Is there one do you think?

If one player wins the first three battles in a two player campaign - so that's both the unoccupied planet battles of turn one, and the first special assault of turn two - would that be a point of no return?

We're thinking we might do the final battle of turn two and if the Imperials win that one as well, we'll either even it up and continue, or start over and swap sides.

Not sure how friendly the campaign is if one side gets ahead early.

Did the winning side not take economic losses in pushing that many victories?

If they are just beating the pants off the other side without taking real losses - then you have a skill disparity and need to switch up teams. We are being careful to have the most experienced players on opposite teams.

How many victory points does each side have at this point? A few victories could be enough to even things up if it isn't too far gone.

The campaign mode has a completely new dynamic, many of the plays styles, meta lists and general approaches to tournament play simply don't carry over and in some cases can act as a major drawback. More importantly though its a campaign mode, with a built in story and premises that presumes you are more interested in playing for theme and cinematics then competitive, tournament style play. Sure we track points who wins, but that really isn't the point of the experience. Everything about the campaign pushes players to create memorable Star Wars moments and I think its rising popularity is the result of this sort of story mode for Armada. I think its important to make that mental shift when you play a campaign as a group.

That said, player skill is player skill and I think its really important that a team based setup like the campaign you have properly divided players by skill levels so that you can have some balance (it even strongly recommends that in the rulebook).

I do think that the campaign has a lot of ways to turn wars around, but if you get crushed sufficiently early on it can be pretty tough to make a comeback, so you really have to ask yourself. Do you really care if you win or lose? Or is it just fun to see what happens. Can you enjoy a game of Armada when your outgunned, out numbered almost sure to lose... do you care what happens, do you want to finish the story?

Armada has that magic infused in it where even losing a fantastically thematic game is a lot of fun. Its filled with those "oh ****" moments that put the grin on our Star Wars soul and the campaign mode puts a story to those moments on a wider scale, bringing us closer to the movies we grew up on. Its more important that you walk out of a campaign with a "remember that time" story rather than a heated discussion about the balance of demolisher or the mathematically statistical problems with the Vindicator squad. That sort of talk belongs in post tournament discussions if anywhere, but in campaign mode players should be encouraged to build theme into their list as the campaign embraces that approach and rewards you for it. Sure Darth Vader might suck competitively, but one might say its Darth Vader, if he's not in the campaign quite frankly you're doing it wrong.

In any case, I guess my point is that you should keep some perspective about why you started the campaign mode in the first place. Are you trying to draw that atmosphere out of the game to bring more perspective and theme out of the battles, or are you just using varied rules for tournament play? Your not going to be able to build "competitive lists" in campaign mode, but there are very exploitable "pretty difficult" to beat lists that can be built and I'm sure people coming from the competitive arena will unravel those puzzles and post them online soon enough. The question is whether or not this is what you want out of the campaign.

During the Campaign, the player with the fewest campaign points chooses the first attack. This means that the team with the most will chose the match up for this battle. In a 6-player game, the side with the most will then pick the next attack and the side with the fewest will choose this match up, and, since there's only one battle left, they choose this match-up for the third battle as well. Which means that the team that's currently winning will pick one of the three match-ups with the losing team choosing the final two. This sequence gives a slight advantage to the side that is currently losing.

However, in a 4-player game, the team with the most points will chose the match-up of the first battle which will then determine the match-up of the second and final battle. This means that in a 4-player game, the winning team will ALWAYS be the team that determines which fleets fight which fleets.

Therefore, I would suggest that if playing a 4-player campaign (or 2-player) that the team with the most campaign points be the one to declare the initial attack.

If it was only about winning/losing then I would agree.

But there is a distinct advantage in picking the location of a battle. Getting that first choice means you get to determine what system your team may attempt to capture.

If the team with the most points gets first pick, they can lock down the most strategically important system before the losing team can do anything.

But there is a distinct advantage in picking the location of a battle. Getting that first choice means you get to determine what system your team may attempt to capture.

But either player may gain a location regardless of who initiated the battle. If the losing team picks a juicy location and lose the battle, the wining team can claim that spot and put a base there. IOW, it doesn't matter which team picks a location, only which team wins the battle at that location. You can't "lock down" a location; declaring it as the target puts it in play for both teams. Plus, by not being the first player, it's more likely that the losing team will get an objective that favors them, thus, increasing their chance of victory.

Hmm. I may need to revisit the rules. We'd been playing that you can only build a base/outpost if you win as the attacker.

Thanks for clearing that up for me.

There was an old WW2 boardgame called Totaler Krieg that I played years ago. It was a typical strategic WW2 game in that the German player had to perform slightly better than historical in order to "win" the game. However, around 1943, if the German player is doing extremely well, he can declare "SS Europa" which gives him a bunch of new units but also changes the victory conditions such that he needs to hold onto all of eastern Europe as well as France to win. The Russians IIRC can so something similar if they are doing well by declaring war against the Allies and claiming all of Europe for communism.

IOW, by changing the victory conditions at the midway point, you can prevent a "point of no return" by allowing the winning team to try to go for a Supreme Victory with a much harder win condition.

For example (off the top of my head)

The Rebels can go for the "Liberation of Corellia" by having a base on Corellia and having no Imperial bases in the Corellian Sector or on either hyperlane route before the Imperial player reaches the normal victory conditions. When the Rebel team declare that they are attempting liberation, all their bases are revealed. They can no longer build outposts but their base limit is raised to twice the number of players plus one. Afterwards, all Imperial campaign point awards are doubled and the Rebels can no longer perform a Hyperlane Raid (although the Empire can if they want)

Is there one do you think?

If one player wins the first three battles in a two player campaign - so that's both the unoccupied planet battles of turn one, and the first special assault of turn two - would that be a point of no return?

We're thinking we might do the final battle of turn two and if the Imperials win that one as well, we'll either even it up and continue, or start over and swap sides.

Not sure how friendly the campaign is if one side gets ahead early.

I see two things at risk here:

1) One of the players didn't really build "campaign" fleets [iE you created a fleet with single upgrades that doesn't really work well]... at that point, you might want to ask to reset (or just retire the admiral). The player that is behind might be able to recover if you reset, but seeing as you're now into turn 3 with 4 wins for one side, the winning player might just go for the final battle at this point and end the campaign. I guess with 4 wins, if they chose well for where they attack, they might be able to get 3 more victory points and win the campaign on this turn.

2) The issue might be that you are doing a two player campaign, and there is a skill discrepancy between the players. You might want to talk to the better player and ask them to handicap themselves to make the campaign more fair.

It is hard to play a 400 point fleet when they have 500 point fleets. Good luck trying to take a base. And after you retire twice, your options are severely limited.

Sure Darth Vader might suck competitively

He finds your lack of faith disturbing. Stay tuned to the World Cup to see if your lack of faith is also justified.

Thanks for the replies. Unfortunately as it's a 2 player campaign we can't do much to combat any innate difference in skill level unless we introduce some kind of resource handicap.

I think there may be something in the 2 player (i.e. 4 fleets) setup that doesn't quite work as well as the larger 6 player campaign. If you're behind then you will keep finding the pairings being matched by the leading player giving them a distinct advantage, as they can design their fleets to suit the matchups. Perhaps a slight tweak where the losing player chooses the first assault (as per current rules) but then the defender must disclose their fleet first so the losing player can do the matchups?

With 6 players this won't matter as much because there will be 3 assaults declared each turn. The losing player will choose two to the leading player's one, giving them more options like always doing a resource assault.

Any other good ideas to improve the 4 fleet campaign?

Any other good ideas to improve the 4 fleet campaign?

One other thought I had for a two-player game was to have each player build three fleets but still only do 2 battles per turn and keep the same number of Refit and resource points (with only the fleets participating in battles getting the Refit points). As it stands now, there are only really two match-ups for each turn AB+BA or AA+BB. So you'll be duplicating battles by the third turn at the latest. By adding a third "reserve" fleet, you'll have nine possible match-up combinations.

It'll still be the same number of battles per turn and the same victory point limit so it shouldn't extend the campaign length as you would if playing a full 6 on 6 campaign with just two players.

What level of losses & income are you seeing between the two sides? Are you looking at spending all your income on repairs, while your opponent is buying a new ship every turn?

I feel like you could put in a house rule that gives the trailing player X build points for each VP they are behind. But I don't know what X should be.

Maybe these extra build points follow the 1 upgrade per ship rule? Representing green ships being rushed into service.

Our group is having a similar problem, and we're trying to work out what to do about it. We are a 6-player group, and one side has lost all 6 battles of the first 2 rounds. They are having to spend a majority of their refit and resource points repairing, while the other side will probably have fully-healed 500-point fleets.

To the OP: what did you end up doing, and how did it work out? And to everyone: has anyone played through this scenario? What were the results? Is it possible to come back, or does the imbalance keep getting worse?

I'd like to think there's something in the mechanics that inherently re-balances things, but we're not seeing it. It doesn't seem like picking the matchups twice is enough in itself.

If one side is incapable of winning any battles in a war, it's hard to imagine a way to make the odds even without punishing the side that is winning all the victories.

What are the VP goals again? 12 for 6 player.. I can't remember 4 player. I think you need to be within 4 to call the mega fight?

I figure if one team wins every game in a 6 player game, they will be about 6-8 VPs. If less than 8 there will be one more round. If 8+ , they should just call the final battle and end the campaign (assuming they are ahead in fleet sizes).

I think the anti snowball mechanic in the campaign is that it ends soon.

On ‎1‎/‎5‎/‎2017 at 6:18 AM, BigKahuna said:

The campaign mode has a completely new dynamic, many of the plays styles, meta lists and general approaches to tournament play simply don't carry over and in some cases can act as a major drawback. More importantly though its a campaign mode, with a built in story and premises that presumes you are more interested in playing for theme and cinematics then competitive, tournament style play. Sure we track points who wins, but that really isn't the point of the experience. Everything about the campaign pushes players to create memorable Star Wars moments and I think its rising popularity is the result of this sort of story mode for Armada. I think its important to make that mental shift when you play a campaign as a group.

That said, player skill is player skill and I think its really important that a team based setup like the campaign you have properly divided players by skill levels so that you can have some balance (it even strongly recommends that in the rulebook).

I do think that the campaign has a lot of ways to turn wars around, but if you get crushed sufficiently early on it can be pretty tough to make a comeback, so you really have to ask yourself. Do you really care if you win or lose? Or is it just fun to see what happens. Can you enjoy a game of Armada when your outgunned, out numbered almost sure to lose... do you care what happens, do you want to finish the story?

Armada has that magic infused in it where even losing a fantastically thematic game is a lot of fun. Its filled with those "oh ****" moments that put the grin on our Star Wars soul and the campaign mode puts a story to those moments on a wider scale, bringing us closer to the movies we grew up on. Its more important that you walk out of a campaign with a "remember that time" story rather than a heated discussion about the balance of demolisher or the mathematically statistical problems with the Vindicator squad. That sort of talk belongs in post tournament discussions if anywhere, but in campaign mode players should be encouraged to build theme into their list as the campaign embraces that approach and rewards you for it. Sure Darth Vader might suck competitively, but one might say its Darth Vader, if he's not in the campaign quite frankly you're doing it wrong.

In any case, I guess my point is that you should keep some perspective about why you started the campaign mode in the first place. Are you trying to draw that atmosphere out of the game to bring more perspective and theme out of the battles, or are you just using varied rules for tournament play? Your not going to be able to build "competitive lists" in campaign mode, but there are very exploitable "pretty difficult" to beat lists that can be built and I'm sure people coming from the competitive arena will unravel those puzzles and post them online soon enough. The question is whether or not this is what you want out of the campaign.

this guy gets it....

Not really.

9 minutes ago, homedrone said:

What are the VP goals again? 12 for 6 player.. I can't remember 4 player. I think you need to be within 4 to call the mega fight?

I figure if one team wins every game in a 6 player game, they will be about 6-8 VPs. If less than 8 there will be one more round. If 8+ , they should just call the final battle and end the campaign (assuming they are ahead in fleet sizes).

I think the anti snowball mechanic in the campaign is that it ends soon.

Yes and No.

We just had a particularily bad start to our Campaign as Rebels.. Empire Won 2, the Rebels Won 1.

But because of the way those resolved, the Empire is SWIMMING in Resources, and the Rebels are already almost all Scarred.

And the big quirk?

The Rebels are "Winning" The Campaign now.

The Rebels Declared a Basic Assault, and Won. +1 Victory Point to Rebels.

The Empire then Declared a Show of Force, and Won. +120 Resources to the Empire.

The Rebels Declared a Hyperspace Assault, and Lost. +40 to Rebels, +40 to Empire.

So 3 Rebel Forces re pretty badly scarred. The Empire managed to get everything repaired and back on track, but the Rebels don't - AND the Rebels are now ahead 1 Victory Point to 0, so the Empire will have Initiative next round...


Because the Special Assaults and Destroying Bases with " +0 " Campaign points can net you nothing for Long Term Victory, its actually quite capable of taking qutie some time to resolve, even if things are going on.

heh.. yeah, I guess those 0pt locations make that weird don't they I imagine after a lead like that though, the Imps wont bother with show of force for a while.

The fleet change rule is a bit of a bandaid here, in that it both pushes the campaign closer to the end and gives a better fighting chance, as much as 400 vs 500 is a chance. Better than 350 to 500 or worse at least. It may also be possible to use fleet knowledge to make a suitable counter fleet, closing that gap a bit.

58 minutes ago, Drasnighta said:

Not really.

Yes and No.

We just had a particularily bad start to our Campaign as Rebels.. Empire Won 2, the Rebels Won 1.

But because of the way those resolved, the Empire is SWIMMING in Resources, and the Rebels are already almost all Scarred.

And the big quirk?

The Rebels are "Winning" The Campaign now.

The Rebels Declared a Basic Assault, and Won. +1 Victory Point to Rebels.

The Empire then Declared a Show of Force, and Won. +120 Resources to the Empire.

The Rebels Declared a Hyperspace Assault, and Lost. +40 to Rebels, +40 to Empire.

So 3 Rebel Forces re pretty badly scarred. The Empire managed to get everything repaired and back on track, but the Rebels don't - AND the Rebels are now ahead 1 Victory Point to 0, so the Empire will have Initiative next round...


Because the Special Assaults and Destroying Bases with " +0 " Campaign points can net you nothing for Long Term Victory, its actually quite capable of taking qutie some time to resolve, even if things are going on.

This was our start too Dras, and the Rebels have had a hard time coming back from it. I think that sort of first turn resource swing, if it can be repeated on turn 2, is a huge mental block. It makes whichever team is starved start playing more aggressively, more recklessly, because they feel like they need a big win to swing things around when they are punching up against bigger fleets they can't take directly. This leads to more scarred ships and a bigger deficit.

Like anything, I think the biggest barriers (other than the obvious rule and reg flaws) to success in the campaign is the mental state of the players going into each match. The farther behind you get, the more you need to mitigate losses, stall missions, run away, even. Maybe you lose a system or 2, but 100pts is not an insurmountable gap to close and if you can manage to even the playing field over 2 rounds of just not getting your butt handed to you, then all of a sudden it's a completly different ball game.

On 1/5/2017 at 11:54 AM, TallGiraffe said:

It is hard to play a 400 point fleet when they have 500 point fleets. Good luck trying to take a base. And after you retire twice, your options are severely limited.

This is very true.

In our campaign, on Turn 1 the Imperials won a Hyperlane Raid and a Show of Force, giving them +160 resource points (+53 per player). This also allowed them to build two more bases at these locations. The Imperials were already going into Round 2 with almost 500pt fleets. We've just finished Round 3, and it's to a point where the Imperial Fleets have maxed out their 500pts and now even if you entirely table an Imperial Fleet, they easily have the resources to unscar everything (since their money isn't good for anything else). By the end of Round 2, the Imperials had built all 7 of their bases.

At this point, the Rebels have to take an Imperial Base, ideally Corellia with it's +45 Resources and Repair Yards to start to even dent the Imperial auto-repair economy, but taking a base is a really tall order in CC, especially if the opposing fleet is worth 50-100 points more than the attacker. The base defense objectives (especially Ion Cannon and Armed Station) are powerful enough to let an out-classed fleet resist a superior attacker, but I can't see how an inferior attacking fleet could ever hope to take a base from a superior defender backed by a planetary ion cannon. But even if the Rebels can get lucky and knock off an Imperial base, the Imperial production engine is still strong enough with the other six bases and the huge treasury of credits that each Imperial has that it still won't be possible to put lasting scarred status on any Imperial ship or squadron for a couple rounds.

I think this is a point of No Return , and ultimately stems from the huge +120 Resources snagged from that Round 1 Show of Force. The Rebels only real chance at this point is to hang close enough to the Imperials in Campaign Points to force a Final Assault special objective and to try and win that battle somehow. But it'll be tough, two of the Rebel fleets are suffering and one just reset, which will pit a 400pt fleet with one upgrade per ship against a 500pt opponent with multiple upgrades per ship, while a second Rebel Fleet is still struggling with scarred ships and resource points going to unscarring.




I think it's an issue with Show of Force being too easy for Imperials to score lots of credits (especially Round 1) and Hyperlane Raid being too darn hard for Rebels and typically still giving Imps 40 resource points. It also doesn't help that the most crucial round of the campaign is the first one, and in that first round Imperials have a huge advantage. ISDs (and even VSDs) with Gunnery Teams swing well above their weight, and they are incredibly hard for a Rebel list to actually kill (especially with only one upgrade per ship). Even if the Rebels can get close to killing an ISD, it can hyperspace exit before actually dying and not require any refitting. Rebel ships, on the other hand, typically get killed, and this can really put a financial burden (refitting) asymmetrically onto the Rebels.


Curious to see how Dras' campaign plays out, but it sounds basically like our start. While Rebels are marginally ahead in Campaingn Points, that resource swing and scarring swing should mean that by Round 3 the Imperials are in an incredibly dominant position.

8 hours ago, miferr said:

Our group is having a similar problem, and we're trying to work out what to do about it. We are a 6-player group, and one side has lost all 6 battles of the first 2 rounds. They are having to spend a majority of their refit and resource points repairing, while the other side will probably have fully-healed 500-point fleets.

To the OP: what did you end up doing, and how did it work out? And to everyone: has anyone played through this scenario? What were the results? Is it possible to come back, or does the imbalance keep getting worse?

I'd like to think there's something in the mechanics that inherently re-balances things, but we're not seeing it. It doesn't seem like picking the matchups twice is enough in itself.

Out of curiosity, which Faction is dominating your campaign?

Allwings, I kind of disagreed in my post above, but I figure for point of discussion I will reiterate:

I think that the idea that the solution for the team that has reached the "point of no return" is to take a high value base, like Correllia which you mention, is the opposite of the best course.

You even admit in your post the liklihood of a 400pt basic fleet taking a base against a 500pt fleet with ion cannon is next to impossible.

If you can go 2 turns, however, without heavy losses you should be able to get your fleet within a stones throw of 500 points.

Losing hard in the first round sucks, but feeling like after 1 or 2 turns you have hit the point of no return and you start throwing hail marys against impossible odds you are going to become a self fulfilling prophecy.

I think as CC fleshes itself out fleets will learn to play the long game. If you take a big loss, let the opponent control the sector for a turn or two. Let them have a point or two. Dont sweat it if you lose a base. Just keep your fleet healthy and then when you come back on even ground make them pay. If you can hit 8 points before they get 12, as long as the fleets are even you can give yourself a really good shot at winning the whole thing.

If you hit 8 pts but have had to draw a new fleet every other turn because you have been desperately tabling yourself in an assault on Correllia you are not setting yourself up to win.

1 hour ago, BrobaFett said:

Allwings, I kind of disagreed in my post above, but I figure for point of discussion I will reiterate:

I think that the idea that the solution for the team that has reached the "point of no return" is to take a high value base, like Correllia which you mention, is the opposite of the best course.

You even admit in your post the liklihood of a 400pt basic fleet taking a base against a 500pt fleet with ion cannon is next to impossible.

If you can go 2 turns, however, without heavy losses you should be able to get your fleet within a stones throw of 500 points.

Losing hard in the first round sucks, but feeling like after 1 or 2 turns you have hit the point of no return and you start throwing hail marys against impossible odds you are going to become a self fulfilling prophecy.

I think as CC fleshes itself out fleets will learn to play the long game. If you take a big loss, let the opponent control the sector for a turn or two. Let them have a point or two. Dont sweat it if you lose a base. Just keep your fleet healthy and then when you come back on even ground make them pay. If you can hit 8 points before they get 12, as long as the fleets are even you can give yourself a really good shot at winning the whole thing.

If you hit 8 pts but have had to draw a new fleet every other turn because you have been desperately tabling yourself in an assault on Correllia you are not setting yourself up to win.

If we can use our vassal CC game as an example:

We went into the game with a pretty clear goal - make sure we (Imp) could afford losses better than our opponents (Rebs). The campaign is, IMO, a war of attrition. So to win you do not need lots of campaign points, you need resources - while denying you opponents the same.

Our plan for round 1 was A) secure extra resources and B) bleed you more than you bled us.

In that we did succeed. As predicted it was fairly easy to kill those stations for extra resources. We got more than we expected though. And the Hyperlane Raid was much harder on the rebel than I had anticipated.

So going into round 2 the Imperials had a stronger position than the Rebels. Not that much really, but still.

Where I think you've made a mistake is not planning for the long war. Rather than conserve forces and build up your fleets, you've gone pretty much all in every time, resulting in losses you can't really afford.

Every time that happens you get weaker, while we, who can afford to refit everything, get stronger.

This is something to consider: you may have to retreat once in a while just to conserve your forces. This is especially important for fleets that go into battle with scarred units.