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[Star Wars: Armada] Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design.
Posts
Squadrons activate first, as that particular dial resolves right after you reveal it.
https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2015/4/6/here-they-come/
ISDs and Mon Cal Cruisers get a new form of Defense Token, "Contain" which allows them to ignore a critical effect.
Mon Cal Cruiser and Frigate are both broadside-focused ships, with Ackbar granting +2 Red Dice to any ship that fires only from its side arcs during a round. The Cruiser also comes with an admiral that lets any ship or named squadron not die until the end of the round, which is going to need to be FAQed about whether or not you can repair and still survive afterwards.
ISD throws 8 dice standard from its front arc, which is goddamn huge considering how big the ship is. It also has a title that reduces its Command stack by 1, which could potentially be really good. Oh, and Tractor Beam upgrade that does... something!
The Rogues & Villains pack introduces 3 new keyboards. Rogue which allows the fighter to move AND attack when activated during the squadron phase, and Intel and Grit, which aren't revealed yet, but I'd guess Intel lets you look at the Command dials of nearby ships.
And both the ISD and the Raider introduce black dice into the anti-squadron pools.
Over all, looking incredibly awesome.
Ship ID question for you guys.
I recognize Slave 1, Falcon, Hwk-209, ???, Outrider, Houndstooth (Bossk's ship), Ig-2000 (IG-88's ship) and the last one I'm pretty sure is Dengar's ship that I don't know the name of.
Just drawing a blank on the 4th from the left.
Though it is interesting that there aren't any Imperial ships there.
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Scurrg_H-6_prototype_bomber
That is indeed Dengar's ship.
This seems to be the Smuggler/Bounty Hunter wave. I'm slightly surprised that each ship is faction-aligned. I was assuming they'd be able to be fielded by either side, leaving an option for an eventual third faction.
tempted but I am waiting on the Imperial-class Star Destroyer Expansion Pack
The last ship to be activated was my wife's Corellian Corvette. I had a Vic with almost no shields, and 1 Tie fighter with nothing in range. She had the Corvette with 1 hull, a frigate with 1 hull, and an X-Wing with nothing in range. She was going to win on points, just on fighters killed, by one point. ONE!
But something outrageous happened: the Corvette couldn't move without crashing into the Vic, suffering 1 hull damage, exactly enough to kill it. She spent about 10 minutes trying to contort the move stick in some way to get past or around it, but in the end had to surrender.
We thought that ships attacked squadrons with their normal attack, which meant my TIEs were getting wiped out by capital ship fire. Learning the rules there should make squadrons a lot less squishy.
When I activated my squadrons, I destroyed 3 X-Wings in 1 turn, but after that I don't think they got any more kills. The squadron command seems to be very important for getting the most out of them.
If I make a screen of fighters, can an X-Wing move straight through them to my capital ship, or does engagement force them to stop?
If the game had gone on one more turn, my Vic would have flown off the map. What happens then? I didn't see anything about it in the rules. Is it insta-death, like in X-Wing?
As you might be able to see in that photo, our table is not quite wide enough for the mat, and there's definitely not enough room for a second mat for a full game. I had a look for tables that'd be big enough, and it didn't go well, so I'm thinking of heading to the hardware store, buying a big board and some table legs, and setting it up in the weird empty room next to the garage. Turn it into an X-Wing / Armada room.
From "Engagement" in rules reference: Squadrons do not engage each other while moving ... only the starting and final positions matter.
Instadeath if any portion of the base is outside the play area (from "Play Area")
Intial impressions is that it's neat but I'm really bad. One core set feels pretty imperial sided because the victory can demolish anything it desires in the smaller engagements.
I was under the impression that the game was built around scenarios rather than a focus on destroying the enemy ships. In such a case, I'd think that the flexibility and speed of the rebel ships should balance out against the firepower of the imperial side.
But I haven't played the game, so I might be wrong on that count.
We've not being playing with objectives yet but the general impression I've had is that due to the smaller board space and lower target counts the Vic can shove around the smaller Rebel cruisers.
Dunno, will have to toy around with it. Only really get to play once a week though.
The Vic is very predictable in its movement, so if you get your speed up on your Corvette and Frigate you can stay out of the Vic's deadly front firing arc pretty well. If you see that you're not going to avoid ending the turn in that front arc, be sure to stick an X-Wing squadron in between you so you can cut out at least one die. If you're in the mood to try and take out the Vic, I kind of feel like with these limited Core Set choices your X-Wings are a bigger threat to the Vic than your capital ships.
Squadrons don't obstruct firing. Only Ships and Obstacles.
Given the time limit, it's more even. The Imperials need to destroy one of the Rebel ships, which isn't trivial.
In a proper match, with objectives, I don't know how it will go. The Vic is slow and can barely turn, and the command dial makes it harder to plan ahead and react to change. But the starter set gives the rebels a significant point advantage, so with some upgrade cards the Imperial side might do OK.
Thanks for that. I re-read the rules book and caught that I had played that obstruction rule wrong my first couple games, and apparently I promptly forgot again. : )
Blue dice. The black dice become much less common to roll once the Rebel player gets better at flying and avoids Close range.
The Gladiator that can use black dice at Medium range should be a lot of fun though.
Victory II
- Tarkin
- Yularen
- Gunnery Team
- Overload Pulse
- Enhanced Armament
3x Tie Fighter Squadron
Objectives:
Hyperspace Assault
Advanced Gunnery
Minefields
And Rebels:
Corellian Corvette B
- Dodonna
- Leia
- Overload Pulse
- Dodonna's Pride
Nebulon-B Escort Frigate
Luke Skywalker X-wing Squadron
X-wing Squadron
X-wing Squadron
Objectives:
Opening Salvo
Fire Lanes
Superior Positions
The Overload Pulse is a bit of a risk. It exhausts the tokens after the attack, so to set up a second attack. Gunnery team lets you get a second attack, but you have to have a 2nd hull zone in the same arc, and honestly, if you can get two 6-dice attacks on a ship, exhausting their tokens probably isn't going to matter. You'd probably be better off with the Dominator title to add more dice. Wulf is definitely good. Enhanced Armament is effective.
The low TIE count might come back to bite you though. If you come up against 3 X-Wings and/or a Neb-B, they'll pretty much just burst into flames.
I'm also not too sure that Hyperspace Assault would be much fun in a 180pt game. Basically you'd have no ships on the board, so you'd pretty much be dooming the game to multiple rounds of nothing.
That is a lot worse than how I thought it worked.
They are pretty much an expendable engagement shield to buy time for me to kill a ship, yeah.
I'm not sure it's "nothing" if they are trying to keep away from the possible jump points while I try to box them in so I can pop in and blow something out of the sky.
Thanks for the overload pulse info; I was resolving that effect at the wrong time in my last game.
I think you may have Gunnery Team wrong a bit, though. The card says you can't target the same ship more than once, rather than the same hull zone. Even if your arc can see two hull zones, Gunnery Team won't let you fire at them both from the same arc.
As for the Ties, 3 of them aren't going to be much of a shield. They are very squishy, and that might be enough to lose you the game. If you lose 3 TIEs and don't take out 2 X-Wings or a ship, you lose. And 3 TIEs taking out 2 X-Wings with a Neb-B as backup is pretty unlikely.
Just use them smart, or they can absolutely be why you lose if the Rebel player keeps his ships alive. That's a bit harder for them to do on a 3x3, but it's an important lesson on 3x6.
It did not go well for him. He launched the TIEs way far out, and I drove my Neb-B into them, which was my, Objective ship, but then surrounded it with X-Wings so that he couldn't actually take advantage of it. Ended up blowing his TIEs to pieces as my Corvette's quickly came around and got behind the VSDs using Nav Team to make some really nice turns.
In the end, I hadn't taken a single damage card, wiped out his TIEs without losing a single X-Wing, and took out his Objective VSD on Round 5.
I wasn't really intending to have it be quite that big of a massacre, ha, as it was all originally just a test of how agile the CR90s could be. I took both an A and a B with Nav Team, and they both performed really well. Though even rolling 4 blue dice on the B's front arc, I failed to roll a single critical symbol to activate Dodonna's Pride. The A with Enhanced Armament and Nav Team was bruuutal, because the extra click you can get from it can really let you fine-tune your arcs, and I got the VSD in two of its arcs on two separate turns, which was pretty nasty.
Even though I already spent so much money on X-wing.
When I first got X-wing, I thought 'This is cool, but I probably would have preferred a similar game focusing on fleets rather than squadrons/wings'. Then after all that money Armada happens.
I barely get the chance to bring X-wing to the table.
But Armada is what I really want.
@Inksplat , your AARs are only making this all the more agonizing for me.
PSN: TheBrayster_92
People see Most Wanted, and don't want to deal with double-damage TIEs. Or they see Contested Outpost, and don't want to face two VSDs in a close confrontation.. but Superior Positions allows me to score 15 points every time one of my TIEs deals a damage (not a card, just a damage) to your rear hull. I have 11 TIEs, and each VSD can command 5 of them, and each of them has a 50% chance of dealing a damage. I don't think I've ended a match with less than 6 Victory tokens, and the most anyone has gotten against me is one. Obviously we're all new-ish players, but getting behind a VSD who got to set up after you is a tough enough (the other advantage of Superior Positions is that the first player has to set up ALL of their ships and squadrons before the 2nd player has to set up anything), but when you have to fly through my TIEs to get to me in the first place, and they're scoring points while you do? That's a tough nut to crack.
So, yeah, lesson of the day: Do not pick Superior Positions when facing a squadron-heavy list.
Is there still a market for BFG miniatures? I had a decent sized collection I haven't used in a decade.
The Vengeance type grand cruisers and Mechanicum forces. I can't really say how much Mechanicum forces are worth, but it's a lot. There's just not much of it around, so prices jack up quickly. Vengeance (and it's ilk) grand cruisers are somewhere in the $80 range.
The supply on Ebay spiked around Christmas and has dropped a bit since.
Game one was the learning scenario and I learnt that TIE fighters need to actually engage X wings so that Luke doesn't just Hit/Crit you 2 turns in a row setting you Star Destroyer on fire. I didn't even manage to kill the Corvette, which survived a range 1 pounding from the front and side arcs of the Victory AND a bunch of TIE attacks. I rolled 1 hit out of like 10 blue dice rolled. X wings can put some serious hurting on a Cap Ship if left unattended.
Game 2 we randomly drew a mission and got Contested Outpost. I played as the rebels and lost because I didn't manage to get the Victory off the outpost. Also parking the Nebulon at Clsoe Range ofthe Victory where its front and Side ARcs could hit the Frigate in the side was a bad idea. Also max speed is fun but not always useful. I started my Corvette on speed 4 and found it really hard to maneuver. I ended up out of range pretty quickly.
Victory 1
-Tarkin
-Dominator
Howlrunner
5x TIE Squadron.
It's pretty lean but works pretty well.
That said I'm considering the merits of the following:
Victory II
-Tarkin
-Dominator
-H9 Turbolasers
-Weapons Liason
4x TIE Squadrons
I'm afraid it's a bit too light on the TIEs, but a Nebulon or CR90 at medium range has a pretty good chance of just getting evaporated.
We've been struggling more with the Rebels. The current list we've been running is:
Nebulon Escort
-Dodonna
CR90-A
Luke
3x X-Wing Squadrons.
Dodonna's Pride seems cool, as does the overload pulse, but dropping the Escort Frigate down to a Support seems a big dicey because the extra Anti-Squadron Firepower and Squad activations seem to useful. Teh alternative is to drop Luke down to a regular X wing maybe?
Next time I play Rebels, I really want to try Dodonna's Pride and Luke as a combo. Since they both get to bypass shields, that means you can blitz for some early critical hits on a VSD before even attempting to chip away its shields, and Commander Dodonna (safely hiding on a Frigate) can give you good odds of giving the VSD the nastiest crits possible.
Guess I need to get a second core set to tide me over...