but we already have dodging in X-wing, it just involves actual positioning and avoiding opponent firing arcs

There wasn't nearly so much of that in wave 1 as there is now. Also dodging is more than just getting completely out of the ship's gunsights, it's also small jinks that mess up the shot.

I don't ever expect you to agree. But IMO defense dice makes sense in X-Wing. Although they wouldn't in Armada, I think the way they do it in Armada is very thematic.

I wish we had a little more thematic carnage.

"Decks 4 and 5 are open space!!! The reactor is leaking radioactive fuel into the mess bay! CONCENTRATE ALL FORWARD FIREPOWER AAAAHHHHHHHh."

^

Opponents after ackbar.

I wish we had a little more thematic carnage.

Only sorta related... But one thing they do a lot of in Flames of War, and I've seen once or twice on the net for Armada, is use plums of smoke to represent damage/kills.

In FoW for example they will stick a plum of smoke on a tank when it's been killed, because tanks are left on the table and can be used for cover.

In armada models are removed, but you could use smoke plumes on damaged ones. Could even do 1 plume per damage card, as a way to track damage.

All you'd need is some cotton balls, some dye or paint, and some way of attaching them.

If you wanted to be a bit more gruesome, you could find really tiny people and stick them in the plume.

but we already have dodging in X-wing, it just involves actual positioning and avoiding opponent firing arcs

There wasn't nearly so much of that in wave 1 as there is now. Also dodging is more than just getting completely out of the ship's gunsights, it's also small jinks that mess up the shot.

I don't ever expect you to agree. But IMO defense dice makes sense in X-Wing. Although they wouldn't in Armada, I think the way they do it in Armada is very thematic.

I wish we had a little more thematic carnage.

"Decks 4 and 5 are open space!!! The reactor is leaking radioactive fuel into the mess bay! CONCENTRATE ALL FORWARD FIREPOWER AAAAHHHHHHHh."

^

Opponents after ackbar.

I see it come to armada dice vs X wing dice.

If I roll tons of blank I'll loose. If I don't roll a single die I'll loose too. We are playing with dice so we have some random here but we have a list building with funny tools, deployment, movement, activations, etc.

Did you loose by dice? Ok, work to reduce the dice dependence. If you don't you never ever will improve you play. Meanwhile enjoy the funny and weird shots. This shots blows up the death star. Seriously a red die with bomber? Whaaat?

This shots blows up the death star. Seriously a red die with bomber? Whaaat?

Luke has a Black Die for Anti-Ship.

Actually: the dice modifier systems of both games is what's interesting, to me.

X-Wing, of course, is more reliant on actions to modify dice. Armada, too, can do that through actions...but it's absolutely more limited than X-Wing. CF simply adds one and the token re-rolls one. Compare that to re-rolling all the ones you want vs boosting the hit chance by quite a few percentage points.

However, the fact that you can build your entire fleet to mitigate dice rolls to a point where random chance really can't devastate your plans is key to how Armada plays and feels.

It's true, in Wave 1, I had a number of instances where my well-lain plan was foiled by dice and tokens. I've had "scary" VSD front arc shots bounce off and do next to nothing numerous times. Of course, that's my fault for relying on a single point of attack. However, my list, now, is set up to mitigate as much randomness as possible.

I have screed to guarantee all of my ships at least do something when I get in close. I have APTs to guarantee i'll lay on some damage cards. I have HTTs with Expanded Launchers and Ordnance Experts on my VSD to ensure I'll land something scary on anything I skillfully get in arc and blast.

This harkens back to my commends months ago about the exponential increase in ship value when upgrading it. Sure, you can take another Raider for the cost of my VSD upgrades...but both ships' reliability are much less than the single beefed-up VSD. This is where my comments on sacrificing ship power for activations comes form. Sure you can take 6 Raiders, but you'll not have much to increase their reliability...so if you fly really well and line up shots expertly, THEN roll poor you've screwed yourself before the game started with such a "random" list.

Either way...Armada is simply a masterpiece in miniature wargames. I love it to death.

I see it come to armada dice vs X wing dice.

If I roll tons of blank I'll loose. If I don't roll a single die I'll loose too. We are playing with dice so we have some random here but we have a list building with funny tools, deployment, movement, activations, etc.

Did you loose by dice? Ok, work to reduce the dice dependence. If you don't you never ever will improve you play. Meanwhile enjoy the funny and weird shots. This shots blows up the death star. Seriously a red die with bomber? Whaaat?

My stance is simply this:

In X-Wing it is possible to lose fly, literally, a perfect game and lose because of dice.

In Armada; that simply isn't possible.

My only caveat would be that if, theoretically, both Armada admirals flew identically perfect games and had identically reliably lists, then dice would naturally be the decider. Of course, I don't see this situation ever happening in reality

I see it come to armada dice vs X wing dice.

If I roll tons of blank I'll loose. If I don't roll a single die I'll loose too. We are playing with dice so we have some random here but we have a list building with funny tools, deployment, movement, activations, etc.

Did you loose by dice? Ok, work to reduce the dice dependence. If you don't you never ever will improve you play. Meanwhile enjoy the funny and weird shots. This shots blows up the death star. Seriously a red die with bomber? Whaaat?

My stance is simply this:

In X-Wing it is possible to lose fly, literally, a perfect game and lose because of dice.

In Armada; that simply isn't possible.

My only caveat would be that if, theoretically, both Armada admirals flew identically perfect games and had identically reliably lists, then dice would naturally be the decider. Of course, I don't see this situation ever happening in reality

This statement just bugs me. What on earth does a perfect game of X-wing actually look like? One where you dodge every arc and trick your opponent into landing on obstacles every turn?

Your point is valid.

However, my point (in theoretical land) stands. Of course, only if you have Turrets in game (which is one of my complaints). It doesn't matter what the perfectly flown game looks like. You just have to look at the fact that, against turrets, you can't shoot them w/o them shooting you. IE dice can make you lose no matter how perfectly you fly.

But, don't get me wrong, I adore X-Wing in every way save turrets+dice.

I wish we had a little more thematic carnage.

Only sorta related... But one thing they do a lot of in Flames of War, and I've seen once or twice on the net for Armada, is use plums of smoke to represent damage/kills.

In FoW for example they will stick a plum of smoke on a tank when it's been killed, because tanks are left on the table and can be used for cover.

In armada models are removed, but you could use smoke plumes on damaged ones. Could even do 1 plume per damage card, as a way to track damage.

All you'd need is some cotton balls, some dye or paint, and some way of attaching them.

If you wanted to be a bit more gruesome, you could find really tiny people and stick them in the plume.

I've seen that. But I'm also getting a little paint lazy recently.

Well, I actually meant like: when you get hit, you roll a die for which deck or whatever, or what got hit.

Which would be interesting cuz then you could make it more critical for what side of the opponent you attack. Instead of simply piling on whatever side has the least shields.

I see it come to armada dice vs X wing dice.

If I roll tons of blank I'll loose. If I don't roll a single die I'll loose too. We are playing with dice so we have some random here but we have a list building with funny tools, deployment, movement, activations, etc.

Did you loose by dice? Ok, work to reduce the dice dependence. If you don't you never ever will improve you play. Meanwhile enjoy the funny and weird shots. This shots blows up the death star. Seriously a red die with bomber? Whaaat?

Yes but there is this thing called MoV. So reducing dice dependence if you want to call it that requires you to play to the objective while minimizing losses. Guess what that doesn't get you? MoV

My only caveat would be that if, theoretically, both Armada admirals flew identically perfect games and had identically reliably lists, then dice would naturally be the decider. Of course, I don't see this situation ever happening in reality

And thus this thread - if a game comes down to dice, the two players were most likely evenly matched and played equally well. Love me some close games - much more fun than outright routs, even when I'm the one winning.

Nerd joke of the day: "Were you fighting a DNS server? Because you got totally routed"

This shots blows up the death star. Seriously a red die with bomber? Whaaat?

Luke has a Black Die for Anti-Ship.

Touche

Just had a dice moment tonight, my MC30 against a Glad.....I rolled 4 black and two blues ( without modification) I got 4 double hit/crits , a blue hit and a blue accuracy ( which I needed to knock out his brace) one face up crit + 9 damage = dead gladiator......

Just had a dice moment tonight, my MC30 against a Glad.....I rolled 4 black and two blues ( without modification) I got 4 double hit/crits , a blue hit and a blue accuracy ( which I needed to knock out his brace) one face up crit + 9 damage = dead gladiator......

Just had a dice moment tonight, my MC30 against a Glad.....I rolled 4 black and two blues ( without modification) I got 4 double hit/crits , a blue hit and a blue accuracy ( which I needed to knock out his brace) one face up crit + 9 damage = dead gladiator......

rofl, beautiful.

Last night, on vassal, vs. Truthiness' Bwing madness:

2nd player, Fleet Ambush.

Plan: high risk, high gain, rush Yavaris, kill it before it can do a double-tap. Then do the same on Salavation, then park Demolisher in front of MC80.

Result: Yavaris has 1 hull left and proceeds to unleash the angriest swarm of Bees ever, killing 1 raider and bringing my ISD down to 3 hull.

Did it come down to dice?

Well, yes. It did. Sort of.

If I had rolled just 1 damage more, I would have been "safe". Well, maybe not safe, but safer

But it wasn't really the dice. It was my overconfidence/poor placement of Demolisher. I could have put 2 red/4 black on Yavaris if I had really focused. I also had Dengar shoot at a squadron, rather than Yavaris. Granted, he's not a bomber, but he would have had a 75% chance of killing Yavaris regardless.

So, was it the dice? Or was it my lack of skill/overconfidence?

Later in the game Salvation escaped with 1 hull...again, was it the dice?

Or was it my choice of command for the remaining raider? Had I picked a Nav I could have rammed it to death. Instead I had a squadron command that I bungled. So instead of a 75% chance of killing it with Rhymer it was wasted.

This time no dice was involved, but the result was the same.

I guess it goes to show that dice or no dice, planning and positioning matters. A lot.

I see the random element of the dice representing the fact that I, as a commander, am depending on gunnery crews and deck officers to execute my commands.

This very much works for me. The [literally] largest difference between an Admiral telling his crew to fire and a Planeswalker launching a fireball is a chain of several thousand people - one might have had too much last night.

I wasn't able to find it, EDIT: FOUND IT!

http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2014-02-01