Are you tired of losing to Scum? Do your eyes roll every time you look across the table and see a Jumpmaster? Does Attani mindlink just makes you want to tear your brain out through your eye sockets? Do you want to go back to the good old days where it is Rebels vs Empire, Jedi vs Sith, Good vs Evil and not have to deal with some pesky Hutt contracted Mandalorian Bounty Hunter raining on your parade? Have I got a game for you where you can play with all your favorite Star Wars ships and never have to see a Scum list again. Click the spoiler below to find the solution to all your scum problems.

Aw yes, where you play as the Scum Empire

8 minutes ago, MandoBard said:

Aw yes, where you play as the Scum Empire

And villainy as rebels!

Best part of Armada is the Jumpmaster only has 4 hull.

I'm an Armada player. There are still plenty of people over there clamoring for scum, arguing it's a good idea to have pirate spaceships or name-dropping Tyber Zahn as some kind of justification for pirate fleets.

I look at this board to see the rampant complaints about Scum, and look at the medicore ship designs for scum, and sit satisfied in my opinion that Armada Scum Is A Bad Idea.

9 minutes ago, Norsehound said:

I'm an Armada player. There are still plenty of people over there clamoring for scum, arguing it's a good idea to have pirate spaceships or name-dropping Tyber Zahn as some kind of justification for pirate fleets.

I look at this board to see the rampant complaints about Scum, and look at the medicore ship designs for scum, and sit satisfied in my opinion that Armada Scum Is A Bad Idea.

As with many things, relying on this board to tell you the general opinion of Scum is not wise. I've met plenty of people, both on this forum and out in the world, who got into the game because of Scum. The problem comes from individual ships, not the faction as a whole.

I wouldn't mind if they released rules to let you fly a couple Scum squads combining the fleets from both sides, and perhaps a couple Scummy rules conversions for Rebel ships.

After all, an appropriately thematic Scum fleet is going to almost overwhelmingly be smaller craft anyway, and likely at small squad sizes to boot.

2 hours ago, Norsehound said:

I'm an Armada player. There are still plenty of people over there clamoring for scum, arguing it's a good idea to have pirate spaceships or name-dropping Tyber Zahn as some kind of justification for pirate fleets.

I look at this board to see the rampant complaints about Scum, and look at the medicore ship designs for scum, and sit satisfied in my opinion that Armada Scum Is A Bad Idea.

Yeah and I see all the Nerf Herders complaining about the meta in Armada. The only saving grace is that there aren't as many in Armada as there is in X-wing.

I like to tell the Armada Nerf Herders there are no flotillas in X-wing.

X-Wing games also go a lot faster.

I gripe about small ships and fighters having supremacy in the game over most other things (B-Wing swarms can mulch TIE Escorts and their carriers thanks to Yavaris) but I dunno... Sloane on the scene changes things a bit. But... that's another issue. And certainly the Empire isn't facing their entire modus operendi becoming extinct because agility dice and re positioning is so devalued in the current meta.

Can't play the game because no Gunboat yet

But the Chimera is here...

Decisions, decisions...

40 minutes ago, Norsehound said:

X-Wing games also go a lot faster.

I gripe about small ships and fighters having supremacy in the game over most other things (B-Wing swarms can mulch TIE Escorts and their carriers thanks to Yavaris) but I dunno... Sloane on the scene changes things a bit. But... that's another issue. And certainly the Empire isn't facing their entire modus operendi becoming extinct because agility dice and re positioning is so devalued in the current meta.

Well Imperials have sort of the exact opposite list set up in Armada than in X-wing. In Armada it is the Imps that have the big expensive ships while Rebels have the corner on the small swarm ships. Heck even the Rebel's squadrons are cheaper than Imperials. Even the Rebel squadrons are cheaper than Imperials on average.

Quantity is also a much bigger thing in Armada than it is in X-Wing. The U-Go I-Go model in Armada means you can activate a number of cheap units to force a primary heavy hitter into sub-optimal shots (for example, an ISD not able to use its forward arc to actually shoot anything), if you have more units. That's why generally most good lists have four or more activations to be competitive (though there are rare exceptions, at least). Since Imperial ships are as a whole more expensive (certainly in flotillas) the Rebels can saturate activations with more cheap units.

It also doesn't help that there are a few killer cards (Turbolaser Reroute circuits, Assault Proton Torpedoes) you can spam with those cheap ships to be deadlier with a thousand cuts than one blast out of a large battery on a big ship. Fighters work the same way, repeated hits on one target overwhelm the defenses, wear it down, and destroy it.

In X-Wing terms it would be like every time you defended, it's one less agility dice for the remainder of the round. Imagine losing those dice for the remainder of the game. At that point, lists would reward lots of ships to shoot down expensive craft a whole lot faster.... which is where I see Armada sitting right now.

When they announced scum at the In Flight Report, I buried my face in my hands. Everybody else was excited, while I sat there thinking, "I have a bad feeling about this." Eventually I warmed up to it, and even bought into the faction. Now I realize my first impressions were accurate. Oh well. Glory to the Empire! We will restore peace and security to the space lanes soon.

I thought that game was currently over run by fighter squadrons

Just now, TylerTT said:

I thought that game was currently over run by fighter squadrons

but no scum fighters, everyone is Imperial or Rebel

Not necessarily. The Yavaris title for the nebulon-B allows six attacks out of three fighters of your choice... which could be anything from harder-hitting X-Wings to the best generic bombers in the game: B-Wings. It's murderous to face, and there are synergy cards that leverage more attack power out of those fighters. B-Wings are at least slow, but Yavaris is a staple of many Rebel lists because of the attack power you get out of it. That said, Yavaris is the only title that sees a lot of use on the Nebulon. With the four hull zones on Armada ships having different defense characteristics, I'll just say it's easy to snap a nebulon in half if your battery is big enough.

That is, if you can get to the Nebulon fast enough to actually attack it. Blocking is also a thing in Armada, and the Rebels have the cheapest flotillas in which to do it.

The bottom of this though is back to valuing quantity over quality in that game. Not only can a swarm of CR-90s gurantee 2 hits against any target they shoot at (with TRCs), but now a Yavaris swarm of B-Wings will shred most fighter screens that challenge it and then bomb the crap out of any capital ship they can in range. What's worse, with the Intel keyword, now B-Wings can ignore fighter screens. I've been the recipient of many rebel speedbump lists with that exact setup, but I'll spare you X-Wing folks the gritty details.

I can't imagine what scum would do to the game if released. Two exclusive slots, game-breaking quirky rules for the sake of being different? No thanks. Fortunately scum couldn't scrape up anything better than a C-Roc to fight anyone with, so I'm happy to think Scum can stay regulated to rogue bounty hunters, cash-strapped pirate bands, and lone individuals in Imperial Assault and X-Wing.

1 hour ago, Norsehound said:

The U-Go I-Go model in Armada means you can activate a number of cheap units to force a primary heavy hitter into sub-optimal shots (for example, an ISD not able to use its forward arc to actually shoot anything), if you have more units.

yeah. It was a mechanic that existed in a previous popular space combat game - Babylon 5 A Call To Arms. It was awful there (functionally killing EA and Narn as fleets when combined with Boresighted weapons) and it's awful in armada, and the moment I realised it was in there it killed a lot of my interest in the game. Being able to buy cheap flotillas to count as activations just made it worse.

Don't get me wrong. A lot of things in armada I like:

• Varying range/effect dice
• Defence being a consumable resource per turn
• The 'command dial mechanic) - albeit that that's good for representing a capital ship rather than a fighter

Things I don't like

• Fiddly shield dials on the base and the initiative slider on the fighter tokens
• The maneuver template, which always feels more fiddly than any of the X-wing equivalents
• Denying a star destroyer a shot by playing initiative games via a pair of freighters on the other side of the board from the fight.
• Much like large ships in X-wing, a lot of the game feels like it's card combinations.
• There's still a lot of scum-related stuff - because a lot of the elite empire squadrons are the S&V characters.

At least the Imperial Forces in X-Wing do not have stupid tattoo style paintjobs

Really like Armada. Fighters and Flotillas got a little out of hand... and then a FAQ right sized fixed it. Armada feels like XWings lean mean more efficient brother.

Its not perfect, but IMO its a much better game than X-Wing. If I could get games in as easy as XWing, I’d play it more.