"Love- Hate relationship with Star Wars Armada" Topic

I find myself confused by my feelings for this game. At times I absolutely love it, and then I hate it!

What I love…
1. It's Star Wars!
2. It has a lot of strategy to it.
3. It isn't too complicated to play, but still challenging to win!
4. The vehicles look incredible!

What I hate…
1. The collectible card element… You have to buy the latest expansions to get the new cards that can be used with your ships.
2. Also the cards – The game is often won or lost in how you assign cards and ships to the game. I'm a historical gamer, and historical games tend to be more about tactics than about which ship with which upgrades you choose.
3. Fighters – Fighters have always been such a strong part of the Star Wars universe, but in this game there is just something wrong with the way they are handled. It's not that they are awful, it's just that they are almost an afterthought. The big problem is that they can't really operate independently from the big ships.

I still like to play the game, but as more and more expansions come out, I find myself getting more and more lost, because I just don't spend enough time "studying the game".

I also am very fond of Armada and agree with all of your positives. In regards to your negatives I would offer the following

1) This is always an issue with any collectible tournament game. It doesn't bother me too much because…

2) while this is my problem with every collectible game, I avoid it by not participating in tournaments/competitions. To maintain the variety available without getting bogged down into "meta" decisions, set up a spreadsheet of standard cards per ship. Then, when assembling a fleet, each player has to pick configurations from the sheet.
3) This is one where I respectfully disagree. I find the feel of the fighter rules perfectly matches what I would expect a Commodore's view of a battle. Compare the decisions you make in a game with the ones the Admirals made at Midway (for example)

By the way, I've found waiting a few months to buy the new ships allows for considerable savings.

Largely agree.

For non-tournament play, just print out the cards you want.

Limit the upgrades if you like. X-Wing also plays superblywithout adding any upgrade cards beyond munitions.

I actually like the fighter/bomber squadrons in Armada. They are brutal when handled correctly, so the deployment limitations are a good check on their power.

Places like Cool Stuff, Miniature Marketplace, and sometimes Amazon put them on sale, especially at the holidays.

Since I'm heavily invested in X-Wing, which I picked up during sales, I don't feel the need to move to Armada.

But I hear your complaints about the cards. You know you can download the cards online and then print out proxies? I do this with X-Wing. It's all good among friends as long as you don't play in an official tournament.

I thought the same about fighters, but just saw Rogue One. Looking at the big battle there, and those in the other movies, the fighters operate pretty close to the ships. Not much sending waves out in a "carrier strike."

I like the game a lot. It has the proper Star Wars feel and I think the fighters are handled better than in any other space game I've played. They can be very powerful, but only if the other guy ignores their threat. Trying to decide between a ship-killing force and a CAP force is an interesting challenge in the game.

As for the cards, I agree that they can suck the fun right out of the game. But only if you let them. My group just doesn't use many cards. Maybe one or two per ship and another or two for the flagship. Any more just bogs the game down as you try to figure out which card to use when. So far this has worked fine.

I hear you brother, I have the same problem with X-Wing and they fact that I enjoy scratchbuilding my own ships just makes it worse, I have fleets for the game and no need to buy someone else's model just for the stat card. I have both TacShip and 5150 Fighter Command which I use instead for X-Wing.

If it bothers you too much there are plenty of non collectable miniature games out there that do star wars quite well, Colonial Battlefleet and Full Thrust are my go to options. Both have full design systems so you can build your own, but in both cases fans have already produced star wars stats and posted them on the web.

Robert

One experiment I want to run (someday, when I have time) is a series of games with fighters, but only on one side.

The question is: point for point, are fighters worth the cost?

Agree about all the cards. Worse offender is Star Trek Armada (the one based on X-Wing). With so many expansions out, I had to give up on competitive play – just too many super-optimized combos out there to the point that the game becomes one of rock-scissors-paper.

Agree completely that Armada and X-wing are great games ruined by the add on cards. Loved X-Wing went to a couple of tournaments and never played again.

Would be nice to have a card limit tournament circuit. Its great to play just with friends but sometimes strangers show up and it would be better to say we play with "card limits" so that all would use same general limits.

Also it would be good to thrash out what limits (it tends to be card combos that completely distort game).

TomT

I never thought of proxy cards… That is a good idea. I don't want to have to buy every ship just for the cards!

I like the "Rogue" keyword that they are adding now, but I think some of the originals need it badly. I mean Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader don't have "Rogue"!

To be honest, most of the Rebel squadrons should probably have "Rogue" because they often worked without capitol ships… Look at Death Star assault and Episode 7 attack on the "Death Star Planet"!

TIE fighters on the other hand are more tied to their capitol ship because they don't have hyper drives.

For the online X-Wing squad builders they print out all the information you need to play; enough that you don't need the card components beyond the base marker for fire arcs. I imagine someone has done the same for Armada.

Oh yes, point for point, the fighters and bombers are well worth their cost!

Judge the A-Wings by their size do not!

Indeed they have, Dust Warrior. I use:

link

I agree with the a lot of your pros and cons. One thing my little group did recently was to do a short campaign, sort of like the old Rebellion video game. Each side had a bundle of points to spend on ships and cards etc, but we mostly used just the basic ships so that the fleets could be larger. There were some really special personality cards and upgrades floating around but they were mostly tied to specific ships. Vader was in play, but due to how one guy moved his fleets about he only showed up in 1 battle! (and he did have good effect) All in all it seemed a lot more like the movies. It was sort of nice to have generic ship battles and not to have to worry so much about all of the special rules and whatnot.

If you guys haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend the Correlian Campaign for Armada. It's a fantastic way to enjoy Armada, along the lines of what Darkest is talking about. Very neat!

I'd love to see a campaign game where you start out with no upgrade cards at all except for your fleet commander. And then as you fight battles you can earn upgrade cards. And later if you lose the ship they are attached to you lose the card. Hardware cards should be permanently assigned to a specific ship, but personnel cards can be swapped around. So you could upgrade one ship a lot at the expense of your others, but if your opponent trashes that ship, you could lose them all.

You 'all' make excellent points.
The constant addition of new ships and new upgrade cards remind me of what I called GW's "Buy Me Rules".

I avoid tournement games like a disease. I want to "play" and have fun, not test my knowledge of page after page of rules.

*ScotWashBurn I think said it best:
"As for the cards, ..they can suck the fun right out of the game."

One of THE best suggestions I have heard regarding Armada and the Upgrade card debate; Limit each ship to One upgrade, perhaps Two for 'the' Command ship of that game.

The Spreadsheet idea is another great suggestion.
List all ships your group has and for Ex. 3-4 cards to choose from for that ship type.
Next limit 1 card per ship, even if they choose the same card for all ships of one type (after all ships were mass produced).

The exception being Character cards. No two can be taken for the same game.
(Ex.Gen. Tarken cant be aboard 2 ships at the same time.)

And last my own bit of "Hate" about the game.
Having to buy the entire "Rogues and Villan" set just to get the Millenium Falcon. Granted its 'the' known ship, however, its also just another class of frieghter that should be available as another resourse for the Alliance.

@Scott- have you seen CC? I think it might be to your liking. Your initial fleet is limited to ONE upgrade card per ship. Ships can become :scarred: and completely destroyed where you lose any unique upgrades on them.

It's really pretty awesome. I highly recommend it!

*indierockclimber I assume your talking about the "Corillian" expansion game? I have heard its pretty good but only from one / two people.
I am curious though.

Indie, I just ordered a copy of CC. I will let you know how I like it.

indierockclimber
..initial fleet is limited to ONE upgrade card per ship. Ships can become :scarred: and.. destroyed where you lose any unique upgrades on them.

Further thought, I like the idea of a ship loosing Upgrades once they reach a certain 'damage point', the effect of pitched battles.

I noticed no one seemed to mention one factor, Cost.

But seems 'we all' had some 'erks' regarding the upgrade card sys. I think that says a Lot about how a 'little thng' can just be taken waay too far.

But as I was saying, MY biggest 'hate' thats really keeping me OUT of Armada, the cost Per Ship. 50 bucks for One Imp. DS, seriously? Let me be clear, I dont think I hve ever seen better mini's for any game, but still.
The $15 USD for the Corvettes & Neb Frigates, not so bad, but once you buy JUST 2 of the Imp SD, the Iconic ship of the Empire.. your $100 USD bucks into this game (snap) just like that.

Some have mentioned and even Im considering going back to Wiz. of the Coast miniature line; "Star Wars Starship Battles" for their MUCH less expensive ships and using Armada rules.
One the down side, there are no Gladiator or Victory SD's in the SW SB game and for the most part, the way out of scale ftrs, stink (some are warped horibbly). To counter this, I think I would just buy Armada's Ftr expansions they look amazing.

WOTC version of the Rebel Assault FF is nothing like the FFG's version. IMHO, it looks as if it came right out of the SW universe. But again, both that vessel and the Neb FF, beware the aft sections 'can' be warped. However there is a way to correct it. Ive used it to 'straighten' some of my Commerce Guild DD's with good results.