The general question: To those of you that have played a variety of card/board/miniature games, how healthy, in comparison, is the armada meta currently? historically? (By health I mean diversity and depth of comp strategies, models/cards used, and FFG's quick/slow/good/bad actions at improving these aspects)

The specific details and concerns: I'm new to armada (have base set basically), but I haven't yet taken the plunge because my playgroup is particularly sensitivity to games with sub-par metas (poor variety, imbalances, over representation of a side or strategy). We're not especially tied to miniatures, so other than a little x-wing (which didn't hold our interest due to lack of scenarios/depth, but also due to FFG's slow-wait-for-next-wave-to-balance-current-problems stance) we're relatively new to miniatures. I usually research a game through youtube and forums before taking the plunge and advising the rest of the group. I've read and heard things that have caused me to be concerned:

• FFG's very slow balancing continues in Armada. Something about a 'philosophy' to almost never errating abilities and cards. Wait until the next wave. Coming from a strong mtg background, this seems really unhealthy?
• FFG Armada World Tournaments have always been won by rebels. Not sure if this is true, or how many worlds tournaments there have been exactly.
• FFG Armada has been silent about the most recent non-diverse world tournament results - no need to discuss the rieekan/squadron/flotilla stuff here, just curious as to where there's been any official/unofficial/grapevine word on how FFG views the seemingly obvious recent lack of diversity in the last worlds

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I know this sort of stuff can be a heated topic. But our playgroup really enjoys maxing out deep game systems that have a variety of strategies while we play, but of course the game system itself has to be able to support that sort of depth and play balance, so I wanted to ask around.

I am a casual only player and have never/will never play in a tournament. If your group is on the casual campaign side of things then the issues that are plaguing the tournament players won't necessarily be a problem. No one in my group has ever even used reiken. If your group is into tournaments and stuff then disregard everything I've said.

armada is the first miniatures game I've played and I love it.

Outside of the top-tier competitive levels (Worlds, some regionals), Armada continues to see a good diversity of fleets archetypes. Strategies are constantly evolving as well. I play several times a month and rarely run into Rieekan fleets.

There have only been 3 Worlds, and only 2 at 400 points. Of those 2, both have been recent (since November) and have covered Wave 4 and Wave 5 respectively. There have been no National or Continental championships since Wave 2.

Edit: There have been several Wave 4 National / Continental champions which have varied winners from 2 Ship Imperials to 8 Gozanti.

The Armada World Cup took place on Vassal in January and also covered Wave 5, and it was won by an Imperial player with Moff Jerjerrod, against a Darth Vader.

Further Edit: Regionals took place 1/2 in Wave 4 and 1/2 in Wave 5, and produced a great variety of lists.

The game is in Flux. This last season there is a clear strong contender but player skill and match-ups are important. This upcoming tournament season could see something else happening

Local metas vary a lot. Same with player skill and match ups. The game is still healthy in these regards.

So lets acknowledge a few things to consider:

1: There has been a relatively tight turnaround in all the Star Wars game systems since the last Worlds event. This means that we are still in the same general meta as the previous major tournament, where this was not occurring. Even though some of the same options were available.

2: Armada is just one of the game systems that FFG works on, and we can directly compare it to a number of other games at a similar or slightly more advanced position in their release schedule. Which is valuable bcause we can directly compare issues side by side and see what parallels there are.

With that out of the way, here's the broader trends we can see:

Out of the top 8 in Armada, All lists were Rebel fleets and 6/8 lists were the rieekan Aces archetype. Of the top 16, there was a bias towards Rebels but Imperials showed up in several positions after including 9th place. The major list archetype is the fleet that came in second last year.
Out of the top 8 in X-wing, 5/8 were scum squads, mostly featuring at least one Jumpmaster 5000 and/or Fang starfighter and all but the winner featuring Atanni Mindlink. 12/16 were Scum and 11/12 featured Atanni Mindlink. 3 Rebels got to the top 8 and 1 Imperial made it to the top 16. Scum utterly dominated in the previous Worlds 6 months ago.
Out of the top 16 in Imperial assault, 15/16 lists were variations of Jabba The Hutt with Weequay Pirates.

Of the top "matured" competition Star Wars miniatures games, we can see that Armada is actually doing pretty good. Certainly, we're doing better than Imperial Assault (though with the way that game does upgrades, the lists are slightly more varied than you might expect with nearly identical model sets). X-Wing has been trying to shake off the scourge of the Jumpmaster since that ship was released and the proliferation of Atanni Mindlink has largely occurred due to nerfs to pilots that issued similar effects. The Armada push towards this particular archetype is very recent and wasn't even all that popular in the Regionals leading up to Worlds this year.

53 minutes ago, thecactusman17 said:

Here's the broader trends we can see:

Out of the top 8 in Armada, All lists were Rebel fleets and 6/8 lists were the rieekan Aces archetype. Of the top 16, there was a bias towards Rebels but Imperials showed up in several positions after including 9th place. The major list archetype is the fleet that came in second last year.

Out of the top 8 in X-wing, 5/8 were scum squads, mostly featuring at least one Jumpmaster 5000 and/or Fang starfighter and all but the winner featuring Atanni Mindlink. 12/16 were Scum and 11/12 featured Atanni Mindlink. 3 Rebels got to the top 8 and 1 Imperial made it to the top 16. Scum utterly dominated in the previous Worlds 6 months ago.

Out of the top 16 in Imperial assault, 15/16 lists were variations of Jabba The Hutt with Weequay Pirates.

Of the top "matured" competition Star Wars miniatures games, we can see that Armada is actually doing pretty good.

I mean Armada is only doing well relative to the other games. Would it not be a more accurate to say that FFG is struggling to balance its matured games at all?

51 minutes ago, Captain Weather said:

I mean Armada is only doing well relative to the other games. Would it not be a more accurate to say that FFG is struggling to balance its matured games at all?

Ok, lets go outside the FFG stable.

And by comparison, Armada is still doing pretty good.

Games like Warhammer 40k and Warmachine are probably the most substantial miniatures games after X-Wing played in broad competition, at least in the USA. And at least as of recently, the general agreement has been that those games are in terrible state when it comes to the current meta.

40K has been dealing with constant power creep to the point where it's pretty difficult for any faction without a current (as in within the last 2-3 months) book release to be playable in competition at top tier. Warmachine has had similar issues, with many players finding that you can't just buy individual models - you have to have a synergy planned out ahead of purchases. Warmachine moved a while ago from "starter sets" to "viable tournament legal teams" for its own box sets because anything else just wasn't capable of being fielded outside the practice games. And even then, at least until the recent new edition launch the top tier factions were pretty rock hard set.

Star trek Attack Wing is almost dead, despite at one time outselling X-Wing, because the power creep has rendered all but a small collection of ships irrelevant.

Right now, FFG is having an issue. However, They've actively worked to fix their meta (this time last year X-Wing Imperials were dominating and Rebels were almost unheard of at the top tables, in Armada the top 8 spread was far less Rebels focused). Things have flipped, and are still looking for equilibrium in Armada. The fast turnaround on the new tournament season has meant that strategies to combat these new threats haven't been fully developed.

10 hours ago, elitesix said:

The general question: To those of you that have played a variety of card/board/miniature games, how healthy, in comparison, is the armada meta currently? historically? (By health I mean diversity and depth of comp strategies, models/cards used, and FFG's quick/slow/good/bad actions at improving these aspects)

The specific details and concerns: I'm new to armada (have base set basically), but I haven't yet taken the plunge because my playgroup is particularly sensitivity to games with sub-par metas (poor variety, imbalances, over representation of a side or strategy). We're not especially tied to miniatures, so other than a little x-wing (which didn't hold our interest due to lack of scenarios/depth, but also due to FFG's slow-wait-for-next-wave-to-balance-current-problems stance) we're relatively new to miniatures. I usually research a game through youtube and forums before taking the plunge and advising the rest of the group. I've read and heard things that have caused me to be concerned:

• FFG's very slow balancing continues in Armada. Something about a 'philosophy' to almost never errating abilities and cards. Wait until the next wave. Coming from a strong mtg background, this seems really unhealthy?
• FFG Armada World Tournaments have always been won by rebels. Not sure if this is true, or how many worlds tournaments there have been exactly.
• FFG Armada has been silent about the most recent non-diverse world tournament results - no need to discuss the rieekan/squadron/flotilla stuff here, just curious as to where there's been any official/unofficial/grapevine word on how FFG views the seemingly obvious recent lack of diversity in the last worlds

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I know this sort of stuff can be a heated topic. But our playgroup really enjoys maxing out deep game systems that have a variety of strategies while we play, but of course the game system itself has to be able to support that sort of depth and play balance, so I wanted to ask around.

Overall: everything is fine, game state excellent.

But we like to complain a bit while we're waiting for the next wave.

If you plan on playing in tournaments and getting competitive, I would not recommend Armada. My evidence is this forum.

If you want to have a fun game that you can play with your friends on a weekly basis, then I would recommend Armada. I have been playing since the starter box came out and have probably played between 1-3 games a week and have only played the same list during tournaments. Most of my lists have been Imperial and with those lists some have been functional and others fell on their face. I feel that FFG had had a sporadic release of waves, which is frustrating like wave 3 and 4 coming out at the same time, this also happened with wave 5 and the Corellian Campaign. If they spread out these releases, I would have had more time to slowly try the new ships and squadrons, so it almost feels like some combinations are not tried because of the sporadic release of products. If you have tight gaming group, I would recommend the Corellian Campaign, to build a fun campaign, again there are some rule issues that your group can nhouse rule during play that were not answered in the errata/faq.

11 minutes ago, modise said:

If you plan on playing in tournaments and getting competitive, I would not recommend Armada. My evidence is this forum.

So you base this on the forum!??? The FORUM!???

1 hour ago, thecactusman17 said:

Ok, lets go outside the FFG stable.

And by comparison, Armada is still doing pretty good.

Games like Warhammer 40k and Warmachine are probably the most substantial miniatures games after X-Wing played in broad competition, at least in the USA. And at least as of recently, the general agreement has been that those games are in terrible state when it comes to the current meta.

40K has been dealing with constant power creep to the point where it's pretty difficult for any faction without a current (as in within the last 2-3 months) book release to be playable in competition at top tier. Warmachine has had similar issues, with many players finding that you can't just buy individual models - you have to have a synergy planned out ahead of purchases. Warmachine moved a while ago from "starter sets" to "viable tournament legal teams" for its own box sets because anything else just wasn't capable of being fielded outside the practice games. And even then, at least until the recent new edition launch the top tier factions were pretty rock hard set.

Star trek Attack Wing is almost dead, despite at one time outselling X-Wing, because the power creep has rendered all but a small collection of ships irrelevant.

Right now, FFG is having an issue. However, They've actively worked to fix their meta (this time last year X-Wing Imperials were dominating and Rebels were almost unheard of at the top tables, in Armada the top 8 spread was far less Rebels focused). Things have flipped, and are still looking for equilibrium in Armada. The fast turnaround on the new tournament season has meant that strategies to combat these new threats haven't been fully developed.

Ok, you've missed my point a little.

You're comparing Armada to other mature games and then saying, by comparison, it's pretty well balanced.

Just because comparatively Armada is in a better balance space than other games, doesn't mean it's in a good balance space overall.

As of right now, FFG's three core Star Wars miniature games (X-Wing, Imperial Assault, and Armada) are, by the comments coming from their respective communities, in a pretty unbalanced state.

I also hear this issue extends to Android: Netrunner as well (though I'm not familiar enough with Destiny's community to comment on any issues there).

Are these games in better states balance wise than W40k and Warmachine?

Yeah probably - but that's a big part of why those games bled players to FFG games in the first place!

Players were tired of the negative play experience coming from the unbalanced nature of those games.

My concern for FFG right now is what's their game plan heading into the future, because if they don't turn the ship around then what's to stop a new game coming in and grabbing the player base same way they did to those other games you mentioned.

Their game plan heading into the future seems to be "lets not put the roses under a weedwacker when we're still planting the garden."

The one thing we've seen since wave 2 is a huge shift in what constitutes overpowered. And that's because we've seen a strong effort to address issues with the game a lot of players pointed out early on. They've smitten that in really bad cases, they aren't afraid to errata something for game balance, but they recognize these are also last resort changes.

I'm not going to worry about the future game state when we've got a new release that may skew it wildly in the other direction peeking over the horizon. In part because it's futile to look at this without a broader view of the future plans.

I'd say that right now, if you're a new player, you're fine and somewhat isolated from the worst of this meta shift. I'd actually say that based on exactly what did well, new players should be very happy that so many early releases are still so relevant in the competition scene. That only occurs because things are points efficient and powerful.

I will agree that if you're a new player it's always a good time to get into Armada because the base mechanics are so solid.

I cannot stress how much I love this game.

Look I've said my piece elsewhere so I'll leave it at that.

In the end we both want the same thing - a healthy Armada community and meta.