I used to do miniature games until I experienced the dismal failure and corruption of the Mechwarriors by wizkids. That was a mess. I wanted to get back into miniatures, and examined XWing and Armada. And of the two - I'd only want to do Armada. I would have done XWing if my interest started earlier before news of Armada.

But I am concerned. I seems there will be no tournament play that I could economically attend. I live in a large county in PA (not Philadelphia areas, but very close to the capital) There are two miniature stores, one a game based store and the other a comic based store. In the neighboring county, there is a another comic store. All of them hold your typical store based tournaments of friendly matches or game maker sanctioned tournaments.

NONE of them have any plans for Armada tournaments. One store that sells X-Wing minatures, has NO plans to even stock or even try to sell Armada (owner told me this while playing in a store based tournament of X-Wing no less). The reason is core game price point. The comic based store, a staple of the county for about 50 years - where I used to do Mechwarrior tournaments - NO plans to have any tournaments (they do have X-Wing tournaments scheduled). They will sell Armada items at MSRP though. Same with the store in the neighboring county. 1 store is out, and the other two both told me it'll be a wait and see, meaning their pre-order numbers at the store re weak enough to indicate is nothing for them to get excited over - and they also blame the core price. 0/3. Next place for me to find sanctioned tournaments is a minimum hour drive now. If fact, I was told player attenedance is waning for X-Wing and the neighboring county might have 4 people show up.

I know everyone here in these forums are good to go on this. I would be too - but I have no friends into this sort of thing. I am trying to break away from console gaming and - physically roll dice. So - I need to find a place that holds tournaments, sanctioned or not (is sanctioned the correct terminology?). But my hopes for that look dismal - and that is based on the very places that do hold X-Wing and Attack Wing tournaments. This is mostly a young-kids game, and I can see the problem with the price point with kids finding it harder and harder to get summer jobs.

Am I just in a non-Armada area? What is the situation with tournaments for Armada? I might have to go to craisglist to find a player - and then, knowing craiglist, I'll be playing the game like Han Solo, with a pistol under the table...

sanctioned tournaments, competition, prices and winners sounds like the dark side to me.

I would wait for wave 1 to come out and then I'd expect an uptake in organized events.

I definitely think armada will surpass x-wing eventually brcuase it will be a more polished game

As for the tourney problem, try and build up a armada group and after you have 6-8 consistent players ask the stores again and they should be willing to host one

Game isn't even out yet! Give it some time. They can't all be overnight sellers like Imperial assault.

It will be interesting to see how many people who play x-wing will also pick up Armada.

That sucks man. I can see this being less popular than X-Wing. It's just going to be the nature of Armada. Armada is going to appeal to players of fleet action games. X-Wing is faster paced (plus everyone has fond memories of the old PC games) and thus appeals to a wider player base.

I hope things improve for you man. If not, take your set to one or more of those stores and try to drum up interest.

I'm kinda in the same boat. There's a small game store about a hour and a half from me that does X-wing one day a week. I haven't asked if they plan to do Armada. The local game store near me literally only does Magic. I just found a place 45 (Hour and 15 if driving from work ) minutes from where I'm staying at the moment that might play. My problem is that I have a rotating schedule each week for work so it's hard for me to do a single day consistently. Not sure what I'm going to do yet.

I figure x-wing is like 40k and armada is like 40k Epic (ie: the same units and setting but on a larger scale with smaller minis)

Now we all know Epic eventualy fell by the wayside but that's because GW will eventually kill of everything besides warhammer fantasy and warhammer 40k. Will FFG do the same? I doubt it.

My local store does well in both X-wing and attack wing. The only reason they are being cautious with the (pre)orders is because of the wildly fluctuating dollar.

I'm with those who say 'wait and see'.

Obviously, there is not much of a tournament scene just yet. Nobody knows how to play the game, except Forensicus and a handful of other blessed ones.

That will be different in just a couple weeks, and when Wave 1 hits, we''ll be able to say more about our Armada community.

Until then, FLGSs are wise to be conservative.

I hear you about WIzkids as I was one of the people doing MageKNigt from the beginning and went into MechWarrior. I was one of the poor shleps who had a crash course with the game designers before the con, and then did Demos of it when it was first on display. (got some good stories I could share in private)

Miniature games competitive play cannot even get close to the CCG market, due to costs. Never going to happen.

Play it for fun, hope some friends join you. I know some local X-wing players that are going to get into it, so i will be playing against them.

I might make a trip to Minnesota or Madison for a tourny, but i doubt that is going to happen locally

If you're on the south side of Harrisburg, you could make it to the gaming stores north of Baltimore in about an hour and a half. While I haven't seen anything specific yet, I know at least one store has a small group of people (including me) interested in playing.

If you're interested, keep an eye on Titan Games in Timonium, Legends Games and Comics in Towson, and Bel Air Games in Bel Air, MD.

After it's out a while and they see sales and get asked about it they'll most likely change their mind

I figure x-wing is like 40k and armada is like 40k Epic (ie: the same units and setting but on a larger scale with smaller minis)

Now we all know Epic eventualy fell by the wayside but that's because GW will eventually kill of everything besides warhammer fantasy and warhammer 40k. Will FFG do the same? I doubt it.

My local store does well in both X-wing and attack wing. The only reason they are being cautious with the (pre)orders is because of the wildly fluctuating dollar.

As for Armada being the big daddy or X-Wing I will say X-Wing will enjoy the popularity for its more accessability to your normal player. Armada will be a thinking mans game, more things to consider and choices to make. It's not as straight forward.

If you're on the south side of Harrisburg, you could make it to the gaming stores north of Baltimore in about an hour and a half. While I haven't seen anything specific yet, I know at least one store has a small group of people (including me) interested in playing.

If you're interested, keep an eye on Titan Games in Timonium, Legends Games and Comics in Towson, and Bel Air Games in Bel Air, MD.

I'll be trying to get play started at Titan, and possibly Legends. Legends is smaller and not really set up for miniature gaming, but has awesome Thai restaurant next door.

As for Armada being the big daddy or X-Wing I will say X-Wing will enjoy the popularity for its more accessability to your normal player. Armada will be a thinking mans game,...

Well, I'm screwed then.

One of things you can do is be the go to person to build the community. Find a store that will give you the space to play on a certain and start advertising that you are playing Armada on that night. If you only get 1 other person to start, that is a good thing. Then you have a second player to play. The key I found when building the X-Wing community in Omaha Nebraska back in August of 2012 was putting the ships on the table was the greatest attractor for the game. Run some demos and invite onlookers to try it out. You will be fighting the price point on this, but it is what you need to play the game. The key to selling the game is to put the game on the table and have people watch you playing it. If they are interested they will buy into it, and if they choose not to right away, let the use your stuff to play until they are convinced they need to buy their own.

As for Armada being the big daddy or X-Wing I will say X-Wing will enjoy the popularity for its more accessability to your normal player. Armada will be a thinking mans game,...

Well, I'm screwed then.

So do you need your Imperial handbook when you use the Bathroom too? I heard the Courtship rulebook is ... different.

Our group here has read the rules and are all on deck. It is set to be the primary space combat game in our area. Why don't you start the group and get other people into it?

Don't you have a local gaming club? If not, then (as others have suggested) why not start one yourself.

Re: being a kid's game (not sure if you were referring to X-Wing or Armada). Aside from that statement being slightly insulting to all the adults who play it, all but one of the people I play in a group of about 10 are late 30s and early 40s. Maybe its different where you live, or maybe you just need to find like-minded people in your age group

How many X-Wing tournaments were planned the week before it was released? I'm thinking about zero. Give it time.

This game may well be a superior design to X wing. That is entirely likely.

I also do not doubt the components merit the cost.

However that cost is still a huge buy in - particularly when it's being marketed to people that already have other gaming commitments. Are enough x wing players really going to be able to afford to support this as well? The price of a single ship in Armada is almost the cost of 1 of each expansions in a typical x wing wave. Not only that, but Imperial Assualt, which is proving very popular, is still relatively new.

I have a feeling Armada will be the straw that breaks the camel's back. I think FFG has overreached itself. I'm sure it will sell initially, I'm sure there are plenty of people who will now tell me they are planning on buying a ton of stuff for it and have 3x everything on preorder. Great, but are there enough of such people to build a community and create a sustainable player base - along with everything else they might play?

As for Armada being the big daddy or X-Wing I will say X-Wing will enjoy the popularity for its more accessability to your normal player. Armada will be a thinking mans game,...

Well, I'm screwed then.

You see what that Imperial conditioning as done to you, you have even forgot how to think. Lucky for you I will be there to tell you what moves to make.

So do you need your Imperial handbook when you use the Bathroom too? I heard the Courtship rulebook is ... different.

I'm very confused by all the people who seem to think Armada is so expensive to get into. If you are a gamer as we all are its clear that Armada is in fact very cheap compared to most miniature games on the market today. Aside from the obvious warhammer reference I can think of many other examples of games that are literally ten times as expensive to get into. Warmachine and Flames of Ware are just a couple that come to mind that are very successful and also very expensive. Now with Armada you also have a much smaller time commitment in that you don't need to spend countless hours assembling and painting a viable army to play. So if you literally spend $100 and get a core set and a few expansions at MM or Coolstuff you already will have a viable and competitive list to play. No months of painting, no investing at least a thousand DOLLARS to even have a bare minimum list. So I argue Armada is not only going to be a great success, its going to bring FFG to new heights.

People don't put in alot of thought beyond, "Oh $100 seems like a lot". They look at the cost of the core and the individual ships and notice they are more expensive then single pieces from other games, like X-wing. They don't put much thought into what is the actual cost to put a list on the table. Or a realistic cost to have decent list variety available.

People claim/claimed X-wing is expensive because a single ship costs $15 dollars, when other games charge way less per model. They just neglect to realize that is irrelevant as you need 10 times the models to actually play. So even at half the cost per model you are spending alot more to get the game on the table.

Neveremind the fact that people don't consider the cost of other popular games when making the argument that Armada or X-wing is untenably expensive.

Comparisons don't make good arguments: whether other games are more expensive says nothing about the cost of Armada. All that tells me is that other games are even more expensive.

But you miss the point I've made: Armada isn't the only game. People this is being marketed to are, more likely than not, players of other games. Armada is competing for a smaller share of the customer's wallet.