"Pimped Out Star Destroyers!" Topic

So far in my Armada games I've always taken a minimum of upgrade cards so that I could take the maximum number of ships. My usual opponent has been of like mind. It has generally worked pretty well. But today we played a 400 point game and I decided to cram my Imperial and Victory SDs with every card I could cram into them. Since I was inexperienced in learning how to make the most of the abilities I fully expected to lose.

Nope!

I gave the Imperial SD Spinal Armament, Redundant Shields, Overload Pulse, Leading Shots, Gunnery Team, Weapons Liaison, and Relentless. It pretty much won the battle all by itself.

To my surprise my opponent also went the more expensive route and I found myself facing TWO MC80 cruisers. He also had one of the MC30 frigates and I had the little 2-ship assault carrier thingy mostly to get another activation.

The rebels came straight at me, intending to catch the Imperial SD between the two MC80's broadsides.

Didn't work. Using all the fancy gizmos in my Imperial I hammered both cruisers on the approach (the Gunnery Team card allowed me to fire my massive forward arc weapons twice, once at each cruiser). The Overload pulse allowed me to exhaust all the defense tokens and well-rolled accuracy dice plus plenty of other hits left both ships hurt as we closed. The next turn I activated the Imperial SD immediately and blew away one of the MC80s and badly damaged the other. None of my ships had even been scratched and the Rebels threw in the towel.

So, I may need to rethink how I play this game! :)

Quality certainly has its own, well, quality.

Sounds like fun, at least for the glorious Empire, as they chose down the rebel scum.

Sounds like operation "EAT plasma rebel scum" worked well for you.

OTOH, I found trying to coordinate all of those abilities quite frustrating. I had the Victory class SD set up to assist the Imperial SD with some extra abilities like the Ion Cannon to knock out even more defense tokens, but I was completely unable to coordinate their activities and the Victory did almost nothing. Takes practice to make this work and it was more work than fun, I think :)

I have found that playing casual games of both Armada and X-Wing with a tournament mindset/list lead to less fun for me and my opponent. It makes the battles seem less narrative, and honestly the old frustrations with the old Starfleet Battles game starts to creep in…

Excellent point! In the future I will go back to my old ways with few cards and more ships. Just more fun that way :)

ScottWashburn
OTOH, I found trying to coordinate all of those abilities quite frustrating.
Takes practice to make this work and it was more work than fun, I think :)

Darkest Star Games
I have found that playing casual games.. with a tournament mindset/list lead to less fun… the old frustrations with the old SFB game starts to creep in…

I have no doubt there will be those that take the point of view that "if your not going to play the game 'as written', i.e. use all available components, "Why play?"
I respect that, however IMHO, the only real reason to game is to have fun.
Ive played both over the many yrs, and understand *Darkest Star's point. SFB did get frustrating, for the same reason *Scott mentioned regarding Armada.
In their own ways, both became more complicated than fun. As for the SFB game, I felt like I spent two hours doing 'home work' and was glad it ended.

"Keep It Simple" and keep it fun, However that works for you.

It sounds very similar to what I did last week-end, Scott.

2 x ISDs with
tractor beams to slow down his ships that would come near by
gunnery team to cross fire between the two ISDs
Overload pulse to neutralize his defence
then some squadrons for protection.

It went like red hot knives into butter.