I was not able to attend. And i have had difficulty even since it moved to Indy, instead of Milwaukee. Without the ability to "Work" at the con.

A local gamer who is into X-wing miniature was not too thrilled with the game. he played the demo and from his accounts the VSD won in two rounds against the CRV and FRG. From some reports in this forum, the rules at Gencon were rather watered down from a complete game for the sake of quick "Demo style" gameplay.

I want this game to succeed, but don't want it to be such a "KISS" game to make it pointless to play

A single fully upgraded X-wing can easily take out 2 low PS Ties at an even cost more often than not.

Basically, I'm not worried. The base rules of X-Wing and stunningly low point matches are often less than balanced and interesting. Beyond that, you have a bunch of players with little to no understanding of the game being thrown into matches against each other and the Imperial side is much less error prone due to it's HP and potential dmg.

They've done a great job balancing X-Wing, and many other games. I think they'll get this one right also.

From what I understand it will be more complex than X-wing full scale and remember Frigates and Corvettes weren't designed for slugging it out with Star Destroyers (now the Assault Frigate MkIIs on the other hand...) I see Corvettes being an alternative to using fighters rather than X-wing Squadrons you can use a single corvette which can be more useful against TIEs but is more vulnerable to the VSDs

The demo at Gencon was very much a limited version of the game. The game takes some of the X-wing concepts and zooms out for a larger scale more strategic experience. If you want the fast paced tactical action of X-wing this is definitely not that. The game play style is slowed down comparatively and long term strategic planning becomes more of the focus.

Personally I am not worried about it being good. FFG has a proven track record at this point so a failure from them would a big surprise. This game will probably appeal to a slightly different crowd from the hardcore X-Wing players. This is the game for the people who wanted more depth and strategy out of X-Wing than X-Wing originally offered.

I'm not worried by the balance. FFG seems pretty good at it.

Armada might be the exact opposite of the style of play of X-wing. In X-wing the Rebels have the shield and hitpoint advantage and usually prefer tactics of slogging it out toe to toe. While the Imperial ships rely more on their maneuverability to survive.

In Armada I can see the Rebel ships requiring more speed and maneuverability to survive or to take advantage of firing arcs, and the Imperial ships being able to just move around slowly and trade blows. Usually when it comes to just the core game, if the Imperial player is new and doesn't out maneuver the rebel player, his Ties will get blown to bits. Same thing probably happening with the Armada core.

The mere fact that the bigger ships like the VSD have to plan their orders 3 moves ahead says this is a "think-ahead" sort of game and not a "react on the fly" game like X-Wing can be. The core ships do seem unbalanced, but I guess FFG are banking on most players buying expansions straight away.

Maneuverability may not play a big part, but outflanking will be crucial. If you get into a VSD side arc, it appears to just about halve it's firepower. Finding each ship's weak spots is going to be the thing to do.

I played it at GenCon. Yes, at range 1 in the front arc, the VSD can one shot the CR90 (mine did). However, we only played a single game round. We didn't even take into account things like upgrades, or captains, or any of the additional components. It was ships, a few squadrons, and the defensive abilities.

Also, the CR90 that I destroyed? He ran right up in my face for no real reason. You move after you shoot, so your shots are going to be based on where people ended up last round, or where they just now moved to. If you go last, its safe to say you will likely have trouble getting good shots without cornering people.

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Also, the CR90 that I destroyed? He ran right up in my face for no real reason. You move after you shoot, so your shots are going to be based on where people ended up last round, or where they just now moved to. If you go last, its safe to say you will likely have trouble getting good shots without cornering people.

Well I think it will be a trade off since every ship has 360 coverage (yes some arcs are more powerful than others) and if you move last other ships will move into a closer range, and moving last could be the difference between only having red dice or being able to add blue/black to the pool.

So you may dodge my front facing with 3 red and 3 black, but to do so you move into a side arc with 2 red and 2 blue so instead of exposing yourself to only 3 dice now you have 4 to deal with. (Of course you may prefer to be shot by blue dice instead of red for whatever reason too, but I believe the tendency is for dice to get nastier the shorter the range)