Hi Everyone,

Recently our gaming group has begun to play more and more games over the 400 point standard limit. Each time we bump the point limit and play, everyone seems to agree the larger fleet size has made the game more enjoyable. We have been working our way higher and higher and are currently playing 600 point games, which seems to be a great sweet spot for our group. This size of fleet allows for plenty of ships for each side (we normally field 4-6 ships each), enough so that doing multiplayer games is actually fun since two people per side each still have 2-3 ships of their own. Also we really enjoy that this gives 200 points to squadrons, which allows for both a strong bomber force and a strong anti-fighter wing, giving the squadron game a big bump in interaction with the larger ships. It also gives you the option of going fighter heavy to suck deployments if your opponent goes fighter light.

I understand this isn't what the game is "balanced" for, but I am curious if others out there have been playing with larger fleets and if so they have house ruled anything to help smooth out any unintended rough spots in game play. As we have gone bigger and bigger we have put a couple house rules into place to try to keep things stable.

1) Bump the value of victory points gotten from objectives. Most objectives with points, as they are written, generally give out 75 points. To keep the objectives important and to keep things from devolving into just fleet destruction, we multiply any points gotten from objectives by 1.5 at the end of the game.

2) Increased table size. 3 x 4 starts to get really tight at 600 points, so we found bumping the size to 3.5 x 5 (conveniently, the biggest table we have is 3.5 x 6) gives us the space to let ships move around without turning into bumper cars. The distance between the deployment zones is kept as normal, the deployment zones just get bigger.

Does anyone else has things they have found to help with larger games?

I am desperate to play very large games. The game size is my biggest disappointment with this game.

You may have missed, however, that the standard size for the playing surface is supposed to be 3x6. The 3x4 size was just for the introductory game in the learn to play booklet.

Our only house rule is that we play on 6x4s We either add an extra turn or we deploy a bit further out to compensate. 3 foot wide tables is a really odd size for wargaming.

Hi guys if you have the space, set up a 4' x 8' sheet of plywood, go to sewing store and buy black cloth and there you have it. 1000pts is a good size especially

for the larger ships. I bought enough black cloth to cover the sheet of plywood, the cost was 20$. And the size also allows for space for cards etc.

Our only house rule is that we play on 6x4s We either add an extra turn or we deploy a bit further out to compensate. 3 foot wide tables is a really odd size for wargaming.

We have 6x4 and 6x3 Tables... But we use the 6x3 Space on 6x4s... Because that 6" or so of room at the tables edge for Cards, Tokens, Etc, is beautiful...

IMHO

I would like to play 600 pts games.

But the main limitation is, that the more ships you bring into the game, the more each turn is slowed down or takes longer.

Having the odd 12x Corvettes on one side, means a lot of activations during one turn.

Likewise if you have the odd 25 Tie fighters.

I actually thought about this earlier today, and have brained stormed a little, to come up with some ideas, that can limit the number of ships, with some natural restricsions.

A) For every two small ships, you must have at least one Medium or Large Ship.

B) The same as above just en reverse. For every Large ship, you must have at least two Medium or Small Ships.

C) All Small ships must have at least one upgrade, All Medium ships must have at least two upgrades and all Large ships must have at least three upgrades.

The above ideas forces one to spend points on something usefull, you otherwise wouldn't spend points on.

If ever an SSD sized ship was introduced, then the problem with to many ship activations would naturally solve itself, as that one "Epic" sized ship would cost in the region of 200 points or more.

We always play at 600 now also. I think it's way more fun. We put a 4 upgrade card limit per ship and 200 pts for squadrons. I don't think I can go back to 400.

I've been thinking of doing this with my gaming group, but as you activate one ship at a time, having multiple players won't speed things up. Probably quite the opposite... Has anyone experimented with, say, two activations simultaneously? If not, how do you speed things up? Or has it not been that big a deal?

Cheers!

Bigger table and Mission objective is the only why to win. no points for killing ships with 4 to 6 players.

This is key guys is multiplying the admiral value by the number of points you're using to keep the value relative. Ackbar vs Donna should be priced accordingly in a 600 point game:

At 600 points Ackbar needs to cost 38 + 16.5 = 54.5 points and Donna 30.

I don't need to explain e reason I hope as it is fairly self explanatory if you think about it. I have a 4x6 table with a 3x8 foot mat. I don't think anything needs to change. However, I could see shortening the setup area in half distance from edge. 1.5 and adding an extra turn. If you add an extra turn consider doing an alternating initiative and giving the player with the initiative the extra one turn. Player 1. Has initiative on turns 1,3, 5, 7 and player two on turns 2,4,6.

I also like a minimum of 20% spent on squadrons and sometimes limit the use of X-17s as they are becoming auto includes in my area. Sometimes you can also limit one large ships for a game etc. on a 3x6 you might want some extra asteroids.

There is always the idea of adding 125-150 points reinforcements on turn 3 for seven turn games. That can be fun.

The only problem I notice with the larger games which are so much better than 400 is that you tend to forget to use certain cards sometimes. I get into a hurry moving my squdron command or firing.

https://boardgamegeek.com/image/2724045/star-wars-armada

https://boardgamegeek.com/image/2724034/star-wars-armada

https://boardgamegeek.com/image/2813512/star-wars-armada

I've been thinking of doing this with my gaming group, but as you activate one ship at a time, having multiple players won't speed things up. Probably quite the opposite... Has anyone experimented with, say, two activations simultaneously? If not, how do you speed things up? Or has it not been that big a deal?

Cheers!

Multiple players speeds things up a lot because people remember what they can do with there cards and can focus on planning a head with few pieces. It really makes a huge difference when it might not seem so with the one ahip activation rules.

I agree with AdmiralNelson, our multiplayer games go much much quicker than our large single player games. Since each person only has control of a couple ships, they tend to know exactly what they plan to do when their turn comes up and tend to forget upgrades much more rarely. We haven't capped upgrades, but since many of the games are multiplayer, it tends to be easier to keep track of who has what.

Upgrading the cost of an admiral is an interesting idea, we will take a swing at it this weekend and see how the group likes it. I think it is a pretty good idea, since none of the current admiral limit their abilities to a given range.

Interestingly we haven't had to put any caps on fleet composition (particularly requiring a set amount of fighters). Our group uses communal figures, so we have one of every ship with doubles of raiders, corvette, and victories. We also got two rebel and two empire fighter packs as well. The power of 200 points of fighters to vaporize ships if you don't field a decent counter has created in internal meta in which players either put 180-200 points of fighters on the board or a 80-100 point holding force. Especially since due to an amazon mix up we got sent 4 packs of R&V. It took one game of 4 Firesprays, Darth Vader, Rhymer, and Punishing 1 face wrecking a fleet with no fighter support before everyone learned the lesson. For example last week I fielded 5 x-wings and moldy crow as my token anti-fighter force. My opponent fielded a full 200 points of fighters (mix of bombers and anti-fighters) and blasted me off the table by turn 5, but it was still awesome to get to use fighters in large numbers.

I play a Napoleonic war game called Close Action. It is for sailing ships, so they divide fleets into divisions of 4- 6 vessels. Each division has a single flagship. So in Armada, designate

3- 4 vessels as a single division and activate it as a single entity. Same with squadrons, set a limit and activate as a group.