I took a bit of a hiatus. The game is ending?

But seriously it takes time to build a community. A lot of people like to compare the game to X-Wing now which is completely unfair considering that X-Wing has a substantial head start. Even around me in the Mideast I estimate it took about 2 years before we got a decent player base for X-Wing and local tournaments (I mean non store/regional championships). I would expect to see slower growth with Armada right off the bat since it's a higher buy in and a bit more of a complicated game.

Just as an aside, keeping a game active in an area is a pretty simple formula. Gotta have community involvement and new releases. If the community isn't really active try to put together some events or find someone to bite the bullet and go to the store everyday for a game. Participation will start low but you have to keep with it. People will play even dead games as long as there is someone to play against.

A friend of mine lives in Houston TX. A huge city with plenty of gaming store. He said that Armada is all but dead there. We have 6 players in Buffalo, NY. But its the same 6 over the last year and a half. We have not gotten any new players. Toronto is the 3rd largest city in North America but only 24 players (2 from the US) at its National Tourney a few weeks ago. It will never get the xwing numbers but you would hope we can keep increasing the numbers. I think numbers at Worlds in a month will be the tall tale.

There is a tall tale somewhere in this thread here...

...but it isn't the numbers at worlds.

...so I guess people are buying it but not playing publicly...sadness really.

I keep hoping the game dies so I can buy up what I need and have a complete game, but that doesn't seem like it'll happen soon.

If it's dead in your local meta and you don't travel to premier events, then I would agree that the game would be dead in your perspective.

Play what you like... if you like it enough, you'll find peeps to play with.

While my area is saturated with FLGS (sorry about less urban parts of the community), but I don't have a local game store/meta. I have to travel 1 hr North, South or West to find real games. My local game store is about 5 min from my job and the FLGS that is 5min from my home doesn't have Armada support.

If Armada is dead, the stuff we have out right now... is plenty good to play all kinds of builds.

While X-Wing is the cash cow and super popular one... Armada is the People's Game. You can play whatever you want, have FUN and be competitive (relatively).

My FLGS sold out all of the new wave they got in despite there never being a game played in the store or a tournament in the store.

We only have 3 dedicated players including me at my local store's league night, but the game itself sells well there.

Also, I will forever curse Nelson for using the same forum pic as me.

(sorry, phone decided to double post)

A couple of points:

When wave 3/4 came out my FLGS got bought out 2 days later and they brought in a LOT, I know exactly 3 people that attend tournaments from my city and none of those people bought any of those ships...

I also happen to know that the number of base games sold across Canada make the turnout at nationals and regionals look like a fraction of a percentage of the people bought into the game. Where do these people play? in groups of 2, 3 or 4 friends, with no interest in organized play or playing in stores. The expectation is that CC will bring in a BUNCH more players and hopefully a solid fraction will eventually become interested in OP

Like any minatures game, Armada is going to fluctuate in any local area. We saw some folks drop off due to other games/Wave Thor took too long, but soon after we have seen more come. There are two folks new to the game and another dude new to the area, and tonight we had four tables of Armada, and four of our regulars weren't there. So I would say keep playing it. You'll draw some curious people in at least. Anyone who lingers a while I usually offer to run a game for sometime. Most say no but, very occasionally, someone will say yes, and in my experience once people start pushing it around a lot of times they are hooked right there.

Armada's passed on! This game is no more! It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to meet its maker! This is a late game! It's a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed it to the shelf it'd be pushing up the daisies! It's run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible! THIS IS AN EX-GAME!

(Sorry. I just had to.)

...so I guess people are buying it but not playing publicly...sadness really.

Why?

I have a Monday to Friday job, I both get and receive a Fencing Lesson on Saturdays as do my children. My wife is an international flight attendant who is not home for a few days a week. Yet, I have played every weekend as I am able except for 4 occasions since the game came out. I am sure that for every person who can make it into a shop there are maybe quite a few more that can't.

As someone who has been only playing Armada for a couple of months, but has been playing X-wing for years, I can tell you a lot of what held me back was simply the lack of waves providing any real diversity. When the game launched first, I was tempted, but was willing to wait to see where the game got to by wave 2 before jumping in (since wave 1 was literally just more of the same ships, as expected). The wait for that wave was so goddamn long, I honestly lost all interest. The same can be said for a lot of people I know were interested in it.

Now that waves 3 and 4 are out, with 5 on the horizon and the CC pack coming shortly too, there's a solid chance you'll find more people picking up the game. I can tell you the CC set is the envy of X-wing players, and it's drawing a fair bit of attention back from the folks who were initially interested. For many of those, their barrier for entry is now the price of the core set, honestly (it runs in the ballpark of €120 over here). Many of them are costing that entry against the price of the fast release schedules of X-wing waves of late.

Even at that, all of the games in this area are casual. I think the very first kit event in our local only happened this month, with a total of only about 5 or 6 players. I try to get a couple of games in a week with a friend at home, maybe one in the local store. It's hard to measure that kind of casual scene.

tl;dr - There's plenty playing, but the slow wave releases have lost potential customers. Corellian Conflict may pull some over from X-wing. Most seem to be playing casually rather than competitively.

...so I guess people are buying it but not playing publicly...sadness really.

Why?

I have a Monday to Friday job, I both get and receive a Fencing Lesson on Saturdays as do my children. My wife is an international flight attendant who is not home for a few days a week. Yet, I have played every weekend as I am able except for 4 occasions since the game came out. I am sure that for every person who can make it into a shop there are maybe quite a few more that can't.

what style fencing?

i used to study tallhoffer longsword.

The Danish armada scene is quite healthy. In the Copenhagen area alone we have about one tournament a month with attendance of 8-12 people each time.

For me the key to joining the community was the Danish armada facebook group. If your local community is not that active, maybe look into setting up a group, additionally getting the local gaming stores involved as well will ensure a dedicated communication channel for events, questions, pre-ordering and the like.

As long as my friend and I play the game it will never die.

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons still lives!

Don't be this guy.

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/205727-wheres-the-beef-we-wait-an-entire-just-for-thisff-gypped-us-all/page-1#entry2106108

look out! it's the ghost of Admiral Nelson!

Locally it never really was. I know people who bought in, but they don't come out to play. So I don't think you can kill what wasn't alive in the first place.

I still like it though.

Seriously though, The Correllion Conflict is going to do a lot by adding campaign play. I could see groups setting up and playing it at conventions, and this will draw in people who don't want to deal with the hustle and bustle of tournaments. I'm willing to bet that as soon as they see how it does they'll have other campaigns out as well

My FLGS sold out all of the new wave they got in despite there never being a game played in the store or a tournament in the store.

We only have 3 dedicated players including me at my local store's league night, but the game itself sells well there.

Also, I will forever curse Nelson for using the same forum pic as me.

Speaking of which, how does one go about changing that? Never looked into it, and I need something that catches my udder virility/rebellious tendencies

Also, I agree with Schmitty (who's opinion was actually taken from the mouths of FFG). If a game is the 3rd best selling of its kind, it isn't dead. Unless it's kind is just dead in general.

And Boardgame Geek has it rated somewhere in the top five of all strategy games

I've only been playing for a few months now but for the first two I only knew one other person to play against. Now I play against 5 or 6 others on a semi-regular basis and have had a couple of others express an interest in playing. Just because a game isn't played competitively at your FLGS doesn't mean lots of people aren't playing at home. My group usually plays at one or another of our houses instead of a store. Plus somebody certainly buys a lot of ships from my FLGS seems like every 2 weeks their shelves are empty except for a couple of CR90s and Neb-Bs. They may not have those anymore since I bought 1 of each last week.

My FLGS sold out all of the new wave they got in despite there never being a game played in the store or a tournament in the store.

We only have 3 dedicated players including me at my local store's league night, but the game itself sells well there.

Also, I will forever curse Nelson for using the same forum pic as me.

Speaking of which, how does one go about changing that? Never looked into it, and I need something that catches my udder virility/rebellious tendencies

Also, I agree with Schmitty (who's opinion was actually taken from the mouths of FFG). If a game is the 3rd best selling of its kind, it isn't dead. Unless it's kind is just dead in general.

And Boardgame Geek has it rated somewhere in the top five of all strategy games

Click on your name in the top corner, move cursor over your "image" and a box for change will appear. Then pick

Local game nights pull between 5-10 in Northern Utah. Last tourney had 10. Regional here last year had 23 I think. I expect next regional to be 40+

It's a game more in line with the old bookcase game crowd; a lot of people have small, closed groups that have their own game rooms and tend to not play socially out in the world. That's how it was with ASL, Supremacy, Third Reich, etc over the years. Especially for older gamer groups that have been doing this kind of thing for decades. It's nice to not have to pack your stuff off to a store to get in a 2-3 hour long thinking/strategy game. I still primarily play in stores, but would get twice as many games or more in if I had the same kind of local group around my new house like I grew up around before.

In eastern Washington there are players but they don't currently come out often. Wonderbread and I are in the process of changing that! We are fully aware it will take some time, but are putting in the effort, and really it doesnt take much.

I can see why people might think its dead when you look at x-wing but you have to look at how long both have been out armada will pick up there just needs to be more waves is all i will say i havent really done any games that are not with people i know but i am trying but ye i just think we need to give it time is all.