Has anyone played Armada solo and/or tried playing the Corellian Campaign solo? How'd it work out for you?

In possibly a very short time I may have to take an extended trip to care for an elderly family member. I'd be staying at elderly family's place on the edge of fly-over country. There is no technology (ie: no internet, definitely no wi-fi) and the closet thing I'd consider a proper town (beyond the local grain elevator, a few houses and the volunteer fire station) with a game store is almost 2 hours away. So when not caring for family, if I don't take something to play, I am going to be stone dead bored...

Doing single matches solo is ok. Still a bit strange, because you know your own tactic and commands (at least for most of the players, i dont count these that are schizophrenic, they have at least a tiny bonus when playing Armada solo).

But the whole Corellian Campaign is a bit overkill, and hard because there are so many hidden informations.
If you want to do it, you need to do the attacks and fleet combinations at random.

And even if all goes well, it will be around 15-30 matches that you have to do.

I find solos are good practice. Pick up a hobby. Like archery or an instrument. For when you get too bored playing with yourself

The trick (and very challenging bit) to playing solo is to make sure you have a solid plan/strategy in mind for both sides before you start. Otherwise all you end up with is one side with a plan and the other just flying reactionary into it.

Also, I tend to find I can't make up more than one type of Imperial fleet without a solid idea to launch it off.

I play solo once in a while... the trick is to pretend to be schizophrenic and step into the role of each commander when you go to that side of the board and forget about the other. I have allot of experience being a role-play Game-master for most of my life so that is a bonus..

What you need to do is take a look at your fleet, mission and the state of the board and decide what YOU would do in that situation every time you take a decision, being it tactical or more strategic. You can't really forget what commands you have on each side so that is the biggest problem but you can try to disregard that and just think what you would do when the game are in this particular state.

Have a plan for both sides at the start and stick with it as best you can.

The best ideas I can give you... solo play are great for practicing formation flying, judging distances, forward thinking and how to position ships and squadron for best tactical benefit. In solo play you can always rewind play and try alternate strategies to see what changes if you do something differently from a certain game state, for learning purposes.

The best way to play against yourself is two experimental fleets. You try to run both at their best without bias so you know the best and learn flaws out of both

Because you will not have the ability to reach Internet, you could randomize your fleet this way : you put a number for each admiral, you toss a dice (with the same number) and play with him. For your fleet composition you can do the same and you complete the setup by your hown selection of squadron. Once this step is done, for the positionning you take the same way. You can divide your starting zone with number, roll a dice for each ship and place them in the zone corresponding to your roll. You could do the same for squadron placement. This way, you are not involved in the selection of the fleet and is placement. The mission can be pick at random.

Yes, it will give you strange fleet composition but at least you will not be involve in the creation and the placement.

I would just recommend something entirely different, like Pandemic Legacy or reading Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin novels.

Sounds like you're asking for advice on how to play with yourself. I'm no expert but I do have some experience playing with myself. While I'm sure lots of people like to use a wide variety of techniques some things seem to be universal. First of all make sure your man tool is in proper working order. It should be rigid yet somewhat flexible and about 12 inches when fully extended. It can be problematic trying to play with yourself if your man tool keeps flopping around everywhere. Secondly playing with yourself is a great way to practice Dic tricks. I've had countless hours of joy putting my Dic on the table and pushing it around while making funny noises. It's always a good idea to make sure you're aware of the abilities and limitations your Dic has. Third be prepared for embarrassment when someone walks in on you playing with yourself. Finally always remember that playing with yourself is just not as satisfying as with a partner because you're only beating yourself.

I thinks it's possible as a thought exercise, and like others have said, a good way to experiment with formation flying, distances, etc. So, something as simple as, "How would I fly a gunline against a Tie Swarm list?" And sticking to the basic idea, you should learn some things.

I guess it's like any other solo game, if you're honest, you'll at least be entertained.

I mean, there's been mornings where I'm having my breakfast and have the bases and maneuvering tool out to test out some fancy flying ideas.

That's normal, right?

Right? ?

1 hour ago, RogueCommander said:

I thinks it's possible as a thought exercise, and like others have said, a good way to experiment with formation flying, distances, etc. So, something as simple as, "How would I fly a gunline against a Tie Swarm list?" And sticking to the basic idea, you should learn some things.

I guess it's like any other solo game, if you're honest, you'll at least be entertained.

I mean, there's been mornings where I'm having my breakfast and have the bases and maneuvering tool out to test out some fancy flying ideas.

That's normal, right?

Right? ?

That is perfectly normal... ...not sure I'm normal though.

15 hours ago, Dameon13 said:

Has anyone played Armada solo and/or tried playing the Corellian Campaign solo? How'd it work out for you?

In possibly a very short time I may have to take an extended trip to care for an elderly family member. I'd be staying at elderly family's place on the edge of fly-over country. There is no technology (ie: no internet, definitely no wi-fi) and the closet thing I'd consider a proper town (beyond the local grain elevator, a few houses and the volunteer fire station) with a game store is almost 2 hours away. So when not caring for family, if I don't take something to play, I am going to be stone dead bored...

Most importantly if you play out an entire cc campaign solo I'd have to assume you're a dedicated and focused individual. Playing solo is one thing. Playing a solo campaign is another.

I'm usually in this boat, so 9 times out of 10 I'm playing solo.

I can say it's definitely good for practicing formation flying and figuring out distances. Whenever I do manage to get an actual game, I'm at least confident that I'll be able to keep my ships from cutting each other off and hitting things.

18 hours ago, Dameon13 said:

Has anyone played Armada solo and/or tried playing the Corellian Campaign solo? How'd it work out for you?

In possibly a very short time I may have to take an extended trip to care for an elderly family member. I'd be staying at elderly family's place on the edge of fly-over country. There is no technology (ie: no internet, definitely no wi-fi) and the closet thing I'd consider a proper town (beyond the local grain elevator, a few houses and the volunteer fire station) with a game store is almost 2 hours away. So when not caring for family, if I don't take something to play, I am going to be stone dead bored...

I've done elder care myself and I found it helpful to have something I could enjoy during my down time, so I think trying to play the CC Campaign is a good idea. I play solo all the time as I have no other players in my area. It's great, but keep track of where you are in your battles in case you need to leave it and play later. Sometimes it's taken me a week to finish one battle when life gets busy. I also find myself looking to Canon and Legend material for inspiration in terms of fleet builds and specific ship upgrades. I enjoy how it further immerses me into the Star Wars universe.

Elder care can be tough. Don't forget to take care of yourself. May the force be with you. Drop a post when and if you can.

I just finished a solo campaign - took quite a while. Plenty of rule changes to make it work. The fleet building and maintenance was fun and it gave me a chance to play the new objectives. I ran four fleets - built two clearly different fleets for each side.

The bonuses like skilled spacers and spies were ignored - no way to make them work. So the focus was on points and the interesting fleet building decisions that would arise.

As for the strategic choices each round - both sides would select the type of attack (base attack, resource grab) and then I'd randomly draw the fleets for each. Made for some fun engagements. Once the Rebels fell behind by a large margin, I let them pick the fleet matchups for a round as a last gasp attempt.

After 4 rounds I ran the big engagement - which took quiet a while to run but was a lot of fun. I let the losing team deploy after the winning team had all of its non hyperspace ships on the table, then deployed the fighters as normal

A few tips: I kept the fleets relatively simple - grouping similar squadrons in a fleet (all xwings and ywings with some named pilots, for example, rather than a big mix of fighter/bomber types). I also built fleets that had obvious tactics to employ - making it easier for me to make choices. For deployment, I'd sometimes imagine a cinematic reason for the meeting and deploy the ships to match that scenario - simplifying that process and making for more interesting story telling. After all, I was mostly looking for a reason to put cool looking plastic ships on the table.

If you have enjoyed solo armada, there are ways to make the campaign an even more enjoyable experience. Lots of theme and non traditional fleet building is great entertainment outside of table time

btw - I dropped the hidden base mechanic and gave both sides the same number of bases. And as for the resource grab missions, since I ran both sides I could force the defender to be more active (no turtling) I also tried running the convoy raid scenario as an actual 'protect the convoy' style mission with proxy freighters that had to cross the board- but I didn't get the balance right and haven't gone back to it yet. I've played a few naval scenarios with similar goals and these were quite fun.

good luck with solo play!

Armada screams for an iOS app with a single-player campaign...hell i'd understand if they didn't want to push multiplayer in order to prevent physical sales cannibalism! This would be especially helpful to people (like me) who rarely get to play against another person.

Wow, thanks for the epic responses. Some of ya'll certain stroked the imagination about playing Armada solo, but I do agree that after a few days of playing by myself the novelty will have been rubbed raw.

I've decided to go with option 3: Take an entirely different game to play, opting to go with a game specifically designed for solo play (since this is FFG's forums I won't mention other products here).