Hi All

I've recently acquired the Armada core set, along with the Assault Frigate, Gladiator and both Rebel and Imperial Squadron expansions. I've only played one game so far using the intro fleets where I played Imperials and got severely thrashed.

With the above in mind, I will be introducing this game to a couple of friends on Wednesday but I was hoping to attempt to balance the Intro fleets more without adding too much complexity too soon.

Currently, the Rebel Intro fleet is 153 points, with the Imperials trailing behind on 133 points. On top of this, the Rebels still seem to be given Initiative and the Imperials don't even get the advantage of Scenarios.

So, factoring in the above expansions, how would you go about evening the odds a little more? Would you give the Imperials 8 ties instead of 6 (149 points)? Perhaps a couple of Interceptor squadrons (155 points)? dd in Darth Vader (154 points)? Or maybe give the VSD one or two of the less complex upgrade cards such as Gunnery Team and Enhanced Armament, for example (150 points)? Or would you downgrade the X-Wings to 2 A-Wings and 2 Y-Wings (143 points)?

All ideas are welcome!

Alternative suggestion : Have the Imps start at speed 1.

That was the biggest single thing in our first few learn to play scenarios. We didn't yet understand the value of a slow victory and instead moved at 2, since that's what the default speed was per the scenario. We ran out of space quickly, or flew past the rebels and then didn't get any good shots.

I find this interesting, as the reverse happened when we played. The Imperials crushed the rebels three times in a row, but in each game, the first action the Imperials took was to throttle down to speed 1 so the rebels can't just fly past them.

So here is my advice: leave it as is. Slow down to speed 1. Don't tip your hand early, but your easier target is the Nebulon with the Star Destroyer. Use your ties purely to just lock up the X-wings, as the rebels don't have great squadron commands to boss them around yet. In fact, if you can get the drop on the X-wings with the squadron command and superior speed, you do okay there. Basically, try Nav on turn 1, Squadron on turn 2, and either Nav or Concentrate Fire on turn 3. Do NOT go quickly, do attack the X-wings before they get to you.

Funnily enough, my first command was to reduce my VSD speed to 1. I still got beaten though

And just to clear things up, I lost due to having all my Ties destroyed by the end of Turn 6. The VSD was still intact, albeit with 3 damage cards on it. It all came down to the final roll of the match where I attacked my opponents Neb-B. If I had rolled just one more damage than I did, I would have won on points. As it happens, I failed and they won on points.

I'd do something like this...

Assault Frigate Mark II A, General Dodonna, Weapons Liaison, Expanded Hangar Bay, Enhanced Armament

Luke Skywalker X-wing Squadron

Tycho Celchu A-wing Squadron

Dutch Vander Y-wing Squadron

Victory II-class Star Destroyer, Admiral Motti, Defense Liaison, Gunnery Team, Expanded Hangar Bay

4x TIE Fighter Squadron

Howlrunner TIE Fighter Squadron

The rebel fleet has the choice of initiative, both lists are fairly easy to fly without much in the way of tricks. Motti gives the VSD more hull, and both have the ability to swap tokens for commands which can help new players.

The VSD and Assault Frig are pretty evenly matched which IMO is a better tutorial/demo then a VSD vs Neb B and CR-90. This also gives the Imp the thematic tie swarm vs the rebel heroes.

Funnily enough, my first command was to reduce my VSD speed to 1. I still got beaten though

And just to clear things up, I lost due to having all my Ties destroyed by the end of Turn 6. The VSD was still intact, albeit with 3 damage cards on it. It all came down to the final roll of the match where I attacked my opponents Neb-B. If I had rolled just one more damage than I did, I would have won on points. As it happens, I failed and they won on points.

That sounds pretty typical for our learn to play scenarios. When you said in the first post that you "got severely" thrashed, I assumed it went worse than that.

In that scenario the rebels are hard pressed to pile enough damage on the VSD in 6 turns, and not get severely hurt in the process. Most of our games came down to fighter casualties once we got the hang of the game.

Yeah, I may have misled a little with "severely" but when you look at the board at endgame and all of the Rebel ships are still on there, it feels like a thrashing regardless of how damaged each rebel ship/squadron was. I hadn't actually destroyed anything!

All of my ties were destroyed (48 points) so the only way I could have won on turn 6 was to destroy all 4 X-Wings (52 points), or take out the Neb (57 points). I chose the Neb... and failed. End score was 48 to nil in favour of the Rebels. That, in my eyes, is a thrashing.

I think that's a bit excessive, if the real margin was a single point of damage on the Nebulon, though.

In the intro games, for us, what always happened was this: the imperial player would tie up the X-wings with the tie fighters, usually killing at least 1-2 of the X's before the ties were completely gone, which was enough that the X-wings were never a serious threat to the VSD.

Then, the VSD would completely ignore the corvette and line up a front shot or two on the Nebulon and obliterate it.

At that point, the rebel player didn't have the firepower to kill the VSD and the VSD had no real way to kill the X-wings or the Corvette (which wasn't going to handily hop into the front arc of the VSD at short or medium range just to die), and the game was essentially over.

They key is the Imperial slow roll and uncompromising focus on the Neb B, as the rebels can't recover from that being toasted, and if they play to avoid any confrontation, usually the corvette gets into a bad spot instead.

I can't say from playing it that the learn to play really feels that imballanced at all, and if anything I'd say it favors the Imperials. The point is to learn the mechanics, not to bet on

I ran an intro game against a buddy of mine last night using the following:

Empire - 195

VSD-II

GSD-II

6 x Tie Squadrons

Rebels - 192

Neb-B Escort Frigate

CR90A

CR90B

4 x Xwing Squadrons

No commanders, no upgrades, just our ships and some debris. It was an absolute blast and gave us an opportunity to really explore all the facets of basic strategy, attack, and movement. While you still have to deal with limited space for maneuvers (still played on a 3x3), the rebels had to play the range game to stay ahead, and the imperials had to be bold enough to get in shots at the right angles, denying evades and red dice.

While at first glance it might look a tad unbalanced in the imps favor, it was a very close finish. I had a mostly-dead CR90 running away from a high health GSD, while my xwings were slowly picked off one by one. I had three left but one or two rolls that had gone the other would have left me needing to make up the point difference in a big way. Total was 78-62 with the rebels eking out a win.

If your teaching the game I'd recommend giving it a try. Getting to roll black dice off the bat is very fun and forces a bit more dynamic movement than the blue/red long range slugfest of the starter.

My friend loved it and can't wait to try the full game so it was definitely a "win" in that sense.

I can't say from playing it that the learn to play really feels that imballanced at all, and if anything I'd say it favors the Imperials. The point is to learn the mechanics, not to bet on

If that's the case, then the game's point system must be wrong. Otherwise, how can one faction be 20 points down and yet the rules favour them to win?

Yet, if the points system is accurate then the Imperials are still 20 points adrift.

So my question remains: What would you use those 20 points for?

I ran an intro game against a buddy of mine last night using the following:

Empire - 195

VSD-II

GSD-II

6 x Tie Squadrons

Rebels - 192

Neb-B Escort Frigate

CR90A

CR90B

4 x Xwing Squadrons

No commanders, no upgrades, just our ships and some debris. It was an absolute blast and gave us an opportunity to really explore all the facets of basic strategy, attack, and movement. While you still have to deal with limited space for maneuvers (still played on a 3x3), the rebels had to play the range game to stay ahead, and the imperials had to be bold enough to get in shots at the right angles, denying evades and red dice.

While at first glance it might look a tad unbalanced in the imps favor, it was a very close finish. I had a mostly-dead CR90 running away from a high health GSD, while my xwings were slowly picked off one by one. I had three left but one or two rolls that had gone the other would have left me needing to make up the point difference in a big way. Total was 78-62 with the rebels eking out a win.

If your teaching the game I'd recommend giving it a try. Getting to roll black dice off the bat is very fun and forces a bit more dynamic movement than the blue/red long range slugfest of the starter.

My friend loved it and can't wait to try the full game so it was definitely a "win" in that sense.

I'd have to look at getting a second CR90 and have it arrive with me by Wednesday. May have to jump on Amazon and look for next day deliveries... thanks for the tip!

The aim of the learn to play game is to learn to play. If you expect the Rebels to win give your bigginer the Rebel fleet, throw and extra ship in to make sure he wins and play.

When he wins don't tell him the game was rigged, tell him how awesome he is, he is a natural to pick up and win the game first trip out.

At this point you have lost a game but will be playing games for quite a while.

I can't say from playing it that the learn to play really feels that imballanced at all, and if anything I'd say it favors the Imperials. The point is to learn the mechanics, not to bet on

If that's the case, then the game's point system must be wrong. Otherwise, how can one faction be 20 points down and yet the rules favour them to win?

Yet, if the points system is accurate then the Imperials are still 20 points adrift.

So my question remains: What would you use those 20 points for?

I wouldn't. The point system is balanced when playing with all the mechanics, not when you throw two mini ships in against a VSD in a half-size play area. Once playing with upgrades and most importantly objectives the CR90 and Neb-B have tactical advantages the VSD will never have, but they'd have to start behind the sucker to take him down without a decent amount of luck on that size of a play space. That's why the imperials are 20 points down if you want to look at it that way, but neither of those ships or both combined beat the VSD in a slug fest just because they cost more points, FFG put a little more thought into them than just that for balancing.

You could always keep the 180 learning total, and just swap the VSD with the GSD. It will encourage more direct combat between ships, reducing the usual Squadron point total determining the victor, and should result in more explosions. Plus, it will be easier to add in Objectives, as both fleets will be more evenly matched in speed and durability.