To be honest, I've played x-wing for a long time. I left right at the beginning of scum, and came back a few months ago. I think that X-Wing has swelled far too big in that time. There are too many upgrades and too many tactics now. You can get really convoluted lists, and it's hard to be a casual player in the setting. What Armada offers is, basically a far more straightforward system. The game is, at this point, much more rooted in the fundamentals, like X-Wing was when it first started.

I agree. X Wing is really starting to feel bloated, and in a game that's only three years old that's not a good sign. How will X Wing look in ten years? In twenty?

Objectives.

Most games will still be all about blowing things up, but different missions give different priorities. And some times, you don't even have to engage your enemy to win. This should keep each game fresh.

100% this. Everything else that has been said about depth, strategy, scale, and decision making are all true. But the inclusion of objectives, to me, is what sets this game apart. It adds so much more to the game beyond just blow things up. Plus, Michael Gernes all but confirmed on ep. 10 of the IFF podcast that they plan to add more objectives in the future. That bodes reeeeeeeally well for the longevity of the game.

I'm an x-wing and IA guy, but I have a chance to pick up an entire fleet of two of everything from wave 1 for cheap, but I'm not sure I want to take the plunge...

The X-wing scene is big here, and I enjoy painting and collecting the IA figs while it's gaining steam, but Armada doesnt have a big footing here, and most players are getting out of it. So what are it's strengths? Weaknesses?

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Armada is pretty much the space combat game I've wanted all my life. It is a bit slower than X-Wing, but it's much more epic in scale. X-Wing is a dogfight, whereas Armada is a naval battle. It's like seeing old navy ships slug it out, accompanied by their fighter support, but in space. It's a bit less about reacting to the current state of the board than X-wing, and more about anticipating what it will be two turns from now (especially with the command dials, but also with the movement and firing rules.)

Some people don't like the sliding scale, but I love it, since it means we can get everything from Imperial Star Destroyers down to Corellian Corvettes in one game.

It's big, beautiful, and epic. And it's Star Wars.

It's an easy game to learn. Not difficult at all. Try it once and you'll have the basics down, no problem.

I've been an xwing player since Wave 1, and I remember sitting around after league night matches discussing what it would be like if FFG took this game a step further. Like zooming the camera out to see where these little fighters are being launched from....like a Star destroyer!!!!........Well look what happened 4 or 5 waves later......StarWars Armada....and here we all are.. If you love epic space battles, naval combat, fighters escorting frigates and battle ships into the fight,if you love StarWars!!!, then this game is for you my son!! Hands down!! The rules are easy to learn, though quite different than Xwing, but fear not....if you play it .....they will come!!

And, there is alot of great support and tips found right here to help you on your way to Glory for the Empire or Freedom in the Galaxy for the Rebels!!

Alright then....enough of the sales pitch....all personnel to their stations, all pilots to your fighters......Good Luck.and Good Hunting....

This is Capt Shadowmax of the Assault Frigate "Lucky Jack".....(..the.League of Extraordinary Old Guys..)........signing off......................................................................

Why Armada?

We got Star Fleets

We got insane amounts of squadrons

We got Ackbar and Vader
You can have Luke, Wedge, Leia and Han in 1 team altogether
You can have Howlrunner, Vader and Fel in the other team altogether

And most importantly...

Join the Armada and see the Galaxies and innumerable worlds

In the end, it's all about how much you love the Star Wars universe and Armada has more Star Wars than any other game could have.

I play both X-Wing and Armada, starting - of course - with X-Wing. When I started with X-Wing, about 18 months ago, I wished that I could have had a capital ships game. Still, X-Wing really is a great game, and it's allowed me to meet and play with people who are now my friends. I enjoy the hell out of it.

Armada is more of the game that I was initially looking for. It allows me to tell slightly different kinds of stories (see sig). It has also allowed me to be in my area's top tier players without lagging behind others' learning curves. That's because I was present at the start of the game. While the game is 6 months old now, newcomers have a little bit of catching up to do, but that is not an insurmountable obstacle.

More importantly, it's allowing me to share the Star Wars tactical/strategic(and some story-telling) experience with a new group of people. Also, because it's younger and the community is not as formed, I have the opportunity to be a community-building entrepreneur, which I'm liking.

As to the differences between X-Wing and Armada. While they're obviously different games, and different people will be able to scratch a slightly different its with each game's style of gameplay - they're still games along a similar theme.It's mostly about the aesthetic and the story for me, while I do well at the tactical competitiveness.

For me it is the strategic arc of the whole game. Much more so than Xwing, once your list is picked, the objectives and fleet deployment are crucial.

In Xwing you can reposition following a poor deployment, in Armada, forget it. And the objectives add a level of balance well beyond just points. It ensures that fleets are built to be flexible.

....that and Imperial Star Destroyers....and lots of tiny fighters...it just feels epic

To me Armada is just the logical extension of both X-Wing and Imperial Assault. You have small scale ship fighting, ground fighting, adding in fleet engagements (plus the RPGs if you are REALLY into it) lets you recreate pretty much all of the Star Wars experience. Other than that, I don't know. It's an awesome game, and you should play it.

I'm an x-wing and IA guy, but I have a chance to pick up an entire fleet of two of everything from wave 1 for cheap, but I'm not sure I want to take the plunge...

The X-wing scene is big here, and I enjoy painting and collecting the IA figs while it's gaining steam, but Armada doesnt have a big footing here, and most players are getting out of it. So what are it's strengths? Weaknesses?

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Try grabbing one of the players at your local store see if someone would let you play a 300 point game using their pieces. Try a couple of games before you make a choice on buying or not. Play as Rebels and play as Imperial as the ships vary in strengths and weakness between the two factions. The best way to know if you like something or not is to try it.

When you say most of the players are getting out of Armada...is there any player base for it? Do you know why those that bought into are now deciding to get out? Would you have more than 1 or 2 people willing to play it at your FLGS? Are their any other places near you that have a active Armada player base?

If the players are leaving the game I would say don't invest nothing worst that buying into a game that no one plays.

I've been an xwing player since Wave 1, and I remember sitting around after league night matches discussing what it would be like if FFG took this game a step further. Like zooming the camera out to see where these little fighters are being launched from....like a Star destroyer!!!!.

This was the same for me. The minute Armada was announced I sold all my X-wing stuff (suckers). The reason I say suckers is because I doubt I would get the same price for X-wing now. I easily got almost full price for my used stuff.

And I can sum up why Armada in 2 words. Which most people already have...

STAR DESTROYER!

And strangely enough as much as I love the Empire and star destroyers I actually enjoy paying the Rebels more. The tactics are so different for both sides.

I've been an xwing player since Wave 1, and I remember sitting around after league night matches discussing what it would be like if FFG took this game a step further. Like zooming the camera out to see where these little fighters are being launched from....like a Star destroyer!!!!.

This was the same for me. The minute Armada was announced I sold all my X-wing stuff (suckers). The reason I say suckers is because I doubt I would get the same price for X-wing now. I easily got almost full price for my used stuff.

And I can sum up why Armada in 2 words. Which most people already have...

STAR DESTROYER!

And strangely enough as much as I love the Empire and star destroyers I actually enjoy paying the Rebels more. The tactics are so different for both sides.

I love the difficulty needed to make rebel lists win.

This will even out with Massing of Sullust and wave 2 but it will be interesting.

Imperial players will now have a fast resilient ship that can outpace their current tank ship.

Easy to learn and hard to master.

It is a great strategy and tactical game.

Armada is a very simple to understand, difficult to master game that has a learning curve of your typical non-Monopoly boardgame. In fact i treat it as such, ive taught several people to play it that dont own the ships that still play pretty well. And it took me ~30mins to explain the rules. The difficulty is entirely in learning positional play, not the rules, which is how a game SHOULD BE

There are some fuzzy rules that i really wish were written better but most of them arent that bad if you misread them.

The ships are expensive, i'll say that much for sure, but i justify the cost because you dont have to assemble them or paint them and you STILL pay less money in the end than any wargame where you do build/paint everything. This game is even cheaper than Warzone to get into, and Warzone is pretty dang cheap.

I don't think I could convince you to dump one for another. It's fun, but for me locally, I know of 4 players, one I've yet to meet and maybe 2 people interested in buying in eventually. So most games I play are against myself.

I was hellbent against buying in when initially announced. So stupid, it's just a larger X Wing and I'm already invested there.

Fast forward a few incredibly impossible to find product months, and I'd let X Wing just collect dust and I let it be. Fast forward again a year and I had found a stupid good deal on a Armada core set. Why not?

Got my Star Wars junkie friend over to play a few core games and he was so hooked, he immediately pre-ordered Wave 2.

I wish I was in Portland where it sounds like they made it mandatory that every other house on the street owns a copy. I'm in an area where only one store within 40 minutes supports FFG (or it seems). It's frustrating to have to travel 2-3 hours to play a game with strangers. But it's fun enough to justify the travel for an occasional casual tournament where I'll get stomped and have fun while doing so.

So if you got the time and money and think everyone here is giving solid advice, buy in. You'll get close to your money back if you don't like it.

I'm rambling. You'll like it. But the community clearly isn't as large and the game does take longer to go through. But it's definitely as much fun, if not more than X Wing. It's a checkers vs Chess comparison between the two games.

We don't have that many people. . . X-Wing still out does us but we have a good community. It helps that we have at least 3 stores in the Portland area alone, 1 in Vancouver, 1 in Hillsboro/Beaverton area and one south of Portland, all accessible by public transportation pretty reliably.

As for the amount of players. . . My mind is still boggled sometimes when I hear that it is selling like crazy but I don't see many players. . .

Then again. . . I just bought a starter box, Gladiator, Imperials squadron pack and a dice set for a friend so he can start playing. . . Bleh. . . I am too nice

Seems like we're pretty lucky here in San Antonio.

We have at least eight regular players who show up on a weekly basis, with another six or so whose schedules restrict them to playing infrequently. These are just the ones I play with, too. Apparently there is another group who plays at a game store I don't frequent myself.

I can always find a game.

Seems like the more we have, the more we draw. People see four games of Armada going and want to know what all those star destroyers are about.

This is why I am building a league night. Which is daunting. . . I have never done such a thing before. . .

My demo night at the FLGS drew two guys to it, and likely to buy in. The one guy who had what seems like every game ever played with me and was definitely in for more matches down the road.

But every time I had the game out to show it, people stopped, asked questions, and watched as long as they could. The community will grow if everyone keeps up showing the game. And honestly everyone is stupid nice I've met who plays.

X-Wing is still more popular around me (Lincoln, Nebraska) primarily because everybody already has a ton of models and they dont feel like buying a new game. Which is understandable i guess. I mean, i own two 40k armies, a warzone army, and Armada so i definitely know the pocket pain in buying a new army/game lol.

The few people ive gotten to try the game absolutely love it. One doesnt have the money to buy into it and another just ate it up lol he has more ships than me now. We all agree its the only game weve played where losing is almost never bad dice luck or unfair rules, its 9/10 of the time because you did a stupid move and got punished for it. Dont get me wrong, weve had utterly terrible dice games but theyre pretty rare compared to 40k's bad dice rates lol

My demo night at the FLGS drew two guys to it, and likely to buy in. The one guy who had what seems like every game ever played with me and was definitely in for more matches down the road.

But every time I had the game out to show it, people stopped, asked questions, and watched as long as they could. The community will grow if everyone keeps up showing the game. And honestly everyone is stupid nice I've met who plays.

Good work on the demos....

I've done quite a few demos myself and am trying to grow the game. This tournament should help.

I also recommend, if you haven't already, to get the number and text some of these guys you meet to see if they want to come back to play with your set. It will help keep them involved, keep you playing and most importantly, possibly get them to buy in too.

I've been luck in that i exchanged numbers with one guy and now we are almost weekly players. 2 out of the last 3 saturday's have been he and I playing armada from about 10:30 to 7ish. We have been approached and have demoed to 3-4 guys during that time where one of us will play the new person. We set up 2 imperial ships and 3 rebel ships, 4 ties and 2 xwings for a demo game. This gives a bit of everything for the new player to see without a ton of upgrade cards. We pick the objective just so they see how it works and then we pretty much tell them how to play before hand and during we recommend what they should do each step of the way. Best moves, best potential set ups, and so on.

After the tournament, I will be setting up a league. I talked with the owner of the game store (who asked me to TO) and he will help me set it up. I've never done it before, but he gave me ideas on what to do such as goals (most ships destroyed, best sportmanship, etc etc) and after the league, a free tournament. My goal in doing this is to build the game. I've noticed more interest as my friend and I play the game -- especially with these long sessions -- and my hope is, that with the advertisting from the owner and with people seeing us play, that more will join in over time.

So if you have the interest and time (I know the drive sucks) maybe you might consider something like this too.

Not to derail the topic too much, I've got a few of the guys info on Facebook and we comment frequently on the stores page. The one employee who will buy in with Wave 2 releasing will likely set up a casual play day for X Wing and Armada. They've had one tournament for X Wing and another scheduled, so I don't doubt the store's buy in down the road.

I'm about to set up a regional X Wing/Armada FB page similar to the one in the NJ/Philly area does in hopes that I can drum up intrest. I'm pretty darn busy with two jobs, but if I can plant some seeds, I'll do what I can.

to the OP:

I have a good amount of X-Wing, Armada, and Imp Assault, I'm crazy like that. I have found that I was overbuying stuff for X-wing, so one way I justify buying both X-Wing and Armada is to cut out the extra X-Wing ships I know I'll ever use say once (1 or 2 Kirakszxkj fighters, instead of buying 5 just to have that option for a 100pts). Also, stick with 2-3 buys at a time. I'm mostly Imperial, so I'll stick with the bare minimum or Rebel stuff. If you like it, buy more. If not, you have another fun game to play casually with friends or store goers.

Remember, we are still in Wave 1 for Armada. Although its not 'as bad' as X-Wing wave 1, it does have a bit of the feeling of 'I'm running Imperials, so do I take a Tie Advanced (~VSD) or do I take a Tie Fighter (~GSD)'. X-Wing opened up a lot after wave 2 hit since the combination options takes off some of the list building shackles.

All the "selling" you should need.