Hi all,

Like many of you, I enjoyed playing board games and miniatures games with my other adult friends. As time has gone on though, I've transitioned from collecting board games and plastic ships, to collecting a house, dogs, a (Big Brothers Big Sisters) Little Brother, and finally a child. While I wouldn't trade any of this for the world, most of my games now sit in the closet gathering dust. Armada is one of my favorite games, but I almost never get to play it anymore. The primary reasons being that it takes too long to play a whole game, and it’s too complicated for most people to pick up quickly and enjoy.

With that in mind, what follows is my attempt to (dramatically) simplify the rules of Armada such that:

• It's fun, simple, and understandable for kids and the uninitiated
• A game can be played to completion in under an hour
• Here are some of the guiding principles:
• Keep it fun! Reduce complexity, simplify mechanics, teach core principles of alternating activations, measuring lines of sight, etc.
• No upgrades, no titles, no heroes. While I love the breadth of gameplay these options provide, they're a major barrier for entry to the uninitiated. Leave this aside for now.
• No firing arcs, obstruction, shields, or defense tokens. These features also add tremendous tactical value, but once again, they're a barrier to entry.
• Command stack? Gone. This is where I lost my Little the first time I tried to play the “Learn to Play” version of Armada with him. It can be too challenging for little ones to think two or three turns ahead.
• Simplify the setup, commands, movement, and attacking by using the Squadron Phase as a model.
• Make fleet building that is easy enough for a novice to grasp.

At this point, I expect I’ve lost several people who think I’ve removed everything fun from the game. Read on, and I hope you’ll agree that I’m close to something workable that strikes a balance between lightweight and fun.

Fleet Building:

I began with fleet building - how do I make fleet building easy enough that anyone can pick it up?

As I mentioned above, I begin with no titles, no upgrades, no heroes, and no other special considerations. Each ship costs its command value. Period.

Take out the ship models, stands, bases, ship cards, dice, rulers, command dials, and damage deck. Put almost everything else back in the box.

Turn each ship card to whichever side has the lowest point value, and array them on the table so that all players can see their full breadth of options.

Aside : I have two copies of the core set, plus a smattering of other expansions from the various waves. With this in mind, I have enough ships for a few different competitive 400-point lists for both Rebels and Empire. This gives people a wide variety of options when they come over to play Armada.

Decide on how many points each player gets, noting that each ship’s cost is the command value of that ship (VSD=3, CR90=1 etc).

Players select the appropriate (might I suggest 6) points’ worth of ships simultaneously. Players then select as many squadrons as the combined squadron value of those ships. Make sure that both players understand which ships were taken and why. One of my goals here is to teach how miniatures games work, so explaining why I picked what I picked helped my Little understand games like this.

Once both sides have selected their ships and squadrons, deploy your fleets simultaneously on opposite ends of a 3x6 game board. Take turns placing obstacles.

Aside: Try to get through this phase quickly. Remember, the whole reason for this exercise is to help you have time to actually play through a game in limited time.

Game Mechanics

Armada already has a mechanic that is simple for children and people new to miniatures games to pick up quickly - the Squadron Phase.

The beauty lies in the simplicity - units have a few basic attributes (hull, attack, movement distance) that define how they interact with other models on the table. By borrowing aspects of this model, I believe that you can make a more lightweight version of Armada that is inviting for beginners.

Each ship's characteristics are reduced to a simple set of attributes

• Command > how much the ship costs to buy and activate.
• Squadron > the "attack" value of the ship. Indicates both how many black dice a ship can used to attack, as well as how many squadrons can be activated with a squadron command.
• Engineering > the "defense" value of the ship. Indicates how many blue dice you can roll on defense, or use to attempt to repair damage with an engineering command.

I'm confident that at this point I’ve convinced most of you that I’m crazy. For those brave enough to continue, let's talk about what I did with Commands.

The Command Stack is gone, as are tokens. Each ship needs a single Command dial to track activations.

On its turn, each ship can perform two actions:

1. One Speed 1 maneuver (by the way, I'm also not tracking speed). Watching his ships fly off the table was another place I lost my Little.
2. One special action, as determined by the command dial. Commands are determined in secret, and revealed to indicate which ships have already been activated.

Here's how I reinterpreted commands:

• Concentrate fire - attack with the number of black dice corresponding to your squadron value. More on attacking/defending is below.
• Squadron - you can activate up to your squadron value of squadrons. More on this later.
• Engineering - you can roll as many blue dice as engineering points your ship has. For every accuracy result, you may remove one face-down damage card. You may never remove face-up damage card.
• Maneuver - in addition to your speed-1 maneuver, you may perform any other valid maneuver for this ship. Once again, I’m not keeping track of speed because I’ve found that this adds unnecessary complexity for novice gamers.

How activation works

The youngest player goes first.

1. Each player must activate a total of three command points worth of ships at a time. This could be three CR 90s, one CR 90 + 2 Neb B, one VSD etc. If at any point fewer than three points’ worth of unactivated ships remain, activate all remaining ships. You should plan for 2-3 activations per player to keep the game moving quickly. No skips, no funny business.
2. Each ship reveals its command dial, which may be performed before or after it’s “free” speed-1 maneuver.
3. Each activated ship performs it’s free move and its special action
4. The next player then must activate three command points worth of ships at a time and the cycle repeats until no unactivated ships remain.
5. Once all ships have activated, activate squadrons as described below

How moving works:

Follow the standard Armada movement rules, except that collisions/ramming are not allowed.

How attacking works:

• Gather as many black dice as your squadron value.
  • Why did I pick the squadron value as the number of attacks?
    • It’s a number that correlates well with size and command, and therefore overall ship cost.
    • It also varies enough to give you options.
• Name your target, you may only pick one.
  • Do you have line of sight as measured from your flight peg to any point on their base? If so, proceed. If not, stop and pick a different target. You may not target friendly units.
• Is your target in range? If not, pick a different target.
  • If your target is a ship - “in range” means long range
  • If your target is a squadron - “in range” means close range
• Attacker rolls the appropriate number of black dice, tallying successes as follows:
  • Crit = one “critical” success.
  • Hit = one “regular” success
  • Blank = miss. Immediately discard.
• Defender, rolls as many blue dice as that ship’s engineering value, tallying successes as follows:
  • Hit = cancel one of the attacker’s “regular” successes
  • Crits = cancel one of the attacker’s “regular” successes. If no “regular” success remain, remove one of the attacker’s “critical” successes
  • Accuracy = miss. Immediately discard
• If any attack successes remain, deal damage directly to the ship (ignore shields)
  • Crit = face-up damage, ignore text on card
  • Hit = face down damage
• If a ship ever has as many damage cards as its hull value, it is immediately destroyed and removed from the game board. Face-down damage cards can be removed during an engineering command, face-up cards cannot be removed. In this way, the game makes progress.

How squadrons work

• Ignore squadron keywords.
• If you are using a squadron command, follow standard squadron rules (move and attack, in any order, ignore crits etc)
• If you are not using a squadron command, squadrons activate automatically (two at a time) following these rules:
  • If there is an enemy unit within short range, attack that unit with appropriate dice following standard attacking rules (ignore crits, etc). Toggle the activation slider.
  • If there is no enemy unit within short range, proceed in a straight line toward the nearest enemy unit.

How engineering commands work:

If a ship reveals an Engineering Dial, it may roll as many blue dice as engineering points it has. For every accuracy result, it may remove one face-down damage card. Face-up damage cards remain and may not be removed.

How you win:

Destroy all enemy ships, protect a space station for 6 turns, escort an objective ship from one of the map to the other. It doesn’t matter! The objective is to have fun and gain familiarity with how games like this work, so that you can graduate to “full” Armada

Note that I still have every intention of playing “full” Armada with friends when I get more time.

I welcome your feedback and any thoughts or considerations you have.

You lost me at the point where you got rid of arcs. They are easy to use because it's all printed on the board, and they teach perception and basic geometric extrapolation when learning how to play with them.

I do like your simplifications with cost of activation and squadron complement.

I am unsure about no Shields and damage, together with arc that would be one of the first things to get back to normal when expanding on the rules after the little ones had some experience and want more...

Defense tokens*, Objectives, Obstructions, shields, and Upgrades of any form can definitely go for running a really basic game.

You could also drop squadrons to start as well. Or at least don't use any of their special abilities. Vanilla X-Wings vs. Vanilla TIE Fighters

I would say that the firing arcs, and command stacks are really what make the game unique, so removing any of them would be detrimental to the experience as a whole. Firing arcs are not a terribly advanced part of the game, and command stacks give the option of choices. Perhaps stick to just one command in the stack, and build up after a few games.

*Maybe each ship just has one brace? So the accuracy side on the dice has a purpose. Dividing by two is a concept that should be practiced early and often to apply to higher math concepts, and when you have individual dice to add/remove it is a very straightforward process.

Thanks for the feedback guys. For some perspective on where we're starting, we normally play Monopoly, Leaps and Ledges, or something Similar. We had a good time playing Pirates of the Spanish main, and I'd like to see if we can eventually transition into Armada as I've seen other teenagers grasp it.

With that in mind, I want to add firing arcs back in - I'm just trying to figure out how. During an early game with my Little, we tried abandoning "just" upgrades, defense tokens, objectives, and limiting the command stack. The result was a painfully short game where a VSD one-shot'ed a CR90 one turn and a Neb-B the next. I really like adding just one token in per ship, or introducing them one as a time.

My thought was to start with movement, which is one of the harder parts to learn, and add complexity in there.

I'm hoping to try out the alternate rules for May the Fourth, stay tuned.

Play different ships. A VSD, and ILC, for imps, Afk ii and Neb B for Rebs.

No defense tokens, AND no shields makes ships very vulnerable to mass damage like the VSD pushes.

Yeah, that's why I reworked things so thoroughly. It was an "if you give a mouse a cookie" situation

Ships dealt too much damage (and arcs were too hard to get) so I reduced it down (now use squadron value).

Without arcs and range, tokens were too tricky so I made it diced-based like other games.

I want to emphasize that this is just a temporary exercise / thought experiment until we can graduate to the full rules.

I've played Armada with my kids (8,6,5,4 at the time).

We play 2 core sets - 2VSD + Tie Fighters, vs 2CR90s, 2Nebs, Xwings.

My changes are:

* ignore the command stack (just have one dial each ship)

* ignore defence tokens (but assume every ship can redirect damage to an adjacent arc)

* ignore upgrades, commanders, etc.

The kids had a great time, and are always pestering me to play again. But my kids are quite game savy - we play Red Planet, Tokaido, etc.

Armada can be simplified to make it totally accessible for kids.

What age level is this for anyhow?

On 5/3/2017 at 5:28 PM, LTD said:

I've played Armada with my kids (8,6,5,4 at the time).

We play 2 core sets - 2VSD + Tie Fighters, vs 2CR90s, 2Nebs, Xwings.

My changes are:

* ignore the command stack (just have one dial each ship)

* ignore defence tokens (but assume every ship can redirect damage to an adjacent arc)

* ignore upgrades, commanders, etc.

The kids had a great time, and are always pestering me to play again. But my kids are quite game savy - we play Red Planet, Tokaido, etc.

Armada can be simplified to make it totally accessible for kids.

My little just turned 6. I've taught them Risk, Chess, Tokaido (which they regularly win at), Smallworld (great for youngsters, no real reading required), and Star Trek Cataan.

I've gotten them to play some x-wing, but Armada has eluded us. I'll have to try your adjustments to really get them into it.

I am late to this party but I am going to have to try this. My son is 3 but always pleads with me to let him play Star Wars with me. I figured he was far far away from even being close to playing so I hadn't even thought of it. He is still probably a year or 2 away from even those rules, but I am going to give it a shot and see!

Only issues I have with your rules are shooting after moving. In my opinion, the moment you do that it ceases to be Armada. Shooting must be before moving or everything you learn about the game us null and void when or if you ever play a more full version.

I applaud your attempt at house rules for your kids. I'm a dad who plays many FF games with his 6 and 9 year old son. I started with them when they were younger. They've done a good job at keeping up with the rules but with Armada it's a great idea to ditch upgrade cards at first. As a parent you know how set-up time is a non-starter. By the time you get to play you need the table back for diner!

My oldest has been having trouble with reading, so I make him read the cards for practice. His mind is incredible at math feats and memorizing the rules, so that helps both of my own deficiencies. The youngest just wants to blow things up and gets VERY upset when it doesn't go his way. I need to use a certain amount of " let the Wookiee win" with him until defeat becomes more palpable. I don't know if that's the best parenting but I've tried everything.

I'd love to give your rules a try. I love hearing about parents with a gaming addiction and little time trying to introduce the hobby to their kids. I work in film and storytelling is the core of my Industry. It's how I made sense of the world and gaming certainly shaped that skill growing up.

That would be a great sub-topic for a FF forum topic. Gaming with younger players!