https://icv2.com/articles/markets/view/38061/top-5-non-collectible-miniature-games-spring-2017

As of Spring Quarter, which would not include Wave 6, Armada is till among the Top 5 miniature games in the market. Seems like the game is in a healthy spot.

Thats all.

I don't believe it. I think this is all a conspiracy to cover up the fact that Armada is dead.

I always get so sad when people act so doom and gloom about Armada. If this was a game at a company other than FFG who has X-Wing, it could be considered a tentpole miniatures franchise. Instead it's perceived for some reason as "unpopular" because it doesn't hit X-Wing levels of play. Armada is still a successful and very much alive game. Thanks for giving us some data to rebut against the negativity!

Beaten only by X-wing, 40k and DnD?

That's rather impressive.

2 hours ago, Megatronrex said:

I don't believe it. I think this is all a conspiracy to cover up the fact that Armada is dead.

I have it on good word that any day now, the Q Bros and Classic Ben will execute their next dastardly scheme, so enjoy Armada while you have it.

14 minutes ago, Snipafist said:

I have it on good word that any day now, the Q Bros and Classic Ben will execute their next dastardly scheme, so enjoy Armada while you have it.

The Q Bros sound like a bad 80s cartoon villain group, a la The Beagle Boys or a less competent Sinister Six.

I won't demean the name of Classic Ben, Bringer of Black Dice Blanks to his Opponents even after Ordnance Experts, Roller of Doubles and Accuracies on All Red Die Rolls, and King of East Prussia.

1 minute ago, geek19 said:

The Q Bros sound like a bad 80s cartoon villain group, a la The Beagle Boys or a less competent Sinister Six.

I won't demean the name of Classic Ben, Bringer of Black Dice Blanks to his Opponents even after Ordnance Experts, Roller of Doubles and Accuracies on All Red Die Rolls, and King of East Prussia.

The Q Bros are henchmen to the malignant genius of Classic Ben, the Doombots to his Doctor Doom.

Pictured: Classic Ben leading the Q Bros into battle against our beloved hobby.

58 minutes ago, Snipafist said:

The Q Bros are henchmen to the malignant genius of Classic Ben, the Doombots to his Doctor Doom.

Pictured: Classic Ben leading the Q Bros into battle against our beloved hobby.

I now know what costume I have to attend my next tournament in.

5 hours ago, Megatronrex said:

I don't believe it. I think this is all a conspiracy to cover up the fact that Armada is dead.

And Ben was the final nail in the coffin. RIP Armada.

I think we are well into the golden age of Armada... Local interest is booming, and online it's rather easy to get a game. The game itself is quite mature with many viable options for competitive play. The average player's skill level has also risen substantially, making games both challenging and fun! Also, I don't see anything on the horizon that would change this positive trend. So as long as FFG keeps putting out expansions, campaigns, and prize kits, this golden age could last quite some time yet indeed!

I'm sure it's certainly doing better than any other fleet-scale game, that's for sure. No that there's really much competition from Firestorm Armada or Dropfleet Commander, especially to go up against a Star Wars theme, much less a pretty good set of game mechanics.

I'd actually still rather play Battlefleet Gothic than Armada, but that's a ship who sailed long ago.

I actually think wave 5-6 attracted more people, it did in my location. At some point we had 4 players tournament. Now we are gona break past 10 in the store one and will even get some spectators. I think even the errata had a little to do with the surge. Last few time we met up, almost everyone had rieekian lists or very squadron oriented rebel builds, i think people were just tired of that meta. Stillness in a limiting meta is usually killer for games in general, video games or table top games. A perfectly good example for why even when it has up and down MTG always recover, because a season rolling out might make things interesting again even if the year before was a dud.

In italy it's not so popular unfortunately: we are a small community divided in various cities. I usually have to travel a couple of hours just for a friendly game! Plus the local distributor stopped selling any armada ships since wave 4 (or even before that!).

If all goes well, Asterion will start shipping and selling Armada in italian again: that's important for the spread of the game.

The errata's have helped people a lot who were on the verge of dropping the game.

On a related note, I'd love to see what else was getting interest during the Spring, as that would typically not include the July release of the latest wave.

If you'd told me that Armada was outselling Warmachine a month ago, I would have been very dismissive of that statement in most places.

4 minutes ago, thecactusman17 said:

The errata's have helped people a lot who were on the verge of dropping the game.

On a related note, I'd love to see what else was getting interest during the Spring, as that would typically not include the July release of the latest wave.

If you'd told me that Armada was outselling Warmachine a month ago, I would have been very dismissive of that statement in most places.

Really? Warmachine DIED in Chicago a year or two ago, and from what I hear other cities aren't much better. Where are you that it's still going strong? Not doubting, just curious.

1 minute ago, geek19 said:

Really? Warmachine DIED in Chicago a year or two ago, and from what I hear other cities aren't much better. Where are you that it's still going strong? Not doubting, just curious.

Backing this up. It's got a few holdout communities (I think they still play it in any numbers at Dice Dojo and at Gamestorm and the like but it's vanished from many stores and the larger community just imploded), but otherwise it's increasingly scarce. Widespread disaffection by the end of MkII and Guild Ball showing up to court those players who hadn't dropped out yet but were getting grumpy resulted in a number of the players leaving the hobby entirely or switching over to Guildball and not meaningfully coming back. That's obviously not the case everywhere in the US, but in Chicagoland as a whole, it's been on the decline for the past 2 or so years.

An aside:

On Vassal - Armada is comparable to 40k and Warmachines. X-wing is like at least 10 times as popular!

How do they calculate this? Is it by volume or dollars?

I'd be interested in hearing from people if the CC campaign was a reason for folks getting into the game a bit. Or if there's just some cool ships from rebels and the latest film.

2 hours ago, Snipafist said:

Backing this up. It's got a few holdout communities (I think they still play it in any numbers at Dice Dojo and at Gamestorm and the like but it's vanished from many stores and the larger community just imploded), but otherwise it's increasingly scarce. Widespread disaffection by the end of MkII and Guild Ball showing up to court those players who hadn't dropped out yet but were getting grumpy resulted in a number of the players leaving the hobby entirely or switching over to Guildball and not meaningfully coming back. That's obviously not the case everywhere in the US, but in Chicagoland as a whole, it's been on the decline for the past 2 or so years.

As an ex Press Ganger I can corroborate this as well. Up here in western Canada, we would have a tournament if not weekly, twice a week everywhere in the province.

The community has seemed to just drop off a cliff since Mark 3. The largest annual tournament went from 70+ attendees in 2016, to 30 this year.

That said, i believe that we are truly in the golden age of table top gaming, with a plethora of selection for every person imaginable ( it's going to be hard to stay away from CMOM's A Song Of Fire And Ice game lol) so 4th is an extremely respectable place to be

So long as Star Fleet Battles still exists, we will always be in the golden age of table top gaming.

I'm going to have to invest into X-Wing eventually...

10 minutes ago, Norell said:

I'm going to have to invest into X-Wing eventually...

I sold my collection off. It grew too fast and recklessly.

I doubt I will go near it again unless they come out with a 2nd edition that cleans things up.

Clean things up?

Just now, Norell said:

Clean things up?

In regards to the rules. There are things that were implemented over time, that would end up causing huge headaches. Not to long ago they had a hard nerf on several units.

Even things like turrets. They were introduced early on with the YT-1300 with 360 degree firing arc. Players have complained consistently about them.

Later, (with the Lancer I believe,) they had a turret you could move to a new arc once per turn. I think that is a much better mechanism and should have been the default.

I think X-Wing as a whole could use a 2nd edition that takes everything they've learned and create a better overall package.

I play X Wing for two reasons: It's really the only FFG supported game locally. And even it seems to be slow in the last few months (A LOT of people have walked away in frustration of the game). And my friends occasionally like to run a HotAC campaign (we've yet to complete one full go round, ironically).

I do prefer Armada, but locally it's like 4 of us I know who are bought in, and we never are on the same availability schedule.