Flavor is important - if a Venator is better than a VSD or ISD, why would you use (or even build) the newer ships? I believe it would break the mood somewhat. So the GAR and CIS ships are statted as state-of-the-art ships fresh off the dockyards, while their Rebel and Imperial counterparts are presented as either refitted and modernised models (which will retain much of their overall power but vary in configuration) or as weaker, obsolescent units with underwhelming power for their size class.

I might do Rebel versions of the Munificent, but probably not the Venator. I don't want to gray out the fleets by giving them all access to the same ships; it would dilute their character and make the game less interesting overall. Cross-faction Dreadnaughts and Nebulons are probably enough, and I'm not even sure about the latter one.

Of course, for a campaign or special scenario, anything goes. At the moment I'm playing the Heroes of the Aturi Cluster campaign for X-Wing and I think it's magnificent . So much so that I'm toying with the idea of developing something similar for Armada. The only thing holding me back is the fact there's so much still left to do on Shipyards...

Flavor is important - if a Venator is better than a VSD or ISD, why would you use (or even build) the newer ships? I believe it would break the mood somewhat. So the GAR and CIS ships are statted as state-of-the-art ships fresh off the dockyards, while their Rebel and Imperial counterparts are presented as either refitted and modernised models (which will retain much of their overall power but vary in configuration) or as weaker, obsolescent units with underwhelming power for their size class.

I might do Rebel versions of the Munificent, but probably not the Venator. I don't want to gray out the fleets by giving them all access to the same ships; it would dilute their character and make the game less interesting overall. Cross-faction Dreadnaughts and Nebulons are probably enough, and I'm not even sure about the latter one.

Of course, for a campaign or special scenario, anything goes. At the moment I'm playing the Heroes of the Aturi Cluster campaign for X-Wing and I think it's magnificent . So much so that I'm toying with the idea of developing something similar for Armada. The only thing holding me back is the fact there's so much still left to do on Shipyards...

I like your line of thought. I was thinking of using Munificents for my Rebels in the way you describe. I can see the Rebels stealing them from mothballed fleets or out of desperation for anything that moves and fights, but relegating them to secondary status as soon as possible. They might be in planetary defense fleets or even mercenarys for campaings, with all the attending deficits of those types of forces.

I tend to agree about the Nebulons. They are so iconic for the Rebellion that seeing them used as Imperial ships is odd, evven though they were Imperial originally in the lore.

With that in mind, would you use the current CIS stats without any adjustment?

Here is some Ideas

Fleet Commandore:

Each ship in your fleet may have 1 command token more than they are usually allowed to.

Flag Captain:

Your flagship may have one command dial less in its stack, but may still have its full allotment of command tokens.

Another crazy/fun Idea from the Kiwi Rat

Flag Captain and Relentless title could mean an ISD with a single command dial and the ability to store 3 tokens.... I'd buy that for a dollar.

Flag Captain and Relentless title could mean an ISD with a single command dial and the ability to store 3 tokens.... I'd buy that for a dollar.

On the flip side, I would love to see cards that offer discounts (negative point value) added to the game at some point. I'm pretty sure DA would rather wait for FFG to set a precedent first, but I think it would be fun.

Green Captain:

This ship may only ever have 1 command token. To gain a new token you must discard your current token.

Trainee Crew:

This ship must use 1 additional command dial above its command value.

Faulty Targeting System:

This ship my not target the same ship from adjacent arcs.

Skeleton Crew:

Command dials function only as command tokens.

Faulty Emmiters:

This ship may only redirect 1 hit to an adjacent hull zone.

Obsolete Hanger Bay:

This ship has its squadron value reduced by 1.

Faulty Comms:

This ship may only activate squadrons at close range.

Obsolete Turbolasers:

Red (crit icon) count as (hit icon)

Obsolete Ion Cannons:

Blue (crit icon) count as (hit icon)

Obsolete ordinance:

Black (crit icon) count as (hit icon)

Obsolete hangar bay seems a bit too much of an "always take" thing unless you play really heavily with squadrons and would give All-Ship or All-Rogue lists free points. Granted, it may take a slot, but still.

Although the idea is cool, it's also a min-maxer's dream, as you can pick disadvantages that won't affect you in the least.

Axelius pointed out how that works with Obsolete Hangar Bay and Faulty Comms, but similar logic applies to most other cards. A couple of examples: an MC30c would always take Obsolete Turbolasers, as it has no red dice and, even if it did, it only cares about black crits. Faulty Targeting Systems are free points for Ackbar's fleet or for anything equipped with Slaved Turrets. And so on. Only cards affecting truly core mechanics, like Trainee/Skeleton Crew, would be difficult to circumvent.

Either way, a more subtle but fundamental problem is that allowing downgrades as well as upgrades tends to gray out the different ships, so that an upgraded weak ship might end up being largely equivalent to a downgraded stronger ship. I touched on the subject of character dilution in my previous post, and I think it's also an important factor here.

That's not to say I don't intend to ever do negative cards (some may be highly thematic for the Scum & Villainy faction, for example), but I just don't see it as a generic cross-faction card set.

With that in mind, would you use the current CIS stats without any adjustment?

Not in the Rebel fleet, no. I'm fairly sure we'll eventually release an Alliance-specific card, and it will surely differ somewhat.

All good points, but they could be used as part of new objective cards. The negative points difference would affect final scoring.

Objective: Tactical Advantage

Shuffle the deck of downgrade cards. Player 1 must randomly draw and equip one to each ship in his fleet.

Objective: Desperate Attack

Shuffle the deck of downgrade cards. Player 2 must randomly draw and equip one to each ship in his fleet. He may then add a less than or equivalent point value to his fleet.

Eh, it's a very random element and has the possibility to do nothing (-Squadron on every ship in an all-ship) or screw up everything (+1 Command on your all Victory list).

Anyway, we're really, really straying from the project. I'll save the idea for later use, but let's go back to the Clone Wars for now

Good news!

As you can see, there's a narrow black outline along the edge of most cards. This is due to the cutting tolerances I mentioned before. You won't see it in future GAR or CIS cards as I've since updated the template, but doing the same to Rebel and Imperial cards would take a massive amount of work (as I don't have access to the original uncut artwork) so I'm not sure it's worth it*.

I have to admit I'm rather pleased at how these turned out! So when we're satisfied that the Clone Wars set is complete, I'll try to prepare a "print package" that you can order directly from the printer without having to download anything. The difficulty, I suppose, will be in deciding how many of each card there should be in the set. My first thought is:

1 of each Large ship card & base

2 of each Medium ship card & base

3 of each Small ship card & base

1 of each Unique squadron card & base

1 of each Non-unique squadron card

4 of each Non-unique squadron base

1 of each Unique upgrade card

2 of each Non-unique upgrade card

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. There's still a bunch of ships and squadrons to be put together, and a lot of testing and tweaking to be done before we get to that stage.

* EDIT: Actually, now that I have the cards in front of me, it's pretty clear that the black edge is only really annoying around the ship artwork, not so much around the stat area. I guess it would not be too time-consuming to fix that part only.

nice, I like it. very pretty.

Looks really good DA. May I suggest with squadron bases that we end up with 4 per card for the non uniques? Also, will the bases be printed on the proper thickness of card, or do we need to back them? Just some thoughts.

The club will be really happy to see these and I will have to order several Imperial/Rebel sets to start.

Oh yeah, of course there'll be multiple bases per non-unique squadron... that was a typo on my part - let me fix that.

Unfortunately, Armada-thickness cardboard (let alone pre-cut punchboard) is out of the question. At present my intention is to print the bases on the same cardstock as the actual ship, squadron and upgrade cards. In fact, the most cost-effective solution may well be to print them on ship and squadron cards: a Small ship base will fit on a squadron-sized card, while a Medium ship base will fit on a ship-sized card, with multiple squadron bases fitting on either. However, Large ship bases will need a different print size, and there's a minimum number of cards per deck, so it's entirely possible that all bases (ship and squadron) will make up a 4th deck, which adds a little to the overall cost but on the plus side lets us use a different, slightly thicker, material. You'll still have to cut it out manually, and either glue it to some cardboard or live with the fact it's much thinner, but it'll still be a hell of a lot better than paper! Anyway, it's still too early to make decisions on this. I'll figure it all out when we have sets ready

Cool!

I have been experimenting with an exacto compass for circle cuts, but the local craft store caries a huge selection of small punch cutting dies. (Martha Stewart brand.) I just need to get time to go through all to see if they have the correct size circle cutters.

If I find one I will post it.

As for the ship bases, I am currently using sheets of foam rubber as spacers for the paper bases. If you add a good rigid card stock and a spray adhesive to the mix, this will be the simplest option as cutting the foam rubber to fit the base is 5-10 min with an exacto blade usind an existing base as a template.

I just use Mat board. Same stuff you use to border pictures before you frame it.

I just use Mat board. Same stuff you use to border pictures before you frame it.

Thats what I am cutting the circles out of for the squadron bases. The squadron bases need to turn, so require the rigidity of the mat board. The ship bases just require the correct thickness, and the foam rubber is easily cut to fit. That was the main reason I suggested it. Not everyone is a deft hand with an exacto blade, nor has the time or patients to cut all those chunks of mat board. Consider it the "sharpie painting" of ship base creation.

Meanwhile, above Coruscant...

This would make the Vulture a worse TIE Fighter, the Hyena a worse TIE Bomber, and the Tri-fighter a (somewhat) better TIE Interceptor. Too big a disparity? Counter 1 was also an option. But the 'pedia insists on these things being extremely nasty. The black dice account for the buzz droids; I didn't think an additional keyword was warranted just for that.

Tri-fighter early tests have been less than promising.

4 V-wing Squadrons (44pts) vs. 3 Tri-fighter Squadrons (45pts)

V-wing with initiative =

3 dead Tri, 4 wounded V in 1 turn.

Tri-fighter with initiative =

3 dead Tri, 1 dead V, 3 wounded V in 2 turns.

5 Z95 Squadrons (45pts) vs. 3 Tri-fighter Squadrons (45pts)

Z95s with initiative =

3 dead Tri, 3 dead Z in 2 turns.

Tri-fighter with initiative =

3 dead Tri, 4 dead Z in 3 turns.

4 TIE Squadrons (32 pts) vs. 2 Tri-fighter Squadrons (30pts)

TIEs with initiative =

2 dead Tri, 2 wounded TIE in 1 turn.

Tri-fighter with initiative =

2 dead Tri, 3 dead TIE in 2 turns.

2 ARC 170 Squadrons (28pts) vs. 2 Tri-fighter Squadrons (30pts)

ARCs with initiative =

2 dead Tri, 2 dead ARC in 3 turns. ARCs died on final counter, but I rolled very badly for the ARCs.

Tri-fighter with initiative =

2 dead Tri, 1 dead ARC 1 Very wounded ARC in 2 turns.

Suffice it to say, I am less than confident that the Tri-fighters stand any chance at all in a straight up dogfight. My son and I aregoing to try repointing at 13, and keeping them at 15 and adding 1 scatter token.

Results to come...

Ok, so we tried various different points, abilities and token combinations with the Tri fighters vs. V-wings. V-wings are the counterpart interceptor of the GAR, so we figured that should be our goal for a close to equal ponts equals even match.

I will admit, I didn't keep notes on this part as we were just trying to find the sweet spot & we have a Boyscout service project at 8 am tomorrow. So we were running through them as fast as we could.

My recommendations at this point are, either drop them to 14 and add one blue, swarm or a single brace token, or drop them to 13 and keep them where they are. The single scatter makes them too powerful. 14 even and they still drop faster than they can kill. 15 is just too high. The Vs still have a slight advantage with the Tri fighters at 13 even , but I think Rogue will compensate for this.

Hope that helps.

Next up an Imperial fleet with an Intradictor...

Running some similar tests on the Tri while sitting here, I agree in much of the above. There are only two advantages over the Tie Interceptor I can see, and one dependent on an outside upgrade card to influence it. Droid Control Array can provide a great advantage in numbers for an Alpha strike, but is not always going to be in use. So that aside the only other advantage over an Interceptor this ship has is Rogue which is also limited by the Droid rule. The Interceptor for less has an additional attack dice with swarm that will almost always score 3 damage + counter. Even with the initiative the Tri is hoping its counter is what carries the fight. Otherwise the Tri is an inferior anti-fighter squadron that costs way more.

Now one on ones are a great first step but we start to see a different story in combined arms Droid formations. Take 2 Tri Droid and 3 Vulture Droid squadrons and run the same situations and the outcome favours the Droids in initiative situations against non counter opponents. The enemy has several more targets to divide their fire into and can't eliminate them all before being overtaken. As anticipated, when the Droids are jumped first they get slaughtered almost every time. This is expected however as the Squadron meta in my experience favors the player who gets to shoot first. When fighting enemies with counter however the situation still favours the Droid's enemy in all but the worst cases of rolling.

Cynan's tests are a good indication of what the Tri can expect as most have repeated here at my end. It is consistently losing against equal point value opponents even with the initiative. I can agree that the Tri should be reduced in cost, and 13 pts seems like a reasonable first step in balancing its cost vs similar opponents. Currently I would go as far as even reducing cost to 12 pts. There is not enough advantage in the Tri fighter to be that much more expensive then a Tie Interceptor or A-wing. As it stands now I would never use it. Being able to activate large numbers of droid fighters is great, but if I can't afford large numbers of them the advantage is not there.

Thanks for your feedback, guys!

There's no question that the choice of 15 point was highly conservative, but the results offered thus far only show the Tri is not an efficient superiority fighter the way TIE Interceptors are. I'm worried that lowering their cost more than a point or two will make them not only great interceptors, but also superbly efficient first-strike bombers, given their speed, the number that can be activated at once, and their speed-2 Rogue ability - which lets them chase most starships around the board without any further Squadron commands.

As a counter example, a TIE Bomber squadron will never win an engagement against a cheaper TIE Fighter, even with the initiative. Yet it's hard to dismiss its value in the greater context of a fleet engagement.

Anyhow, let's recost it at 13 for now, but I suspect this will make it the dominant squadron in the entire Clone Wars set once we get to full fleet tests.

Hey sorry to intrude. Those printed cards are quite beautiful DA, if I can ask, who is the printer you went through?

No intrusion at all, it's a public space

This time I went with MakePlayingCards.com , though normally I use PrinterStudio.com . I believe they're two different front ends (or intermediary companies) for the same Hong-Kong based printer, so the final products are identical even if there are some differences in pricing or the materials on offer.

Today I took a small break from ships and squadrons, and instead put together an Objective card template. Here is the first card set:

Limited Warfare (working title) is based on the diplomatic immunity suggestion someone made earlier: each ship starts with a token. When a ship attacks another, the defender collects both ship's tokens (15 VP each). Of course, once a ship has attacked or been attacked, it's fair game from then on. Also, the second player may remove a ship's token at the end of each round. It's design to favour fleets with few ships and many squadrons over small ship swarms.

Flanking Maneuver is a reverse form of Fleet Ambush: the second player may deploy up to half of his ships along the short edges instead of his deployment zone.

Nebula Encounter simulates poor visibility and disrupted sensors: attacks at medium-long range are obstructed, and there's bonus VP for destroying ships at close range (is 15 enough? would 20 or 25 be better?). The second player's advantage is to move all obstacles around, which can help him funnel his opponent or protect his own flanks.