Everyone stay frosty!

I think it's cool that a 2 Vic list made the final table. At GenCon, we had two ship builds duking it out. I think this alone is more interesting than the XWing power builds (again, it's just a preference... I definitely can see why much of the known world plays XWing!).

Norm is from Canada. It would be good to hear what he says about how Nationals went.

I love how people are saying that this game was boring. It was actually 100% more interesting than the Aus nationals where two rebel players circled each other and not a shot was fired till turn 6....

Pretty sure it was turn 5...

I thought it was an interesting game and there is definitely a lot of nuance in the squadron game. Regarding games like this where people slow roll at speed 1 from opposite corners of the map....stop picking superior posisitions people! You almost always get this kind of game. There are a lot of viable fleet builds and I think Armada is in a great place. Worlds is going to be great!

I thought it was an interesting game and there is definitely a lot of nuance in the squadron game. Regarding games like this where people slow roll at speed 1 from opposite corners of the map....stop picking superior posisitions people! You almost always get this kind of game. There are a lot of viable fleet builds and I think Armada is in a great place. Worlds is going to be great!

I don't know how some people wind up with these kinds of games in Superior Positions, of all things. If you're choosing SP from somebody else's objectives, you should have 1) the speed and threat range to bring the fight to them, 2) a deployment plan that will allow you to maximize your ability to respond to a fleet placed anywhere on the board, and 3) a superior ability to strike at the adversary's rear zones, or at least the ability to deny him the same.

If you don't have these things, choose his Precision Strike or Firing Lanes instead!

If you can't handle one of those three objectives, your list needs work, because you can count on seeing them (or CO) in basically every bomber list.

I will say watching X-wings games be it vassal or at the table top and watching Armada games I find Armada games to be the more interesting ones to watch.

I don't usually watch wargame on video or streaming, but I like armada so much I am willing to do the effort for this game. I just saying that they could really improve the coverage without spending a single penny.

Also at least one other camera would be cool.

Well the same can be said for X-wing too. Honestly the best coverage for an FFG game I found were last years netrunner regional where the announcers were good at keeping up with the plays which were faster than any play I could make in a casual game. We are talking where all 4 clicks were spent in less than a minuet and it included a couple of runs.

However announcing for table top games is sort of new and is behind from the more popular esport announcing. Watching some Star Craft 2 streams makes me wish why can't we have that in X-wing. But then I realize that X-wing has less going on per minuets than starcraft which really make it slow. Armada while still a table top game and a slow one with 6 turns taking up at least 90 minuets it does seem like more goes on per minuet. Then again including squadrons Armada tends to have more models on the table unlike X-wing where there was a 2 ship meta for quite some time.

I don't think this guy plays any tournaments

Well chris, where I certainly agree, and will likely be belittled for, that the game turns more squadron centric with each wave, and that I dont like it. Now is the time to tell me "well, you simply cant handle squads, then". With the flotillas there is now a way to not lose ship (too many) activations and still have even more squads. I like having flotillas in the game in principle, even if the gozanti seems a more war-designed ship than the GR-75 ever was and hence should be likelier be part of a military fleet. By the way, though, slicer tools or so I can understand in a GR-75, but hiding a bcc in there, and not being able to put one into a Yavaris or MC80 command, is a joke.

The usual rebuttal now is that squads played such a huge role in all the battles, be it the A downing the SSD or Luke blowing up the Death Star or Poe taking on whichever elite pilots the Order has (surely has nothing to do with it being much easier to endear a dashing squad pilot to the audience compared to a Neb navigator ).

All true, I would not want to play the game without them. But the balance was better before flotillas, in my simple personal opinion. Now I am no game designer, I dont have a solution to having capitals, flotillas and squads feeling right for me (for me, guys, not saying for you all). But having dirt cheap flotillas, with the price surely representing just the hardware and certainly not what the flotilla with its upgrades and activations does for the whole fleet, complicates things. Earlier, you didnt have to have Nebs or raiders or ccs or ISDs, but now it seems you have to have flotillas. I am not up to date with the most succesful WC qualifier lists, maybe they lack flotillas, I stand corrected then.

I am definitly looking forward to Tie Defenders, to Es and Zs, and to more choice in this regard. FC, FCC, BCC and others are out now, no going back...I still think its way more ok to question those things than filling 40 plus pages with rant about missing articles (and whatever else that is ranted about there), even if one of those is always immediately answered with "just send me your ships".

I love Armada, its certainly not broken in any way, but yes, the increased squad centricity including BCC bothers me. I always used squads, but it feels you cannot escape using more and more now. I will be wrong for single fleets, but I think not overall. And oc some players like it better this way, no issue with that.

Edit: In addition, there shouldnt be generic rogues and villains (even if I am a prolific yt2400 user). Its perfectly ok to have individual rogues or hired individual villains supporting an official Rebel or Empire fleet, but generic firesprays and yt2400s all under the command of military purists like Tarkin or Ackbar?

Nebulon B - I don't think you should be belittled, you have a valid perspective and it's not like you are proclaiming the death of Armada! My feeling is that the intention was always that a fleet should comprise of 100-134pts of squads as part of a balanced diet, to me the idea of fleets going to battle without squadron support is like sending in bombers, battleships or tanks without their respective combined arms approach. I think that the fluff we are drawing from supports a significant role of squadrons as does the generally poor anti-squad capasity of most ships... Can you imagine the IRL logic of going without squads? It would be something like - Well we are going to take these hugely powerful ships into battle and just hope they don't turn up with heaps of cheap, hard hitting squadrons which could destroy us... But hey that's a fluff argument and therefore not worth the screen space I spent writing it...

From a game logic/balance point of view the current waves are the best ever IMO. Massive squadron support can be dominating with BCC and Rymer etc etc. But If you've ever gone up against a high bid DeMSU list you would understand that the all ship builds can be just as overwhelming, and frankly not that fun to play against. A bucket of squads gives me another tactical option against that which otherwise I couldn't counter without a higher bid or even more activations (trigger cold war...)

My feeling is that with only 2 sides in this game we need to have tactical variety in builds otherwise it would get super stale super quickly. I hope that they rule against multiple BCC giving multiple rerolls because we don't need bombers to be dominating the entire game to the point where you NEED to run max squads just to keep up but I'm comfortable with spending 100pts per game unless I want to accept a big risk. I think the key word is balance and that means you need to accept the need for both.

I'm REALLY in favor in toning down the 1/3 squad rule to ... 1/4 or 1/5 max, preferably 1/5th. I feel games are taking too long and the board is overly messy with 20+ squads, the norm now.

Well on the other hand, no one seems to be complaining that Demolisher is OP anymore! Balance has been restored to the Force.

But on a serious note, I think that BCC not stacking would go some way toward addressing the perceived imbalance. I say that even though I've been a prolific user of them, and still would be. One reroll really is enough.

Looks like my game started a lot of discussion! It was never my intention to "turtle", but I've found that Victory class ships need to avoid early engagements, they turn like shopping carts with rusted wheels. My plan was to be on the station by with my Victories by turn 4, I also wanted the squad fight to take place there so I could repair any damage I took. As for superior positions as the objective my opponent picked, his other options were probably worse, his deployment in the corner allowed me to do the same.

In the lead up to Canadian Nationals I practiced a lot of squad heavy games with my group in Toronto. Most games came down to who won the squadron war. Playing against Lord Darth Yik, a local killer, really taught me the nuances of the squad game, hiding in rocks, where to engage, controlling the station. It's like a game within a game. Rymer is really good, but he is most important in the early game, he allows ships to start damaging enemy ships at like range 7 ( this will increase with the coming wave and relay).

I find it interesting that the game went from almost no squadrons to maxed out squadrons with the addition of floatillas. I used to run ship heavy lists but getting hosed by bombers and b-wings really sucks. Taking max squads pushes out a lot of ship options. I couldn't find a way to take ISD of either class without giving up too many activations.

I hope you guys enjoyed the video, it's not as boring as baseball after all. Hopefully we figure out a way to better identify ships and squads in the interface. I'm being hounded to do a tournament report for dockingbay416, so that should be up soon. See you guys at worlds!

Investing in that many BCC's is seriously not worth it though, in most cases. And if people star consistently 100-150 points in enhancing their bombers, they're going to be really sad when the resurgence of Mon Mothma neuters all those points...

I love how people are saying that this game was boring. It was actually 100% more interesting than the Aus nationals where two rebel players circled each other and not a shot was fired till turn 6...

What people are forgetting is that grand finals aren't a normal social game where you throw ships at each other and go pew pew. It's a game between 2 guys playing for a huge prize where a win by 1pt get the prize. That will definitely lead to a cagey game because you have excellent players who don't want to risk a mistake. If I have a criticism it's not of the players in that game, it's of the system itself.

I get why xwing needs a cut but I just don't think it's needed in Armada, scrap this cut crap and just do straight 5 rounds or whatever is needed.

On the issue of squadron tactics I have to say claiming there isn't any is laughable, it just illustrates a lack of understanding. We've all been there though, same as you're first few goes against demolisher when you feel it's broken as well, or reikkan or anything else that breaks core dynamics. If you are playing at nationals level I think it's fair to expect you're good enough to understand the tactics.

I think you've hit the nail on the head. I agree totally that there should be no cut. After a 5 round marathon of Armada the person at the top of the pile is the winner. That person has demonstrated over 5 games that they deserve to be there. Anyone can have a good or bad one off game in the cut game and maybe the best player doesn't always win.

Seriously are there that many people spending a minimum of 52 points just to roll bomber dice twice?

Yes. and even more. 3 Gozanti with 3 Bomber Commando center. It works quite well

Seriously are there that many people spending a minimum of 52 points just to roll bomber dice twice?

Well it's only 24 points for 3 BCC's. The points spent on flotillas come with other advantages as well. Activations, Antisquadron dice, etc.

He mean with 52 points two rebel transporter (18 each) and two BCC (8 each).

And yes, it is woth it if you have the bombers for it.

Norm is from Canada.

I’ll preface this by saying I’m sorry for letting down the community with a Round 3 loss to Jordan and with my inexperienced casting ability. How can the commentary be better for a live Armada cast? What would make for good content during the long delays between player actions without resorting to long-range forecasting?

The meta is wide open for a creative, innovative player to step forward and set the precedent. There is room for experimentation to find an optimal fighter screen without going the bomber-heavy route. Currently it is safer for someone to max out on 134 squadrons with a focus on bombers than to think of a squadron escort at half those points. The Wave 2 meta was not figured out by GenCon after nearly a year, and I expect the same for Wave 3&4.

The Canadian Nationals went well overall. There was the bias towards Rhymer, but most lists were represented. Table 1 of Round 3 was a killer all-ship rebel list versus a Rhymer DeMSU (they 6-5’d each other allowing Kristjan to slip in from Table 3). Unfortunately, the nuevo-Yavaris did not make an appearance that day.

For me personally, I scrubbed out. My confidence was shaken by Carlo (Toronto Regionals Champ), who fully tabled my GenCon list the week before. I brought an untested list specifically designed to beat Carlo’s. I knew he would be using his Regionals Bye for Round 1 so I chose to use mine as well, hoping to pair up against him Round 2. I also expected Dark Lord Yik to 10-1 his opponent in Round 1, so a bye would let me temporarily dodge him in swiss. I used my time during Round 1 to finish my judging duties for the Game of Thrones Nationals top cut. To my disappointment, Carlo and I ended up missing each other Round 2. In Round 3, I was giving Jordan a clinic on squadron combat with the Boosted Comms-Vector-Chiraneu-Mauler combo until he landed a Life Support Failure critical on my token-stacked Wulff Demolisher, causing it to plow into the front and side arcs of his ISD. And that’s how I ended up at the casters table.

Hi everyone,

I was the runner up to the event and tokra pretty much nailed everything that was going down. I misplayed my ships speed out of fear. I was totally punished by vector and the swarm combo and could not get the alpha strike off needed for me to win the squad battle. after losing vader and dengar in one round of fire, my plans kind of crumbled and I did not have a real back up plan.

As far as conceding goes, it was getting late and I could not kill 2 Motti VSDs in two turns with demo. My ISD had no shields left was going to implode. Was it lame? Yes, it sucked doing that. However it didn't effect anyone else's standing at the end of the day, and I had a bit of drive to get home. (not to mention I was totally surprised that I made it to top 2)

To address some of the streaming issues, the setup that was used was being used stream x-wing, netrunner, and a bunch of other games at nationals. Yes it was not ideal, but the organizers worked with what they had. There was not much time between this finals and the last events finals.

And at the end of the day, this game finally feels like star wars to me. The no squad builds always bothered me because it always missed part of the movies. Now we have full furballs as well as capital ships and flotillas. The game feels complete. Is moving squads messy? kind of. Does it drag out the game? sure. But god **** does it feel like star wars.

My thought to change the squad game would be to go in slightly the opposite direction. Have separate points for ships and squadrons. Maybe lower both of the point values, but still be able to mix up both ships and squads but feel that you don't need to sacrifice part of the game for the other.

The only problem was, that both player wanted to wait and find out how the squadron fight is going. But with this many squadrons, it may take to long.

They were both moving forward really slowly for the first rounds. And not trying to open up to much. The first ship attacks were in round 4.

Yes, Kristjan was player 2 and placed his ships after Jordan. So he decided to make a slow play by placing the ships this far away. And he knew that his squadrons were stronger.

I guess they know each other, or have played against each other already?

This looks exactly like a match against a teammate of me. We are always moving in really slowly, because we know each other and how we play.

Or they both were a bit nervous (it was the final after all), and no one wanted to make the first step.

If it comes to a heavy squadron fight, you have to move all in if your squadrons are weaker (like Jordan was).

The combo Howlrunner + Mauler + 4xSwarm was the stronger squadron list (imo). So jordan would have to go in with his ship, and make a decission before the squadron fight was over. To wait for it means he will have to face the bombers and the ships. And he had the bonus of being the first player on his side as well. Kristjan on the other hand hat the bonus of more ships. So Jordan would have to make another squadron move, to make sure that he gets the first attack with the squadrons.

Yes, he was unlucky with the demolisher. Not hitting the gozanti is normal. Two red dice and you need one accuracy can happen. To see it happen twice, well... The scatter token is just to good. But he was unlucky on the hits of the VSD (pure dice roll).

But they would not have changed this much. because he could not concentrate the fire on one VSD and had to hit both, it would not have changed much in the end.

The fault was to go in this slowly and watch his squadrons get slaughtered.

The surrender at the end was predictable. His squadrons were gone. The ISD would go down in the next round. The demolisher cannot turn around fast enough for another double attack and the VSD are not badly enough damaged.

Kristjan could have collected a bit more victory tokens with attacks in the back of the ISD. And he could have done in the next round and kill the ISD for sure. There was no way that Jordan could kill as many points as the ISD was worth in the last round. So giving up might be look lame, but was the logical decission in a match where nothing was left to win after the bad luck with the dice.

with my inexperienced casting ability. How can the commentary be better for a live Armada cast? What would make for good content during the long delays between player actions without resorting to long-range forecasting?

Np man, into normal circumstances your casting would have been absolutely fine .Without the ability to speak out loud that was not easy to manage. Considering the lack of visibility we had on the table it would have been nice to have a more descriptive casting rather than an analytical one, if you know what I mean.

As far as conceding goes, it was getting late and I could not kill 2 Motti VSDs in two turns with demo. My ISD had no shields left was going to implode. Was it lame? Yes, it sucked doing that. However it didn't effect anyone else's standing at the end of the day, and I had a bit of drive to get home. (not to mention I was totally surprised that I made it to top 2)

I agree with your decision to concede. At that point, pulling out a win without having any squadrons against Kristjan's fleet is going to be very difficult, if not impossible.

As for squadrons, I don't agree with ChrisCook in that they need to be limited somehow. I feel that the game is currently balanced between capital ships and squadrons.

I enjoyed the cast and I could see how limited you were in what you can do. It would be nice to have some kind of zoom with the camera so you could zoom in on squads so we could tell. I liked ships being lettered/numbered for reference. Looks like it was an exciting even. I do think player 1 should have kept his squads back a little more or at least got off an alpha on the group of ties that had mauler in it but that is easier said than done. With Demo if you can't get an accuracy or guarantee you will get rid of the scatter it's best to just run around the gazonti and go after the Vic's.

I do think player 1 should have kept his squads back a little more or at least got off an alpha on the group of ties that had mauler in it but that is easier said than done. With Demo if you can't get an accuracy or guarantee you will get rid of the scatter it's best to just run around the gazonti and go after the Vic's.

His squads where sitting on the station with vector. I would have been attacking obstructed into those squads. I don't think I could have gotten close enough to them with out them getting the jump(vector speed bump). I planned to attack hits bombers to draw them out but forgot the distance they could fly.

Yeah I took a crazy fleet to this that leaned all the way on a rhymerball

Sorry, Chris, but you are way off. My first match my ball got neutered by a Yavaris alpha strike with just 3 starfighters. Nuked Dengar and vader and my bombers were useless. My second match was against a dual ISD with a veritable rhymerball shredder squad compliment (pushed by flight controllers, with howl, 6 blues coming out of interceptors and 5 out of tie fighters, Vader and Dengar vapourized in 1 activation).

If you lean on the rhymerball there are no lack of ways for an opponent to build against that. If your entire meta is Rhymerball just have a plan for rhymerballs....

I really don't get the sour grapes. If it's rock-paper-scissors and you decide to take away the rock, how does that make the game better?

The lists the top 2 brought were nothing new and in fact one was very similar to a new variant I have of a list I call "old faithful" (you can see me talking about it many months ago). I see them as balanced lists that bring a lot of strengths to the table and were out of favour for a long while because of the DeMSU and TRC MSU BS. Was that era of the game what you are pining for? or is it the gencon special era where you were stupid for bringing any squadrons?

At the very least now min/maxing is dangerous (as I learned at nationals) which I think is WAY healthier. 130 points of squadrons is great but when a well played 60pts of squadrons can neuter it then I don't see the problem.

I do think player 1 should have kept his squads back a little more or at least got off an alpha on the group of ties that had mauler in it but that is easier said than done. With Demo if you can't get an accuracy or guarantee you will get rid of the scatter it's best to just run around the gazonti and go after the Vic's.

His squads where sitting on the station with vector. I would have been attacking obstructed into those squads. I don't think I could have gotten close enough to them with out them getting the jump(vector speed bump). I planned to attack hits bombers to draw them out but forgot the distance they could fly.

This is one of the reasons I've been building demo a little strange lately. I use a Glad II with agent Kallus. Crazy, I know, but if you shove that thing at squads you do roll a lot of dice and you can ET to potentially artificially 2-arc squads.