Its not for everyone...

X-Wing is not for me. I don't want to be making a bunch of what seems to be split second decisions over and over and over again, until such time as the game is over, wether those decisions ahve any bearing on what I'm doing or not...

But Armada, I enjoy the slower game.

If only I could play on the Topped Pool Tables at Dickens when they have their Gamer Sundays open with a couple of Pints...

I'd love to see a game were a well flown Ackbar mobile (not conga) is beaten. Any examples?

Assault Frigates? Engine Techs and Double Rams with APT thrown in for measure....

I haven't seen WELL FLOWN ackbar congas beaten. Only poorly flown ones. Where they fly directly into the enemy, across the board.

At the same time I have yet to see a well flown ISD list beaten. Oh it could happen but those games are far few and between.

On a side note. . . How do we know ow what is considered "well flown"? It's not like X-Wing where the game has been out forever and everything has been mapped out.

Hmmmm I think I have another idea for a discussion Time thread!

A lot of us know that the conga line is a strong way to play Ackbar. If you see something different, it had better be a very strong reason for differing.

I mostly see players who don't know how to fly them try and charge Ackbar slash between Gladiators. Whoooo. Not pretty.

Let's not even talk about the ones that fly off the board cuz theyre going 3 speed down the short side directly at an emeny.

I'm going to toss my chit into the "I have no idea what OP is talking about" hat.

I wish he could come to our local monday Armada night, or our Friday league, to get a taste of what a lively and imaginative community can do with the nuance in this game.

We regularly have 10 players showing up to casual game nights, each with a unique list and each putting up a **** good fight. People meet up several times a week coordinated through our facebook group, and our Friday league has 13 players. Every week new people are asking about the Star Destroyer game.

Ironically, I was just having a conversation with the owner of my FLGS tonight about how X-Wing is dying and Armada is surging.

Come to San Antonio, OP. We'll show you a good time. Uh... in a strictly Armada related way.

The 2 biggest issues are actually with the rebels.

Arkbar highly mobile gun lines. This in my opinion is almost going to ruin this game for many players. In the hands of someone who can nativgate AF s and CRs these will easily beat 90% of lists with long range firing. 4 AF with gunnery teams are highly effective, but boring as hell. Invest too much in squadrons and these guys have far less ships to get through before your squadrons go puff into thin air. The carrier ships required to make the slow squadrons competitive go down too easily. The mobile smaller ships that can get away are no good at activating squadrons. And raiders/victories, don't make me laugh. I might as well just hand over the points.

Snipping this bit out, but it seems you've not tried some things because you mentally think they're pointless. I've played vs a 4 AF Ackbar squadronless build with 3 x Victory I with boosted comms, and Rhymer with 5 bombers plus a few other upgrades/squadrons. Things you think are pointless. I destroyed the Ackbar list, a few red dice and 9 squadrons (6 bomber types) firing drops an AF per turn.

There will always be min/max players. Tournaments only exaggerate this. In X-Wing there is a post where someone said the X-Wing itself is "utterly useless" because it is 1.2% less efficient than a B-Wing.

I'm hoping to get into Armada soon and have an order in shipping. But I'm stopping with one each of everything up to and including Wave 2. I don't want to get into another collectible game and X-Wing has all of my money already. I posted here and asked if Core, Wave 1 and Wave 2 were enough for good games is plenty of replayability. Most said yes so I'm going with that and jumping it and crossing my fingers since I really don't want a few hundred dollars of dust collectors.

But, and remember I haven't even played yet, if the OP is right then either I'm worried or excited. I'm worried because it may get stale. Yet at the same time since I usually play at my home and I'll be providing the ships for both sides maybe because I only have one of each then that will be a forced variety.

And with variety then, hopefully, win or loose the games will be more fun

I think the problem is playing competitively, not playing Armada. The X-Wing tournament scene has gone through many periods where there were only one or two viable builds if a player wanted to place in a truly competitive event. I don't know what it's like right now because I'm following Armada more, but I think the problem is playing games to maximise opportunity to win instead of playing to have fun.

I don't see competitive balance as a problem what so ever. I just tore apart an Ackbar gunlines in the Vassal tourney, who had himself torn apart a Rhymerball in the previous round. I faced down a small Fireball in the previous round. I'm using Independence, 2 Neb-Bs, Wedge, Dutch, Jan, and 4 B-Wings.

Your meta, for some reason, seems very stagnant. You dismiss things that I'm finding work just fine. I highly recommend arranging some Vassal games at some point. There are some very good players lurking around. You absolutely have to play JJ Juggernaut some time. Playing him repeatedly has brought my game to a whole new level. He also doesn't run your typical lists. His current tourney list is a 5 ship Mon Mothma death by paper cut list. It's just plain terrifying to watch him fly it.

The Vassal meta is indeed very good. Not only because you have players there from all around the world so the meta is completely different, but you'll also have a lot of variation in lists and playstyles.

I felt like the OP spent a lot of time telling that there was one big problem with Armada, but then a page latter just listed a bunch of objections to his meta.

The game is slow, it is also pretty hard. I mean I feel warn out after a session of Armada. But those are so much bad things as they are just the flavor of the game. Armada may not be the best game in the world to recomend to huge X-wing fans, they are just very very different games. But isn't that a good thing.

People ave been complaining about "win" lists as long as I have ever been on any forum discussing any game.

Ackbar though is **** effective.

I've been asking on the boards for more imp help to beat him. Currently haven't gotten an answer that would work against me.

Ackbar can be beat easily with a Heavy squadron build for the Imperials and you dont need 6 firesprays and Rhymer to do it, although that of course will wreck Ackbar. Here is one example of many. All you need is a heavy imperial fleet that consists of Rhymer, Tie Bombers, Vader or Tie Advanced(s), and Dengar and fly an ISD I with Boosted Comms, Flight Controllers, Expanded Hanger and if you have it a second ISD II load it up with Gunnery teams, ECM and Motti. I have played this several times in different configurations against different Ackbar builds and it has won 80% of the time. There is no build in this game that you cant beat with the opposed faction with thoughtful builds and practice. Me and a buddy of mine purposely make the most broken builds on both factions and then the other player tries to break it and EVERY TIME we find several ways to beat them.

What are the good fleet builders? I was the fab has a randomizer. I wonder how well that work.

So a few quick thoughts:

• As a general point, if you have a stale meta where you know what lists people are going to take, you should unabashedly take the counter list until it forces them to change. Also, in most reasonably balanced games, there are counter lists (if there literally are not, and there is but one list that rules them all, then yeah, you need a new game).
• As a specific point, the Ackbar list has two weaknesses:
  • Ackbar lists that are too ship heavy are horribly weak against bomber builds. The AFII on its own does not have the firepower to reliably down Firesprays or Tie Bombers, and while they are fast, they are not CR90 or Raider fast. Against a standard Ackbar list, a Rhymer Fireball or standard Rhymer Ball are going to rapidly degrade the operational capability of the opponents.
  • Akbar lists are also weak to being jammed, which is to say the gencon special list, much more than non-Ackbar whale lists. Because an Ackbar list needs to keep its sides primarily to the enemy in coordinated fashion, if you are fast enough to get in front of them and ram them or force very harsh course corrections, you throw off the list. Ackbar thrives on coordination, as gun team frigates can't hit the same ship twice if they want to use Ackbar, so you need to line up multiple whales to concentrate fire.

My advice would be this: if you are an Imperial player, try a Rhymer fireball list (park at the center of the arc the whales are turning around to broadside and just fire fire fire), or failing that, get a list with several fast small ships and use them aggressively to jam the whales. AFII's hate nothing more than a ship blocking them in their front arc. Parking a Raider at distance one in front of them to force them to either turn into the rest of your ships or ram it is perfect.

If you are a rebel player, either do the same thing, or build the much maligned but absolutely hysterical Riekaan Engine Tech Corvette ram list. Whales hate that. A lot. Also very funny. They probably won't want to play you again, and it's not good against several other lists, but man that screws an Ackbar list hard if you start landing those rams...

I'd love to see a game were a well flown Ackbar mobile (not conga) is beaten. Any examples?

Assault Frigates? Engine Techs and Double Rams with APT thrown in for measure....

I haven't seen WELL FLOWN ackbar congas beaten. Only poorly flown ones. Where they fly directly into the enemy, across the board.

3 double bumps and the guppy goes home, and it takes 4 for the MC80, an aggressive ram monkey doesn't need to shoot everything. Heck in a conga line the second from front ship may just move to overlap one of those ships and do some of the work for you.

While we shoot and move the damage from a ram happens as part of the move, so depending on activation order and who has first player what seems to be a bad idea may have a better outcome more often than not.

My very first fight against an Ackbar Conga line was (I think) 2 AF and an MC80. I was (horribly misplaying) a high activation pocket carrier list. I lost pretty badly BUT my one crowning glory in that game was managing to head-on ram the lead guppy with an expanded launchers raider. That raider single-handedly took out that entire AF. Hilarious.

I haven't been rammed yet. :/. Might need to play someone who can do it well.

Also in response to the squadrons guy: yes I know mass squadron lists are a moderately good counter to ackbar. But I really hate playing them myself cuz they're so boring.

One person flew a badly planned squadron group and I was able to hold him off long enough to table both ISDs.

I don't see competitive balance as a problem what so ever. I just tore apart an Ackbar gunlines in the Vassal tourney, who had himself torn apart a Rhymerball in the previous round. I faced down a small Fireball in the previous round. I'm using Independence, 2 Neb-Bs, Wedge, Dutch, Jan, and 4 B-Wings.

Your meta, for some reason, seems very stagnant. You dismiss things that I'm finding work just fine. I highly recommend arranging some Vassal games at some point. .

Gee, who might that have been?

Agree about the playing on Vassal. The Holiday Tourney has introduced me to concepts that I wouldn't otherwise see at my local league.

Also, there is a ton of variety within these list archetypes. I shamelessly stole my tournament list from Hero's blog, with just one tweak. It's not working quite to my playstyle so I'm going to make a few upgrade changes and see how they work. What I'll end up with is the same ships but a much different experience than Hero.

Yeah, that particular list is designed with my playstyle and priorities in mind. It's not going to fit everyone and it certainly doesn't mold well to everyone because of just how the game works (command choice, activation priority..etc).

I don't see competitive balance as a problem what so ever. I just tore apart an Ackbar gunlines in the Vassal tourney, who had himself torn apart a Rhymerball in the previous round. I faced down a small Fireball in the previous round. I'm using Independence, 2 Neb-Bs, Wedge, Dutch, Jan, and 4 B-Wings.

Your meta, for some reason, seems very stagnant. You dismiss things that I'm finding work just fine. I highly recommend arranging some Vassal games at some point. There are some very good players lurking around. You absolutely have to play JJ Juggernaut some time. Playing him repeatedly has brought my game to a whole new level. He also doesn't run your typical lists. His current tourney list is a 5 ship Mon Mothma death by paper cut list. It's just plain terrifying to watch him fly it.