18 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:

I just pointed out the obvious. I wasn't trying to be a ****, but when someone says "Hey, flotillas are freaking everywhere so that's a problem", my first response was "Yea, FFG fully intended for this to happen. Check out what FFG actually said, multiple time."

I actually felt kinda bad since everyone just took that and ran, using that to claim flotillas are fine where they are at. Honestly, I was simply refuting a point that supported someones opinion of the game.

Yeah thats how it came across.

I really want to post the meme of the guy with the huge clock saying "IT'S TIME TO STOP" to "IT'S TIME TO PASS" but I don't have the interwebz skillz for it

7 hours ago, MasterShake2 said:

7 Hammerheads all with External Racks, Task Force Antilles, a Pelta with Shields to Maxiumum and Rieekan...go go gadet spam!

So yeah a pass rule would be good to deal with lists like this

I remember the rieekan 8 corvette swam problem. Beating it was not the problem beating with a good score and actually enjoying the game was the bigger problem

If lists like above become a thing i dont think we will see any large ships anymore

5 minutes ago, X Wing Nut said:

So yeah a pass rule would be good to deal with lists like this

I remember the rieekan 8 corvette swam problem. Beating it was not the problem beating with a good score and actually enjoying the game was the bigger problem

If lists like above become a thing i dont think we will see any large ships anymore

They don't become a thing though - They Win, but they don't win big and thus, don't rise to the top of tournaments... Solid 6-5, 7-4 territory most of the time... It takes both great flying yourself, and a good matchup, to run away with a big win with them.

Would giving the first player/second player choice to the person with less ships help? I don't know enough about the objectives to determine myself, but if your 3/4 ships get choice in first/second over 5+ you can opt for first to strip first/last activation right? That limits positioning of individual ships. You could also choose second player if you have objectives that really make your list sing. If you bring a bunch of ships then you still get to out-activate someone with a smaller list but you don't ALSO get to control initiative.

Again, I'm not experienced enough myself to know if this is actually a good idea or not, but I've never seen it mentioned(not that that says much) and it FEELS like a good idea?(also it would mean i don't have to feel bad about trying to spend as close to 400 as possible haha)

1 hour ago, Drasnighta said:

They don't become a thing though - They Win, but they don't win big and thus, don't rise to the top of tournaments... Solid 6-5, 7-4 territory most of the time... It takes both great flying yourself, and a good matchup, to run away with a big win with them.

This is a very tournament centric answer, and that's the problem. Not everyone plays tournaments, but everyone plays for fun and a shot to win. That's the problem, they win, they aren't fun to play against, and they're bad for business.

Play against a new player with this list, they'll quit before they even start, play it against a beginner and they'll quit angry for having spent money.

Just because they won't take top spots at tournaments doesn't mean it's not OP level broken. This is where FFG needs to step in and fix the activation disadvantage, make large ships viable, and fix rieekan (I mean my dog got fixed, and that really toned him down.)

Just now, Gadgetron said:

This is a very tournament centric answer, and that's the problem. Not everyone plays tournaments, but everyone plays for fun and a shot to win. That's the problem, they win, they aren't fun to play against, and they're bad for business.

Play against a new player with this list, they'll quit before they even start, play it against a beginner and they'll quit angry for having spent money.

Just because they won't take top spots at tournaments doesn't mean it's not OP level broken. This is where FFG needs to step in and fix the activation disadvantage, make large ships viable, and fix rieekan (I mean my dog got fixed, and that really toned him down.)

I'm not disagreeing, but I also feel you're using a self-defeating argument.

If you're playing for fun and a shot at winning - and you're taking these lists repeatedly... Then you're only taking HALF of your goal in mind - The half that involves Winning, and not the Fun .

Outside of the tournament centric environment, which is inherently competition based, I feel casual gaming (which I'm involved in a bunch) is more of the agreed environment.

Take a Ramstrosity list against a New Player, and you're not playing for Fun. You're playing only to Win.

Take a Ramstrostity list against a beginner and you're not playing for fun. You're playing only to win.

Casual gaming is just as much of a sacred contract for everyone to enjoy themselves as tournament gaming is a competitionl.

1 hour ago, Drasnighta said:

I'm not disagreeing, but I also feel you're using a self-defeating argument.

If you're playing for fun and a shot at winning - and you're taking these lists repeatedly... Then you're only taking HALF of your goal in mind - The half that involves Winning, and not the Fun .

Outside of the tournament centric environment, which is inherently competition based, I feel casual gaming (which I'm involved in a bunch) is more of the agreed environment.

Take a Ramstrosity list against a New Player, and you're not playing for Fun. You're playing only to Win.

Take a Ramstrostity list against a beginner and you're not playing for fun. You're playing only to win.

Casual gaming is just as much of a sacred contract for everyone to enjoy themselves as tournament gaming is a competitionl.

It's not the onus of the player to self regulate, it's the game creators and game designers job to create a regulated set of balanced rules.

When the designers knowingly cause this kind of imbalanced environment, it's time for players to bring that to the designers attention. Players hiding their heads in the sand and constantly saying "this is the most balanced game I've ever played" or "this is the nearest to perfect" or any of the hundreds of excuses I've heard, is what led to World's showing off just how broken the game really is.

Either they adjust and fix the game, or they'll see it stagnate and die.

35 minutes ago, Gadgetron said:

It's not the onus of the player to self regulate, it's the game creators and game designers job to create a regulated set of balanced rules.

When the designers knowingly cause this kind of imbalanced environment, it's time for players to bring that to the designers attention. Players hiding their heads in the sand and constantly saying "this is the most balanced game I've ever played" or "this is the nearest to perfect" or any of the hundreds of excuses I've heard, is what led to World's showing off just how broken the game really is.

Either they adjust and fix the game, or they'll see it stagnate and die.

Except that isn't true of most successful tabletop miniature games or in fact many competitive games.

That British company with their space soldiers and their fantasy game, WarmaHordes, Malifaux, Infinity, none of these have a "regulated set of balanced rules" that make lists which win more often then not when played against a newbie play necessarily fun for said newb.

WarmaHordes is all about synergies and hard counters, so if I come with my electric Cygnar army and you run your anti-electric army, well I already lost before things go on the table. The game for a while had nearly no big stompy robots because they were a liability but when a new player bought the starter box what they got was big stompy robots.

My intro to Malifaux was me wanting to play a shooty faction, turns out those lose unless you are really good (I was a newb), get a good matchup and are lucky during the edition I played. Not sure about now.

Infinity came out and people all played 8-10 person lists until the tournament scene opened up and people realized that activations/order sponges were needed and the typical list shot up to 14-20 person lists. There's other issues. Someone plays Military Orders to play big guys in power armor and faces an opponent who loves hacking. One of these armies has pretty much got the game in the bag.

Go to your local game store and learn how to play Magic the Gathering, Guildball, My Little Pony the card game from someone who is good at the game and has built a broken/tough deck, team, army or play a tabletop role playing game with the person in the group who thinks 'total party kills' are awesome as the game master.

I'm not saying this is good, far from it, but gaming is a social contract when done for fun. So it is on us the players to regulate the game. You don't demo a game by starting off at 400 points in Armada with taking the most hardcore of lists while your opponent who is just getting into the game has the contents of the starter and maybe two other ships. Similarly if someone only plays the most broken list, either people stop playing with that person or the other players develop ways to combat that and the local meta becomes more competitive.

There are people on here loving Correlian Conflict with house rules or playing at 800+ point games, more examples of the social contract that goes into playing a casual game with people you hope to open up the opportunity to play against again.

The game designers I am sure know what the different factions in Armada community believe are the problem, activations, flotillas, squadrons, Rieekan, Relay, etc... FFG has a company policy from what I've heard not to rewrite rules, so there are not 2nd editions of games or lots of errata but to deal with issues through new expansions. You can see Sloane and to a lesser extent Quasar with its titles as trying to damage the squadrons game, it hurts flotillas some too but also increases the Empires squadron game. This is the path they've chosen. If you disagree, that is fine and certainly keep letting them know that you want the game focused on whatever it is you want to focus on. Yet given the examples I've used above it is clear that even if the game remains as "broken" as you see it or even became more broken it can still be successful because many of the above mentioned games are or have been far more broken over the course of their existence. There are admittedly broken games that have failed too though.

Also claiming that Dras' argument is too tournament-centric and then using Worlds as an example as what is wrong is a bit odd.

This isn't a problem just for tabletop either, I hear console players are still waiting for Black Widow in Overwatch to be good. They will continue waiting until they get a PC that can run Overwatch.

1 hour ago, Gadgetron said:

This is where FFG needs to step in and fix the activation disadvantage, make large ships viable, and fix rieekan (I mean my dog got fixed, and that really toned him down.)

Rieekan needs fixing, I agree with that.

However, Fleets with large ships in them are viable. Fleets consisting of only big ships are not . There is a difference.

2/3 of regionals fleets with at least 1 large ship were 4+ activations. Those fleets were generally quite viable. (81 fleets, 21 top 4 finishers, 16 bottom quarter) (all numbers exclude Rieekan fleets)

Ships without a large ship were also viable at 4+ activations (89 fleets/18 top/20 bottom)

Comparing against 5+ activation no-large fleets, the big ships are still comparable (5+ Small/medium: 49 lists, 12 top, 8 bottom - very similar percentages to the large ship numbers given above).

Squadrons don't have a huge effect outside of Rieekan fleets. 5+ activation heavy-squad fleets are successful, but so are low-squad 5+ fleets with a large flagship, or 6+ ship fleets without a large. That seems pretty balanced to me. If you don't spend a lot of points on squads, you can either buy another decent small ship, or bump one of your existing ships to a large.

If you want to complain about the specific build of 3 pizza wedges no longer being viable, feel free. But don't complain that large ships are broken, in general.

4 hours ago, X Wing Nut said:

So yeah a pass rule would be good to deal with lists like this

I remember the rieekan 8 corvette swam problem. Beating it was not the problem beating with a good score and actually enjoying the game was the bigger problem

If lists like above become a thing i dont think we will see any large ships anymore

Why would I want to pass?? So I can let more ships ram me?! Maybe lose my ship before activating it??? Seems like I would want to activate as soon as I could to remove threats or get out of the way.

1 hour ago, SkyCake said:

Why would I want to pass?? So I can let more ships ram me?! Maybe lose my ship before activating it??? Seems like I would want to activate as soon as I could to remove threats or get out of the way.

The strategy is for the opponent playing 8 bump ships with Rieekan would activate 4 ship that wont be in range for an attack hoping to out activate there opponent so all there ships will move into range of the guns of the other 4 ships so they can shoot at there opponents ships then bump the afterwards because they cannot be attacked this round they live to next round. the opposing player can destroy 2 even 3 of there ships but because of Rieekan they live attack and ram again with good tactics 4 of those ships will do 8+ damage without firing a shot. add dice and a ISD can drop in 1 round with little effort. if there was the abilty to pass then there is a chance that that same ISD could kill 2 of those ships before the ram.

the Idea of how the pass rule should work is that if your opponent has 8 bumping ships and you have 3 you don't have to move your ships into range of bumping and attack until your opponent has activated a number of there ships to the point where they have the same number of ship to activate as you

Example

Player 1/First player 8 ships. Player 2/Second Player 3 ships

Player One Activate a ship

Player Two Pass

Player One Activate a ship

Player Two Pass

Player One Activate a ship

Player Two Pass

Player One Activate a ship

Player Two Pass

Player One Activate a ship

Player Two Activate a ship as there opponent has the same number of ships left to activate

Player One Activate a ship

Player Two Activate a ship

Player One Activate a ship

Player Two Activate a ship

Player One Activate a ship

Player Two No more ships to activate

with the pass rule if the second players last ship to activate would end in range of last ship player 1 has to activate it give that ship a greater chance for survival then if there were 5 ships that could shoot and bump with out that ship being able to do anything about it

its a rough example of how a pass rule would work. the passes are not when they should happen as the second player could chose to pass at any time as long as it falls in the rules and its not the best but I hope it give you an idea

Except with such a rule you put all the power back into two or three ISD fleet... Second of all its not hard to remove a corvette per turn with bombers, keeping your ISD out of range... And you supposedly have other ships shooting too... I've played against that fleet in the hands of a capable player before and it wasn't as bad or as unfun as I thought it would be.

These pass rule threads come off to me as make the game easy for the fleets I like to take, so that no matter what I don't have to be at a disadvantage and learn to beat my opponent straight up.

There are a multitude of options available in the game already to low activation fleets that allow them to compete with higher activations. Your energies would be far better spent learning about the tactics, ships, upgrades, squads, objectives, etc that enable said fleets to compete rather than demanding the designers turn the core mechanics on their heads because you say you know better.

11 hours ago, SkyCake said:

These pass rule threads come off to me as make the game easy for the fleets I like to take, so that no matter what I don't have to be at a disadvantage and learn to beat my opponent straight up.

There are a multitude of options available in the game already to low activation fleets that allow them to compete with higher activations. Your energies would be far better spent learning about the tactics, ships, upgrades, squads, objectives, etc that enable said fleets to compete rather than demanding the designers turn the core mechanics on their heads because you say you know better.

You know what is great?

How often I've seen this expressed in basically this exact way with zero self-awareness about the implications of the statement.

Now this isn't a personal attack, it is just a convenient place to comment on what I've seen littered throughout these forums.

At its core you're fundamentally assuming that people that take umbrage with what they see as an issue around activation advantage are kind of bad at the game. That they need to learn how to beat their opponents straight up. That their energies would be better suited learning about the game.

That's the real issue, that the people complaining need to git gud.

I'd put to you that it's an incredibly dismissive argument. ' No, no, there's no real legitimacy to your problem, you see you just need to be better at the game !'.

Plenty of talented players see activation advantage as a fundamental problem with the game. Steven from IFF who was Top 4 at last year's Worlds. Craig who came 5th at this year's. Plenty of others. Equally, just to be clear there are plenty of great players who don't see it as a problem - I'm not trying to say that great players fall exclusively one way on the issue.

Treating the issue as if it is only players that don't understand the game are the ones having a problem with activation advantage though is just blatantly wrong.

18 hours ago, SkyCake said:

Except with such a rule you put all the power back into two or three ISD fleet... Second of all its not hard to remove a corvette per turn with bombers, keeping your ISD out of range... And you supposedly have other ships shooting too... I've played against that fleet in the hands of a capable player before and it wasn't as bad or as unfun as I thought it would be.

These pass rule threads come off to me as make the game easy for the fleets I like to take, so that no matter what I don't have to be at a disadvantage and learn to beat my opponent straight up.

There are a multitude of options available in the game already to low activation fleets that allow them to compete with higher activations. Your energies would be far better spent learning about the tactics, ships, upgrades, squads, objectives, etc that enable said fleets to compete rather than demanding the designers turn the core mechanics on their heads because you say you know better.

I would never assume that I would know better then the game designers. I created this topic to create discussion about the idea of a pass rule not "FFG do it because I want it!" after all isn't that what these forums are for? this game is still young and the designers are looking to the community for ideas on how to improve the game. many rules changes for X Wing and Imperial Assault started in forums with people asking "what do you all think about...." healthy discussion about any topic can only help players and designers move forward and improve upon the game. telling anyone to go away and get good, as the post above has stated is not really healthy for the conversation

on strategy a pass rule would not give the auto win to the big ISD fleets it just takes away the auto win from the 5+ ship lists allowing both players to be more creative about there strategies and not really on the activation crutch.

2 hours ago, X Wing Nut said:

I would never assume that I would know better then the game designers. I created this topic to create discussion about the idea of a pass rule not "FFG do it because I want it!" after all isn't that what these forums are for? this game is still young and the designers are looking to the community for ideas on how to improve the game. many rules changes for X Wing and Imperial Assault started in forums with people asking "what do you all think about...." healthy discussion about any topic can only help players and designers move forward and improve upon the game. telling anyone to go away and get good, as the post above has stated is not really healthy for the conversation

on strategy a pass rule would not give the auto win to the big ISD fleets it just takes away the auto win from the 5+ ship lists allowing both players to be more creative about there strategies and not really on the activation crutch.

A limited pass rule would probably be a reasonable correction. IA-style unlimited pass would, in my opinion, be too much. Other tweaks to activation order mechanics could also be done to lower activation advantage's magnitude.

Here's my theory-crafting why Imperial Assault unlimited pass would be too much, assuming a few things for sake of simplicity.

Ship power can be described as Firepower*Survivability, which should be fairly comparable for the points, when summed over a wide variety of combat situation. Some ships will punch above their weight in long range (TRC90), and others will punch below their weight at long range (Gladiator).

The battle can be described as generally 2 phases: Approach, and Scrum.

During approach phase, late movers are advantaged, in that they can both shoot the first movers, and position optimally against already activated ships.

During scrum, first movers have the advantage because they can destroy an enemy ship, and also can get away afterwards.

So, lets add activations to our combat power equation for a fleet:

Approach:

Power(ship 1)*1+P2*2+P3*3

Scrum:

P(1)*3+P2*2+P3*3

I'm assigning a 100% increase per activation step purely for illustration.

Now, lets drop a Large ship (power 3) vs 3 small ships (power 1) into these equations:

Approach:

3+0+0 vs 1+2+3

Scrum

3*3+0+0 vs 3+2+1

Total:

12 vs 12

Lets do the same thing, but with IA passing:

Approach:

0+0+3*3 vs 1 + 2 +3

Scrum

3*3 + 0 + 0 vs 3 + 2 + 1

result 18 vs 12

So, this is why I feel that the solution to too-strong activation advantage should not be unlimited passing by the lower activation fleet. The ability for the smaller fleet to choose to go last during approach & first during combat gives them a greater deal of control over the battle than the fleet with more ships. I could certainly see the value in finding ways to decrease the value of activation advantage.

Example after tweaks to the rules/new cards/whatever:

Approach

P1*1+P2*1.1+P3&1.3 (Approach gives 10% to each later mover)

Scrum

P1*1.5+P2*1.25+P3*1 (scrum grants 25% advantage to each earlier mover)

crazy ideas: (A denotes activation from high-ship fleet, B is a ship in the low-ship fleet, _ is a pass)

Battletech Initiative: AAABAAAB (each fleet activates a proportion of their remaining ships each time, not simply 1)

Pass once: A_ABABAAA (gives the smaller fleet some ability to control the tempo, but not the massive control that unlimited pass does. For cases where the fleets are within 1 activation of each other, this is as good as unlimited pass.)

Fixed order (weak): (put a number marker on every ship in your fleet. Deploy & Activate in that order all the time. No more first/last. If demo gets deployed last, it will move & shoot last every time. (A1, B1, A2, B2 ...)

Fixed order (strong): Put a number marker on every ship in both fleets as they deploy. Activate in that order every time. (A1, B2, A3, B4...) If B kills A1, then B2 activates first, followed by A3.

Go-Last once: Unique upgrade: exhaust this card to have this ship activate last in the round. (Next-to last if first player?) This would mean that only one of your ships would be able to react to the other sides fleet, and it's all or nothing. (ABA_A_A_A_AB)

Flagship-Pass-Full: If the ship that your admiral is equipped to is your last unactivated ship, you may pass as many times as you like. Slightly better than Go-Last-once, as you can react somewhat to the flow of the turn. Would mean that low-activation fleets would definitely want to put the admiral on a combat ship, not a lifeboat.

Battletech & fixed order would have to be part of Armada 2.0, while the others are possible with expansion packs.

I think the activation is sort of fine as it is... more ships should give you a tactical advantage in reaction and maneuverability and the ability to capitalize on enemy movement. It is sort of realistic.

The only thing I dislike is the fact a ship can potentially act last and then act first in the next turn, this can often be a bit too powerful.

The only rule change I would like to have is... If the first player activate a ship last he can't activate that same ship first in the next turn, Simply put a marker on such a ship and remove it when you activate another ship in the next turn. This type of strategy become a bit gamey and if that is removed I think things work pretty great as it is.

Another thing you could use to mitigate activation advantages would be the ability for ships to do a reaction fire command if it has a concentrating fire token. Any ship that has not activated yet may expend a concentrating fire token to fire the weapons in one arc. It may do so before an enemy ship moves. When this ship activates it may not do ANY attacks with any weapons.

This way you need a token and sacrifice one attack for the opportunity to fire out of turn. Seems quite balance and an interesting tactical option to me. There could also be cards to make this ability better down the line. Look at it as a ships withholding fire until that last moment. It sacrifice overall firepower to fire at the exact right moment.

11 hours ago, jorgen_cab said:

Another thing you could use to mitigate activation advantages would be the ability for ships to do a reaction fire command if it has a concentrating fire token. Any ship that has not activated yet may expend a concentrating fire token to fire the weapons in one arc. It may do so before an enemy ship moves. When this ship activates it may not do ANY attacks with any weapons.

This way you need a token and sacrifice one attack for the opportunity to fire out of turn. Seems quite balance and an interesting tactical option to me. There could also be cards to make this ability better down the line. Look at it as a ships withholding fire until that last moment. It sacrifice overall firepower to fire at the exact right moment.

something like this might make a good upgrade card to counter Demo and MC30s. Interesting

Instead of looking at Pass mechanics, why not just put out abilities that punish the activation of large numbers of small ships? Do things that let you take extra shots at the fragile small ships or something that will force your opponent to waste a number of his own activations to your potential advantage. Give them a steep opportunity cost like being a Commander ability. For example:

Admiral Raddus: When you activate a Medium or Large ship, you may discard its command dial in order to place an Overwatch token on that ship.

Overwatch: If an enemy ship activates inside one of your firing arcs, you may discard this token in order to fire at it once. If this token is not used before the start of the Squadron phase, you must discard it.

If your ship ends its turn in range of a small ship, it can then wait at its leisure for your opponent to activate it in order to launch a pre-emptive salvo at it. In return, it loses access to stuff like Akbar, Rieekan, actions, and tokens. But it now does your opponent no good to play through a half dozen flotillas in order to get your large ship stranded after its movement. Small ships still maintain the ability to use tokens to defend against the strike, their reliance on low HP ships might result in them losing one before it can even fire. Raddus could be placed on a small ship, but the more medium/large ships you have, the more economical his point cost will be.

Grand Admiral Thrawn: At the start of your turn, you may exhaust any number of defense tokens on your flagship. Your opponent must then activate an equal number of small ships/flotillas before your first activation.

This time, your ships get access to their dials/tokens, and the activation shoe is placed on the other foot. If your opponent activates 4 flotillas, his ability to control the activation game is greatly diminished. If he activates small ships, he is potentially giving up the ability to attack that turn or place himself in range to be shot at. But if a number of ships are in range of Thrawn, it would be rather foolish to use this ability as it will place your flagship at the mercy of multiple attacks with diminished ability to defend against them. Putting Thrawn on a small ship would be foolish as they are much more reliant on their defense tokens and sometimes have fewer in number.

If you don't want to blow your Commander slot to counter large numbers of activations, then make an upgrade card that is similarly punishing to small attacks at long range.

Overcharged shield generators: When you activate this ship, you may deal one facedown damage card to it. If you do, you may cancel one (blue) or (red) die for each attack targeted at a section that still has shielding on it until the end of this turn.

In other words, bring the reinforce token to Armada but burn your ship in order to use it. Makes no sense to use on small ships, but mitigates minimal long ranged fire. If there's a large number of flotillas/small ships, then they're going to have to get in close to wear you down or use their speed and focus fire on one shield facing. This would be a bit OP against fighters though, but just an idea.

Bracketing fire: You may change up to 2 dice into (accuracy) results.

Good for denying evade tokens at long range. Needs a good roll to be used effectively. If you're rolling hot, then it is useless. Used effectively, you can try to pop a flotilla or small ship every turn or so until your large ship makes its points back.

The point I'm making is that this is a meta issue, not a core game issue. There's no easy way for a large ship to use its major strengths against numerous small ships. So put in situations where that is no longer the case. If there is a hard counter against massed activations, then people will diversify their builds in order to make that counter less effective. Then we achieve a better measure of balance.

In my opinion it is better with a core mechanic change to mitigate large activation and first player moving last and first ship issue. It should not be mitigated by cards only but could be strengthen by it if you wish.

I have played with my above suggested "over-watch" method and it works really great. Large number of activation is still a tactical advantage in the maneuver game as it should but you cant just magically pass a ships and fire at it without fear of retaliation.

I like the inbuilt ability to over-watch and have ships prepare to fire at the detriment of more concentrating fire during its normal activation. It forces you to make choices during the game, choices is always good.

On 6/2/2017 at 9:36 PM, Drasnighta said:

I'm not disagreeing, but I also feel you're using a self-defeating argument.

If you're playing for fun and a shot at winning - and you're taking these lists repeatedly... Then you're only taking HALF of your goal in mind - The half that involves Winning, and not the Fun .

Outside of the tournament centric environment, which is inherently competition based, I feel casual gaming (which I'm involved in a bunch) is more of the agreed environment.

Take a Ramstrosity list against a New Player, and you're not playing for Fun. You're playing only to Win.

Take a Ramstrostity list against a beginner and you're not playing for fun. You're playing only to win.

Casual gaming is just as much of a sacred contract for everyone to enjoy themselves as tournament gaming is a competitionl.

best example of this I ever had was running a competition Warhammer 40k list against a new player. Let's just say that it was a pretty disgusting situation. And I felt very bad about annihilating that 12 year old.

One of the reasons I like Devastator is the sense that, in the words of Stan Lee, "with great power comes great responsibility." It matters that you have a downside, and have to expose yourself to risk to take the best action.

Quick thought on the pass mechanic: you can elect to have a ship pass, but you have to burn it's command dial, though, you can immediately take the token and resolve the token when you come back around to said ship.