I'm looking into getting this game for casual play with my gf, I was thinking of getting the core set, one ship for each faction, and Rogues and Villains. Would this allow for decent size games and fleet building? Is Rogues and Villains a good early buy (I like that it provides options for both factions)? What ship for each faction would you recommend I pick up for a balanced game? I was thinking the Gladiator S.D and possibly Tantive iv or MC30 frigate.

The most forgiving rebel ship has to still be the assault frigate. I would by one of them and then the gladiator to start. If you're only going to buy one fighter pack, I would probably go with the rogues pack. That way everybody gets something.

I think the old standard when it was just wave 1 for casual play was the core set the gladiator SD, the assault frigate mark II, and one squadron pack for each faction. I found that to be a good starting place for me but I'm not sure what would be the recommended expansion for casual play with wave 2 out.

Let me parrot Stasy. For ships, get the GSD and assault frigate. Getting both fighter packs from wave 1 would give more options, but just one the scum and scum pack is a good pick too.

If you like the game, I would make sure you have 1 of each fighter pack before getting more ships. And stick to 300ish point games for a while.

Thanks for the advice! How's the Home one instead of the assault frigate? I like the looks of the Home One more than the Assault frigate, although I'd like to preserve the Imperials having the larger high firepower ships so maybe I should just go for the Assault frigate.

Home one is definitely not as flexible or forgiving as the assault frigate. Probably should be on your buy list later on.

But if you do pick up the home one, make sure to buy an extra dice pack or 2.

Home one is neat, but I think it has a "steeper learning curve" than the space guppy. Also, I don't think it would be great in a small fleet.

If you want to graduate to 400pt games, buying both the Home One and an ISD are good. The Imperial Star Destroyer is significantly easier to use (basically point and shoot) than the Home One, which is a ship that really wants to synergise with the rest of your fleet.

I just got Armada the other day as a Christmas gift. I'm still not sure if it'll remain casual or if I'll try to get competitive in tournaments, so for now I'm buying ships that look cool and have a nice Star Wars feel. So for me it was forget about Gladiators or Assault Frigate and get right to buying a couple Imperial Star Destroyers to replace the "what's this crap?" Star Destroyer from starter set. I also got another rebel cr90 because they were $7 on Amazon. I think my next move will be to try to find the fighter packs(also got the rogues and villans pack as part of my Christmas gift, so that's covered). I think my FLGS where no body plays Armada might actually have them and I'll be checking soon. At the end of the day for casual/fun play I'm going to pick the ships for the kind of battles I'm going to want to play and some times that means leaving of some of the wonkier EU(or Legends or whatever they call it now) ships that might be great but I feel no connection to them at all no matter how good they are.