OK, I'm on board. Just picked this game up along with expansions, should be arriving via Amazon on Saturday. One question though, it says for "2 Players", is this right. If someone else (a 3rd player) had their own Armada, couldn't they also join the battle? I guess the question is are the rules structured so tight you can not shoe horn a 3rd or 4th player? Or do the rules allow some wiggle room, either as an alternative rule set or just a clever game player?

do 2v1. You can give the 2 player team a small advatange. like 30 points or something. Also put the most skilled player on that team, but do not allow him to make all the decisions.

We have played 3 vs 3, just decide on a pts limit total for each side and then divide it as evenly as possible between 3 players. You can decide if there will only be one admiral/side or if each player can bring on or whatever. Anyway, it has been lots of fun with big games. I suggest at least 1 3'x6' game surface for each set of 4 players.

OK, I'm on board. Just picked this game up along with expansions, should be arriving via Amazon on Saturday. One question though, it says for "2 Players", is this right. If someone else (a 3rd player) had their own Armada, couldn't they also join the battle? I guess the question is are the rules structured so tight you can not shoe horn a 3rd or 4th player? Or do the rules allow some wiggle room, either as an alternative rule set or just a clever game player?

You can do Team vs Team, which (like in X-Wing), works pretty well. 1 vs 1 vs 1 (or more) don't really work, not so much because the rules don't allow it, but because three+-way scenarios are very difficult to balance. Unfortunately, they usually devolve into two teams ganging up on the third, and then the survivors fight it out.

In our games, we gave one player the Imperial ships, and the other two players dived the Rebel fleet amongst themselves. So Rebel one had the Assault Frigate and a few fighters, and Rebel two had the Neb B and the rest of the fighters. I think we also played a four player version where Imperial two took command of all the Tie fighters, etc.

The point being that neither side should get any extra turns as a result. It's the Rebel's turn, then the Imperial's turn, and then the Rebel's, etc. The team with more players just has to work out for themselves when to take their turns as best benefits their team.

in casual play, anything goes

so go nuts

I do agree that team games would be far easier to manage than free for alls (where would the other players deploy?). You will have to discuss your actions as a team though, because alternating activations will force more communal decision making as opposed to X-wing where PS sets a strict order of activation

Play as many people as you want. Just adjust down points unless you want a realllllyyyyyyy long game.

I would add more table to the game, but not just length add width too. So for a 2x2 go for a 6x4' table, then an 8x4' for a 3x3 and maybe a table tennis table for any more players. Space permitting of course.

I would also make the player with the lowest spend chose to go first or last, if they chose last their missions will be given to the player that ends up being first player. Second last player is the player who has the second lowest points spend and so on.

I think this prevents the problem we get where a team talks for 5 minutes about what is the best choice as to who is going next, then spends another 5 minutes figuring out what of that players ships would be moved.

You should also make a decision to treat unique cards as unique to all players in the team or individually. Also figure out if you will have one admiral per fleet or one per player.

After that allow 20-30 minutes post game to talk about what worked, what didn’t and what to change to make it better next time.

We do 2v2. We just add 1/3 of the current rules points to the fleet total (ex, we play 400 pt games in wave one and will play 600 pt games in wave 2).

We used to split that up into 2 even fleets controlled by one player each, but now we just play both sides by committee. It lead to better games, and the initial ones kinda devolved into that anyway. Generally each player still has ships or squadrons that are nominally "theirs" but the overall strategy and each move winds up getting discussed by both players on either side, with the players opposite them making snide remarks about how none of that is ever going to work and they are doing "exactly what we want them to do"

The limit to how many people can play is only limited by the number of ships you own. The downtime for fleet building can be huge so it may be a good idea to prepare lists beforehand. Make sure you designate team leaders who will have the final say during deliberations.

No fleet is complete without all the Admirals in the war room!

the 2nd game I played was with 4 players 250 points each player seemed very easy to do, we just had 2 teams and it all worked out.