Thanks for all the good input. I am slightly less stumped now.

However I will say he was definitely not unarmed or outmatched. He had a Demolisher, as it was one of the cards he picked out of the list that he wanted to try because even he, with precisely 0 experience in the game, saw shooting after movement as a strong upgrade. His ISD was gunnery teams, X17, leading shots, but other than that I tried to go as trim as possible on the upgrades. My exception was titles: myy own ships were naked otherwise (Salvation, Jainas ((trc doesn't count a cr90A right? I mean it practically isn't a ship without it)), and Mon Karren) and Tycho, and that is what got me in trouble.

I will say that perhaps even my philosophy of "barest of upgrades" was too much when you look around and see that I typically defaulted to titles and those tend to be the most "break-ey" out of all the upgrades. Tycho in hindsight was a total mistake against a first time player because it pretty much ruined the squadron game on his end, but I hadn't thought about that ahead of time.

Someone's gotta swoop in to this poor guys defense.

If my very first exposure to this game involved me playing somebody fielding Demo and Rhymer, I'd never play this game again.

Just saying first impressions last a life time and if your first impression is that the core rules mean nothing and that everything breaks the rules in order for them to be "unique" then ya I'd hate it too.

Yeah, but that's not what happened, right?

It doesn't sound like an exploitative first game designer to punish his friend for inexperience.

I mean, Dodanna's Pride and Tycho are hardly the greatest abilities in the game.

They are if you arent prepared for them.

Face it. The first thing you do at the start of a game is scan your opponents list for dangerous cards.

You see Dodonnas pride, you line up to kill it or block it with a high hull ship.

You see Tycho, you put your intel ship on his tail.

Actually I see Dodonna's pride and I go..."hey great thats not a trc90".

OP, I'm going to ask you to check your defenitions. You say he's a good wargamer. What wargames does he like?

Based on his reply, I suspect he likes historical wargames. Napolionic, WW2, American Civil War, American Revolution. In these games, it is all about stratigy and tactics. There is no "deck building" aspect whatever. At best, there might be one or two "special" rules to cover the fact that the enemy has been without supplies for four days, or to cover an ambush scenerio. By these standards, Armada is hardly a wargame at all; it's a deckbuilder with ships.

You might try easing him into it, or simply accepting that this is not his game. I reccomend ignoring anyone claiming he's a "sore loser."

Armada uses its upgrades to bend and break many of the Hard Structured rules. This is why the game has the variety and balance it does.

When you are a new player to a game, you learn the core rules.

As a teacher I think it's important to just utilize those core rules for the first few plays.

Let them get a feel for the base game before hitting them with all the exceptions and mechanic-bending upgrades. Otherwise it can feel like you set the player up with some expectations and then blind-sided them in order to win.

One step at a time. Let them internalize the rules before you start breaking them.

I do it in small doses. 1 upgrade and a commander per side but usually ones that dont break rules outright.

OP, I'm going to ask you to check your defenitions. You say he's a good wargamer. What wargames does he like?

Based on his reply, I suspect he likes historical wargames. Napolionic, WW2, American Civil War, American Revolution. In these games, it is all about stratigy and tactics. There is no "deck building" aspect whatever. At best, there might be one or two "special" rules to cover the fact that the enemy has been without supplies for four days, or to cover an ambush scenerio. By these standards, Armada is hardly a wargame at all; it's a deckbuilder with ships.

You might try easing him into it, or simply accepting that this is not his game. I reccomend ignoring anyone claiming he's a "sore loser."

He played Warhammer, Warhammer 40k, Lord of the Rings Miniatures, and dabbled in some Napleonic and WW2 minis. He was probably deepest into 40k and the LOTR minis. He only stopped because he ran out of time for painting, so asked me show him Armada since the models were pre-painted and he is crazy for Star Wars and it seemed like a good fit in that sense.

I don't think it was necessarily the card abilities that put him off, he liked the ship upgrades like XI7 and gunnery teams and the like. Even liked Lando and his risky maneuver. It was mostly the truly arbitrary stuff like "every squadron has to engage... cept Tycho, cause he is Tycho" and "Dodonna's pride has magic ion cannons that cannot be stopped by shields."

OP, I'm going to ask you to check your defenitions. You say he's a good wargamer. What wargames does he like?

Based on his reply, I suspect he likes historical wargames. Napolionic, WW2, American Civil War, American Revolution. In these games, it is all about stratigy and tactics. There is no "deck building" aspect whatever. At best, there might be one or two "special" rules to cover the fact that the enemy has been without supplies for four days, or to cover an ambush scenerio. By these standards, Armada is hardly a wargame at all; it's a deckbuilder with ships.

You might try easing him into it, or simply accepting that this is not his game. I reccomend ignoring anyone claiming he's a "sore loser."

I don't think it was necessarily the card abilities that put him off, he liked the ship upgrades like XI7 and gunnery teams and the like. Even liked Lando and his risky maneuver. It was mostly the truly arbitrary stuff like "every squadron has to engage... cept Tycho, cause he is Tycho" and "Dodonna's pride has magic ion cannons that cannot be stopped by shields."

Plus when someone questions how a character can break the rules...just say it's the Force.

Someone's gotta swoop in to this poor guys defense.

If my very first exposure to this game involved me playing somebody fielding Demo and Rhymer, I'd never play this game again.

Just saying first impressions last a life time and if your first impression is that the core rules mean nothing and that everything breaks the rules in order for them to be "unique" then ya I'd hate it too.

Yeah, but that's not what happened, right?

It doesn't sound like an exploitative first game designer to punish his friend for inexperience.

I mean, Dodanna's Pride and Tycho are hardly the greatest abilities in the game.

They are if you arent prepared for them.

Face it. The first thing you do at the start of a game is scan your opponents list for dangerous cards.

You see Dodonnas pride, you line up to kill it or block it with a high hull ship.

You see Tycho, you put your intel ship on his tail.

Actually I see Dodonna's pride and I go..."hey great thats not a trc90".

And that would be fatal against a well played DP...

But another thing to suggest to new players is to plan for navigation commands in their first few games. I started doing that after my new players were doing engineering turn 2 with CF on turn 1, and practically forcing themselves into terrible positions to avoid collisions. The directed maneuver aspect of this game will often cause new players to maneuver terribly, and spammed Nav commands help out a lot with that. Also allowing them to break the aspect of not pre measuring stuff so that they can get their spatial bearing, even to the point of letting move their ship and then move it back to see the actual physical difference (though it didn't sound like this guy needed that much help). And since everyone wants to fly an ISD their first game, that fishtail needs some special attention.

It sounds like you'd be developing bad habits, but it really helps to encourage them in a first game.

Someone's gotta swoop in to this poor guys defense.

If my very first exposure to this game involved me playing somebody fielding Demo and Rhymer, I'd never play this game again.

Just saying first impressions last a life time and if your first impression is that the core rules mean nothing and that everything breaks the rules in order for them to be "unique" then ya I'd hate it too.

Yeah, but that's not what happened, right?

It doesn't sound like an exploitative first game designer to punish his friend for inexperience.

I mean, Dodanna's Pride and Tycho are hardly the greatest abilities in the game.

They are if you arent prepared for them.

Face it. The first thing you do at the start of a game is scan your opponents list for dangerous cards.

You see Dodonnas pride, you line up to kill it or block it with a high hull ship.

You see Tycho, you put your intel ship on his tail.

Actually I see Dodonna's pride and I go..."hey great thats not a trc90".

And that would be fatal against a well played DP...

But another thing to suggest to new players is to plan for navigation commands in their first few games. I started doing that after my new players were doing engineering turn 2 with CF on turn 1, and practically forcing themselves into terrible positions to avoid collisions. The directed maneuver aspect of this game will often cause new players to maneuver terribly, and spammed Nav commands help out a lot with that. Also allowing them to break the aspect of not pre measuring stuff so that they can get their spatial bearing, even to the point of letting move their ship and then move it back to see the actual physical difference (though it didn't sound like this guy needed that much help). And since everyone wants to fly an ISD their first game, that fishtail needs some special attention.

It sounds like you'd be developing bad habits, but it really helps to encourage them in a first game.

Hasnt been yet.

Someone's gotta swoop in to this poor guys defense.

If my very first exposure to this game involved me playing somebody fielding Demo and Rhymer, I'd never play this game again.

Just saying first impressions last a life time and if your first impression is that the core rules mean nothing and that everything breaks the rules in order for them to be "unique" then ya I'd hate it too.

Yeah, but that's not what happened, right?

It doesn't sound like an exploitative first game designer to punish his friend for inexperience.

I mean, Dodanna's Pride and Tycho are hardly the greatest abilities in the game.

How do you know that's not what happened?

All I know is that this was the guys first game and that abilities that break core rules upset him. This is irrelevant to an experienced player thinking Tycho and Dodonna are mediocre cards at best.

From what I know from what the OP wrote is that to me at least, its not this outrageous outcome that the guy walked away with a sour taste in his mouth. And for people to immediately jump to the conclusion "it's because he's a sore looser" is short sighted in my opinion.

Edit

I must be a slow typist. Beaten again by another valid post

How do I know he wasn't thrown up against a Rhymer/Demo list? Because, and maybe I'm speculating unfairly, but the new guy was playing against a Rebel list, and those don't typically include Rhymer or Demo.

The point is that Tycho and Pride, no matter how much a situation involving then might turn out to suck aren't nearly as all-purpose excellent. That's how I know that.

Someone's gotta swoop in to this poor guys defense.

If my very first exposure to this game involved me playing somebody fielding Demo and Rhymer, I'd never play this game again.

Just saying first impressions last a life time and if your first impression is that the core rules mean nothing and that everything breaks the rules in order for them to be "unique" then ya I'd hate it too.

Yeah, but that's not what happened, right?

It doesn't sound like an exploitative first game designer to punish his friend for inexperience.

I mean, Dodanna's Pride and Tycho are hardly the greatest abilities in the game.

They are if you arent prepared for them.

Face it. The first thing you do at the start of a game is scan your opponents list for dangerous cards.

You see Dodonnas pride, you line up to kill it or block it with a high hull ship.

You see Tycho, you put your intel ship on his tail.

Nope, still not the powerhouses that Demo and Rhymer are.

Someone's gotta swoop in to this poor guys defense.

If my very first exposure to this game involved me playing somebody fielding Demo and Rhymer, I'd never play this game again.

Just saying first impressions last a life time and if your first impression is that the core rules mean nothing and that everything breaks the rules in order for them to be "unique" then ya I'd hate it too.

Yeah, but that's not what happened, right?

It doesn't sound like an exploitative first game designer to punish his friend for inexperience.

I mean, Dodanna's Pride and Tycho are hardly the greatest abilities in the game.

They are if you arent prepared for them.

Face it. The first thing you do at the start of a game is scan your opponents list for dangerous cards.

You see Dodonnas pride, you line up to kill it or block it with a high hull ship.

You see Tycho, you put your intel ship on his tail.

Nope, still not the powerhouses that Demo and Rhymer are.

Not even in the ballpark.

Not even in the ballpark.

In Tycho's defense, is definitely say he's pretty good.

Not that I would describe either Demo or Rhymer as "pretty good".

And I'm with you, if I saw a Pride, I'd be super happy that they didn't go with a TRC90. You want to get within medium range? Cool.

I've been feeling like this about X-wing more and more (only dabbled in Armada so my examples will be from X-wing but I think its relevant). It's definitely getting worse. Each wave brings new ships and to make them more unique, the complexity level just keep ratcheting up, more and more abilities that fundamentally break the core rules in some way. Now we have abilities that let you fire in the activation phase, thereby circumventing pretty much every part of the game.

I've got issues with this from a game design perspective in several ways.

1) Most of all, more complexity doesn't make a better game. I feel like X-wing was at it's peak in the very early waves where maneuver, action and target priority made up the majority of tactics. It often feels like ships have unique special rules for the sake of being special rather than any real addition to tactics (example: SLAM seems largely pointless when we have boost already).

2) Barrier to entry is higher. Not only do you need to learn how to play well, you need to learn all of the combos and what each one does, how to counter them, etc. You can argue this is adding skill to the game but often it requires memorisation of combos and counters at the expense of maneuver and target priority.
3) Many of the special rules negate some limitation built into the game (true of virtually every wargame). This is okay at a low level, but typically those restrictions are what make a game interesting as you can't quite do everything. Ships that you don't need to think about are not challenging or interesting to play against.
4) FFG's release mechanism has its faults. Even really cool later additions to the game can't easily be retroatively applied and each wave needs to have something to set it apart from the previous ones, often making old, basic options seem bland.

You just broken the first golden rule when trying to show new player the game (making a demo). You let them win . This might sound stupid, but it is the right way to do. You have to lower yourself to the same "unexperienced" level when you play against new players.

And the second one: you dont overload the game with to many effects. Just a plain simple game for the basics.

You are not using your tier 1 meta deck/list/fleet/squad against someone who is trying to learn the game. Just because it is already hard enough to understand the core rules, to many combos or tricks are only confusing.

And it does not matter if he is the mega pro on other games, or if he is arrogant and always thinking he is the best (no idea if he is this kind of person, but i know one with this behavior).

Especially these guys only accept a game when they "think" they are so smart to learn it really fast. But are totally pissed when they lose to combos, they didnt knew or forgot about in the match.

OP, I'm going to ask you to check your defenitions. You say he's a good wargamer. What wargames does he like?

Based on his reply, I suspect he likes historical wargames. Napolionic, WW2, American Civil War, American Revolution. In these games, it is all about stratigy and tactics. There is no "deck building" aspect whatever. At best, there might be one or two "special" rules to cover the fact that the enemy has been without supplies for four days, or to cover an ambush scenerio. By these standards, Armada is hardly a wargame at all; it's a deckbuilder with ships.

You might try easing him into it, or simply accepting that this is not his game. I reccomend ignoring anyone claiming he's a "sore loser."

He played Warhammer, Warhammer 40k, Lord of the Rings Miniatures, and dabbled in some Napleonic and WW2 minis. He was probably deepest into 40k and the LOTR minis. He only stopped because he ran out of time for painting, so asked me show him Armada since the models were pre-painted and he is crazy for Star Wars and it seemed like a good fit in that sense.

I don't think it was necessarily the card abilities that put him off, he liked the ship upgrades like XI7 and gunnery teams and the like. Even liked Lando and his risky maneuver. It was mostly the truly arbitrary stuff like "every squadron has to engage... cept Tycho, cause he is Tycho" and "Dodonna's pride has magic ion cannons that cannot be stopped by shields."

Two thoughts:

1) one can always play without upgrade cards if one likes. Personally, I think that would be very boring and it would be hard to kill much of anything.

2) it's mostly only frustrating when you don't know what to expect and don't know how to counter it. Most cards do have ways of countering them that come up in list designing and effectiveness of play. Those elements are what make Armada a replayable game for me. Otherwise, it would be a simple game of who gets to throw the most dice and that's not particularly interesting. Finding synergies in cards and ships, counters, ways to protect the flanks of your ships - that's what Armada is all about.

Not knowing how to counter a card-specific rule is the hardest part of adjusting to the ebb and flow of a game. It is what makes it interesting.

You just broken the first golden rule when trying to show new player the game (making a demo). You let them win . This might sound stupid, but it is the right way to do. You have to lower yourself to the same "unexperienced" level when you play against new players.

And the second one: you dont overload the game with to many effects. Just a plain simple game for the basics.

Letting the new player win is a pretty condecending way of introducing someone to a game. I don't expect to win my first attempt at a game. Not curbstomping them into the ground with a top tier list and making sure you talk through each choice and option they have (and what you can do too!) to make it a fun game is one thing, but letting them win is another.

Keeping it simple and not using too many effects is an excellent idea to keep the number of variables down but many posters are suggesting the OP's friend is confused or overwhelmed and that clouds his opinion. It doesn't seem that way to me - it seems he's an experienced wargamer making a first impression opinion on the game design, and it's perfectly valid. When it the core rules are pretty solid, simple yet effective, excessive exceptions and special rules detract from that.

Like i said. Golden rule of making demos.

I find it always really funny when watching demo matches of games i know. To see the "newbie" errors the demo maker is doing, just to not win (to easy).

It can (and will) be even more frustrating for the person you are trying to teach the game when you kick his ass, and he had no chance at all. At least the most persons i know feel this way. There are exceptions that grow on this and try to learn. But most want at least a chance, or want a close match to become interessted in the game.

Former GW redshirt here. No matter what, let the r(w)ookie win.

You can view it as condescending or placating but if you want to grow the game do everything in your power to make the first play experience enjoyable. If you want to avoid making it condescending work the "training" angle.

I think everyone is missing the most important part of that initial game. How many games have you played where Dodonna's Pride actually triggered 3 times in the same game and twice in the same attack? The new guy was a witness to an absolute anomaly with that ship.

OP, I'm going to ask you to check your defenitions. You say he's a good wargamer. What wargames does he like?

Based on his reply, I suspect he likes historical wargames. Napolionic, WW2, American Civil War, American Revolution. In these games, it is all about stratigy and tactics. There is no "deck building" aspect whatever. At best, there might be one or two "special" rules to cover the fact that the enemy has been without supplies for four days, or to cover an ambush scenerio. By these standards, Armada is hardly a wargame at all; it's a deckbuilder with ships.

You might try easing him into it, or simply accepting that this is not his game. I reccomend ignoring anyone claiming he's a "sore loser."

He played Warhammer, Warhammer 40k, Lord of the Rings Miniatures, and dabbled in some Napleonic and WW2 minis. He was probably deepest into 40k and the LOTR minis. He only stopped because he ran out of time for painting, so asked me show him Armada since the models were pre-painted and he is crazy for Star Wars and it seemed like a good fit in that sense.

I don't think it was necessarily the card abilities that put him off, he liked the ship upgrades like XI7 and gunnery teams and the like. Even liked Lando and his risky maneuver. It was mostly the truly arbitrary stuff like "every squadron has to engage... cept Tycho, cause he is Tycho" and "Dodonna's pride has magic ion cannons that cannot be stopped by shields."

but warhammer 40k has so many upgrades that do exactly what he was complaining about. Hell some entire armies revolve around having special rules like Necrons not staying down, or Tau markerlights

This is part of why I was confused... it seemed to me like this was the essence of most mini games I had tried. Albeit I was never big into any of them, but I had played more than 1 match of especial LOTR against this guy before, and it didn't bug him, I guess because those were in the realm of possibility (like an elven archer being able to shoot through obstruction, which was an example he used to describe upgrades he doesn't mind.)

I think everyone is missing the most important part of that initial game. How many games have you played where Dodonna's Pride actually triggered 3 times in the same game and twice in the same attack? The new guy was a witness to an absolute anomaly with that ship.

I love Dodonna's Pride, it is probably my favorite Rebel ship and I run it almost every time I put together a Rebel list. I like to think I am generally pretty good with it as well. However, I have never had it perform as well as it did during this game. I had no dice modification and could not stop rolling crits.

I think everyone is missing the most important part of that initial game. How many games have you played where Dodonna's Pride actually triggered 3 times in the same game and twice in the same attack? The new guy was a witness to an absolute anomaly with that ship.

I love Dodonna's Pride, it is probably my favorite Rebel ship and I run it almost every time I put together a Rebel list. I like to think I am generally pretty good with it as well. However, I have never had it perform as well as it did during this game. I had no dice modification and could not stop rolling crits.

Oh I do too! I like to add SW-7 to it for guaranteed damage. But for it to trigger 3 times in one game...that's like an Acbar guppy rolling 5 double hits in a single roll...

Former GW redshirt here. No matter what, let the r(w)ookie win.

You can view it as condescending or placating but if you want to grow the game do everything in your power to make the first play experience enjoyable. If you want to avoid making it condescending work the "training" angle.

I used to work for GW too back in the day so I know all of the tricks. I guess it depends on what your goal is. You can keep your opponent informed of all of his choices and your capabilities, you can bring a straightforward, no gimmick list and play a honest game. If you want to literally sell them on the game then sure - but if my buddy did this to me I'd be kinda annoyed.