An edited down version of a Live YouTube stream wherein @durandal343 and I finish tweaking the lists we ended up bringing to a local store tournament. Towards the very end you can find a perfect example of why FFG felt the need to take the nerf bat to Demolisher. Enjoy.

Great report guys, hope your store champs goes well!

Thanks! We unfortunately live in a fairly remote area with a pretty small Armada community. After the May tournament finished we were hoping to have a Store Champ in August but no word yet from the organizer.

Once again The Durandal Initiative will be testing out new fleets in preparation for the upcoming August local store tournament. We'll be starting in about 20 to 30 mins. Everyone is welcome to drop in and chat.

On 7/28/2017 at 10:24 PM, SgtDurandal said:

Once again The Durandal Initiative will be testing out new fleets in preparation for the upcoming August local store tournament. We'll be starting in about 20 to 30 mins. Everyone is welcome to drop in and chat.

Meouch! Lol.

Good report. Are you able to move the tray overlay to the opposite side so it isn't covered up by the text from the fleet lists? Also, is it possible to reduce the text size on the fleet lists and narrow the width of the overlay? These will open up the field a bit more. There was also a glare on the dice tray. This is all just some feedback for the future to make the videos a bit more clean and polished.

As for the lists, that late activation of Mon Karren in turn three literally lost the game for the Rebel list. It was really unfortunate about losing Foresight so early with such great defenses. I think that would have readily handled the Demolisher, but that's the way it goes. I bet the Imperial list would have benefited from trading out a raider and an arquitens for a VSD-I. It would have given you forward firepower; all the imp vessels in this list are for strafing. It was unfortunate to see the two A-wings not get much action. At least they tied up an attack or two. Madine certainly got the Liberty into the mix of things quick, but you might have seen better use out of Reeikan or Leia.

Let us know how things go at your tournament with these!

On 7/14/2017 at 0:04 PM, SgtDurandal said:

Thanks! We unfortunately live in a fairly remote area with a pretty small Armada community. After the May tournament finished we were hoping to have a Store Champ in August but no word yet from the organizer.

Also, where are you guys located? Our community is tiny as well.

8 hours ago, Geodes said:

Also, where are you guys located? Our community is tiny as well.

@Geodes thanks for the feedback! We're always interested in hearing ways we can improve. We can definitely tweak the overlay to open up the field a bit. I'm always concerned about going too small so that it becomes unreadable. As for the glare on the dice... working on that. Just moved into a new house about 3 months ago and then had a newborn join the family about a month later so I haven't had a ton of time to perfect my setup.

We are located in South Dakota... Rapid City to be exact. Not a lot around here. We're lucky enough to have a local store that is willing to put on Armada tournaments every 3 months or so but outside that it's a min 6 hour drive to the closest store that offers an official Store Championship event. Looking at possibly driving down to Denver or up to Minnesota for a tournament someday in the future.

I did just post an edited version of the live stream. Pairs the match down to about an hour or so and we included a couple pre-match tactics videos we each recorded going over what our planned strategies were. Check it out here:

2 hours ago, SgtDurandal said:

@Geodes thanks for the feedback! We're always interested in hearing ways we can improve. We can definitely tweak the overlay to open up the field a bit. I'm always concerned about going too small so that it becomes unreadable. As for the glare on the dice... working on that. Just moved into a new house about 3 months ago and then had a newborn join the family about a month later so I haven't had a ton of time to perfect my setup.

We are located in South Dakota... Rapid City to be exact. Not a lot around here. We're lucky enough to have a local store that is willing to put on Armada tournaments every 3 months or so but outside that it's a min 6 hour drive to the closest store that offers an official Store Championship event. Looking at possibly driving down to Denver or up to Minnesota for a tournament someday in the future.

I did just post an edited version of the live stream. Pairs the match down to about an hour or so and we included a couple pre-match tactics videos we each recorded going over what our planned strategies were. Check it out here:

I'll have to watch it here in a bit. I'm based out of Savannah, GA. You'd figure with larger cities like Charleston, SC and Jacksonville, FL within two hours, we would have a lot of players. I think there are six active in the whole area. Atlanta has more, of course.

I have been wanting to get into making videos (mostly me recording my games with others, then explaining all the mistakes I make in text overlay as the game proceeds). It is expensive to get a solid setup though it seems.

@Geodes Only a couple pieces of advise I can give you is to one, just start simple. We started with a Logitech c920 off ebay and an old camera tripod. Lots of guys just take videos with their cell phone and then use any free video editing software they can get. I can't speak for the whole Armada community but @durandal343 and I appreciate any content people take the time to create and share as it helps us see and experience more games then we'd otherwise have access to.

Second piece of advice is not to underestimate proper lighting. The rooms I've been able to setup and play Armada were both in basements with subpar lighting. Go to your local hardware store and buy a couple high lumen LED floodlight bulbs and throw them in a couple cheap clamp lights. Makes a huge difference if you're using webcams.

Cheers!

4 hours ago, SgtDurandal said:

@Geodes Only a couple pieces of advise I can give you is to one, just start simple. We started with a Logitech c920 off ebay and an old camera tripod. Lots of guys just take videos with their cell phone and then use any free video editing software they can get. I can't speak for the whole Armada community but @durandal343 and I appreciate any content people take the time to create and share as it helps us see and experience more games then we'd otherwise have access to.

Second piece of advice is not to underestimate proper lighting. The rooms I've been able to setup and play Armada were both in basements with subpar lighting. Go to your local hardware store and buy a couple high lumen LED floodlight bulbs and throw them in a couple cheap clamp lights. Makes a huge difference if you're using webcams.

Cheers!

I think the community, and myself, are grateful for this advice. I know many folks watch videos from yourself, @Irokenics and MOTF, and @Crabbok regularly to feel more involved with the communities that don't exist in our areas. Thanks to all of you.

So the plan right now is that The Durandal Initiative will be streaming another tournament prep match tomorrow night around 8 pm Mountain. @durandal343 and I will be recording our Pre-match tactics videos tonight and adding them to the final edited video of the match to be posted later. I wanted to get some feedback to see if anyone would be interested in having the pre-match tactics video posted to the channel before the live stream of the match. Let us know if that's something any of you would be interested in.

Cheers!

Pre-match strategies video is up!

So after being away for quite some time with different life responsibilities I've finally started pulling my weight again and edited down our last match to something a bit more brief We ( @SgtDurandal and I) are actually consolidating our efforts into the Durandal Initiative which is going to become the new home for our videos. There's not much there yet but at some point in the future we'll completely transition from our separate youtube accts. If you've suffered through the very very long livestream.. thanks for watching! I really hate that Demolisher. Here's the edit:

That was a very fun watch. Thanks!

How exactly are you mounting your camera above the table like that? Can you show me in a picture?

18 minutes ago, Camiji said:

How exactly are you mounting your camera above the table like that? Can you show me in a picture?

So @SgtDurandal and I have pretty similar setups. I have some things in the works that I'm hoping are fun to play around with but for a 1 camera setup just getting a $8 mount on amazon and putting it in the ceiling is the way to go.

Have to compress the picture.. edit to come

Edited

and edited again because that picture was way too small

Wow, right on the ceiling. Awesome. Thank you for sharing.

40 minutes ago, Camiji said:

Wow, right on the ceiling. Awesome. Thank you for sharing.

Yup, not something to do in the living room

Luckily I have a room where it doesn't really matter. @SgtDurandal had to get approval for his mount.

There are also scissor-arm mounts for microphones that will elevate the camera over the table without using the ceiling. They probably won't get the whole mat in the view though. Another thing we did before the ceiling mount was to have a tripod at one end of the table which gives an angled view of the game, but better than nothing! Even my little garbage can setup I have there for the dice cam would work for the game, you'd just have to move it around. I tripod would be more mobile

Edit: Just had a thought.. you might be able to use an arm coming off a tripod with a camera on the end of the arm.

Ok, so this Friday's match of Armada will be the last we stream on my personal YouTube account. @durandal343 and I have launched a new channel that we will be consolidating all our content on. We very much hope that if you've enjoyed watching us bicker and argue over plastic star ships you'll join us over on The Durandal Initiative . Please enjoy our shamelessly self promoting "announcement trailer."

and we're LIVE