Hi everyone,

Just got into armada and have been having a blast just making fleets using SWAFT. I know bidding for initiative is important for a lot of lists, but without many games under my belt, I am unsure what would constitute an aggressive bid? I have seen that 3 points or less is considered conservative, but if you build a fleet that needs one of its objectives picked, how many points under do people go to guarantee their objectives. I.E. would an 11 point bid be a good move, or is it overkill compared to a 5-8 point bid?

5 to 8 seems to be the standard in our area. 11 would be pretty much a gurantee as that is the cost of most fighters in the game.

Its very area dependant... Here, I can get away with 3 point bids still... Anything more than a single upgrade card...

I'm frequently seeing all ship lists that are 10 points under, sometimes (infrequently) more.

All ships has become the standard here, and the only list with fighters seeing any success is the Rebel Aces/Yavaris/Gallant Haven combo - which generally comes in 0-5 points under.

I'm frequently seeing all ship lists that are 10 points under, sometimes (infrequently) more.

All ships has become the standard here, and the only list with fighters seeing any success is the Rebel Aces/Yavaris/Gallant Haven combo - which generally comes in 0-5 points under.

Time to start bringing Rhymer Blobs to the party.

Yeah, I had a friend run a 6 ship no fighter list against me the other day, and my rhymer ball had a field day.

Personally, I don't think the initiative bid is all that important. It's nice and all, but I'm generally comfortable either going first or letting my opponent pick one of my objectives. The only times that changes are if I desperately want to go first or I'm not confident in my choice of objectives. When you start bidding ten points under, you start leaving very real upgrades off of the table.

For what it is worth:

Play as close to 300 as is possible; don't throw in upgrades just to waste points, but I find there are usually useful things to take to get me all the way to 297 or so with almost any list.

Let other people bid down, and just make sure that if they make you go second, you have objectives that are extremely good for your fleet (arguably, you should pick your objectives BEFORE building the fleet list so that you will build to win those objectives), and if you go first, have enough ships or squadrons that you can make it really painful for your opponent.

You want to be durable across all possibilities (no matter how low you bid, some jerk might bid lower), so rather than getting into the iterative guessing game, build a list that works as first player or second player, on a variety of objectives, vs. a variety of forces.

This is assuming you aren't planning to ambush a friend's specific list...