I think we're getting a little hyperbolic if we ever sat the objective didn't matter. At the very least the obj compels players to move a certain way.

this is a huge point to stress

back in Warmachine, I had a lot of people say objectives didn't matter because we so rarely won based on objective unless someone was horribly down on attrition and didn't have models to contest points. Similarly, if they got their caster assassinated because the caster was too close too the front, chances are it was because he/she/it needed to throw their weight in order to secure the objectives on the table.

thing is, if it weren't for objectives forcing players' hands games in warmachine would never have played out in any similar way. They're a massive influence on every engagement, even if you don't score a single point from them because they influence how both players have to move/engage

In Armada, it's the exact same thing except, instead of winning outright they can provide an insurmountable lead or completely change the nature of the game (hyperspace assault, fleet ambush, dangerous territory, minefields etc) or both (advanced gunnery)

Agreed FGD.

I also, see that the top-players focusing on reds as an issue for the current leaning towards all-ship fests. I could be wrong, but I don't think that the picture of the winner (I think that was him on his 2nd or 3rd to last game?) had a red card sitting pretty on the table. Yellow/Blue are the ones that change the entire aspect of the game from shoot-em-ups to tactical concerns.

Be nice to hear about the objective selections overall though. Even the reds force the game, as FGD comments: like most wanted is absolutely favoring multi-ship lists over fewer balanced ship lists. While things like SupPos favor squadron heavy lists, for example.

if you think Most Wanted favors multi-ships, wait till you see Opening Salvo

if you think Most Wanted favors multi-ships, wait till you see Opening Salvo

great minds and all

in all seriousness, the objectives all favor various list types. This is why you choose 3 as part of building your fleet, so you can skew the **** out of the selection as recompense for the enemy taking initiative (whether he wants to or not ). It's no surprise, then, that ship-spam will have objectives that heavily favor ship-spam.

(in a ship spam v ship spam scenario, though, I can see where opening salvo would not be ideal. There you are, cruising along with your GSDs when, suddenly, out pops a 6 cr-90 swarm. Well, you're going to be none to happy about them taking those extra red dice, are you?)

going by the top list's objectives (advanced gunnery, firing lanes, intel) I'd have to guess the reason for picking AG is because it's easily the least of all possible evils. It still sucks to give the enemy an easy target, but firing lanes and intel sweep introduce objective tokens that force your hand ito positioning. Controlled positioning + 3 ACM GSDs = oh god, what a mess

Fire lanes actually benefits a squadron list over no squadrons. A squadron sitting on a token automatically awards points to the owner. True a ship can run over te squad and displace it, but likely only for a single turn, unless it stops and becomes a sitting duck.

Overlapping gives the objective to the OTHER person iirc. Would be too easy to score otherwise.

indeedly deed, never sit squadrons on the token

it's a very small detriment to the main disadvantage (enemy has more ships, more arcs, more dice etc)

the biggest yellow objective geared for squadrons is Hyperspace Assault. Yavaris and a couple B-wings farting out into optimal range for 8 bomber dice + a neb attack? yeah no, never getting picked

Just my two Imperial credits.

I won several Warmahordes tourneys in the past (played Circle and Menoth) and I always completely ignored the objectives and just straight assassinated the enemy caster. No idea if it influenced my enemy but it didn't influence me one bit.

In Armada, I won the first local tourney and again.....totally ignored whatever objective we had and went for wiping out the enemy cap ships as fast as possible. Worked like a charm, perfect tourney score. I never had initiative, always went first, and simply picked the weakest objective from my opponents list and then ignored it.

Now that was 300 points. The next one is the 22 and its 400, so a bit different....I'll post a report once it's done. Kinda planning on taking that 2 VSD 3 GSD list I've been experimenting with....

Overlapping gives the objective to the OTHER person iirc. Would be too easy to score otherwise.

Well [expletive redacted], we've been playing that wrong. I'll just show myself out then...

Just my two Imperial credits.

I won several Warmahordes tourneys in the past (played Circle and Menoth) and I always completely ignored the objectives and just straight assassinated the enemy caster. No idea if it influenced my enemy but it didn't influence me one bit.

In Armada, I won the first local tourney and again.....totally ignored whatever objective we had and went for wiping out the enemy cap ships as fast as possible. Worked like a charm, perfect tourney score. I never had initiative, always went first, and simply picked the weakest objective from my opponents list and then ignored it.

Now that was 300 points. The next one is the 22 and its 400, so a bit different....I'll post a report once it's done. Kinda planning on taking that 2 VSD 3 GSD list I've been experimenting with....

Playing with objectives are a way to rack up points, but the points they bring are sufficiently low that you can't forget about fighting other ennemies. Preventing the enemy from scoring points while at the same time aiming for destruction is a viable strategy.

After all, killing a ship rewards more victory points than the objectives, so destruction must always be on a player's mind !

After reading about the top 4...the Rebels need more ships, or more luck. I don't want to see Imperial white washes all the time. That'd get boring fast.

Following the discussion, I can't help but wonder: What if the rules had made spending 1/3 of your fleet points on squadrons mandatory?

Just thinking out loud, in the real world, no actual fleet would go into battle with no air support, nor (thematically) does the idea of Star Destroyers without clouds of Tie fighters seem quite right. I think a house rule that all capital fleets have to have some points expended on combat air patrol is pretty darn reasonable.

**** no

choice is the name of the game, squadrons have to be good enough to be worth making the choice of including them

There is too much meta synergy with this post. I hate it all.

After reading about the top 4...the Rebels need more ships, or more luck. I don't want to see Imperial white washes all the time. That'd get boring fast.

I suspect Wave 2 changes this dramatically. The core problem with the Rebel fleet right now is that they are anti-synergistic other than the CR90:

• The Nebulon wants to snipe straight on at range.
• The AFII wants to circle gently and obliterate with broadsides (I imagine the Blue Danube, Space Odyssey 2001 style, as the background music for the whale)
• The Corvettes are like scavengers; they either want to coalesce to gang up on something and then disperse, or they want to all circle, wide, and chew.

So the CR90 and AFII are at least similar, and I think play together at least okay, but the Nebulon is a totally different animal.

On the flip side, both the VSD and the Gladiator are brawlers (especially the VSDI) who want to get up close, personal, and just punchpunchpunchpunch. As a result, the Imperials all kind of want to play the same way.

However, the death shrimp becomes an ideal complement for the rebel broadside game (extending their ability to the "up close and personal" bracket) and the MC80 is like the barry bonds on steroids version of the AF, so I think instead of having three ships where 1 doesn't play nice with the others stylistically (Neb B) and one is 50-50 (CR90), the Rebels will have a much more strategically unified fleet after Wave 2, like Imperials have now.

Edit: Also, if Ackbar works as a "fire out of either side arc only" instead of "fire out of both the left and the right side arc for it to trigger", the Rebels have their Screed equivalent in terms of damage output and Whales/MC80s with Gunnery Teams in an Ackbar Fleet become slightly more lethal than opening a box of enraged, rabid weasels.

Perhaps another avenue of argument, that no one seems to be discussing, is objectives. All of the discussion (and from the pic I saw, it was telling) is on straight up 40k-style combat: line up and shoot till dead. Said match picture, a few pages back, had a red going on. Seems like people are looking to put ships on the table and shoot eachother all day.

I wonder how much these objectives would alter things if building lists around them? I find it odd that first players seem to be content taking the Reds that are often heavily stacked against them in pure combat. Perhaps 2 ship lists are hamstrung hardcore by reds when compared to 4 ship lists?

Objectives are one of the major considerations to Armada, imo, and that all the tournament discussion and details center around: "These all-ship lists pewpew the best when flown well" is telling. Anyone notice how often non-red objectives cropped up?

I initially hailed this game on how well its objectives steered the game away from the standard 40k "line-em-up-and-shoot-till-dead" mentality...yet people still did this at GenCon (from all accounts heard so far). Either I was wrong and shooting-till-dead with the most guns IS the best way to play; or these competitive players are just bringing their past baggage to the table and missing other options entirely. Maybe we need more options for objectives to effect the game while contending with an opponent who only wants to table us?

I think what is going on is that in a tournament style play where taking out all of your opponents ships to get the largest margin of victory -- all ship builds that can take out opposing ships the quickest will do better than a build focused on objectives.

In a 1 off game against a friend, where MOV isn't important, then I think the build can be more reflective of your chosen objectives.

Right now, the best way and easiest way to remove all the opposing ships is to go with an all ship build that can thow the most damaging dice. I'm not saying it's easy to get in range to be able to always do that (since we are talking black dice) but in a tournament based on MOV, anytime you can table your opponent, you're going to come out ahead.

Additionally, until wave 2 and the rebels get a black dice ship, this style of play in tournaments will favor the imperials and will favor all ship builds over balanced or full squadron builds.

Right now, the best way and easiest way to remove all the opposing ships is to go with an all ship build that can thow the most damaging dice. I'm not saying it's easy to get in range to be able to always do that (since we are talking black dice) but in a tournament based on MOV, anytime you can table your opponent, you're going to come out ahead.

There are also objectives that you can take which emphasize killing the other ships, so you end up with the dominant strategy being a "kill" fleet:

You can always kill the opponent to win.

If you take a maneuver/non-kill fleet, you need to be VERY confident in your bid and have three objectives that force it in order to play your game, otherwise you might end up against a list like the winning list that is all about ship killing, always, with all objectives.

given that a rebel list placed 2nd, we may a little too gung-ho on supposed imperial dominance

remember that while skreed black dice are super legit, they're still close range dice making them the easiest to avoid. CR-90s, while seeming not nearly as impressive, back a lot more range and maneuverability for a lot less price. Sure, a salvo of black dice is the most damage you can output in a single round, but you have to stack that against the rounds in which those black dice are sitting uselessly in the armament and the GSD only throws out a pitiful 2 red at most. This is not an issue of numbers (this ain't x-wing, specific dice have specific ranges), it is an issue of positioning.

Nebs specifically have issues with this because they're as maneuverable as GSDs (until speed 3) but their arc distribution is strictly worse (which is why they have yavaris, squadrons don't care about facing )

CR-90s have the maneuverability to **** around GSDs and Fatties have the arcs to lob dice while not directly approach the mass of incoming black dice.

I'm not worried about acknowledging the current dominance of the imperial list when it comes to tabling an opposing fleet and how this affects tournament style MOV points.

This will likely balance out with wave 2 when the rebels get a black dice ship as well.

Following the discussion, I can't help but wonder: What if the rules had made spending 1/3 of your fleet points on squadrons mandatory?

Just thinking out loud, in the real world, no actual fleet would go into battle with no air support, nor (thematically) does the idea of Star Destroyers without clouds of Tie fighters seem quite right. I think a house rule that all capital fleets have to have some points expended on combat air patrol is pretty darn reasonable.

no...

But i could see 1/5 or 1/4. Just to get away from the all ship builds. But then Imperials would have the advantage... so no. I have no clue what FFG was thinking when all but one of the rebel fighters is slower then the imperials

Following the discussion, I can't help but wonder: What if the rules had made spending 1/3 of your fleet points on squadrons mandatory?

Just thinking out loud, in the real world, no actual fleet would go into battle with no air support, nor (thematically) does the idea of Star Destroyers without clouds of Tie fighters seem quite right. I think a house rule that all capital fleets have to have some points expended on combat air patrol is pretty darn reasonable.

no...

But i could see 1/5 or 1/4. Just to get away from the all ship builds. But then Imperials would have the advantage... so no. I have no clue what FFG was thinking when all but one of the rebel fighters is slower then the imperials

They're thinking it fits the description of slower, bulkier rebellion starfighter and designing around that image (probably )

Perhaps that most of the Rebel Squadrons have more HP then thier Imperial analogs, and that most hit Ships harder then thier equivalent as well.

Well lets elaborate on why as X-wing and Armada are indeed 2 very different games but mechanical similarities can be drawn between the two.

in X-wing torpedo and missile secondary weapons are attacks that sacrifice a powerful ability in X-wing known as dice modification. It makes it so you are not at the mercy of probability. Thus using the Target Lock to modify your 2-3 dice attack is way more powerful than rolling 1 or 2 more red dice. You still pay points for that upgrade so when your ship is destroyed it provides more points for your opponent. The upgrade also is discarded so there is no longevity more of a use it or lose it aspect.

Now moving on to Squadrons in Armada, Squadrons are units in Armada that are missing one powerful mechanic in Armada that the capital ships have and that is damage mitigation. Save for the Aces squadrons have no defense tokens so they eat each hit ignoring critical results. However the big thing is with the exception of the space station they have no damage recovery mitigation that the capital ships have. You still pay points so they do provide points to your opponent for destruction but with objectives that may be mitigated a little unless a game is close. Still more disadvantage over the advantage they provide. The advantage is merely adding a single or 2 dice attack at a very close range, and having a unit that is fairly maneuverable but easier to destroy.

But frankly with Armada supposed to have learn the lessons from X-wing they haven't yet refined their game mechanics from the experience of X-wing. X-wing has some none dice damage mitigation and it has proven to be strong in the meta. Problem with the meta is that there is well 2 types of builds competitive and casual. Competitive only includes strong units an average build has no room in a competitive environment.

As I said from the start the Squadrons were the weak point in the gameplay mechanics. I wasn't alone as many of my fellow X-wing players tend to agree, now it has been said before Armada is not about starfighter combat but I will rebuttle with the fact that Star Wars was about Starfighter Combat and the Big ships were more like armed battlecruisers that launch and service starfighters and can still provide an exciting fight as with the opening scene. However they don't have the boarding mechanic in the opening scene and as for Starfighter combat it is no more than meh even in an abstract form. Star Wars Armada is more like Star Trek battles than Star Wars battles now while it does a much better job than Star Trek Attack Wing.

Well it is obvious that the squadrons are going to need a fix in Wave 3 and beyond. As I sad they should have had defense tokens on the generics. A single brace token for shielded ships and an evade or scatter token for TIEs should have not been broken. however the cards are printed as they are printed thus it is too late for that. Maybe adding in some docking and launching mechanics that can also restore lost hit points by using engineering and squadron points could help a little with the lack of damage mitigation. Well whatever they do they definitely need to help out squadrons if they want to see them in competitive builds. However one last retort, I don't see Armada becoming the competitive scene that X-wing has become. I think it will always be the casual Star Wars space game.

Okay look here.

We are getting a little confused about the theory.

Let's always assume almost equally skilled opponents.

I tried the no fighters list today against a "better" or at least equally skilled player running 4 A-wings. I got a smart wallop. I want to see how the tournament winners didn't lose ships to independent, but well placed squadrons.

If I may throw a crazy ball in here, it seems like

mass-fighters beats no-fighters beats some-fighters beats mass-fighters.

--

Also lesson learned: Awings good. I wanna try some B-wings next. Also Paragon good. Also, opponent better than me. Play better.