Has anyone set up a Battletech style grinder for Armada? The basic Idea is that you start with a weak unit/fleet and fight it out with others. When your weakest gets destroyed, you drop the middle strength unit/fleet on the table and start fighting against whatever was left on the table. After you middle strength dies, you drop your best/heaviest/biggest/strongest fleet and fight to win.

The general rules would be:

-Each fleet has to have at least one ship.

-Each individual fleet is faction pure but all of your fleets don't need to be the same faction.

-No uniques shared between fleets. So you can't run a title like Paragon or a crew like Wulff in the second and third fleets.

-When the last ship in your fleet is destroyed, remove all remaining squadrons and deploy your next fleet at the beginning of the next turn.

-Use the rotating intiative from the station multiplayer scenario

-First fleet is built to 50 points.

-Second fleet is built to 100 points.

-Final fleet is built to 150 points.

-You get the value of each ship you destroy and +50 for being last player standing.

-For game setup, pile all of the obstacles and the 6 turn counter tokens in one pile. Starting with the player with initiative in the weakest fleets, you can place an obstacle or a turn token. Using placement rules for obstacles apply to tokens.

-Each time you deploy, roll a D6 to find out where you deploy. Ships must be at range 1 of the token and squadrons within 1-2 of the ships.

Any recommendations to change certain rules or thoughts on viability?

I searched on here but couldn't find anything. Maybe I was using the wrong words.

Never heard of this, and I have to say I'm not quite sold on the fluid drop-in replacements paradigm. I do like the idea of escalation-type events, but positioning is so critically important in Armada that I can't see it being anything but frustrating having opponents drop in fresh ships in an arbitrary orientation with arbitrary commands set in the middle of the match.

To add to that, it's going to be a snowballing disadvantage to lose a ship early, because not only do you have to deal with the remainder of their previous fleet (probably intended), but more importantly your reinforcement wave is already deployed and committed when your opponent's reinforcements come in, allowing them to deploy in the worst possible way for you. This means that whoever's raider or CR90 rolls the worst in round 1 could find themselves hosed for the rest of the game.

There may be changes that you could make to mitigate these objections and make it work. Sorry, but I'm not clever enough to come up with what they might be...

I spoke with one of the other local diehards and we agreed on a few changes. What I posted here was spitballing ideas to see what stuck.

-Fleet values at 75/125/175 so that the first waves aren't just raiders and corvette. At 75, you can drop a VSD or assault frigate if you were inclined for some reason. We also agreed on just saying no Demolisher allowed.

-Changed Deployments. For two players, use three immobile tokens along each normal deployment zone. For 3 or 4, use the corners like in the station scenario. Basically for the same reasons you listed.

The snowballing advantage sometimes happens in battletech. Typically though, the weak/light wave tends to leave the winner pretty beat up. So Wave 2 typically takes minimal damage wiping the surviving weak fleet.

Just popped in to say that the content of this topic was totally NOT was I was expecting from the title.

However i would totally pay for an Armada hookup app for off the cuff games.

I can see this working in the 4 player variant you described. It could be a bit slow to get your fleet into the action when you drop up, though tactically that's not such a bad thing to let the others slug it out.

Plus the 4 player variant is much less likely to have snowballing.

The challenge of the 4 player is trying to give the players a reason to fight each other, rather than to just play keep away and hope all the other players kill each other off.

The immediate idea that comes to mind is to award points for kills (or attacks that hit?), either the value of the ship/squadron or a victory token.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents.

50 points eh. . . So a flotilla with 2 B-Wings?

I think you only need a few things. BTW Battletech is awesome. Just reading this made me want to go dust off my mechs in the closet.

1. Define the play area (3x3) that keeps everyone close and forces the combat

2. No Lemming rule - if you run off the table you go back to your start position. Granted some might use this to get out of being killed but it will slow thier progres down.

3. One ship per fleet - in true battletech grinder fashion you fight or you die, you die you get a bigger nastier ship. - I say this because I am an A hole who will look at someone with 2 cr90s and kill one just to leave the others and make you wait for a better ship while i keep fighting others and ignore you.

Man I want to play B Tech now....**** you. **edit this was not the F word it was the D word BTW silly filters**

I think you only need a few things. BTW Battletech is awesome. Just reading this made me want to go dust off my mechs in the closet.

1. Define the play area (3x3) that keeps everyone close and forces the combat

2. No Lemming rule - if you run off the table you go back to your start position. Granted some might use this to get out of being killed but it will slow thier progres down.

3. One ship per fleet - in true battletech grinder fashion you fight or you die, you die you get a bigger nastier ship. - I say this because I am an A hole who will look at someone with 2 cr90s and kill one just to leave the others and make you wait for a better ship while i keep fighting others and ignore you.

Man I want to play B Tech now....**** you. **edit this was not the F word it was the D word BTW silly filters**