I have seen several people mention how, after a full day, people didn't want to stick around for the final game and so distributed the ships based on the regular tournament and then everyone went home. I wonder how common that is?

In our own tournament of 8 players everyone stayed around and watched the final 400-point game (and it was good close one). I arrived at Game headquarters at 9:30 AM and didn't leave the shop until about 9:30 PM.

Our game store did a 3-rounder on Sunday and once we hit 6PM and the 3 rounds were done, everyone but one guy wanted to go home (to wrap up the weekend and get ready for work on Monday). One of the top two guys couldn't agree on how to resolve it, so he and the other fellow each just played a 300 point game to figure out who got the ISD and who got the MC80. Making new lists and then replaying would take about 2.5-3 hours and nobody really wanted to spend that much more time on it.

You could have just rolled a dice, you know

Is it just me, or does it feel like when you build a list, you run out of points in a hurry. But then you see a similar build on an opponent, and it feels like somehow they have magical builds (that are close to yours) that feel like they added 20 more points on there? Hahah

I'm not suggesting cheating. Just want to say that.

I once saw that. I ran the math and found that he had gone seriously over. Fortunately (for him) I caught it before the tournament began, so that he could shed the points and still play without being disqualified. He then went on to win the tournament, forcing me to take second place. Dammit.

Guys, seriously...

The entire point of this thing is to play the final round so we can get some war stories of the new ships.

If this had been available to play in Australia we would have got a 16 player turn out in Newcastle alone.

All these stories of 4 or 6 people playing, sharing out the prizes and not even bothering to play the final round is pretty naff.

Sorry in advance if this offends anyone, just a perspective from down here in the neglected antipodes...

But play the final round and give us results and commentary!

Honestly after playing on Saturday for 7 hours straight, and then Sunday for 8 hours straight, that final game was painful haha. Fatigue had definitely set in, but it was fun nonetheless. Managed to pull 2nd place running Salvation, Yavaris, Jaina's Light and had 2 B wings, Wedge and Tycho. Took home the ISD. Great games!

On Saturday, we did the 3+1. I was pretty tired and cranky through that last round. I'm glad that we only did 3 rounds of Swiss on Sunday.

I have seen several people mention how, after a full day, people didn't want to stick around for the final game and so distributed the ships based on the regular tournament and then everyone went home. I wonder how common that is?

In our own tournament of 8 players everyone stayed around and watched the final 400-point game (and it was good close one). I arrived at Game headquarters at 9:30 AM and didn't leave the shop until about 9:30 PM.

For the Sunday tournament, we voted to do 3 rounds of Swiss and skip the last game (the store closed at 6pm). That way, more people got to play more games. I suppose we could have also broken to the top 2 after 2, and let 3, 4, and 5 go another round to decide the bottom 3 prizes.

I completely understood not hanging for the 400 point matchup on Friday... most places didn't start until 5/6pm. That's a real long night, and semi-unfair for the stores hosting to stay open until 1-2am to host something. Especially if they didn't make any money on it.

But Sat/Sun... that's pretty lame. I mean, if you had less than 8, there was no excuse not to cut to two rounds, and then force the 400pt game. In my case, multiple people had over an hour ride home, but it still would have been nice. Glad it happened on my Sunday tournament. It was nice to see them unboxed and on the table.

On the Saturday, it was just Lyraeus and myself fighting that last round. Everybody else had gone home. Thankfully, there were non-participants watching and getting to know about Armada. More thankfully still, Lyraeus was busy explaining things to them, so that he was distracted and I was not.

He was so cranky because I kept telling him that if I won he would walk home with the Home One.

He was so cranky because I kept telling him that if I won he would walk home with the Home One.

This is quite true.

I did not go it was sad no raider for me.

Played a Sullust today, 6 player tournament (it seems a lot of people wanted this size for better odds)

all 6 of us showed up with Empire today so it was a complete jousting slug-fest and down to the dice gods.

my list was: 298 points

VSD II w/ Admiral Screed, XI7 Turbolasers and Gunnery Team
Gladiator II w/ Assault Concussion Missiles x2

Tie Advanced Squadron x3
Contested Outpost
Minefields
Opening Salvo

round 1 was vs a 2 gladiator list with expanded launchers, screed, engine techs and one with demolisher and a massive 100 point rymerball (that was scary) came in at 298 points. he won the toss so chose to go second. i chose contested outpost from his list and opted to put it right in front of where i planned to deploy

unfortunately for my opponent he rushed in with his gladiators and fighters but he kind of had to because i slow rolled at speed one the whole game and got 3 rounds of contested outpost victory points, so i guess he had to do something. My tie advanced did exactly what they were supposed to do and took the damage away from my ships and in turn i punished his 2 gladiators in 2 rounds of exchanging fire 10-0 for my first game, and i was feeling pretty optimistic by this point being my first Armada tournament and my 5th 300 point game ever


round 2 was vs a near mirror match, a VSD II with screed, overload pulse and one other upgrade that has slipped my mind, 2 Gladiators with ACM, Engine techs and each with a glad title, and 2 tie fighter squadrons. also came in at 298 points and again i lost out on the toss so he opted to go second and left me with advanced gunnery, hyperspace assault and superior positions.. all of which were bad options for me but i figured i'd have the best chance with superior positions

after a few rounds of fire and no ships lost yet my opponent had a very tough decision to make, he either activates one of his gladiators or his VSD, either choice was hard because he was going to lose one of them. he chose to attack with his VSD and took out one of my wounded gladiators. after that he lost both his VSD and one of his gladiators with 1hp remaining with 0 shields. now he was in a precarious spot and had to take down my relatively healthy VSD with his one remaining Demolisher gladiator and did about 1 damage on my VSD with the first shot (not looking good) then got extremely lucky with his second attack and rolled 1 red and 4 blacks (concentrate fire) and managed to score 3 natural double black hits, a double red hit and a single black hit.. my VSD couldn't repell fire of that magnitude and went down

at the end of the game he had 1 glad and 1 tie squadron left, i had 1 glad and 2 squadrons (possibly 3 i can't remember) and i was just barely ahead in points by 4 points.. but then we had to tally the objective markers.. i managed to score 3, he scored 6 on me so he ended up winning 6-4. but because of my full 10-0 win last time it put me only 1 point behind him at 14 points to his 15 and he was currently in first

now the pairings for a 3rd round came up and both of us had to be paired down, he was paired up with 3rd place (whom was also close to us with 13 points so it was still potentially anyone's game) and i was paired up with 4th place

Round 3 was vs 1 VSD1, admiral screed, ACM and something i'm missing, Gladiator II with Demolisher and ACM and a rhymer ball with howlrunner, vader and mauler mithel (also 298 points but this time i won) he chose to go with Conested outpost

right off the bat i placed my ships at speed 2 (which i dislike) to get to that contested outpost by turn 2 or he would continue to take VP's all game. in just 1.5 rounds of fire i lost all of my squadrons and only managed to kill vader and one set of interceptors (really good anti squadron dice luck on his part). both of us had softened up ships at this point and he managed to kill a single one of my gladiators just as i punished his 2 softened up ships with both my side arcs (flew right between) and downed the VSD and brought his Glad to an inch of it's life. he responded to try and kill off my limping gladiator but failed to kill it with 1 hp remaining and had no way to ram it.. my VSD finished it off with a close range front arc and that was the end of that. i walked away with a 7-3 win bringing my total to 23 points, my round 2 opponent (whom was in 1st place) barely squeezed out a 5-5 loss but his points put him at 20 points and 3rd place remained in 3rd with 18 points

fortunately for me i end up placing 1st, and so i played as rebels in the final round and went with the cheap "Admiral Crackbar" kite list with 1 MC80, MC30, AF, Dash, 2 y wings and an A wing with Opening salvo, hyperspace assault and superior positions. i had the cheaper list so i opted for 2nd. my opponent (3rd place played for him because he had to leave for work) picked Opening Salvo. so as you might have guessed i spent the game at pretty much full speed running away from his ships and picking them off one by one (he chose a 4 ship list with one of each of the ships) starting with the Gladiator, then the raider and finally the ISD before he conceded the match because i hadn't lost anything but a single A wing squadron and it was pretty clear i had won

so i got to take home that beautiful ISD. and i look forward to the 400 point games

thanks for reading

TO'd (and played) a Massing yesterday in (my neighbour town) Sundsvall, Northern Sweden - 16 participants!

Quite amazing.

Probably the largest Armada tournament in Scandinavia so far. (Nordic Nationals had14 people.)

Had expected no more than 6, but so much people in that area just got into Armada and the Massing really got them to commit.

Since I was playing I didn't want to claim the fifth expansion for me, but instead the top 4 got to chose among the ships and then we split up the squadrons so 5th to 12th got to chose one squad each so that as many as possible got something extra for participation.

(Of course I ended up 5th, so due to my own idea I got only one squad instead of all 8! But since I already had 2 ISD's from last weekend i Stockholm I was totally happy to share the rouges.)

Good times, hope for more Armada events in my area now that so many gotten started!

Played a Sullust today, 6 player tournament (it seems a lot of people wanted this size for better odds)

all 6 of us showed up with Empire today so it was a complete jousting slug-fest and down to the dice gods.

my list was: 298 points

VSD II w/ Admiral Screed, XI7 Turbolasers and Gunnery Team

Gladiator II w/ Assault Concussion Missiles x2

Tie Advanced Squadron x3

Contested Outpost

Minefields

Opening Salvo

round 1 was vs a 2 gladiator list with expanded launchers, screed, engine techs and one with demolisher and a massive 100 point rymerball (that was scary) came in at 298 points. he won the toss so chose to go second. i chose contested outpost from his list and opted to put it right in front of where i planned to deploy

unfortunately for my opponent he rushed in with his gladiators and fighters but he kind of had to because i slow rolled at speed one the whole game and got 3 rounds of contested outpost victory points, so i guess he had to do something. My tie advanced did exactly what they were supposed to do and took the damage away from my ships and in turn i punished his 2 gladiators in 2 rounds of exchanging fire 10-0 for my first game, and i was feeling pretty optimistic by this point being my first Armada tournament and my 5th 300 point game ever

round 2 was vs a near mirror match, a VSD II with screed, overload pulse and one other upgrade that has slipped my mind, 2 Gladiators with ACM, Engine techs and each with a glad title, and 2 tie fighter squadrons. also came in at 298 points and again i lost out on the toss so he opted to go second and left me with advanced gunnery, hyperspace assault and superior positions.. all of which were bad options for me but i figured i'd have the best chance with superior positions

after a few rounds of fire and no ships lost yet my opponent had a very tough decision to make, he either activates one of his gladiators or his VSD, either choice was hard because he was going to lose one of them. he chose to attack with his VSD and took out one of my wounded gladiators. after that he lost both his VSD and one of his gladiators with 1hp remaining with 0 shields. now he was in a precarious spot and had to take down my relatively healthy VSD with his one remaining Demolisher gladiator and did about 1 damage on my VSD with the first shot (not looking good) then got extremely lucky with his second attack and rolled 1 red and 4 blacks (concentrate fire) and managed to score 3 natural double black hits, a double red hit and a single black hit.. my VSD couldn't repell fire of that magnitude and went down

at the end of the game he had 1 glad and 1 tie squadron left, i had 1 glad and 2 squadrons (possibly 3 i can't remember) and i was just barely ahead in points by 4 points.. but then we had to tally the objective markers.. i managed to score 3, he scored 6 on me so he ended up winning 6-4. but because of my full 10-0 win last time it put me only 1 point behind him at 14 points to his 15 and he was currently in first

now the pairings for a 3rd round came up and both of us had to be paired down, he was paired up with 3rd place (whom was also close to us with 13 points so it was still potentially anyone's game) and i was paired up with 4th place

Round 3 was vs 1 VSD1, admiral screed, ACM and something i'm missing, Gladiator II with Demolisher and ACM and a rhymer ball with howlrunner, vader and mauler mithel (also 298 points but this time i won) he chose to go with Conested outpost

right off the bat i placed my ships at speed 2 (which i dislike) to get to that contested outpost by turn 2 or he would continue to take VP's all game. in just 1.5 rounds of fire i lost all of my squadrons and only managed to kill vader and one set of interceptors (really good anti squadron dice luck on his part). both of us had softened up ships at this point and he managed to kill a single one of my gladiators just as i punished his 2 softened up ships with both my side arcs (flew right between) and downed the VSD and brought his Glad to an inch of it's life. he responded to try and kill off my limping gladiator but failed to kill it with 1 hp remaining and had no way to ram it.. my VSD finished it off with a close range front arc and that was the end of that. i walked away with a 7-3 win bringing my total to 23 points, my round 2 opponent (whom was in 1st place) barely squeezed out a 5-5 loss but his points put him at 20 points and 3rd place remained in 3rd with 18 points

fortunately for me i end up placing 1st, and so i played as rebels in the final round and went with the cheap "Admiral Crackbar" kite list with 1 MC80, MC30, AF, Dash, 2 y wings and an A wing with Opening salvo, hyperspace assault and superior positions. i had the cheaper list so i opted for 2nd. my opponent (3rd place played for him because he had to leave for work) picked Opening Salvo. so as you might have guessed i spent the game at pretty much full speed running away from his ships and picking them off one by one (he chose a 4 ship list with one of each of the ships) starting with the Gladiator, then the raider and finally the ISD before he conceded the match because i hadn't lost anything but a single A wing squadron and it was pretty clear i had won

so i got to take home that beautiful ISD. and i look forward to the 400 point games

thanks for reading

Sounds like you guys were playing Contested Outpost wrong, at least in game1. The 2nd player places the outpost, wh8ch makes contested outpost so nasty.

i'm pretty sure we played it right, perhaps i just got the order mixed up on who went first. (it was a long day) it seemed to be a popular mission for most of us and i know i had it, so i had it for 2 of my 3 empire games

He was so cranky because I kept telling him that if I won he would walk home with the Home One.

I find it rarely pays to upset the TO.

I know how to ship:

I know how to ship:

Circle 'em wagons!

I know how to ship:

Putting the powerful broadsides of those Neb-Bs to use against anyone that approaches, I see!

Actually, apologies for double-posting but seeing this thread pop up made me realised I'd never posted anything about my Sullust experiences!

Played in two events. On Saturday I was at Edinburgh Games Hub, and on Sunday went through to Common Ground in Stirling. Won't wall-of-text with the turn-by-turn, but I'll fire up a summary of the lists (assuming the notes I took were correct!) and the outcomes.

Took an adjustment to the Rebel list I'd been working on for the Saturday:

297 of 300 pts

Flagship: (112 pts)

• Assault Frigate Mark II B(72 pts)
• General Dodonna (20 pts)
• Ray Antilles (7 pts)
• Gunnery Team (7 pts)
• Advanced Projectors (6 pts)

• Nebulon-B Support Refit(51 pts)
• Salvation (7 pts)
• Intel Officer (7 pts)
• XI7 Turbolasers (6 pts)

• CR90 Corvette B(39 pts)
• Dodonna's Pride (6 pts)
• Veteran Captain (3 pts)

• CR90 Corvette A(44 pts)
• Jaina's Light (2 pts)

• 1x Luke Skywalker X-Wing Squadron (20 pts)

• Precision Strike
• Hyperspace Assault
• Dangerous Territory

Insidious, ACM, Engine, glad 2

Demolished, ACM, Engine, glad 1

VSD2, Motti, defence liaison

4 TIEs

I got 1st player and chose Intel sweep. Got a win of 7-3.

Game Two:

VSD2, Motti, Wulff, hangars, leading shot

VSD1, Intel, XI7, expanded launcher, Dominator

Rhymer

2 Bombers

2 Advanced

2nd player, he chose Precision Strikes, I won 7-3

Game Three:

AF2A, Mon Mothma

Neb Escort, Salvation

Corvette A

Corvette A

3 A-Wings

I was 1st player, chose Intel Sweep, won 10-0

That put me into first place (out of 8). Second place was the same guy I'd played in Game Three, so we were both OK with pulling the plug on the day there and skipping the 400pt game! And since 2nd place was another Rebel player I didn't feel so bad about taking the ISD as my prize.

Wanted to mix things up on the second day, so took a Rhymer build after borrowing a couple more squadrons from a friend.

Name: (297 of 300 pts)

Faction: The Empire

Flagship: (117 pts)

Victory I-Class Star Destroyer(73 pts)

Admiral Motti (24 pts)

Corrupter (5 pts)

Admiral Chiraneau (10 pts)

Expanded Hangar Bay (5 pts)

Fleet Ship 1: (89 pts)

Victory I-Class Star Destroyer(73 pts)

Warlord (8 pts)

H9 Turbolasers (8 pts)

Squadrons (91 of 99 pts):

1x Major Rhymer Tie Bomber Squadron (16 pts)

3x Tie Bomber Squadron (27 pts)

4x Tie Advanced Squadron (48 pts)

Objectives:

Advanced Gunnery

Contested Outpost

Superior Positions

Game One:

AF2b, Mon Mothma, Adar, enhanced

Cr90a

CR90a

Cr90b

Keyan

2 B-Wings

1st player, chose Hyperspace, got a win 6-4

Game Two:

CR90a, Mon Mothma, Ray, Tantive, ECM

CR90a, Enhanced Armament

CR90a, Enhanced Armamanet

CR90b, Dodonna's Pride, ECM,

CR90b, Jaina's Light, Overload Pulse

Was 2nd player, he picked Superior Positions, I won 9-1

Game Three:

VSD2, Screed, XI7

GSD1, ACM

GSD1, Wulff, ACM, Demolisher, Engine a tech

4 TIEs

This time I was 1st player, chose Superior Positions, got a win 10-0

That was enough to take 2nd place (out of 10), a single MOV point behind 1st!

We again dispensed with the 400pt game, almost everyone there had been at one of the two other Sullust events nearby the previous day and we were mentally exhausted. 1st place in this tournament had won an MC80 the previous day, and only played Rebels so opted for the MC30 as his prize. I already had my ISD so took the MC80 for second. That allowed third place to pick up the ISD, and as this was the same player I'd beat into second place the day before I was glad to see him get it.

He was so cranky because I kept telling him that if I won he would walk home with the Home One.

I find it rarely pays to upset the TO.

Part II.

New weekend, new Sullust, new ships.

After walking away with victory and a ISD after the first local Sullust I went to a second and smaller tournament Sunday. I had been on the verge of cancelling, as I was under the weather, but I also knew it was a very small event and that me not showing up would leave them at an odd number and even potentially cancelling the event due to being too few. So off I went, stopping to pick up some painkillers on the way. Right, so we were only four people, but the event was still on. Cannot thank the stores enough for investing in expensive tournament kits for these relatively new games, often at economic loss, to help stimulate the growth of the community.

I was bringing nearly the same list I had used the previous week in the larger Sullust event, having exchanged Chiraneau on my Victory in favour of adding a TIE Bomber to my list. I did this partly because I had barely used Chiraneau's ability in my entire last tournament, partly because I expected fewer squadrons at this second event, making Chiraneau less useful. Ironically that meant that expecting fewer squadrons made me increase my number of squadrons from 5 to 6. Right I was and in fact I had more squadrons than all my opponents' put together, my six versus their 3, 2, and zero squadron respectively. While it meant that I would go on to clear out their squadrons in a heartbeat in each match, it also meant that I was stuck with an unfortunate number of points locked in squadrons, half of them named, less usefull in hurting my opponents' ships. I had my work cut out for me, even if I'd be certain to win a ship merely by having participated (being only four of us).

1) I lost my first game 4-6 to two VSDI / one Gladiator (+ three TIE fighter squadrons). I took out the squadrons and the gladiator fairly early and had a comfortable lead, when my own VSDII suddenly evaporated in the last round. The surprise made more sense when we later realised that we had played my opponent's Admiral Screed wrong throughout the game. Rather than only using it on one attack per activation and paying a die to turn another to a crit, it was used on every attack and without paying the die (the more damage as a lot of black dice were rolled, increasing the damage output from Screed). To my defense I had a headache and I had never flown with or against Screed - and my opponent, always a good company that I've often met at X-Wing tournaments, had not played that many Armada games before. In hindsigt I might not have played this as poorly as I felt at first, but Screed had made the difference that had both forced my Gladiator to retreat from the arena to avoid destruction as well as in killing my VSD in very few attacks.

2) Nevertheless, my problem was that I was already behind and I knew that I would face a very challenging opponent next. I've seen this list from afar at league nights and tournaments, where it's been rolling through most oppponents, without ever facing it myself. On one hand relieved that I had dodged it so far, on another in trouble because it meant I had yet to build experience on how to handle it. Across from me three VSDII with Intel Officers and Admiral Motti were fielding. My opponent was First Player and picked Superior Positions from amongst my objectives. My game plan was to focus fire on one of his Victories, being prepared to lose my Gladiator in the process, if needed, earning crucial extra points from the objective. He flew his VSDs in a close formation and I knew that my Gladiator had to pass through some firing arcs to make it in behind the enemy Victories, made more difficult by my opponent being first player and having one more ship than me. My main concern was what to do with my own Victory. I'd rather not meet the enemy triplets headon too early, as I needed to stay alive, but on the other hand I also could not hold back for too long or I would not be able to present an alternate threat to that of my Gladiator, which might allow one or more of the triplets to swing to catch and kill my Gladiator in their port arcs before it got to deliver its payload on the Victory I had pegged for destruction. All in all I managed to strip most of the shields off the targeted Victory and to pile in six damage cards (of the no less than 10 needed because of Admiral Motti), by a combined fire of my Gladiator on close range on his aft, my VSD at long range on his fore and all my six squadrons harrowing his flanks and aft. Ironically my one TIE bomber never managed to land a hit - much less a critical from the Bomber keyword - while all my figthers consistently made neddle pin hits. Next round and it all basically comes down to one die roll as he activated his limping VSD first while it still lives. He has a single unmodified shot from his aft onto the fore of my Gladiator, needing three hits with his two red dice to kill me off before I get to activate the Gladiator and finish off his VSD. Unfortunately it is a bull's eye and it looses me the battle then and there, my VSD dying the following round as it now has to contend with all the triplets having survived and firing at it front and center and with both my ships down the game is over immediately before we get to the squadron phase of that 6th round and the yet small chance that my squadrons might finish off the wounded enemy Victory. I had, however, landed a lot of hits on the rear of my enemy, collecting seven or eight VP tokens, which saves me from the utter humilation of a 10-0, instead making it a 9-1.

3) Desperate times having only scored 5 tournament points and with only one game to go, while being far behind the others at 10, 11, and 13 points respectively. Luckily, though, my headache had abated by this time and I was itching for one last epic and desperate push of the day. Across from me were one Assault Frigate and no less than four corvettes under the leadership of Mon Motha (and two A-Wing squadrons). I have the choice and leave the First Player to my opponent, more worried about action economy than being first against a horde of corvettes - reasoning that a single corvette acting first every round won't be able to hurt me that much, considering their limited firepower. My opponent picks Superior Positions from my objective deck, a very reasonable choice for someone with a majority of fast and agile ships. However, I manage to cover the rear of my VSD well and my Gladiator tears through one corvette after another on the other flank, often with my squadrons finishing off those that manage to limp past my picket line. My Gladiator does go down in one desperate long range shot from the enemy Assault Frigate, which in turn could have been a close range barrage on my VSD, which fortunately means that my VSD never gets endangered, albeit at the price of loosing my Gladiator. Final result is 3 dead corvettes and one holding on to its last hulls after making it to the Space Station (surrounded by my squadrons). More importantly though, my horde of squadrons having been busy stinging at the rear of all those corvettes has earned me no less than eight victory tokens, bringing me to a comfortable 8-2 victory. Interestingly his majority of ships, that could potentially outflank me, instead became a weakness as it gave me many more rear hulls to shoot at each round. More importantly my MoV, primarly generated by the 120 points from the objective tokens, becomes a tiebreaker in the final results so that I managed to squeeze in on a second place out of the four of us, despite my poor results in the first two matches.

I walk away with Home One - and a Raider actually as the store owner sold it to me afterwards, not playing the game himself - and with a wetted appetite for playing more Star Wars Armada. Unfortunately we were meant to have a third fourth Sullust event in a third nearby store this coming Saturday, but that one has since been cancelled due to the lack of players (and here I was hoping to gun for the Rogue and Villains squadron pack).

I know how to ship:

Circle 'em wagons!

I'm not exactly sure what needs to transpire during a game for ship #2 to have turned all the way around while two other Nebs are running parallel and the final one seems to be moving towards the enemy, but if this really did happen during a game that's a great example of how you can give the opponent shots on Shield 1 arcs from literally anywhere on the table.

I'm very curious about what their speeds are at - and what a tractor beam could do to mess those circling waggons up

Tale from a New Player:

I want to start off my story with sort of a new player warning attached to it, but we all started off at some point right?

This was my very first non 40k event and first Aramada event. I built a very upgrade heavy imperial fleet (later found out that it was a rare thing). There was a total of 10 players in this event. We did three rounds then finals. Each round was max of 2 and a half hours. I forget the actual upgrades but I roughly ran the following:

Tarkin Fleet leader

VSD-II

Full upgrades taken

GSD - II

Few upgrades

Demo

Mauler mithel

2 tie fighters

Soontir

1 tie interceptor

The first game I played was against another imperial player with 2 VSD-2s, two tie fighters and 6 tie bombers. I did my best to hunt the bombers but they did their job really well because he had the tie bomber named with the group. In short I got tabled and losted 0 -10.

The second round I faced a rebel player that had three corvettes, a AFM2, tyco, and 2 y wings. The list was designed for Dodonna and crits. The only issue is he wasn't rolling crits, it worked out really well for me. He ran one corvette into the GSD head on. The poor corvette was vaporized. I then surrounded his AFM2 with fighters, and my VSD while the GSD went around to the back. I was able to take out that ship but by then it was the end of the game. I ended up winning 7-3.

The finally round (for me) was against another rebel player. He was using 2 AFM-2, and 3 corvettes, and no fighters. I started off well focused fired on one of the AFM2s down to one remaining hull point. He then used the other AFM2 to ram me and keep me away from that ship which limped off repairing itself the rest of the game. The corvettes took turns picking my VSD apart from afar, while my GSD tried to case down the almost dead AFM2. I ended up loosing my VSD from ramming and being shot from all directions. In the end I was never able to completely kill any ship. I lost that game 3-7.

Sorry I wasn't as detailed as other stories I was trying to remember the day from a few weeks ago.

I didn't make the finals which was sad because by the third round the wave 2 ships were out for viewing. Everyone got very excited and distracted. Even though I lost I had a great time, and it helped me really locked down some of the rules I was confused about. Meet some really cool folks and got to drool on wave 2 a little bit. Now I must wait for the full release sadly since the SF bay area only held one weekend event at three stores. I was advised there will be one more event for my store upon release day.

Ok, so the circle of wagons happened turn 4. One ships is going speed 2 and the other three are going speed 3.

How it happened I really can't say because I was flying in a line for a turn or 2 and then having to dodge 3 Vics, a couple of astroids and some wreckage. Number 2 on screen was a fresh Neb while the other 3 were wounded pretty badly but had full rear shields so pretty much he was acting as bait/obstruction.

And if you are wondering this happened the last match of the day and won me my MC80 (Mainly because Yavaris and 3 B-wings ate ships alive and some bad squadron mistakes from my oppenents). Who says you can't circle Nebs. Fear their broadsides.

It's not glamorous or a great combat story but due to many other stores in the area hosting Friday and Saturday our tournament on Sunday only had 3 people show up. We waited for a fourth and made a few calls. After about 45 mins we talked about ships and just divided them amongst ourselves and then played a 3 fleet furball using 400 pt fleets and the new ships. My Mc80 died a glorious death taking three ships out in its final 2 turns. Everyone left happy.

1) I lost my first game 4-6 to two VSDI / one Gladiator (+ three TIE fighter squadrons). I took out the squadrons and the gladiator fairly early and had a comfortable lead, when my own VSDII suddenly evaporated in the last round. The surprise made more sense when we later realised that we had played my opponent's Admiral Screed wrong throughout the game. Rather than only using it on one attack per activation and paying a die to turn another to a crit, it was used on every attack and without paying the die (the more damage as a lot of black dice were rolled, increasing the damage output from Screed).

I lost the second match against the Rebel player 4-6. We had the objective that gave half points for each ship with at least one damage card, and I had exactly one on one of my VSDs... I was also struggling with the corvettes that circled my formation.

The third game was a 1-9 loss for me. I chose Contested Outpost as objective and never realised that it scored every turn instead of at the end of the game, which cost me 80 points. Our formations flew straight at each other and I took down two VSDs, but lost my whole fleet.

I came last with my 11 points, and given the choice between the Raider and the Rogues & Villains, I went with the latter (painting in progress). It was a great event with three good games and patient opponents despite my inexperience with the game. I learned a lot and look forward to playing more games. I definitely want to try flying with more squadrons since that is such an iconic part of Star Wars space battles, and the Rogues & Villains are a great addition here.

Thought I would share my experience at Sullust.

We had originally only about 6 people, but a lot showed up towards the end of registration and it bumped up to 9, meaning one sorry soul got the bye. I had expected the turnout was going to be mostly Rebels, most likely Double Assault Frigate with B-Wings, Assault Frigate and Yavaris with B-Wings or, well, you know, things with B-Wings. Due to this, I decided against bringing Rebels and instead fielded an Imperial force:

(296 of 300 pts)
Flagship: (133 pts)

• Victory II-Class Star Destroyer(85 pts)
• Grand Moff Tarkin (38 pts)
• Enhanced Armament (10 pts)

Fleet Ship 1: (88 pts)

• Victory I-Class Star Destroyer(73 pts)
• Corrupter (5 pts)
• Admiral Chiraneau (10 pts)

Squadrons (75 of 99 pts):

• 1x Major Rhymer Tie Bomber Squadron (16 pts)
• 3x Tie Bomber Squadron (27 pts)
• 4x Tie Fighter Squadron (32 pts)

Objectives:

• Precision Strike
• Hyperspace Assault
• Superior Positions

(Thanks, SWAFT)

I did make one mistake in the list building, I forgot to include Expanded Hangers on Chiraneau's ship. I was a little puzzled why I had room for the 4th TIE Fighter, but the tournament was starting in something like 5 minutes so I wrote it off as a math error instead of double checking. It did make a difference in the tournament - needing to Tarkin up a Squadron token on a lot of turns I would have preferred otherwise just to get that 4th Bomber into the mix. The marginal benefit of the 4th TIE Fighter over the 3rd was very, very small.

Well, it turns out that we had only 3 Rebels out of the lot. That ended up working in my favor anyways, as the only squadrons I worry about are in fact B-Wings.

First match:

Faced off against an admittedly relatively new player. He brought a Victory I, a Gladiator I (Insidious), and something like 8 squadrons including a psuedo Rhymer ball of Rhymer and Darth Vader. We both exchanged remarks regarding our surprise at seeing other Imperial players with squadrons. I went first and chose Most Wanted out of his list. He chose Tarkin's ship, of course, and his Victory I (also Tarkin, a bit of a tactical mistake on his part I believe, but he probably thought the Gladiator was most likely to die and give up those extra points easily).

I forget how set up went exactly, but it was largely unimportant. I put my VSD's down next to each other and fanned my squadrons out to avoid overlaps. He placed opposite me, with the GSD set to flank (surprise...). Due to wanting to take out his marked flagship ASAP, I went in quick hoping to get all that sweet extra dice before the GSD could properly flank. I let a few of his TIE Fighters jump on my Bombers because I had Chiraneau but, due to an estimation error on my part, I wasn't in range to follow up the turn after engaging. I lost one round of Bomber shots when the squadron engagement began on Turn 2. However, on Turn 3 Chiraneau let loose the Bombers from the furball, with my TIE Fighters keeping his stuck in.

He destroyed all my TIE Fighters, at the cost of his VSD. The GSD went quickly after. Tabled. Both my VSDs suffered heavy damage, but survived. I had 85 extra points from Most Wanted alone.

I explained to him the benefit of Demolisher + ACM over Insidious + Expanded Launchers and how he likely would have taken that game to a 6-4 or even an actual win for him, given the damage on both of my ships.

10-0 Victory.

Second Match:

I faced the other 10-0 player, who brought an Imperial list with 1 VSD, 2 GSDs, and a token couple of filler TIE Fighters. He ran Admiral Screed and of course ACMs on both GSDs, one being Demolisher. The VSD, I believe, was running Overload Pulse. He went first and chose Superior Positions from my list.

Since I had to set up blind, I just placed the VSDs next to each other with a 2 TIE Fighter/ 2 TIE Bomber fan on each side. He placed his VSD across mine, next to his regular GSD, with Demolisher off to the side. I slow-rolled and positioned myself between asteroids as to make his GSDs at least somewhat uncomfortable while flanking. The starport was closer to his side of the field so I didn't want to give him that advantage, either.

I was originally going to send the Bombers on Demolisher hunt duty, but decided that, since my VSDs were not moving towards it, I would just be leaving them out to dry without Squadron Command support. I changed targeting priorities and on Turn 3, Rhymer and the gang sprung into action, launching 4 successful attacks against the rear of his VSD. Through redirects and natural shielding, I only managed to land 1 Damage card on it. However, they hounded the VSD without the need for Squadron Command support for the next 2 turns. One of my Bombers landed a particularly potent critical, Crew Panic, on the turn he had an Engineering command queued. It was just 1 damage (Basically just a Structural Damage by a different name), but of course my opponent made it sound like the end of the world.

I took Screed out quickly, and in return had the Corrupter sitting with zero shields, but no Damage cards. Tarkin's ship had, I think, 2 Hull remaining and only a couple shields. ACMs do what ACMs do, of course. One of the GSDs had Damage cards already, and another had no shields in the important zones. At this point, I noticed that Tarkin was not going to survive if he did not activate first. I also noticed that the Demolisher was able to attack the Corrupter, but only after moving. Since Corrupter had 8 Hull left, and Screed was dead (No guaranteed ACM effect), I elected to move Tarkin. An underwhelming roll left the GSD functional, which would spell Tarkin's demise later that round. The Demolisher activated, and in one attack managed to actually deal 8 damage the Corrupter. I was pretty shocked, but that was one less round of rear-zone fire from Rhymer's wing and, since Tarkin went down immediately after, I was officially tabled.

Due to Superior Positions, I had racked up 7 Victory Tokens totaling 105 points. Despite only downing one ship and being tabled, I had managed to push the MOV down to a 3-7 loss (may have been a borderline 2-8, but I believe it was 3-7). Pretty good all things considered.

Only click on the spoiler if you feel like reading about a possible sportsmanship issue.

Third Match:

I faced the person who had the first round bye. Since he had essentially 2 less hours of mentally fatiguing game time than myself, I was a bit worried. I had lunch after the last round, though, so I had a chance to cool down a bit. He brought an Imperial list as well, with one VSD, GSD (Demolisher), and a squadron mix of TIE Fighters, Interceptors, and Soontir Fel. It seemed he was anticipating heavy squadron presence. Well, he got his wish. He chose Superior Positions as well, assumedly he felt that he could lock down and neutralize my Bombers easily enough that the Victory Tokens would only benefit his dodgy Demolisher.

I deployed in the same way as the previous round due to deploying blindly, putting as many asteroids on one flank as possible. I slowrolled as slow as I possibly could, twisting and turning my VSDs with Navigate my commands to keep their bearing as unpredictable as I could. If Demolisher wanted those rear hull shots, he was going to have to gamble with that front arc. In addition, I wanted to clear out as many of his squadrons as possible before engaging.

Well, despite him "falling into my trap" and allowing me to jump and destroy several Interceptors, which had zoomed far ahead of his regular TIEs, Soontir Fel ended up destroying all 4 of my TIE Fighters without suffering a single damage. Once I had lost space superiority, I shifted gears and pushed all the VSDs into Speed 2. Despite being jumped on every turn, Chiraneau + Corrupter sent my Bombers every round to attack a different ship's rear hull zone. Bombers are tanky enough that the few attacks which landed on them (Mostly my opponent was moving his squadrons in the squadron phase) didn't phase them.

As the typical game tends to go, his VSD approached mine head on, and one GSD was on my flank closing in. I was barreling ahead so fast I actually moved past his VSD. I wanted to reach the starport and also give his Demolisher less space to navigate. I lost the Corrupter, though Rhymer and pals were in a decent enough spots that Tarkin's ship could command them effectively, and I only lost one Bomber despite losing Chiraneau. On the final round of the game, we had a situation like this:

+++++++++++++++   T=Tarkin (Mine)
+++++++++++++++   S=Starport
+^+++++++++++++   V=VSD
+T+++SV++++++++   G=GSD
++++++v+++^++++
++++++++++G++++   <,>,^,v = Heading of ships
+++++++++++++++

He merely needed to activate the VSD, shoot at Tarkin (through an obstacle), then move forward, and then his GSD (Demolisher) would have been able to fly up to the starport, trigger enginer techs, then fire and have a decent chance of finishing off Tarkin and tabling me. It was a really good position to be in, and a pretty good plan. The punch line is that in the squadron phase immediately preceding this round, one of my Bombers landed a Comm Noise critical, where I dropped his speed to 0. Sure, he got to activate and repair the card immediately, but without a Navigate Command on his dial, he couldn't go anywhere. The GSD could not get in range of Tarkin due to overlaps, and the squadron phase saw his Speed 0 VSD fall to Rhymer.

I had racked up 10 Victory Tokens for 150 points. Despite losing half my ships, and most of my squadrons, only taking down one of my opponent's ships, the Victory Tokens granted me a 9-1 Victory.

Final Placement: The one opponent who beat me also tabled his final round opponent. This was the best situation for me, as it turns out. He had 27 Tournament points, minus 3 from me, thankyouverymuch! If he had lost, it would mean there were two opponents with low 20's Tourny points for me to beat. With the win, it meant that only he and I had over 20 points. So he took first, and I took second. My final round opponent took third.

We skipped the Sullust round, as it was already late. I kind of wanted to play the final round, especially after my opponent made some remarks about how he would choose Empire and how, being a primarily Imperial player, he would have the advantage. However, since I preordered all the Wave 2 ships already, I didn't particularly care whether I got an extra ISD or MC80. I asked the tournament participants if any of them were interested in seeing a final Sullust showdown, but most of them wanted to go home. Suited me well enough, and I took home an MC80.

Overall, it was fun. My last round was incredibly tense, resulting in a lot of very long rounds (We went to time). In Armada, unlike X-Wing, this is a sign of a good game I feel. IMO, In X-Wing, the Planning phase is where all the long, hard thinking occurs, so when the actual Combat phase is taking a long time, it's usually a slow player. Whereas in Armada, there is so much more back and forth reacting that a long round is usually an indication of good competition, as each player really has to think over the repercussions of their actions.

If anyone is interested in what lists placed where:

First: VSD, GSD, GSD, token Tie Fighter filler.

Second: My list, shown above.

Third: VSD, GSD, Soontir Fel, Interceptors, TIE Fighters.

Fourth: All Nebulon-B list, with Yavaris and B-Wings.

My thoughts on the Squadrons vs All Ships thing: Despite constantly arguing against squadrons here on the forums, I still like to play with them. I consider myself to be an above average player with an ability to leverage them. However, I spoke with each of my opponents after the games about squadrons performance. We mostly had to conclude that having my opponents choose Superior Positions was a huge factor leading to my victories (100+ Victory Points on both games). And I did feel that my Bombers' worth was mostly as a VP generators than anything that actually affected the battle. In both games with Superior Positions, I generally felt that having a GSD to chase down wounded ships would have resulted in tabling my opponent rather than simply getting a bunch of VPs. In the round I lost, it was nice that they racked up so many VPs that I turned a normally 0-10 table result into a 3-7, but if I had opted for a Demolisher instead of the Rhymer ball, that match might have gone on longer. Heck, I might have ambushed his Demolisher with mine and destroyed it.

Wave 2 is out soon, and I will certainly try out all the new Squadron game-changers, but if I had to go to another tournament before then, I would expect that no one's going to be picking Superior Positions and probably just take another ship with a couple TIE Fighters to lock down any troublesome-looking squadrons of my opponents.