I have seen this mentioned in a couple other threads usually offhandedly, but I think it could be a fun mechanic if implemented well in Armada. What are your opinions?

The main problem I see with it is that it would require a re-working of the ships base card stats as it would seem to me that a boarding defense and offense number would need to be added.

Also with tractor beams being added in Wave 2 that could possibly lead to boarding actions being incorporated and resolved, but I am not sure of how those mechanics should work.

Opinions?

Current evidence suggests that boarding actions end poorly for the rebels.

So, of course, I'm all for it.

Boarding would be a clunky mechanic and would only favour Imperials which I'm not up for. Not because of Rebel bias, but because it would unbalance the game.

For the fluff guys: Take a second and look at the fluff stats of something like the Nebulon B and a VIctory Star Destroyer. Nebulon B has a crew of about 900 with an extra capacity of 75 troops. Victory has a crew of about 5,000 with an capacity of 2,000 troops. who would you think would win in a straight up fight? Not all crew members are trained to keep out boarders (ie Engineers, Medics, Cooks, ect...)

Boarding would be a clunky mechanic and would only favour Imperials which I'm not up for. Not because of Rebel bias, but because it would unbalance the game.

For the fluff guys: Take a second and look at the fluff stats of something like the Nebulon B and a VIctory Star Destroyer. Nebulon B has a crew of about 900 with an extra capacity of 75 troops. Victory has a crew of about 5,000 with an capacity of 2,000 troops. who would you think would win in a straight up fight? Not all crew members are trained to keep out boarders (ie Engineers, Medics, Cooks, ect...)

I agree. After all, the boarding action in ANH was after all of the firing was over, not during it. There was no boarding in ROTJ. Sure there was plenty of boarding in Clone Wars, but there you have lots of jedi (on the Republic side) or expendable droids (on the CIS side).

There are tons of instances of saboteurs in Star Wars you know? How many times do we see a tiny team infiltrate a massive ship? Or perhaps even a MASSIVE DEATH STAR. I think boarding would be best suited to a type of fighter squadron - boarding/breaching ships. Not sure if we have any of those in the star wars canon so much, but still could be awesome, and definitely work on both sides. Empire could have storm troop squads, who are bigger and meatier, but less specialized, and Rebels could have little elite assassins. Or mix and match for different units on both sides - it all fits. One-shot fighter squads launched from a specific type of ship or something, that when they hit the enemy ship, they board/infiltrate and right then (or maybe with some delayed action - roll a dice each turn to see if they succeed in sabotaging something), cause some interesting effects. Maybe dealing face up damage cards / just their effects under certain rolls of the dice. Knocking out some shields or something. Could be very cool.

Ok but then I want a Wraith Squadron unique thing.

Boarding could simply be a token that is applied when your stormtrooper shuttle contacts a speed 0 or speed 1 ship (tractor beam, damage, etc).

Defender rolls a die, based on their ship base size. If it's a hit or something, remove the boarding token.

Every turn a ship with a boarding token is dealt a face up critical, ignoring shields.

I have seen this mentioned in a couple other threads usually offhandedly, but I think it could be a fun mechanic if implemented well in Armada. What are your opinions?

The main problem I see with it is that it would require a re-working of the ships base card stats as it would seem to me that a boarding defense and offense number would need to be added.

I think ship to ship boarding actions could easily be based off ship base size. For instance: Small base ships get 1 black die during boarding, Medium = 2, Large = 3. Roll off and whoever gets more hits and crits wins the boarding action. Accuracy rolls negate a hit/crit from the opposition. I'm not sure I would have a successful boarding attempt allow you to gain ownership of a ship, maybe just do hull damage and possibly remove an upgrade card from the ship. A possible future upgrade card would be something like an extra complement of Marines that would increase your base size one step (large ships can't equip it) for boarding actions. You could also apply this mechanic to boarding squadrons (i.e. assault shuttles). Maybe have them count as a small base ship for boarding. This is all just a quick idea for how to implement boarding without having to reprint cards, I know it's overly simplistic.

There are tons of instances of saboteurs in Star Wars you know? How many times do we see a tiny team infiltrate a massive ship? Or perhaps even a MASSIVE DEATH STAR. I think boarding would be best suited to a type of fighter squadron - boarding/breaching ships. Not sure if we have any of those in the star wars canon so much, but still could be awesome, and definitely work on both sides. Empire could have storm troop squads, who are bigger and meatier, but less specialized, and Rebels could have little elite assassins. Or mix and match for different units on both sides - it all fits. One-shot fighter squads launched from a specific type of ship or something, that when they hit the enemy ship, they board/infiltrate and right then (or maybe with some delayed action - roll a dice each turn to see if they succeed in sabotaging something), cause some interesting effects. Maybe dealing face up damage cards / just their effects under certain rolls of the dice. Knocking out some shields or something. Could be very cool.

It's convenient for the plot for the Good guys to be all brave and lucky and for the Bad guys look completely moronic. Competent security forces would have shut down the entire breached area and put it into lock down. it's convenient to the plot that the Good guys complete their misson and escape.

Boarding could simply be a token that is applied when your stormtrooper shuttle contacts a speed 0 or speed 1 ship (tractor beam, damage, etc).

Defender rolls a die, based on their ship base size. If it's a hit or something, remove the boarding token.

Every turn a ship with a boarding token is dealt a face up critical, ignoring shields.

Looks like Killionaire and I had similar ideas while I was typing mine above.

I always thought the whole principle of boarding during a space battle is far fetched. I can see hit and run attacks in say Star Trek due to the transporter technology, but in Star Wars it involves loading troops on an assault shuttle, flying through an ordnance soaked and enemy fighter infested battlezone, somehow docking with an enemy ship, then fighting your way through the ship's defenders to critical area's of said ship to sabotage it. When anything goes wrong on the enemy ship you'd have to fight your way back to your shuttle, hope it hasn't been blown up by the defenders, then fly back through the ordnance soaked and enemy fighter infested battlezone to your mothership. Who would volunteer for that?

I know Star Was is filled with boarding actions (mostly involving Jedi), but it never made much sense to me mid battle even though the principle is cool.

But as for rules, it could simply be an assault shuttle squadron without an attack value. Bringing it in contact with an enemy ship gives you a single black dice attack that bypasses shields after which you discard the squadron.

I am going to disagree.

Boarding actions will bring:

• More book keeping tracking crew
• More dice rolling as to see what happens to the crew during the shooting phase
• For no tactical benefit

May well be implied in the overlapping rules as both ships take damage that may just as easily be a boarding action as a collision.

To think boarding favors the Imperials doesnt take into consideration, that the Imperium doesnt show up with Star Destroyers, and most Rebel ships were captured some time.

When should boarding and capture take place when not in a space battle? Most ships wont be handed over without a fight.

A whole batlle could be just the try of the Rebels to capture an imperial ship.

A Neb-B and a lot of Y-Wings go for a Imperial Neb-B? Why not.

Rules could be:

Every Ship has Boarding resistance of their Hull Points.

Shuttles and Transports can perform a Boarding action, 1 (shuttles)/2 (transports) Black die for every Hull Point left, when engaged with a captial. They can either deal only crits with that or reduce the Boarding resistance of a ship. Once it is overcome the ship is captured. Easy. Only one stat more to keep in the book, and a whole range of more tactical possibilites and ships to choos from.

Lambda shuttles

Speed 3
Hull 4
Squadron Dice = 1 Blue
Anti-Ship Dice = None
Rescue (any lost fighters only count half for purpose of objectives)
Heavy

Limited Boarding (may engage Captial ships and perform a single 1 black die per Hull left attack with the bomber rule, ship is captured if destroyed by the attack).

Delta-class JV-7 Escort shuttles

Speed 3
Hull 4
Squadron Dice = 4 Blue
Anti-Ship Dice = 2 Black
Rescue (any lost fighters only count half for purpose of objectives)
Counter 1

Heavy

Limited Boarding (may engage Captial ships and perform a single 1 black die per Hull left attack with the bomber rule, ship is captured if destroyed by the attack).

Delta-class DX-9 Stromtrooper transport

Speed 2
Hull 5
Squadron Dice = None
Anti-Ship Dice = 2 Black
Heavy

Boarding (may engage Captial ships and perform a single 1 black die per Hull left with the bomber rule, ship is captured if destroyed by the attack).

Gamma-class ATR-6 Assault transport

Speed 2
Hull 6
Squadron Dice = 4 Blue
Anti-Ship Dice = 2 Black
Heavy

Counter 1

Boarding (may engage Captial ships and perform a single 1 black die per Hull left (max.5) with the bomber rule, ship is captured if destroyed by the attack).

Beta-class ETR-3 Assault transport

Speed 2
Hull 7
Squadron Dice = 4 Blue, 1 Black
Anti-Ship Dice = 3 Black
Heavy

Boarding (may engage Captial ships and perform a single 1 black die per Hull (max.5) left with the bomber rule, ship is captured if destroyed by the attack).

To think boarding favors the Imperials doesnt take into consideration, that the Imperium doesnt show up with Star Destroyers, and most Rebel ships were captured some time.

When should boarding and capture take place when not in a space battle? Most ships wont be handed over without a fight.

A whole batlle could be just the try of the Rebels to capture an imperial ship.

A Neb-B and a lot of Y-Wings go for a Imperial Neb-B? Why not.

Rules could be:

Every Ship has Boarding resistance of their Hull Points.

Shuttles and Transports can perform a Boarding action, 1 (shuttles)/2 (transports) Black die for every Hull Point left, when engaged with a captial. They can either deal only crits with that or reduce the Boarding resistance of a ship. Once it is overcome the ship is captured. Easy. Only one stat more to keep in the book, and a whole range of more tactical possibilites and ships to choos from.

That's exceedingly overpowered and frankly, unbelievable. Ships just aren't captured that often, and warships even more rarely. This essentially turns the game into Star Wars: Win The Game On A Few Lucky Die Rolls.

I was thinking something more basic.

Each boarding squadron and, instead of attacking, be removed to place one Boarding Token on the defending ship base. (possibly the defending ship gets one free shot off.) At the start of the turn, the boarded ship can try to destroy the token (success based on size). After that, the attacker has the option to remove a boarding token to place one face up damage card (suicide sabotage). Otherwise it stays there.

When a small ship has as many boarding tokens as it has Hull Points, the attackers have seized a foothold and the defending ship's Command value is reduced to 0 (i.e. it doesn't have a command dial and can't use command tokens).

If the combined total of boarding tokens and damage cards equals double a ship's Hull Points, that ship is captured.

Something like that.

I was thinking something more basic.

Each boarding squadron and, instead of attacking, be removed to place one Boarding Token on the defending ship base. (possibly the defending ship gets one free shot off.) At the start of the turn, the boarded ship can try to destroy the token (success based on size). After that, the attacker has the option to remove a boarding token to place one face up damage card (suicide sabotage). Otherwise it stays there.

When a small ship has as many boarding tokens as it has Hull Points, the attackers have seized a foothold and the defending ship's Command value is reduced to 0 (i.e. it doesn't have a command dial and can't use command tokens).

If the combined total of boarding tokens and damage cards equals double a ship's Hull Points, that ship is captured.

Something like that.

That ignores the fluff that indicates that Imperial ships carry many, many more Stormtroopers than a similarly-sized Rebel ship has marines. You'd have to give Imperials a rather large bonus relative to the Rebels, which would mean that the Rebels would be at a significant disadvantage.

I know there's a certain "Wow, I captured your ship!" neatness involved, but honestly, I think boarding just detracts from the experience.

You could certainly make boarding a thing. But it doesn't seem very Star Wars-y to me.

That ignores the fluff that indicates that Imperial ships carry many, many more Stormtroopers than a similarly-sized Rebel ship has marines. You'd have to give Imperials a rather large bonus relative to the Rebels, which would mean that the Rebels would be at a significant disadvantage.

A Star Destroyer has tons of Stormtroopers but a smaller ship like the Raider doesn't. Really, only small ships would be vulnerable in any event, Rebel or Imperial.

Anyone got the Star Wars dice application on their smartphone?

I was thinking of using that, espicially the X-Wing dice since I'm familiar with that.

The number of dice rolled is equal to the amount of HP involved.

So if a VSD is boarding a CR90, VSD would roll 8 attack dice while CR90 rolls 5. The only results considered would be evade and hits, Crit hits on the red dice are to be considered as hits.

The number of times a boarding party can roll the dice is equivalent to their ship HP so a VSD rolles 8 times and consequently, CR90 rolles the green dice 8 times as well.

Within those X number of times, the boarding party has to reduce the targeted party's HP to 0.

So if for example a VSD boards a CR90 and in 8 rolles of the dice fails to reduce the CR90 HP to 0, the boarding party fails and the VSD disengage.

So every boarding action is a new one. E.g. If that VSD tries to board the same CR90 or a different ship again, VSD rolls the attack dice 8 times

(Copied from another thread where the subject was brought up)

In my opinion, the major requirements for boarding are the following:

-The target ship should be stopped, or at least moving slowly

-The target ship should have its shields down, in at least one hull zone

-Difficulty of capture should scale with ship size

-Capturing ships should give some benefit over destroying them

It's very easy to write individual rules for each requirement... but way harder to come up with short, simple wording that accomplishes most or all of the above without adding extra components or rules overhead.

I went through several iterations before arriving at this (and I fully expect it to need further refinement after some playtesting):

Just some food for thought

That's terribly OP. An 8 point model that can one shot a corvette?

You obviously know something I don't about how to bring an enemy corvette to speed 0. Please do share - I've tried to find out how the Wave 2 Tractor Beam upgrade card works but I had no luck so far.

To think boarding favors the Imperials doesnt take into consideration, that the Imperium doesnt show up with Star Destroyers, and most Rebel ships were captured some time.

When should boarding and capture take place when not in a space battle? Most ships wont be handed over without a fight.

A whole batlle could be just the try of the Rebels to capture an imperial ship.

A Neb-B and a lot of Y-Wings go for a Imperial Neb-B? Why not.

Rules could be:

Every Ship has Boarding resistance of their Hull Points.

Shuttles and Transports can perform a Boarding action, 1 (shuttles)/2 (transports) Black die for every Hull Point left, when engaged with a captial. They can either deal only crits with that or reduce the Boarding resistance of a ship. Once it is overcome the ship is captured. Easy. Only one stat more to keep in the book, and a whole range of more tactical possibilites and ships to choos from.

That's exceedingly overpowered and frankly, unbelievable. Ships just aren't captured that often, and warships even more rarely. This essentially turns the game into Star Wars: Win The Game On A Few Lucky Die Rolls.

So first, you think it easy to get a speed 2 or 3 lame duck across the battlefield, get it in close with a ship that can still fire ? Of course there are too much die until now, could be 1 die for each 3 hull points or something like that. And even than it doesnt stack with other damage.

I dont know where you take that ships arent captured that often. Until recently in history ships were very often captured and the Star Wars Fluff and the Star Wars games a full of captured ships... How do you think the Rebellion got all that ex-imperial ships?

So first, you think it easy to get a speed 2 or 3 lame duck across the battlefield, get it in close with a ship that can still fire ? Of course there are too much die until now, could be 1 die for each 3 hull points or something like that. And even than it doesnt stack with other damage.

I dont know where you take that ships arent captured that often. Until recently in history ships were very often captured and the Star Wars Fluff and the Star Wars games a full of captured ships... How do you think the Rebellion got all that ex-imperial ships?

All it takes is a squadron command activated before the ship moves, so yes. Speed 3 isn't a lame duck, unless you think that X-Wings have a hard time getting anywhere.

Merchant ships were captured often. Not warships. And bringing up sailing ships just undermines your argument. Yes, the Rebels captured a few Imperial ships. In the examples that I've seen, it's when they've surrendered, not by any boarding action. They also stole ships, which makes sense. After all, boarding actions play into the Imperials' strength: manpower.

I see boarding as more of an Imperial Assault expansion than for Armada. It just seems to fit that scale and flavor perfectly.