With the upcoming "official" tournament fleet size coming at 400 points as soon as Wave 2 hits, I have to ask : do you guys think that the game was meant to be played at 400 points all along (with a staggered release over the year 2015 ?) ?

I'm just asking, because while 300 points is nice and much better than 180, I'm just having the feeling that the table is a bit empty and the fleets lack "Oomph!" in both sides. I had two back to back games tonight and although ships were crippled, the only kills were squadrons.

I also have to ask, due to the reference guide clearly detailing the base sizes for all class of ships (small, medium and large) and Motti also helping out large ships (so obviously they had plans to release the large ships all along ).

Has anyone else had the same feeling that lingered ?

Cheers !

I believe it was designed for 500, with 400 a compromise to keep tourneys manageable. Of course as far as I'm concerned it was designed for over 1000. Hehehe.....

It was designed for 400 points on the Tournament Scene. They only had it at 300 because of the limited number of ships available. Add in that they waited to release the Large ships until wave 2 and you can see were it is going.

it plays just fine at 300 and 400

in fact, I'm rather surprised by how ******* difficult it is to expand my 300 point fleets into 400, especially when trying to keep the 133 squadron cap in mind

"okay, so I have 2 fatties. I'll just add another Mark B and then add Intel Officer, and Expanded Armaments and...oh, that's 89 already is it?"

it plays just fine at 300 and 400

in fact, I'm rather surprised by how ******* difficult it is to expand my 300 point fleets into 400, especially when trying to keep the 133 squadron cap in mind

"okay, so I have 2 fatties. I'll just add another Mark B and then add Intel Officer, and Expanded Armaments and...oh, that's 89 already is it?"

It plays fine at 300 points but I find the games a bit dull with ships blowing up very rarely I feel that 400 points will bring more dakka to the table, less areas to flee later game.

if you want things to blow up, you need to play aggressively

I get quite some games with my double fatties that end up mainly with me eating some squadrons, maybe a ship, and then derping off because, hey, why would I ever get into optimal range of a VSD or a bunch of B-wings when I can just list off to the side and win on points?

play something like triple nebs + squadrons or most imperials, though, and you have to be aggressive to bring your optimal ship capabilities to bear. ****'ll blow up then if you engage, I guarantee it (no guarantee as to whose **** will blow up, though)

given concetrated fire or very powerful attacks (VSD barrages, demolisher with ACM, Yavaris B-wings, Paragon etc.) it's not unusual to see even fatties and VSDs go down in 2 rounds

See, Armada is a game of uneven returns. A VSD is a terror at optimal range + arc, but pathetic otherwise for its cost (losing often half or more of their maximum potential output). A GSD is basically worse than a **** CR-90 if it doesn't get its black dice off. Furthermore, defense tokens heavily reward the defender for taking few attacks, but crumble to sustained fire or specific offensive tech.

Things in Armada will live and die not so much based on how much crap you have, but how you play it.

If you mean empty as in there aren't enough ships evenly spread out on the 6x3 board, then I don't think 400 pts will fix that as all of those assets will eventually concentrate on where they are needed the most. This might mean one, at the most two points on the table.

If you are lamenting about the lack of firepower, well, you have to play more aggressively. I've been tabled a few times and have also done the same to the other team a couple of times. Most of the time, there'll be one ship on one side being chased by two ships on the other side at the time the game ends. I play Imperial and have only played Rebels on demo games (the core set demo) and my chosen build does not have any squadrons on my fleet and I tend to ignore the enemy squadrons and go after the enemy ships.

Well, playing mostly Rebels, I'm already aggressive enough that I can shoot multiple arcs from each ship on my target ships and yet not much happens Going close would yield nothing more in terms of pure efficiency and would just expose the Rebel ships unnecessarily

We have been playing almost exclusively at 400 and it does feel better, imo. Your fleets are able to do more interesting stuff and feel more fleshed out.

You obviously, OBVIOUSLY are NOT playing aggressive enough. Your crews don't know "aggressive" until they see Vader force-choke their commander for failing to finish off the enemy ship! Have that done a few times and watch them shoot those turbolasers until the barrels glow!

In all seriousness, I would say concentrate your firepower on one ship if possible. With enough concentrated firepower, a VSD can go down in one or two turns. Also make sure you've got the right upgrades on YOUR ships. My favorite fleet so far is a VSD with Screed, Warlord, and H9 turbolasers, then a Glad 1 and Glad 2. Screed kicks in for all ships, and when my VSD is firing, Warlord and the H9 lasers work beautifully. The synergy of the cards allows me to hit harder than I would if I just depended on a plain dice roll.

As for aggressiveness, well, you have to be in range to be able to fire... all that extra dice is useless if you're not rolling it. Get on a side arc, obviously. My fleet has been tabled by a Rebel fleet that consisted of the cheapest CR90s with only Mon Motha as the commander, no other upgrades. Oh, Lord Vader was most displeased with that!

I can imagine that, yeah ! One of the reason I might have felt my firepower was underwhelming might have been because I tended to go for the crits on Dodonna's Pride rather than dealing the damages in the early turns of the game. Sometimes I might have blown up several damages that could have weakened the shields or forced the opponent to spend a token which might have been much better.

Anyways, more practice coming next week But I still feel that the game will really shine with Wave 2 and a minimum of 400 points

Most games I play have ended in tablings. There simply isn't enough room for ships to espace a victory destroyer and a demolisher with squadron support. If you're driving AT each other then there's very little room for you to escape unless you have a special lane for you.

The exception to this is corvettet swarms...those ships are so quick it's hard to pin them down with enough firepower to table them if they don't want to engage. Of course they aren't going to pull many points off of you anyhow.

Not to mention that objectives often force the engagement to happen in a way that encourages a fight.

Playing with a higher points cap will allow for more ships, limit more table space and force people to play more aggressively. With the added ease of getting multiple arcs on single targets and more ship collisions, I just wonder how the Rebels would be able to keep up with their flanking style of play.

they'd keep up pretty well

3 by 6 is freaking huge and adding another fattie isn't going to change that

they'd keep up pretty well

3 by 6 is freaking huge and adding another fattie isn't going to change that

The actual playing area is 3 by 4 ft. That's hardly bigger than an X-wing game. One foot on each end is allotted for cards and tokens.

they'd keep up pretty well

3 by 6 is freaking huge and adding another fattie isn't going to change that

The actual playing area is 3 by 4 ft. That's hardly bigger than an X-wing game. One foot on each end is allotted for cards and tokens.

No. The PLAY area is 6x3.

they'd keep up pretty well

3 by 6 is freaking huge and adding another fattie isn't going to change that

The actual playing area is 3 by 4 ft. That's hardly bigger than an X-wing game. One foot on each end is allotted for cards and tokens.

No. The PLAY area is 6x3.

I have only played one game at 300 points, and that was my first one. ever since ive played 400 or bigger. 450 is the number i usually go for as it allows me to get 2-3 whales, a neb and a bunch of fighters on the field along with a good smattering of upgrade cards. however i do play 1000 point games and they are by far my favorite (they just take 3-4 hours to play out)

I'm soooo looking forward to 400 point games. I'm really hoping that the extended points will allow for more squadrons to be put on the table as the increase in points will still allow for enough firepower.

Hypothetically, that could be what, 7 nebulon b's (7x51=357)? That's 21 red dice out the front at a possible single target. I'm not even sure if that's possible, ie lining up all 7 shoulder to shoulder and all 7 having range to a single target. But man, that would be interesting to try!

I can imagine that, yeah ! One of the reason I might have felt my firepower was underwhelming might have been because I tended to go for the crits on Dodonna's Pride rather than dealing the damages in the early turns of the game. Sometimes I might have blown up several damages that could have weakened the shields or forced the opponent to spend a token which might have been much better.

Anyways, more practice coming next week But I still feel that the game will really shine with Wave 2 and a minimum of 400 points

Crits can be quite nasty, but I would rather go for damage. I use ACMs a lot and I'd rather +2 damage than a standard crit effect (faceup damage card). Ships go down faster that way.

400 point games are more challenging than 300. While I will play larger battles (beyond 700), and I already know that it will be fun, I don't want to play beyond 400 points on regular base without change to the objective rule - in games of 500+ points the current objectives won't have much of an impact anymore, which would be sad, as I think that it is a vital part of Armada. I consider to use 2 objective cards for such games, have to give it some more thinking first.

Crits can be quite nasty, but I would rather go for damage. I use ACMs a lot and I'd rather +2 damage than a standard crit effect (faceup damage card). Ships go down faster that way.

Yeah, I definitely agree with what you said there. I feel that the Dodonna's Pride card mainly helps if you fail your dice roll with lots of accuracies rather than lots of damage. In that case it's much better to inflict a critical effect than cancel a decent roll of attack dice damage. But if you'd have dealt only one or 2 damage instead, might as well throw a face up card.

they'd keep up pretty well

3 by 6 is freaking huge and adding another fattie isn't going to change that

The actual playing area is 3 by 4 ft. That's hardly bigger than an X-wing game. One foot on each end is allotted for cards and tokens.

No. The PLAY area is 6x3.

Set up Area is 4x3. That is where your deployment, obstacles, objectives, etc are limited to.

Oh right. My bad. This happens when you play deathmatches instead of objectives too often. I stand erected.

Wait, the set up area is limited to 4x3 ? I can understand with objectives, terrain and the like, but ships aren't prohibited to deploy less than 5 from the left and right edges of the board ?