I haven't seen this topic come up yet, and there was a question about it on the rules subforum.

How often do you find yourself trying to decide if you should discard that exhausted token?

If the ship's gonna get blowned up anyway, then it's a simple question to answer. But sometimes it's not so cut and dry.

For example one game there was a GSD looking at 4 or 5 damage on the side arc with 2 shield left. So even with a redirect I'd strip two arc's of shields, but the brace was already used.

So spend the exhausted brace and take 2 damage which could be spread out, but then be without it for the rest of the game or take the damage and save the brace for the next round?

It was the 2nd round and was playing Hyperspace Assault, and the GSD had just come into the game.

Myself I tend to fall into the trap of "I should save this for when I really need it..." Which quite often means by the time I figure I really need it, it's too late for it to do any good.

Usually, I have only one to two tokens left per surviving ship - but most of my ships usually survive.

I think the main calculation has to be how much damage to you expect the token to prevent over the course of the remainder of the game. Redirect tokens I'm happy to burn earlier, because once your shields are down, they don't help any more, so you might as well use them now. Evade tokens depend on how the battle looks to pan out: if you're getting in close to something, burn your Evade now before it's useless. If you're speeding away from something, it may be best to hold on to. Brace is pretty mathematical: unless you're facing a fighter swarm, you can usually safely assume that Brace is going to reduce 1 damage a turn for the rest of the game that you're alive. So spending it now to prevent 2 damage is roughly equal to keeping it and using it for the next two turns: if you don't think your ship will survive beyond 2 turns, you might be best spending it now.

In your example, I feel a Gladiator at full hull and two shield arcs down could expect to last 2 more turns, and would elect to take the damage, but it obviously depends on the board.

It's also worth considering how many other tokens you have, and how useful they are, because defence tokens get worse the fewer you have, given accuracy. So if that Brace token is the only one you have left that does anything, it may be best to spend it now for value, rather than have it sit there getting accuracy-ed away.

I'd imagine its one of those things where you have to judge whether or not your ship will be around much longer, or if it'll make a significant difference. If it saves my ship, or I suspect I may lose it later that round, you bet I'd be willing to lose a token to keep the thing around an extra turn

I was just gonna make a thread like this after seeing that rules question. It always did strike me as a rather odd, if not interesting, rule.

I guess its definitely a matter of understanding how likely you are going to be attacked across the duration of the turn and the remainder of the game. If its turn 6, and you -know- its the last attack you're going to be hit by, well of course you should burn all those tokens.

You definitely want to at least be willing to burn them though, no reason to lose the ship over being too stodgy with em.

Not to go too far off topic, but what are people's thoughts on Intel Officers? Use accuracy faces to negate other defense tokens, and nominate the remaining option with that?

I spend them all the time on the 5th or 6th turn.

Or once I start taking hull damage, or I need to take the least amount of damage possible before I break off going speed 3 and spending engineering dials and tokens to deny victory points.

Yeah - I'm with the Corellian. By turn 4, I start burning them at will. At that point, I'm all about doing whatever necessary to keep a ship out of my opponent's point tally, and available defense tokens after round six aren't worth anything but perhaps some bragging rights!

I have yet to do it, but I have also forgotten on occasion that I could and regret not doing so when it would have been advantageous.

I'd imagine its one of those things where you have to judge whether or not your ship will be around much longer, or if it'll make a significant difference. If it saves my ship, or I suspect I may lose it later that round, you bet I'd be willing to lose a token to keep the thing around an extra turn

Having been in exactly that kind of pinch with one of my GSDs in turn 4-5, I can state from experience that I regret not doing so.

I spend them all the time on the 5th or 6th turn.

Or once I start taking hull damage, or I need to take the least amount of damage possible before I break off going speed 3 and spending engineering dials and tokens to deny victory points.

Yeah - I'm with the Corellian. By turn 4, I start burning them at will. At that point, I'm all about doing whatever necessary to keep a ship out of my opponent's point tally, and available defense tokens after round six aren't worth anything but perhaps some bragging rights!

Reprogramming my tactical computers to keep this in mind for future engagements

Granted, I've been spoiled by Tarkin VSDs, but with my new Gladiators being more squishy, I have to realign my methods.

Reprogramming my tactical computers to keep this in mind for future engagements

Yeah to be honest I think I've ended most games with all my tokens, which really doesn't make sense, at least not in the 5th or 6th round, not much point in saving them in the 5th and no point at all in the 6th.

For earlier rounds, I think GAThraawn had some great thoughts about it.

5th or 6th round if it means a chance to keep a ship around, hell ya

Today I learned that you can discard tokens

My group and I must have skipped over that rule my accident.

So I can officially say, never

Today I learned that you can discard tokens

My group and I must have skipped over that rule my accident.

So I can officially say, never

It is sort of like pushing engines or shields till overload. Put enough strain on them and they can no longer function as well.

It is sort of like pushing engines or shields till overload. Put enough strain on them and they can no longer function as well.

Oh, it makes perfect sense, but clearly we misread it. I like it, it's another interesting decision to make during a game.

It is sort of like pushing engines or shields till overload. Put enough strain on them and they can no longer function as well.

Oh, it makes perfect sense, but clearly we misread it. I like it, it's another interesting decision to make during a game.

well for damage mitigation they went with tokens over dice and damage recovery over damage prevention. Now while dice does an okay job and using statistics you can make reliable predictions of what assault the ship can survive and what the ship can't it was just enough randomness that ships depending on defense dice can fall through.

With armada the ships either recover shields or repair hull or they redirect the damage to where it doesn't hurt them in any way. However with tokens they are 100% accurate. You know exactly how much damage you will be mitigating. The question will be how much damage will you have to mitigate next. All this damage mitigation often make the game go to 6 rounds without the loss of a ship (at least on the starter level).

As for squadrons they have 0 damage mitigation (except for heroes) and 0 damage recovery (except when hogging that space station obstacle).

I think it's best to burn them unless you have a strong feeling you'll need it more later. It's interesting though because saving it for next turn and taking some damage this turn usually means you get "2" more uses out of it. As long as you're not taking debilitating crits, it's sometimes wise to use your ships hull like a resource - the ship doesn't become less effective even if it's on one hull point (apart from crits). Then again, a ship on one hull point but with a token available is arguably much more vulnerable than a ship with 2-3 hull points left that has no tokens available.

Pretty much it's just delectable game design Funnily enough Armada has made me enjoy 40k a lot less, you just don't usually get those kind of interesting decisions, it's a lot of plastic crack that I don't care about anymore.

Depends on expected use.

If I got stuck in the front fire arc of a VSD, I'm going to burn every token I can to keep my ship in as good a shape as possible. Braces especially usually only stop 1 or 2 damage at most.

Redirects are used liberally whem I'm about out of shields in useful places and not expecting to gen more.

Evades are much trickier. If you can use them, you get a lot of value turn after turn. But if you're not leaving close-medium range, it may be worth it to remove double hits from the equation.

For fighter aces, I burn those braces every single shot. You won't get many uses out of those. The scatter gets used heavilly, and is burned as soon as it can stop 2 damage. Accuracies are too common in fighter on fighter.

I think previous posts have the right of it

if you're not going to need it later, toss it out the airlock when you can

that evade is doing a fat lot of good against gladiators whether they shoot at you or not

only point of contention would be having to forecast how much you'll need a certain token against your specific opponent (thinking ahead in Armada? preposterous!) versus how much easier it is to single out lone defense tokens with accuracy results

I try to avoid losing those tokens, even in the last turns of the game, but I echo everyone here and say it comes down to risk vs reward. If you think you're going to need that token more than once or twice more, you probably shouldn't burn it.

Burnnn.....Burnnnn.....Burnnnn......Burning token of fire.

Burnnn.....Burnnnn.....Burnnnn......Burning token of fire.

Knowing when to burn or keep a token is a key descision in Armada.

Burning tokens is just another type of command descision and I love how this game is built around the command decisions.

As I get more games under my belt I'm finding that the art of burning tokens is becoming a major part of my endgame plan.