handle on the game, or I will wait until the first wave is fully out and buy the core set, one of each expansion, and an extra dice pack and movement template. Man that is expensive...

I need to try this game out soon, see if I want to get into it.

IF I were to get into this game I'll probably go the same route. I bought 2 core sets for X-Wing but it seems that core plus expansions may be the way to go for Armada due to the upgrade cards you'll be getting. With wave 1 "on the boat" they should probably come in the next 1-2 months anyway.

Heh, "I'm more and more likely to pick this up, but I don't feel a huge rush right now, in fact it might be a few months."

All the star wars excitement got to me. I suddenly needed a new star wars toy.

Chrisoc13 wrote:All the star wars excitement got to me. I suddenly needed a new star wars toy.

Well with that new trailer , Star Wars like pollen is in the air!

$iljanus wrote:

Chrisoc13 wrote:All the star wars excitement got to me. I suddenly needed a new star wars toy.

Well with that new trailer , Star Wars like pollen is in the air!

That, the star wars celebration, the battlefront 3 trailer which with the game coming out in November... just too much Star Wars and suddenly I decided I needed Armada.

"Look at the size of that thing!"

Man, I want some of those new Episode 7 ships. I really hope they step up the designs and show more rebel/resistance ships to turn into minis.

The actual game is still fun, however, not too sure about the base 6 turn limit. I don't think anyone I know plans to play with that limit. I know why it's there, as you need to restrict the time it takes to play for more time limited or casual matches.

Turtle wrote:The actual game is still fun, however, not too sure about the base 6 turn limit. I don't think anyone I know plans to play with that limit. I know why it's there, as you need to restrict the time it takes to play for more time limited or casual matches.

Have you played with objectives? I'm finding that the turn limit seems too restrictive for deathmatching, but with objectives it's starting to seem pretty ok.

HERE is a demo play of the game. Looks fun.

Me: Soooo, Katie, there's this new Star Wars game that now has the large capital ships!

Daughter: Ooooh cool!

Me: Here let's watch a video about it.

Dad and Daughter watch video

Me: Oh, it says the game is recommended for kids 14 and older. I guess you're too young for it.

Indignant 8 yr old: Daaady! Grrrr! I can play it and I understood what was going on in the video!

Me: So I should order it?

Enabling 8 yr old: Yeah!!!!!

Me:

It's on sale today at CoolStuffInc for $55!

wonderpug wrote:It's on sale today at CoolStuffInc for $55!

Sigh, of course it is after I bought it from Amazon. Luckily for my wallet I decided I didn't need a second core set. Unfortunately for my wallet I bought a whole bunch of 1st wave expansions.

wonderpug wrote:It's on sale today at CoolStuffInc for $55!

Woooohoo! Thanks for the info! I was considering asking for this for my birthday, which is in August, but I could not pass it up at that price. Also picked up the rebel and empire fighter expansions.

For those folks with the game, what storage solution are you using? My current Plano tower box is dedicated to my X-Wing mins and that's getting pretty full so I won't be able to store my Armada stuff in it. Should I just get another 1374 Plano box? That's what's holding the X-Wing stuff now. Or is there something smaller? And yeah, I ordered one of everything for the Wave 1 expansions. Thanks!

The Armada ships are fewer in number and bigger in size, so a lot of the Plano solutions that worked great for X-wing aren't as perfect for Armada.

The box it comes in is pretty sizeable, so there's a lot you can do to store things safely in there. I got a brick of pluckfoam tall enough for the Star Destroyer, and it should be able to fit 3-5 more big ships. I then got a small Plano case that can fit most of the tokens and dice, and in one of the bigger sections I used leftover pluckfoam bits to cushion my two Frigates and two Corvettes. Finally, I've got a taller Plano that's 2 3/4" tall I use to store the fighter squadrons on their bases (jumbled together at the moment), command dials, and the damage deck.

The pluckfoam with VSDs, the smaller Plano, the ship cards, and the rulers all fit in the Core Set box, leaving just the fighter squadron Plano to carry separately.

This should suit me well through Wave 1, but I'll have to reevaluate when Wave 2 hits.

Thanks, Wonderpug. I was a little concerned about the capital ships with all the stuff hanging off them and their odd shapes and your hybrid solution using the core box and a small Plano case for tokens, cards and squadrons sounds reasonable.

$iljanus wrote:Thanks, Wonderpug. I was a little concerned about the capital ships with all the stuff hanging off them and their odd shapes and your hybrid solution using the core box and a small Plano case for tokens, cards and squadrons sounds reasonable.

The Victory Star Destroyer and the Frigate in particular have a lot of little fiddly antenna bits sticking out you'll want to protect. Just holler if you want any pictures.

Are you the type to put your damage deck in sleeves? If so, you'll want to make a tuckbox for it or some other kind of holder. The damage deck stack is a little too tall and tipsy on its own if sleeved.

For X-Wing I did sleeve my pilots but not the damage deck. Too many cards and sleeved cards tend to be slippery so I probably won't sleeve the Armada damage deck.

Thanks for the pic offer, Wonderpug! I'll see how easily I can configure things and if I run into issues I'll happily trouble you for some pictures. I got the dice pack yesterday and I was shaking the dice in the see through package to see what die rolls came up.

So I called Coolstuffinc because I noticed that an Imperial Raider snuck into my Armada wave 1 order which would have been a disaster since the Raider isn't coming out till the 3Q of 2015. They were happy to remove the raider but more importantly the customer sales rep said that the Wave 1 stock is hitting the shelves tomorrow so here's to some nice 300 point games with all sorts of interesting upgrades, commanders, etc.

Oh, I had ended up ordering one of each expansion. Didn't feel the need to order duplicates of everything like X-Wing so I guess I'm saving some money...um yeah...

Anyone with a CSI preorder should also remove any maneuver tools from the order, as that's still showing "at the printer" on FFG's site while all the Wave 1 stuff is "shipping now".

I'm so excited for Wave 1. I love the game, but even with two Core Sets there's just not enough variety to keep things interesting.

Also of note is that they recently released version 1.0 of their FAQ/Errata for the game, and there are a good number of big clarifications and rule modifications in there.

I'm planning on getting 1 of each ship in a few weeks. In the process of moving right now but I'm happy to have some options for bigger battles soon. I went crazy with X-wing upfront, but now I have too many of lots of the early ships, so now I'm going to do my best to be much more patient knowing that in a few waves I will have so many options I won't even want any more of the ships. Doing the same thing with imperial assault, and it isn't easy.

Another key thing they revealed in the FAQ was the existence of their squadron disengagement abilities, which will be tied to ship upgrades.

The Chirneau ability is to make squadrons activated by his ship to move even if they are engaged, albeit at only speed 2. There's more cards that reference squadrons, so here's hoping for more stuff that makes the squadron dynamic more interesting.

So this thread kind of fell off a cliff.

Does anyone still play this? I just officially requested it for Christmas which means I'm very likely to receive several components.

Now I have to make myself find time to find and play with people.

I actually sold off all of my armada.

It's a great game. I love it. I would recommend it to anyone and the new campaign structure looks just plain awesome.

But...

I own over 100 x-wing ships and I like the system of x-wing just ever so slightly more. In the end armada never made it to the table because whenever I got a chance to play a game like it... I chose x-wing.

That I also am deeply invested in imperial assault didn't help. It was too much to keep up 3 different star wars games. And then when I included play time... As a huge star wars nerd even that was too much star wars in my gaming life.

Fantastic game though, I look forward to hearing some impressions, especially if you get into the new campaign, something I hope they bring to x-wing.

I still collect ships, but I can't remember the last time I was able to actually play the game. I'm focusing my efforts on feeding and watering my children until they grow large enough to play miniatures games with me. : )

Finding people to play with at times that fit my schedule is going to be a challenge for sure. I have a kid that is old enough and one that is into Star Wars but they are not the same child

I have it, but have never played it. My wife, son and his fiance played X-Wing for about 5-6 weeks straight on the weekends, then everyone's job changed and we fell off before being able to try Armada.
For people looking for people to play games with though, Tabletop Simulator seems like a good option. I have it, but haven't found time for me to reach out and play anything yet. My schedule is all over the place and something always comes up.

Have played a couple of rounds of Armada via Table Top Simulator.

Still learning both the game and the interface but this is a great mod that models everything up through the just released Corellian Conflict campaign.

If you have an interest in Armada but don't want to sink the funds into the models or have trouble finding opponents this looks to be a good option.

Oh very nice. Very nice.

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Sun Aug 22, 2021 12:20 am

Kinda sad te\hey release thousands of dollars worth of stuff the cut it off at the legs.

They just did this with Mansions of Madness 2nd edition. I suspect FFG is cleaning house of any non FFG owned licenses at this point. That or just moving to a “5 year support then done” model.

I suspect they want to get the hell out of the business of miniatures and instead want to double-down on card-based games.

Yeah, Marvel is still going strong with them and it’s card based. Same with the relaunch of Arkham Horror and LotR LCGs coming up. I wonder if they’re just getting away from being the company that makes most of their cash from expansions?

Star Wars Armada deserves a video-game treatment a la Battlestar Galactica Deadlock.

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 9:38 pm I suspect they want to get the hell out of the business of miniatures and instead want to double-down on card-based games.

Marvel Crisis Protocol doesn't show many signs of slowing down...