Oh, X-Wing players here are downright derisive of Armada daring to take 1-2 tables every second Week.

I tweak their noses back from time to time.

Cross platform germination is definitely the future for games like these IMO. It adds another complete layer of story-telling and campaign-centric narratives that tell a much fuller story than just "yo, today I spent 8 hours playing X-Wing, and played blah blah rounds vs. blah blah this". Of course, that's a blatant generalization to muscle my point across, but I think many people in this thread would like this idea.

So, X-Wing games typically run like 45-1 hour with the Armada game going for 2x that. What we usually do is play 2 games of X-Wing for every 1 Armada, or if you really want to spice it up, run one bigger game of X-Wing with 150-200 points per side and then play your Armada game next to it. They will both run around the same duration, and I think 150 per side in X-Wing actually adds to the scale of the engagement and gives X-Wing players something different than what they're used to (100 points 90-minute timers). No epic crap, keep this between the fleet admiral and the dogfighting expert.

The community spirit in my local meta are generally: Star Wars fans. That's the bridge or glue that holds all the nerds together for the most part and it works. There's rarely a discussion that takes place in X-Wing where I don't mention ISDs and nerdgasms are afloat everywhere. The thing is, I'm tread heavily in both waters and know the same people. However, this idea is currently sitting in my garage (well.. dinner table and with some folks at work) and haven't taken off fully just yet. It's just something that we like to do to make things interesting because it does the following things for us: Get X-Wing players into Armada, have a great time together and bridge any gaps between the two game systems by giving us all the chance to play a story-driven narrative that feels alive, refreshing (because it's different), and adds another layer of dynamic gameplay.

What you need to do is to find like-minded people, because these are the people that will get it, and will help spearhead this initiative. It was the same with 40K and BFG at one point because there's always elitists out there that think their game is superior to the other. At the end of the day, it's not about them, it's about the fact that realistically, you're both huge nerds playing in a game store. It's about comraderie and that's something even the most elitist player (like myself) is willing to partake. Once you get these players, you're sold, because then they'll start min-maxing their team of admirals and generals and be first to sign up in every month's escalation league (no joke). It's basically fantasy football, you just need to be able to speak their language.

And I think what you're stating is probably going to work wonders in your environment.

But it won't work here.

I do think you've got a good point, HERO. The Luke example is a particularly good example to me given that it's essentially just a slight dice roll modification. It's painful, but not significant enough to affect the Armada game overall. Yet it certainly has the potential. Hmmm, I'd have to look into how the battery fire works for epic sized ships in X-wing, but it might be a way to model a significant Armada-to-X-wing effect. I do think it's about the right ratio in general, adding small nudges rather than taking over their particular 'arena' as it were.

-laughs- Glad to help, Ardaedhel. It's actually called the 'Ignore Preferences' but it's the same thing. No one's on mine permanently, but if I get into a discussion and I just can't bite my tongue anymore, then I'll go ahead and add a name so I don't make an idiot of myself. Then I go ahead and remove it after 24 hours. Problem solved, blood pressure stabilized.

Yeah that sounds about right, Dras. What got me was one pleasant enough X-wing player asking, "Hey cool, any of you play X-wing too." and it got a staunch "No." from my opponent. I was sorta flummoxed as the answer for me has always been, "Not in any serious capacity, but I'd rather like the chance to learn and get in on the action. The X-wing community can present barriers to newcomers as it's already so advanced and I'm actually a fairly timid individual, so thanks for not screaming 'you're taking my table, scrub" Buuuut it came out more like a stuttering hiccup as I wasn't sure what to say. We don't have X-wing and Armada at the same place on the same nights but we do have them on the same nights in the city. The most significant thing holding me back from X-wing is that.

But with that pointless bit of an anecdote out of the way, I like the idea at fostering cooperation between X-wing and Armada, and IA on the territorial control/effects aspect. Because of things such as repair yards, spynets, etc, IA could do something to the effect of reducing the effect, enhancing the effect of these situational bonuses.

And I think what you're stating is probably going to work wonders in your environment.

But it won't work here.

What you will need is:

> 9' table or 6x3' with a 3x3' table next to it.

> 6 huge nerds; yourself, another Armada player, 4x X-Wing players.

> Play the game using my method above with X-Wing at 150 points (75 per player) and 400 points of Armada with a narrative twist.

> Play it in the same room as the other X-Wing nerds.

> Laugh, cry, have a better time than they are, as you talk about your fleet battle ruining the other X-Wing team's day and vice versa.

> Watch as other people who finished their games earlier flock to your table and be insanely jealous because they have no idea why they're even dog-fighting aorund in empty space in the first place.

> Explain your story to them.

> Watch as they walk up to the counter and purchase Armada or talk to you more, pro-longing the game you're playing for another 2 hours. Either or is a win for Armada.

I dunno, this might not work for the folks you're sharing the room with, I don't know what it's like over in your area. Honestly though, it shouldn't concern you because you should be enjoying yourself and hanging out with like-minded friends regardless.

And I think what you're stating is probably going to work wonders in your environment.

But it won't work here.

What you will need is:

> 9' table or 6x3' with a 3x3' table next to it.

> 6 huge nerds; yourself, another Armada player, 4x X-Wing players.

> Play the game using my method above with X-Wing at 150 points (75 per player) and 400 points of Armada with a narrative twist.

> Play it in the same room as the other X-Wing nerds.

> Laugh, cry, have a better time than they are, as you talk about your fleet battle ruining the other X-Wing team's day and vice versa.

> Watch as other people who finished their games earlier flock to your table and be insanely jealous because they have no idea why they're even dog-fighting aorund in empty space in the first place.

> Explain your story to them.

> Watch as they walk up to the counter and purchase Armada or talk to you more; prolonging the game you're playing for another 2 hours.

As I said, your environment. Not mine.

because finding 4x X-Wing players willing to do anything other than Standard Games or HotAC, will not happen.

I can't see posts about the Corellian Conflict!

*

We're too close to totally losing the thread!

*

Everybody loosen up!

please?

And I think what you're stating is probably going to work wonders in your environment.

But it won't work here.

What you will need is:

> 9' table or 6x3' with a 3x3' table next to it.

> 6 huge nerds; yourself, another Armada player, 4x X-Wing players.

> Play the game using my method above with X-Wing at 150 points (75 per player) and 400 points of Armada with a narrative twist.

> Play it in the same room as the other X-Wing nerds.

> Laugh, cry, have a better time than they are, as you talk about your fleet battle ruining the other X-Wing team's day and vice versa.

> Watch as other people who finished their games earlier flock to your table and be insanely jealous because they have no idea why they're even dog-fighting aorund in empty space in the first place.

> Explain your story to them.

> Watch as they walk up to the counter and purchase Armada or talk to you more; prolonging the game you're playing for another 2 hours.

As I said, your environment. Not mine.

because finding 4x X-Wing players willing to do anything other than Standard Games or HotAC, will not happen.

Oh well, that kinda sucks and I don't think there's anything that can be done

There had better be new and cool ships too because I'm actually sick of fighters in Armada.

Nope

At that price you know they can't put ships in. They might come out with a few more before it drops though.

Oh well, that kinda sucks and I don't think there's anything that can be done

Plenty that can be done. And is being Done....

Just not in that format.

Oh well, that kinda sucks and I don't think there's anything that can be done

Plenty that can be done. And is being Done....

Just not in that format.

Oh? Care to share about rehabilitating what appears to be resentful X-Wing players who disdain Armada?

Yep.

Leave them to their own game. They're not defective, they're not criminals, they don't need to be rehabilitated. They're passionate about playing their game the way they like it, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with allowing them to do that.

Instead, we gather, and we play Armada.

We've just wrapped up our second League, and our third League will kick off once Waves 3 and 4 have arrived (along with the Summer kit)... Probably with a Tournament, where I'll toss in some of my custom made trays as additional incentive prizes...

And we'll run 2-3 of the Campaign concurrently when that arrives, as it is presented.

Yep.

Leave them to their own game. They're not defective, they're not criminals, they don't need to be rehabilitated. They're passionate about playing their game the way they like it, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with allowing them to do that.

Instead, we gather, and we play Armada.

We've just wrapped up our second League, and our third League will kick off once Waves 3 and 4 have arrived (along with the Summer kit)... Probably with a Tournament, where I'll toss in some of my custom made trays as additional incentive prizes...

And we'll run 2-3 of the Campaign concurrently when that arrives, as it is presented.

Oh.. OK.

... Man, that Armed 13 Hull Point station has Red-Red-Blue-Blue for ANTI SQUADRON....

That's gonna be bonkers.

So, Check this out...

Check the Wording between the Green Objective Card "Show of Force", and the Red one "Station Assault"...

The Wording is almost identical.

The formatting is slightly different............... And the wording is simply abridged by 1 or 2 words....

But it leads me to believe that the Green Card might be a "promo image" sort of thing, despite being on the box....

Nice spot there Dras. Hmmm, it could be something hidden in the wording but doubt it too. It does feel like a promo image, with the Unarmed Stations being a proper noun now. Could it be a difference in how the VP is calculated? IE, Station Assault grants 40 VP, but Show of Force grants 1 CP?

(G) "each station must be beyond" vs ® "each station must be placed beyond"


Certainly, the Red has the more bombastic, but ultimately clearer rules writing...

Actually, I counter your promo image theory with them being exclusively used for campaign games thus why the wording is a bit different.

But the wording difference doesn't even amount to anything? Why call them different things, then? Why not just ahve a Green Station Assault, and a Red Station Assault, then, if that's what it is?

Why the lax punctuation, (as Vykes pointed out) when its completely unneccessary, and potentially misleading?



Its certainly possible, Lyr... But I feel that, again, Occam's Razor of the Picture taken for the box art was of an earlier piece shall prevail


But certainly, will step up if I'm wrong, as I usually do

But the wording difference doesn't even amount to anything? Why call them different things, then? Why not just ahve a Green Station Assault, and a Red Station Assault, then, if that's what it is?

Why the lax punctuation, (as Vykes pointed out) when its completely unneccessary, and potentially misleading?

Its certainly possible, Lyr... But I feel that, again, Occam's Razor of the Picture taken for the box art was of an earlier piece shall prevail

But certainly, will step up if I'm wrong, as I usually do

The reason why we have green Objectives are for the Campaign objectives, a highly likely reason why they were not gone over in the initial article. Sadly we will have to wait 6 weeks to get more info.

Maybe.

The awesome part about the green being a promo image, and thus, incorrect, means that the Green Objectives could be ANYTHING else..... They could be overarching Campaign To-Do lists... They could be victory conditions... They could be just about anything else....

... Rather than just copies of other objectives.

Who knows! We don't!

Maybe the End of Game conditions are remarkably different?

The "normal" mission gives you a game win/loss whereas the "campaign" mission gives you a bonus to your ship repair if you held the system or captured the system.

Maybe the End of Game conditions are remarkably different?

The "normal" mission gives you a game win/loss whereas the "campaign" mission gives you a bonus to your ship repair if you held the system or captured the system.

HERO. . . Are you being obtuse on purpose now? Obviously people are attending X-Wing more. It is an older game that grew a larger player base.

You are comparing grapes to watermelons. . . Oh who am I kidding, you. Don't even take the time to spell my name right, what point is it talking to a person who is creating a comparison where none can exist.

Oh, I knew your background because you post on BoLS. A select player base posts there.

God's. . . Ok ZERO, go on, keep comparing Armada to X-Wing and keep getting frustrated becuase you can seem to figure out the obvious.

B+ for effort, but you're getting way too emotional for any serious discussion to be had about the matter. Oh, and it's not applies to oranges like you keep saying it, it's just not. That would be something like 40K vs. X-Wing. Armada and X-Wing share the parent company, share the same franchise, share the same stakeholders and decision makers, and share mostly the same playerbase. I mean, lol, trying to call me out about not being to figure out the obvious. The difference here is more synonymous to an older sibling vs. a younger one. Different personalities for sure, but the origin and raising methods might be different.

I'm not so sure it's true that Armada and X-Wing share mostly the same player base. Sure there is some overlap,but I know that my meta, the Twin Cities meta has a healthy mix people who play both X-Wing and Armada, converted X-Wing players (like myself) and players who came just for Armada. I think this is obviously meta-dependent, and what's true fro your meta may not be true in others.

Thanks for responding yourself, but I'm going to put a small dent in the high-fives and this guy gets it emotional roller coaster that's going on in this thread a bit.

First, I'd like to say that I'd like to keep this emotion free when we're talking specifically about metrics. I'll be first to admit that I like Armada way more than X-WIng, but that's because I come from over 15+ years of 40K and BFG. Big surprise there, maybe to Lycareos, but I'm sure he hasn't really looked at my blog in a while to know where my actual roots are before I started posting here.

The metrics I provided were in the form of ratios and proportions used as an approximation for numbers that I do have in my immediate area, the greater SoCal and NorCal region, as well as Nevada and Arizona for the sake for gather further data of nearby areas that might share a different opinion. Since our Regionals have attendees from these areas, it made a lot of sense to pull from nearby states as well. You can find this a few pages back. And yes, they were done out of pure curiosity because I was seeing a downward trend to player attendance and I wanted to see what was causing it. Before, a year ago roughly, I was in a same boat as many others in this forum where a few "doomsayers" came in and started talking about Armada dying off in their area. For me, it was still too new and I wasn't seeing the immediate signs nearly as problematic from the other posters on the forum. Sure, the hobby was more expensive than X-WIng and the initial buy-in was significantly more; but realistically, it was still nothing compared to 40K/Fantasy or Warmahordes.

OK, so going back to our discussion about game health. I started looking into a few metrics based on numbers gathered for attendance for store tournaments, casual tournaments, weekly game nights, and either gathered them myself (I was either TO, a player, floor-runner, demoing games, or an admin on a FB page), and I started doing it for about 9 months now. For social media I used FB, for X-Wing comparison metrics I used both X-wing list juggler and data from other store runners, and for my immediate data, I used connections that I have in the blogosphere as well as TOs from surrounding areas. What I saw was a worrying decline of Armada players and a sharp increase in X-Wing players. At first, I was like sure, there's a dry spell and the release cadence might be a little off-putting, but as more and more people started vacating game nights and tournaments, I started probing into it a little further. Mind you, this is not area related because when I look over TO sheets and FB sign-ups, they're all within the same distance. So I dug a little deeper and realized that most of these players are also in both gaming clubs for X-Wing and Armada. Further analysis showed that they attended more X-Wing than Armada, on top of the stagger difference in game participation that I presented previously. OK, so what about sales? I started asking local store owners, and then from the other regions and then out of state. X-Wing product just flies off the shelf while they always have Armada in stock. This should be no surprise because its a more expensive hobby. I took all this data and then compared it to the East Coast where I still had connections; mainly in the tri-state area because I'm originally from Jersey. Oh, and I got Delaware involved too because I know some heads there. The end result was that I found the ratios to be similar; in that in terms of player gain (measured through new players in events over time), retention (measured through the same players participating in events over time (TO reports + FB group joins)), and velocity (measured through participation/new players after release cycles), that X-Wing leads Armada approximately 4:1 in all areas, with some absolutely demolishing it. Like I said, some places had to cancel events because they didn't have enough people; while the same people showed to X-WIng events placed around the same dates. Trust me, from a TO perspective, we literally have to scatter Armada and X-Wing around because this kind of data definitively proves without a reasonable doubt that the majority of the playerbase is franchise-specific, not game-specific.

Now, to stop beating a dead horse because seriously, lol, I think I've hurricaned on this parade long enough, how do we fix it? You mentioned that you believe that Armada is going to have the same popularity as X-Wing? Well, for one, 15 years of 40K, and working as a red shirt, seeing the complete fall of BFG, and the trends I see today is not making it any easier. Yes, we have the almighty Disney dollar and the Star Wars name, I understand this 100%. However, can you really say that based purely from data, and not gut feel and emotional ties and most likely heavy financial investment in this game that your statement is true? If I was a business stakeholder and seeing this kind of data, the immediate question for me would be how to make it better. Now, keep in mind that I have no idea what FFG executives do or what their metadata is telling them; but I can assure you from a purely business perspective, if Armada is selling their product for 4x more, than X-WIng but have 1/4th as many players, then it's still perfectly acceptable. With this kind of acceptance, business strategy does not need to change unless they want to push for something more. That's where the community comes in right, like I mentioned before, and probably the only thing me and Lyraeos (I butcher his name every time, I know) have to agree with. If the community can generate more players, this will increase a higher demand on the product, which will sound off alarm bells at FFG headquarters to start producing more product, or god forbid put out more content per year like X-Wing has. Data has proven that with each new release, of anything, X-Wing, Armada, 40K, anything, shows an increase of players. I mean honestly folks, what do you think the goal of an campaign is actually? To drive a narrative and hopefully get more players into the game. It's essentially 40K escalation league with a Star Wars twist, and Escalation leagues regardless of what designers tell you, is to drive sales through inducting more players into the hobby.

Lastly, and this is the last point, I swear, is that when you say that the popularity is the game mechanics, keep in mind that this is strictly personal taste and a notable opinion. Yes, I completely and utterly agree with you that Armada is a superior game. If you've seen the material on my blog or the posts I've made prior to this thread-derailing mini-rant that I'm all in on Armada being one of the best game son the market. However, at the end of the day, we have to look at data as data if we're to make an honest review of the situation.

I see some of you in this thread has made it evident that you're going to spark up new campaigns and get people to play them. GOOD, and I say that honestly because taking the initiative to bring this great game to the forefront is what it needs. However, let it be known in the back of your heads, however deep you want to bury it, is that this game is X-Wing's little brother. He is the firstborn, he reaps all the glory apparently, and his parents are spoiling him heavily for it. That's what I've come to see the last couple of months counting the number of players go by, and it's upsetting none the less. That's probably the only emotional tie I have with all of this, and is to see a great game put on the sidelines. /endrant

Edit: One last thing, seriously, is that if I was given this data in FFG headquarters, I would increase game development for Armada and increase the release cadence. I can't believe I'm saying this, but this is probably the only thing that GW does right. When they sniff out a downward trend, they increase game development to a specific division and release new product at an increased rate. Then they soak in the money and let decadence and most likely stupidity sip away all knowledge of how to actually retain these players. This strategy, in terms of product release, is unsustainable UNLESS, it's Star Wars, and I crap you not. That's why I'm so very surprised that FFG hasn't jumped on this harder for Armada when it's so clear it works for X-Wing. Like I said before, even if Armada was 4x as expensive, as long say sell to the 1/4th of players from the same franchise-related demographic, then it's still god. Now, turn that player number to 1/3rd and you can see the dollars rolling in. I think that's what FFG is doing through this campaign, but it's not nearly as good as just faceblasting new releases. Seriously, with this amount of SW hype, this is the perfect opportunity to crap out as much product as possible, at least 2x the amount of content we're seeing right now for Armada. That's what I would do, and as a Armada player, you bet your ass I will be buying it too.

If your numbers are correct, FFG has some questions they will have to answer (to themselves) about the game. I don't feel seem them going GW and ending it ala Fantasy.

On the topic of Xwing and Armada animosity or overcoming stigmas, our area recently had an event in which Armada, Xwing, and IA all took part. Pretty cool. Your idea also seems pretty cool.