Hi there fellow pilots and commanders

I have now played 10 games of Star Wars Armad (7 with the proper rules) (thank you ffg community for your help.)

I have also watched 6 games.

In all 16 games the Empire has won. Demo Games and Fleet Building

The issue I am having is that with only the core set. Fleet building is limited. ( which I get its just a starter set)

In ALL 16 games the empire has won. (Keep in mind this is with multiple different opponents and people from x-wing veterans to newbies.

My question for fleet building is just using the core set what reccomendation would you suggest for a Rebel Fleet building list?

The reason is that for many different combos. Yes I can inflict some damage and focus fire on the empire. But even focusing everything I can I am unable to drop it. I am talking about concentrate fire frm both ships for rebels front arc full dice potential and even if I do 4-5 damage it just isnt enough. With the engineering of 4 and possible upgrades the star destroyer easily repairs.

Is the starter set unbalanced?

What does it take to destroy the empire fleet?

And what does a Rebel player take while very patiently waiting for wave 1?

Also I forgot to ask.

Has anyone won a game with the rebels playing the demo game or using the fleet building rules with just the core set?

Also I forgot to ask.

Has anyone won a game with the rebels playing the demo game or using the fleet building rules with just the core set?

I've only played a half dozen or so games, and most of those demos of the learn-to-play scenario for folk who're showing an interest in the game. Have had the Rebels win learn-to-play, but mostly because of some very good red dice rolls off of the X-Wings to take out the Star Destroyer. Last one of these that I ran for someone saw the very last dice roll of the game come up with a double-hit to finish of the VSD with 2 hull left.

But that feels like more the exception than the rule, until you get to larger games the Rebels can't use their speed to pick off individual Star Destroyers.

If you are still not using objectives it may seem that way. Start adding objectives to your game that work to your advantage as a rebel player. The Empire frequently loses in missions that it has to race the Rebels to certain points. Also worth noting that using 2 core sets to make 300 pt games makes for a far better balanced game. The Rebels have the power to gang up on one star destroyer and the imps struggle to stay on top of all 4 Rebel ships.

Anyway, as said above, add objectives to your games and things may change. We have plenty of Rebel victories in our camp.

Corvette A with Dodonnas Pride and Dodonna

Nebulon-B Support Refit (Point Saver)

3 X-wing Squadrons

Luke Skywalker

I believe they are balanced fine.

We were talking about that last night. I had just won two games as imperials at 300. Onlookers and my opponent asked me that basic question.

One, there is the general phenomenon that many gamers (not just armada players) believe that if they have a list of whatever with some cool sounding combinations they can just move generally toward the enemy and barring 'bad luck' have a fair chance to win. This is actually completely wrong. But I see rebels talking all day about their list's cool capabilities and then they get on the table and it looks like recess at grade school...

Two, if both sides were the same style-wise it would be boring. In any game the designer is going to try and have the sides emphasize different styles. In xwing, the rebels are the tank style and the imps are the maneuver style. Its the opposite in armada. This means the armada imps are damage managers and the rebels are the maneuverers. But in armada, there is this other layer with the fighters. And rebel fighters, even now in the core set, are ship killers. I have no ship with 2 dice of anti squadron and all of your fighters are five hull bombers. Yet after about 20+ games, I have seen only one or two where the rebel even tried to win the fighter engagement. I know I should not be saying this because it will likely make it harder for me, and it is just so obvious, but:

your x wings are speed three, you have 2-dice frigates. do NOT move to where my ties can pin your x wings without getting shot at by AS fire until you are within distance 3 of my ties at the start of a turn. almost every rebel makes the mistake of moving away from his frigates to pin my ties early and without doing it all at once. You can finish off a ship in one turn with x wings, and it can be turn 6, so set it up. Jump out there and I will win the fighter battle and plink you to death (literally) on turn 5 and 6 with a bunch of 1-blue shots. Again, make it so that if I want to pin your fighters, it is where you have obstacle cover and a bunch of 2-dice frigate shots. In most games, it is not turn 2 where you can make this happen, so train yourself not to come after my fighters til turn 3 or after. You have time, use it.

Three, learn these:

1. The sides of a neb B suck - shooting and defending.

2. You can't use evade effectively at close and medium range.

3. At long range a neb B front and a VSD front shoot the same dice.

Stay at long range pointed at me as long as possible. Every time these rebels go around me they give me side shots, lose their evades and bring more of my dice to bear than they can answer with. I will be near enough to a map edge that if you go around me, you will be in medium range at least. Go over me, and don't do it until the last second.

Four, stop making me second player for Sith's sake. lol

Just some thoughts. YMMV.

I will start this as I am mostly a Empire player, but early last week we were playing with just two core sets and playing the 300pts the other guy wanted to play Empire so I took the Rebels and was able to win. Not saying that I am the best or anything but just play to the strenghts and try to avoid your weeknesses. The Empire player was ganging up on my X-wings one at a time, and also adding fire from his two Victory I's by him going with the Vicotry I's I was able to close to medium range and have more firepower than he did, with him ganging up on my fighters one at a time I was able to use the others to attack his ships or fighters depending on what was in range. And then to finish off his last Star Destroyer I ramed it with my corvette doing the last hull point that he had.

My thoughts on very basic ways to play. Empire there ships are there main firepower, there fighters are just to tie up the Rebel fighters. The Rebels it is a mix there ships and fighters, both are part of there firepower, and you need to use both, but even more important the rebels need to use there manuverablity and control the fight, when and where they want.

Played a demo learn to play yesterday where the rebels won.

Xwings killed all the ties and started harassing the Vic while the rebel capital fired long range harassing shots.

With repairs, the rebel ships ended with 1 damage each and the Vic was unhurt, but had maybe 1 shield between all its sides.

It's a bit difficult to get to grips with the style of game that Armada seems to be building into. The Objectives (minus the red ones) give you an avenue of winning that is independent of the amount of ships you destroy (provided you don't lose too much) and some factions are designed around this.

I found this especially true in Warmachine, where Cygnar (jack of all trades) was always outshone in some capacity by another army and almost always in the durability of the enemies they came up against (good Victory analog). Their principle strength was to combine whatever advantages they had, plus some very accurate guns, and "scalpel" the opponents core pieces while vying for the objective. One very rarely won by just annihilating the opponent (unless going up against one of the squishier factions)

I see rebels as very similar to Cygnar. The hulking Victory is a monster that you can very easily end up wasting shots on, so you have to do your best to ignore it unless

1.) a concentrated effort actually has a chance of killing that thing (generally only viable after the Ties are gone or if you're behind the Victory)

2.) your attack has some other means of checking its capabilities. D's pride is a good, direct example as it can either neuter the destroyer with a well placed crit or force it into engineering commands which limit its effectiveness in other areas (principally in moving and commanding ties).

If you don't have a good chance of doing either of the above, don't bother . Ignore the Victory, plink/scalpel out ties (which also count towards winning the game on victory points), go for the objectives (if applicable). Just stay the hell out of the big guy's front arc and you can win without ever getting close to killing it.

It's a weird style to get used to (and it's not always fun to be staring down a far more imposing army ) but imo the two sides are balanced. They're just not geared to steamroll evenly into one another (the empire is kinda supposed to be able to demolish the rebellion like that )

Wow!

Thank you for all of the incredible responses.

I will definetly consider all of these things in my future games.

Thanks for the great input gents!

I'll let you know how it goes!

I'd like to echo the comments from ficklegreendice. The Rebels are currrently (with the core set) the light fast maneuverable ships. They are the Rebels, hit and run! In most games I have seen and played, when the rebels try to go toe-to-toe with the empire, they lose. When the Rebels focus on objectives and killing TIE squadrons, they win.

Killing a VSD requires a concentrated effort. Its hard to effectively dispate a VSD's defense tokens with only 2 smalll rebel ships.

One other key to winning, Empire or Rebel, is to make the enemy the First player. This way the enemy has to choose from your objectives that, if you've done your homework, are taylored to your force. This requires giving up some points, but its well worth it.

As new ships are added, both rebels and imperals will have maneuverable ships and heavy ships and fighter with different capabilities. Capabilities will balance over time.

'Focus on the objectives' sounds good, but really does not play out that way. The typical set is Adv Gunner, Hyperspace Assault and Minefield. The rebel cannot really choose from the first two as they are just giving a ship away. So, they should do two things: make a serious bid for initiative and also practice flying on a board with a well-laid out minefield.

Also, you really cannot win without killing at least one VSD. At most, I will have only 100 pts in fighters, and even if you could manage to kill all of them with no loss of either ships or your own fighters, which is really not going to happen, but let's say it did, you only have 100 pt mov in a game where you need much more to advance. If low wins and draws are your thing, then maybe hiding the ships and going all in on the fighter combat may work against some people. But I would recommend working on plans to win decisively, and no matter how much you lose or do not lose, that requires killing at least one ship. Aim low, get low.

I will post up a set of lists and a battle report from last night pretty soon. I was the Imperial player and conceded the game at the end of turn 3 as there was no way I could possibly win.

The rebels actually have a pretty huge advantage when it comes to objectives and can easily fly circles around the Vic at 180 points.

Bat Rep will be up tonight or sometime tomorrow and I'll cover my thoughts in detail.

As an example of the lists:

CR90a - Dodonna's Pride, Engineering Team

Nebulon-B Escort Frigate - General Dodonna

x4 X-Wing Squadrons

179 Points

Victory Mk I - Enhanced Armaments, Wulf Yularen, Grand Moff Tarkin, Dominator

x3 Tie Fighter Squadrons

Howlrunner


Rebels got a very easy victory during the game. I'll link the batrep here when it's posted.

I think the Empire is just a little more forgiving to errors in play and on the flip side unforgiving to Rebels who mess up a few plays.

Core Sets are not meant to be balanced for actual gameplay. They don't need to be. Even at the 300pt level what we are playing now ranks as a relatively glorified demo.

Learn to move your ships, but worrying about actual gameplay is going to have to wait until Wave 1.

Play with scenarios and 300 points. Everything else is just an unbalanced demo of the game.

I've read a ton of these same questions. They all talk about how the core set is unbalanced in favor of the Imperials. I have played 3 games with the core set (I know it isn't a huge amount of games), but in all 3 the Rebels won. They were close games, but the Rebels won. Their manueverability and the strength of their squadrons can really go a long way. In all the games I've seen the Imperials fire from their forward arc maybe 3 times, and in all cases it was at long range. The Rebels can just outmanuever them so well. Apparently I'm the only one who experiences this? Maybe we're playing the Imperials incorrectly.

This is saying nothing of objectives, which I haven't tried yet. I think the Rebels definitely have a huge advantage over the Imperials in this case.

rebels were designed to be far more manueverable than the imperials

as for objectives, it depends on which

the space station one and mine-fields are very much in the imperial's favor, for example

I saw a game last night (double box, 300pts), the rebels had two corvettes (all blue dice ones) with the overload pulse and engineer upgrade, then the support frigate with the title and there commander, the rest of there points were in X-wings and they had a lot of them. The Empire had two VSD, commander and some fighters. The mission was the one were you get the free gunnery upgrade and have to kill the command ship for double points. By the end of turn six the Empire had killed one X-Wing, one Corvette, and the Command Frigate, but had lost all of there Tie fighters and there command VSD. They played to wipe after the official end and it only took two more turns one for the remaining X-Wings to get in range and one for them to kill the last VSD, as the VSD was trying to run it almost killed the last Rebel corvette (did all but one damage on it, including a critical that would not let it do any long range attacks). In the end the Rebels cleaned up by killing two VSD and 10 or 11 Fighter bases, and they only lost one corvette, one frigate and one X-wing. Almost every kill in that game was by the X-wings, the Frigate I think did kill one fighter other than that they did damage to ships and fighter knocked down shields and such but it was the X-wing that was the MVP and won the game for them.

So I played 200pts with the Core Set yesterday, 3 times as Rebels. We drew two random scenarios, and the first player (Imperial in this case) chose the objective. The objectives were Minefields, Advanced Gunnery and Fire Lanes.

I was able to draw circles around the VSD every game. The VSD fired only once from its front in three games, and only twice at medium range, all in the last game (where I was pretty desperate to get VPs). I won the first game by taking out his squadrons, I lost the second one because he took out my squadrons (Howlrunner + VSD + squadron token + squadron command ... ).

The final game was a bit weird, since we forgot about line of sight when putting objectives, so the Imperial player was retconned to 0 victory tokens since he parked himself behind the space station. I only lost ships in this game, when I allowed the VSD to shoot at medium range (he had Dominator and Shooting command, fired 6 dice from his side). I was 10-2 for VPs, but we kept going on after my ships were both destroyed, which gave him some VPs and points from killing Luke.

I will post up a set of lists and a battle report from last night pretty soon. I was the Imperial player and conceded the game at the end of turn 3 as there was no way I could possibly win.

The rebels actually have a pretty huge advantage when it comes to objectives and can easily fly circles around the Vic at 180 points.

Bat Rep will be up tonight or sometime tomorrow and I'll cover my thoughts in detail.

As an example of the lists:

CR90a - Dodonna's Pride, Engineering Team

Nebulon-B Escort Frigate - General Dodonna

x4 X-Wing Squadrons

179 Points

Victory Mk I - Enhanced Armaments, Wulf Yularen, Grand Moff Tarkin, Dominator

x3 Tie Fighter Squadrons

Howlrunner

Rebels got a very easy victory during the game. I'll link the batrep here when it's posted.

No offence intended but I think that's a terrible imperial build, 3 TIE fighters isn't enough to screen x-wings.

I would drop Wulf, Dominator and invest the (19?) points in two more squads of TIE fighters

I will post up a set of lists and a battle report from last night pretty soon. I was the Imperial player and conceded the game at the end of turn 3 as there was no way I could possibly win.

The rebels actually have a pretty huge advantage when it comes to objectives and can easily fly circles around the Vic at 180 points.

Bat Rep will be up tonight or sometime tomorrow and I'll cover my thoughts in detail.

As an example of the lists:

CR90a - Dodonna's Pride, Engineering Team

Nebulon-B Escort Frigate - General Dodonna

x4 X-Wing Squadrons

179 Points

Victory Mk I - Enhanced Armaments, Wulf Yularen, Grand Moff Tarkin, Dominator

x3 Tie Fighter Squadrons

Howlrunner

Rebels got a very easy victory during the game. I'll link the batrep here when it's posted.

No offence intended but I think that's a terrible imperial build, 3 TIE fighters isn't enough to screen x-wings.

I would drop Wulf, Dominator and invest the (19?) points in two more squads of TIE fighters

He has 4 ties (you forgot howlrunner).

And I would argue that 4 ties are more than enough to screen the Victory. You just need to keep the Xwings occupied for a couple of turns while the VSD pounds some ships into scrap.

i have played two games, once with the imperials and once with the rebellion, I have won both games.

Looking at lists using the core sets only at the different point values it doesn't look terribly unbalanced.

180 Point Fleet Lists

Rebels - 173 (Core Only)

Nebulon-B Escort Frigate - 77

- General Dodonna

CR90 Corvette A - 50

- Dodonna's Pride

2 X-wing Squadrons - 26

Luke Skywalker X-wing Squadron -20

Imperials - 175 (Core Only)

Victory II-class Star Destroyer - 135

- Grand Moff Tarkin

- Dominator

3 Tie Fighter Squadrons - 24

Howlrunner Tie Fighter Squadron - 16

300 Point Fleet Lists

Rebels - 293 (Wave 1)

Nebulon-B Escort Frigate - 77

- General Dodonna

Nebulon-B Escort Frigate - 57

CR90 Corvette A - 50

- Dodonna's Pride

CR90 Corvette A - 44

5 X-wing Squadrons - 65

Imperials - 292 (Wave 1)

Victory II-class Star Destroyer - 123

- Grand Moff Tarkin

Victory II-class Star Destroyer - 97

- Dominator

7 Tie Fighter Squadrons - 56

Howlrunner Tie Fighter Squadron - 16

400 Point Fleet Lists

Rebels - 394 (Wave 2)

Nebulon-B Escort Frigate - 77

- General Dodonna

Nebulon-B Escort Frigate - 57

Nebulon-B Escort Frigate - 57

CR90 Corvette A - 50

- Dodonna's Pride

CR90 Corvette A - 44

CR90 Corvette A - 44

5 X-wing Squadrons - 65

Imperials - 393 (Wave 2)

Victory II-class Star Destroyer - 123

- Grand Moff Tarkin

Victory II-class Star Destroyer - 97

- Dominator

Victory II-class Star Destroyer - 85

9 Tie Fighter Squadrons - 72

Howlrunner Tie Fighter Squadron - 16

Imperials - 174 (Core Only)

Victory II-class Star Destroyer - 150

- Grand Moff Tarkin

- Dominator

3 Tie Fighter Squadrons - 24

Victory II-class Star Destroyer (85) + Grand Moff Tarkin (38) + Dominator (12) = 135 points, not 150.