Deployment is certainly important and can most certainly lose you the game.

But I also know that dice can as well. I lost 2 games at Sullust due to improbably bad dice rolls. One game 6 black dice rolling back to back blanks at one target with no shields and 1 hull left, and the same thing happened with 4 blacks at another ship. Both were my opponents respective command ships, both would have won me the game if destroyed but left the points in my opponents favor alive.

I change my attitude a little...

I don't lose in Deployment. The game is not lost there. If the game is lost, the game is lost by my inability to adapt my battle plan to the Enemy. Which, as I was taught in my RAAF college days, a first class Military sin.

One thing I really like about Armada as a tournament game, is the MoV system rather than the straight Win/Loss... My battle plans, right from the start, must preserve as much of my force as possible.... It makes me really consider how I am going to do things from the get go, and have multiple layers of plans - from try to push ahead, to break away, to playing for a draw, to going for the throat.

I severely dislike the very idea that you can Deploy, and then look at your opponent and go "You win."... That takes the fun out of the game, as quite often (but not always) a player in the Underdog position plays the game resigned to their defeat, and its not a fun game...

So I always believe an adaptable plan, played out with maneouver and dice, will recover from even a bad deployment.

I agree with Skyshuffler but would add that the addition of large ships with large dice pools (and therefore a broader bell curve of possible results) will definitely make some people feel like the game is all about dice. They're wrong, of course, but you'll hear it. You'll also hear me sobbing, if you listen carefully, the first time I roll that 3 or 4 damage on eight ISD dice.

Leading Shots for 4 points. Won't happen... well, probably not.

Never say never.

Ultimately there are things you can and cannot control. There are always choices you make during the whole game.

I love this game because it's on you more often than dice alone. I've been burnt on dice, but never gave the game away because of dice alone.

I find knowing what my fleet can do and how I can move it in the first and second turn is vital, I set up to maximize what I can do and do not set up to react to my opponent.

Make your opponent react by knowing at least 3 or 4 different opening gambits from 2-3 possible set ups with the same fleet.

Dice play a part in this game, but movement and co-ordination is everything.

To play devils advocate. Bad placement can be made up, because outside of the worst placement ever, you should be able to correct or adapt. Bad dice can take you straight out of a game and out of your strategy and rhythm. If you're flying a squad list, and you can't land a hit, well that's pretty much worthless. Or if you're rolling low damage on Adv. Proj. You might as well just quit, because you'll never be able to take a ship out. No amount of good placement will save you from bad dice for you, or on the other side Great dice against you.

To play devils advocate. Bad placement can be made up, because outside of the worst placement ever, you should be able to correct or adapt. Bad dice can take you straight out of a game and out of your strategy and rhythm. If you're flying a squad list, and you can't land a hit, well that's pretty much worthless. Or if you're rolling low damage on Adv. Proj. You might as well just quit, because you'll never be able to take a ship out. No amount of good placement will save you from bad dice for you, or on the other side Great dice against you.

I have to disagree with you on virtually all points.

Bad placement can be made up for to a very narrow degree and with a very specific subset of maneuverable ships. Bad placement with a slow-roller like, say, the Victory class star destroyer many times simply *cannot* be made up for. You can find yourself in a situation where you are woefully outmaneuvered and simply never get the chance to fire back no matter how clever you are with your maximum of two yaw clicks.

Following onto that, bad dice simply do not have the impact on this game that you're making out. Dice go cold, but if you're playing the game well that shouldn't make or break anything for you outside of a statistically negligible chance of rolling nothing but blanks and accuracies for six turns.

Good placement very much *will* save you from bad dice rolls, since good placement involves having as many of your arcs on the greatest number of weakly defended arcs at any given time, while simultaneously limiting the opponents availability of return shots.

This is one of the largest, most glaringly wonderful features that I absolutely LOVE about Armada. Dice going hot/cold simply do not decide matches. They influence gameplay, no doubt, but they do not make or break a strategy.

I've had dice go unbelievably cold, rolling multiple handfuls of 5+ black dice and having NOTHING but blanks, and saved the game with good positioning and playing to the objective. Maybe you won't win by a huge margin, but you shouldn't lose if your plan was sound in the first place.

Setup may not win you the game, but it can sure as hell lose it for you.

Thus far, this is the best answer that I've read in this thread.

It seems like the Anna Karenina principle applies to playing Armada. There are lots of ways in which you can lose a match of Armada. Winning the game is about doing less of the things that will induce your loss than your opponent. Screwing up your deployment is a very likely way to lose the game.

In both X-Wing and Armada I have a hard time taking seriously those people who consider the games too dice-dependent. Sure, sometimes the dice will lose the game for you; that's certainly happened to me in X-Wing, but I've also played a LOT of games of X-Wing. It is bound to happen, but it's the outlier case and doesn't generally characterize the game at all.

Comparatively, I'm not convinced (as Norsehound and Lyraeus are) that X-Wing is more about dice than Armada is. I am, however, convinced that deployment is much more of a factor in Armada than it is in X-Wing. In Armada your earlier decisions weigh a lot more than your later decisions do. In X-Wing, that is less the case. In X-Wing, you still should think ahead for sure, but it's not as imperative as in Armada.

At the same time, I don't spend too much time agonizing about deployment or even mission selection. Sure, when we deploy, I have some vague plan, but I'm not going to tax my brain cells too much considering all the different ways in which a deployment can play out. One can still unleash surprises (and have surprises unleashed upon you) later in the game.

One thing we can all agree on (whether you realized it before reading this or not) is that bemoaning dice in a loss is one of the most despicable crimes you can commit in gaming. The implication is always that "I would have beaten you had it not been for those bad rolls" and that's another way of saying "you're not good enough to beat me unless the dice fail me".

No one here was alluding to this at all, so don't read into that statement! Every beating I've received in armada was completely earned by my opponents!

One thing we can all agree on (whether you realized it before reading this or not) is that bemoaning dice in a loss is one of the most despicable crimes you can commit in gaming. The implication is always that "I would have beaten you had it not been for those bad rolls" and that's another way of saying "you're not good enough to beat me unless the dice fail me".

No one here was alluding to this at all, so don't read into that statement! Every beating I've received in armada was completely earned by my opponents!

I totally agree that bemoaning the dice is bad sportsmanship. But, c'mon, I'm sure we've all had games in which our dice went seriously awry. We've probably also had games in which our opponents' dice did the same. It balances (unless you really do believe that your dice hate you).

A good sportsman won't mention it, or at most just laugh it off and graciously congratulate his opponent on a win.

Also, I would have you know that I do devote a lot of time and attention to appeasing the Dark Side, and that pays off in dice rolls. So, in my view: Dark Side > Deployment.

One thing we can all agree on (whether you realized it before reading this or not) is that bemoaning dice in a loss is one of the most despicable crimes you can commit in gaming. The implication is always that "I would have beaten you had it not been for those bad rolls" and that's another way of saying "you're not good enough to beat me unless the dice fail me".

No one here was alluding to this at all, so don't read into that statement! Every beating I've received in armada was completely earned by my opponents!

I totally agree that bemoaning the dice is bad sportsmanship. But, c'mon, I'm sure we've all had games in which our dice went seriously awry. We've probably also had games in which our opponents' dice did the same. It balances (unless you really do believe that your dice hate you).

A good sportsman won't mention it, or at most just laugh it off and graciously congratulate his opponent on a win.

Also, I would have you know that I do devote a lot of time and attention to appeasing the Dark Side, and that pays off in dice rolls. So, in my view: Dark Side > Deployment.

I just get new dice and make them watch as I melt down the old ones.

Hmm, I guess I'm a bit of a cynic

pre-emptive tl;dr: just because Armada games can be won or lost in the deployment phase, doesn't mandate that they will be. There are lots of factors.

I'll make a few generalizations first if you don't mind. In most wargames I've played, deployment against an equally skilled individual means you can often determine who is going to win. You might not be able to tell the margins, but if you bungle deployment, that's often 'it'. All the optimism and underdog sunshine stories aren't going to make certain units pull off impossible victories. IE: don't expect to successfully climb Everest barefoot.

Dice rolls can win or lose a game. It happens. But most people don't need it pointed out, it'll almost certainly come up in any post-game discussion if it was that obvious. I mean, has anyone else suffered a first turn route in a wargame? Just me? (Ah, once upon a time, when a cannon took the head off my general on the first shot of the game, and seven subsequent panic tests were all failed, leading to my army fleeing the field... glorious memories). Some times you will just get that 1:1,000 roll. In fact, they often seem to roll that a little more than would seem possible, for better or for worse.

You can give yourself an almost impossible up-hill battle if you have already lost the strategy and tactical sides of the battle (who watched the top table round 5 game at worlds and cringed by the end of set up?). With the 'swing' builds trying to win big or lose big, this sort of thing happens more frequently because it's not really diligently working to reduce risk management. Lyraeus got it right, mitigating the ways in which the game can go wrong, often is a good start to ensuring victory. That means everything from list building, to deployment, to positional factors each matter.

But with Armada, the whole thing is almost a tribute to the elegance in which the game has been handled and designed. Nearly all of those unilateral 'swings' beyond your control that happens in other games can be managed. Wild dice swings happen, defences even things out. Hordes of scary ships with no upgrades trying to chew on your fleet, pick an objective that works for you. Damage dealer dice coming up blank, that's why the tokens are there. Min-maxed super-ship lists bullying your friends, take some fighters to out-deploy them. Armada far more often than not, requires multiple player induced failings in order for the match to be unilaterally decided. It's more complex than a simple 'rock paper scissors' methodology unless you're actively looking to pursue a 'scissor' fleet. That's your call. Like the the grand Moff said, every single win my opponents have wrangled out of me, was well deserved. I mean, it is a dice game, it's going to tip the scales a bit, but few things are sure in Armada.

Do you know what I do like in 'tournament' Armada? The 'oh I lost, this is pointless' resignation gives you a 0-10 loss. If you're unwilling to try, you deserve it. This is still a dice and chance game; weird things can happen and a plethora of unexpected events can lead to some extremely unlikely outcomes. Nothing is set in stone.

Oh, -ahem-, I guess I should say what I do think it actually a critical factor in tipping the scales: playing and practicing the game. Familiarity, sorting through contingencies, establishing workable formations, practicing deployments and distances, recognizing your natural tendencies, and making sound judgements are all honed by being on the field, not just shuffling lists and theorizing.

I totally agree that bemoaning the dice is bad sportsmanship. But, c'mon, I'm sure we've all had games in which our dice went seriously awry. We've probably also had games in which our opponents' dice did the same. It balances (unless you really do believe that your dice hate you).

A good sportsman won't mention it, or at most just laugh it off and graciously congratulate his opponent on a win.

Also, I would have you know that I do devote a lot of time and attention to appeasing the Dark Side, and that pays off in dice rolls. So, in my view: Dark Side > Deployment.

I find that the most often I talk about dice is when an opponent is the victim of bad dice in his rolls, or if I get off an absolutely murderous salvo. Then it is conciliatory - "It wouldn't have gone as badly if..." If I lost, I'm definitely stopping to think why my ships were in a spot to get a murder-salvo tossed at me, and not how nasty the roll was for that salvo. Sometimes it is because it was a gamble. Sometimes, I just plain screwed up.

Against equally matched top-tier opponents that have both figured out the other's optimal strategy, dice is absolutely the deciding factor. In most other situations though, the winner will be the player that out-thought the other, and the biggest place you can gain that advantage is in objective selection, obstacle placement, and ship deployment, with maneuvering and shot selection during the rounds important as well.

Vykes has the right of it. Many of my games against Mikael have been losses because I deployed wrong.

Getting a ship into the fight when it is placed wrong can open it up to many a ways for it to die a horrid death,

One thing we can all agree on (whether you realized it before reading this or not) is that bemoaning dice in a loss is one of the most despicable crimes you can commit in gaming. The implication is always that "I would have beaten you had it not been for those bad rolls" and that's another way of saying "you're not good enough to beat me unless the dice fail me".

No one here was alluding to this at all, so don't read into that statement! Every beating I've received in armada was completely earned by my opponents!

I totally agree that bemoaning the dice is bad sportsmanship. But, c'mon, I'm sure we've all had games in which our dice went seriously awry. We've probably also had games in which our opponents' dice did the same. It balances (unless you really do believe that your dice hate you).

A good sportsman won't mention it, or at most just laugh it off and graciously congratulate his opponent on a win.

Also, I would have you know that I do devote a lot of time and attention to appeasing the Dark Side, and that pays off in dice rolls. So, in my view: Dark Side > Deployment.

Coincidentally, Home One, Screed, TRCs, Ordnance Experts, Leading Shots, are all examples of upgrades to skew dice rolls.

One thing we can all agree on (whether you realized it before reading this or not) is that bemoaning dice in a loss is one of the most despicable crimes you can commit in gaming. The implication is always that "I would have beaten you had it not been for those bad rolls" and that's another way of saying "you're not good enough to beat me unless the dice fail me".

No one here was alluding to this at all, so don't read into that statement! Every beating I've received in armada was completely earned by my opponents!

I totally agree that bemoaning the dice is bad sportsmanship. But, c'mon, I'm sure we've all had games in which our dice went seriously awry. We've probably also had games in which our opponents' dice did the same. It balances (unless you really do believe that your dice hate you).

A good sportsman won't mention it, or at most just laugh it off and graciously congratulate his opponent on a win.

Also, I would have you know that I do devote a lot of time and attention to appeasing the Dark Side, and that pays off in dice rolls. So, in my view: Dark Side > Deployment.

Coincidentally, Home One, Screed, TRCs, Ordnance Experts, Leading Shots, are all examples of upgrades to skew dice rolls.

In armada dice rolls have less of an effect than in many other tabletop wargames. For example in Warhammer when 2 units engage you have to first roll a bunch of dice to hit, then to wound, then the opposing side may make saves, then gets to counter attack using the same sequence. I.e. everything is dependent on dice rolling and there are almost no auto hits. A roll of 1 always fails and a 6 always succeeds. In such games it is very possible to lose the match due to bad rolls vs good rolls.

In Armada this is much less so as there are many ways to guarantee hits or reroll misses. Additionally you only roll once, with defenses etc not involving any dice rolls. It's still possible to lose a match due to bad rolls, but then the match would most likely have been lost anyway or at best be a tiebreaker. Deployment is much more important in armada, but I wouldn't go as far to say that the match is won during deployment though. Again using Warhammer as an example: if you deployed your infantry unit at the wrong corner of the table, it would take the unit out of the game for most of the battle. In Armada with the speed of the ships and the navigate commands you usually you have the opportunity to compensate for bad deployment somewhat during the first few turns unless you really messed up or have an extremely unflexible list.

Oh, -ahem-, I guess I should say what I do think it actually a critical factor in tipping the scales: playing and practicing the game. Familiarity, sorting through contingencies, establishing workable formations, practicing deployments and distances, recognizing your natural tendencies, and making sound judgements are all honed by being on the field, not just shuffling lists and theorizing.

This a million times. You can plot and scheme and draw and think but until you put plastic to table it's all theory. It also helps you find shorthands - I.E. knowing if you can turn past certain base sizes at certain speeds, eyeballing range, things like that.

When I was fencing competitively I would find that there are three factors that would affect my outcomes. Training, practicing the moves and counter moves, and being able to physically do the stuff a fencer needs to do. Then you had to learn to find out what your opponent was doing, you developed a sense of touch as well as the spacial awareness to see the attacks coming.The final part is to learn how to react to your opponents actions in a timely manner and with a sense of tactics, most notably by controlling the tempo of the bout.

In terms of Armada:

1. Practice running your ships solo, how does each rebel ship move at each speed. Is there a sweet spot or do you fly as fast as possible? How far is it across the board and when do you fly off.

2. Play games and watch and learn how your opponent reacts. After a while, you start to see the patterns your opponent will take. Here you will notice that some fleets want to be jousting, others want to flank, or swirl.

3. Change the tempo of things and get tactical. Go slow and then speed up, start fast and slow down, start fast and stay fast. Quite a lot of players either spam the same order or have a very predictable sequence. If you are suddenly too far away and then a turn or two later too close what happens to nice predictable sequences?

In armada dice rolls have less of an effect than in many other tabletop wargames. For example in Warhammer when 2 units engage you have to first roll a bunch of dice to hit, then to wound, then the opposing side may make saves, then gets to counter attack using the same sequence. I.e. everything is dependent on dice rolling and there are almost no auto hits. A roll of 1 always fails and a 6 always succeeds. In such games it is very possible to lose the match due to bad rolls vs good rolls.

Intended or not, this statement has a very common misunderstanding about dice.

Paradoxically, the more dice you roll, the less 'dice' matter.

When we talk (ie. gripe) about dice, we talk about outlier results - the really bad or really good (but mostly the bad) rolls that we experience. But, unless your dice really are biased, then the more dice you roll, the more the results will average out.

(Incidentally, the more I please the Dark Side, the better She rewards me when I roll dice. The Dark Side also likes it when I derail forum threads, such as this one.)

In armada dice rolls have less of an effect than in many other tabletop wargames. For example in Warhammer when 2 units engage you have to first roll a bunch of dice to hit, then to wound, then the opposing side may make saves, then gets to counter attack using the same sequence. I.e. everything is dependent on dice rolling and there are almost no auto hits. A roll of 1 always fails and a 6 always succeeds. In such games it is very possible to lose the match due to bad rolls vs good rolls.

Intended or not, this statement has a very common misunderstanding about dice.

Paradoxically, the more dice you roll, the less 'dice' matter.

When we talk (ie. gripe) about dice, we talk about outlier results - the really bad or really good (but mostly the bad) rolls that we experience. But, unless your dice really are biased, then the more dice you roll, the more the results will average out.

Not entirely in my example as they are in sequential order: you don't always roll all the dice. First you roll say 10 dice to hit. You hit on a 3+. Those that hit you roll to wound, say you need a 4+, then the opponent gets to roll an armour save, say 5+, repeat for the counter attack, then the loser gets to make a morale check (=the most important, usually 50/50 chance). Essentially 7 seperate instances where messing up with bad dice rolling (or good rolling on your opponent's side) will disrupt the sequence regardless of how good you rolled in a prior step. And for the really important rolls (morale) you only roll 2 dice, with usually about a 50/50 chance to fail/succeed. Everyone playing wargames has ran into situations where their unstoppable super expensive unit of heavy cavalry/monsters/lord has fluffed their attacks, rolling 6 one's or two's, then lost combat due to being outnumbered & having less ranks, then failed their morale test and ran off the table...

In any case, my post wasn't about the amount of dice being rolled, it was about the non-existance/rarity of auto hits in most other wargames. My point stands that in Armada you have so many ways to get rerolls or auto-hits with dice, that the luck aspect is greatly reduced compared to other wargames.

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Intended or not, this statement has a very common misunderstanding about dice.

Paradoxically, the more dice you roll, the less 'dice' matter.

When we talk (ie. gripe) about dice, we talk about outlier results - the really bad or really good (but mostly the bad) rolls that we experience. But, unless your dice really are biased, then the more dice you roll, the more the results will average out.

You may be right, Dark herald of the Empire, but Lord Tareq's point isn't inherently incorrect.

It's not about the number of dice skewing the results, it's the relationship in which Armada's dice rolls interact with the system which lessens its affect on determining the result of a match. It's not about more or less dice rolls, but the greater number of results which are decided by player derived conditions rather than simply rolling dice.

To cut down on my natural wordiness, I'll just say that something like Warhammer's 'layered' approach of dice rolls atop more dice rolls, inherently prioritizes the dice mechanic as a method of determining actions (rather than just combat results). If I want to attempt an action, I'm reliant on dice rolls which may or may not permit me.

Armada's dice rolls need not dictate the focal point of a battle, or determine its victor thanks to objectives. It also also has player controlled functions that allow for dice to be mitigated by altering the result and number of dice being rolled, or changing the target for a more satisfactory one. Many other games lack these management tools.

As a result, dice in Armada play less of a role in determining a game compared to other systems.

I used to think that dice weren't as important in Armada as other games, but if you roll below average and not take down ships, well you lose the game.

Proper setup and maneuvering get you half way there (navigate commands are almost never wasted) and might lose you the game in specific cases, for instance tournament finals where score matters and the objective is dangerous territory.

My current feeling however is that it's still first and foremost a dice game, and that you can't get enough dice modifying upgrades to ensure at least minimum damage. Home One+TRC? APT+OE ? Screed+ACM? Swarm? Yes please. I'm inclined to think the Imperials have the easiest access to that as it stands now.

Utltimately, dicerolls decide if that ship you setup and maneuvered right into the dream double arc easy evade spot gets to a) live long enough to activate and b) deal any kind of meaningful damage, possibly removing a threat from the table (where crit luck also matters).

Hmm, add in the proviso "If you roll below average and not take down ships, you will 'likely' lose the game" and I think I agree. It's more a comparison to other game systems. After all, Armada is still a dice game, but there's just less instances in play in which dice are required to other aspects of play. The less I have to rely on dice to get something done, the more I feel responsible for the results.

If you had to roll a D6 and get 4+ or more in order to use a command that turn, or in the manoeuvring phase you could roll a D6 and on the roll of a 6+ you could increase your yaw by another click, does that make the importance of dice more significant? Then again, does X-wing place more of an importance on dice than Armada?

-shrugs- maybe it depends on prior games, maybe it depends on how you play now. 'Dunno, but all the peripheral aspects to getting a fleet in position, as well as how you manage your ships in relation to the opponent, seem to have a proportionally greater effect in Armada for me. At least that's been my experience so far. We'll see if Wave 2 changes that. Again, I don't use much for upgrades and I've always liked fighters. Maybe that just makes me the blank of the black die. C'est la vie.