27 minutes ago, Ophion said:

Not fielding VSDs

I got 4th in my SC of 16. 2 VSDs and Konstantine.

31 minutes ago, TallGiraffe said:

I got 4th in my SC of 16. 2 VSDs and Konstantine.

Did you win because of Konstantine or despite him?

Just now, ManInTheBox said:

Did you win because of Konstantine or despite him?

I used him a few times to speed up stuff. Helps with Quad Battery Turrets.

I've been a tournament gamer in multiple systems for over 2 decades. There is some pretty good advice above, but I do want to add this to show the difference in mentality of how players approach a tournament:

Competitive tournament players come up with a list and then collect it.

Non competitive tournament players come up a list from their collection.

Granted, that changes if you already own a huge collection so don't need to buy anything new, but the point still stands. The competitive player sees the force that they feel they are competitive with and takes steps to make sure they have that force. The non competitive player just looks at their collection and makes up the best they can out of it.

5 hours ago, Ginkapo said:

Has anyone noticed that the repetitive winners are usually regular opponents of another regular winner?

I had a coach that put this as "Practice makes perfect, but only if you practice perfectly" - it is true in Armada and all things. The higher caliber of player you make your "regular" the easier you will surpass players not familiar with high level play.

But not everyone is so fortunate to be able to sharpen their iron against a champion class player. So this is a bit of a conundrum. Still, playing as many games against the best players accessible to you is a foundational way to learn play better.

The Dark Side.

1. The ability to identify good synergy in builds. The ability to be able to identify it yourself is important. I've found this true in many games. You can couple down a build, a fleet, a strategy from someone on line, but if you can't understand the underlying elements at a base level, you won't likely excel. They need to also see the synergy in opponent builds, and identify how to disrupt those synergies.

2. The ability to critically analyze your own success and failure and most importantly, learn from it. You won, but how could you have won by a bigger margin? Did any of your upgrades fail to live up to their expectation? What mistakes did you make? Many times a winner can let their success blind them to what mistakes were made. Many times a loser can blame the opponents build, bad dice/luck, or some other external factor instead of learning from their failure.

3. The ability to 'read' your opponent. If you were playing that fleet against yours, how would you deploy. If you deploy this ship here, how would they deploy? If you move here, how would they respond. If you activate this ship now, which ship will they activate in response.

4. The ability to predict the meta. By following the forums, communicating with other players, seeing what types of builds are popular, they can craft something that is likely to have an advantage against the majority of the most common builds.

5. Practice. The best players are likely people that have been playing their builds in local tournaments and using that to fine tune and hone their builds and strategies. But that's just a start. They also likely play against their friends, and if they are lucky, they have friends willing to test common builds against them to test new strategies. On top of that, they may very well play against themselves. This gives them the ability to test even more scenarios, and really study what their build looks like from the other side.

6. Critical strategic consideration of objectives (currently my biggest weakness). They pick the best objectives. This isn't as simple as 'this objective would be good for me' but also 'this objective could hurt me against these types of fleets, so even though it's good for me, it would be better to take this other one that can't be used against me'. On top of that, they carefully consider how they would play against each and every objective if they are have to choose from the opponents objectives, and can figure out on the spot which objectives would benefit them more than the opponent.

7. Experience. Overall experience of the game helps to make the previous 6 points happen quickly and innately.

8. Solid, dependable opponents. If you win easily against everyone in your local area with nearly anything you take to the table...chances are you are going to fail hard outside that area. If one meta dominates your local tournaments, chances are you are going to struggle against anything outside of that meta. You need to be constantly challenged to progress.

You don't need all 8 of these factors to succeed, but the more the merrier. Being extremely good at 1 can make up for a weakness in another area. Say you don't have good opponents and friends to play against. This hurts 5 and 8. But if you make up with it more practice against yourself in a very critical fashion, then you can overcome the other issues.

13 hours ago, ManInTheBox said:

@Ardaedhel... are some guys I know

You would be excused for thinking I belong on that list since all you know of me is the way I talk on here, but I'm not actually that good at this game. Just very opinionated about it.

So, in the interest of staying in character, here are my opinions.

13 hours ago, MandalorianMoose said:

being able to see multiple turns ahead and understands the “flow” of where the game will go

This is a big deal in tactical execution. Being able to look several moves ahead and read not only what opportunities your moves will give you, but what your opponent's considerations will be and how you can force him into unfavorable decisions on your terms is a really big deal.

Relatedly, taking away options as quickly as possible is always beneficial, even if you don't see the benefits right away. Force them to burn discards and otherwise blow one-shot options early so you can leverage their absence later. The threat of an unused Lando, Pursuant, or Hondo is sometimes more valuable than the effect itself.

11 hours ago, Ginkapo said:

Has anyone noticed that the repetitive winners are usually regular opponents of another regular winner?

5 hours ago, BrobaFett said:

The higher caliber of player you make your "regular" the easier you will surpass players not familiar with high level play.

Having just moved from an area with multiple very good players to one with a much smaller experience pool in general, I'm appreciating the options that Vassal offers in this respect. Many of the best players in the world--and also @CaribbeanNinja--are commonly available to play on there. Even though there is definitely a skill set of playing the physical game that you miss if you only play Vassal, it is a very accessible way for almost anyone to get hard games against good players.

3 hours ago, kmanweiss said:

1. The ability to identify good synergy in builds. The ability to be able to identify it yourself is important.

Everything you said was great, but this one is particularly insightful. The ability to quickly read through an opponent's list and identify their strengths and weaknesses, spot what vulnerable points enable their list, and identify how you can attack those points is a hugely useful skill that only comes with practice. This is a big part of why netlisting doesn't work in Armada, IMO.

Speaking of which...

13 hours ago, geek19 said:

the truly greats don't netlist. DO netlist for a start if you're curious about how something works, but knowing yourself and how YOU play should preclude you from taking something built around how SOMEONE ELSE plays.

Good advice, but there is another thing netlisting is really good for: wargaming and thought experiments for your own fleet designs.

A trap I've seen a lot is people coming up with a sweet idea for some interaction or fleet theme that works awesome against an MC80 flying in a straight line toward them with no squadron cover, but has no tools to deal with anything else. By all means, build a list that's something you like. But then, go through the archetypes that show up in battle reports, event debriefs, Vassal tourneys, in the Fleet Builds forum, and in your local meta; consider what you're going to do when you see that fleet across the table from you; and re-tune your own fleet as necessary. This is a very good way to quickly do some rough optimization before the fleet ever even hits the table, potentially putting you weeks in the maturing process for that list.

----------------

I agree with what pretty much everybody else said: practice is critical. But there's more to it than that (of course).

- Debrief your game immediately afterward if you can. Even if you're frustrated, or if a bad roll cost you the game, or if you beat the pants off of the other guy, or he's a new/casual player, there's always something to be gained by talking through what happened and what each of you could've done better. This is the best way to improve your tactical execution, and also gives you insights into how other people are seeing the situation from their side of the table. Knowing just how terrified people are of Yavaris is handy knowledge to have in your back pocket.

- Try to get a sparring buddy. This is not just whoever you can get casual games with--this is somebody who is also interested in increasing their level of competition and is willing to put in some rigorous work to help you improve, and to whom you will reciprocate in kind. "I need to playtest this fleet against this specific DeMSU build, if they win the bid and pick X objective" kind of partner. This needs to be somebody that you can bounce ideas off of and expect honest and well-informed feedback. Fleet Builds is good for general advice on fleet composition, but it's harder to get useful tactical feedback customized to your personal play.

- Don't get stuck on the Flavor of the Month. Don't build hard counters to it, and don't use it. Instead, find out what the hard counters to it are, and then build a well-considered fleet that has a plan for handling both the FotM and those hard counters, but not one that's pigeonholed into the role of Rieekan aces counter or whatever. Then, practice against both the FotM and its counter. If this sounds like a tall order, that's because it is, and is what the "meta" side of competition is all about: who has the best idea for doing all of these hard things at the same time, and does it first and best.

- Fly MC30s. They are the best ship and you will win if you use them well.

------------------

I had some other thoughts but I've forgotten them because I'm tired of talking to you and I want to sleep.

being able to judge distances and angles helps. whats that in english, spatial sense?

As had been said, there is an innate aptness for games like that, for sure, including the ability and will to concentrate longer than your opponent on those 3+ games days.

The ability to find synergistic builds, and a lot of experience with a wide range of builds and cards to know what you will likely face, how a given game will likely shape up.

And of course total confidence in your own list, which comes with playing it again and again.

Not much beyond previous answers, really

I tend to win far more than I lose, and thinking on it, quite frankly for me it boils down to thinking at least three turns ahead and not giving a darn wether I win or lose. Oh, in depth knowledge of the rules is also helpful.

I'm going to answer the question in the title wiiiith:

A bacterial biofilm as result of quorum sensing.

As a relatively new player who is situated firmly in 'the rest' portion of this topic I just wanted to mention that this topic has been increadibly useful in understanding the most important aspects to work towards to improve and I have also got myself a practice partner and we intent to borrow bunch of fleet builds off the forum and play them against our current builds we are working on to see what we need to alter to do better and also see if theres any included upgrades frequently not being used to full potential.

not a top tier player, but it's important to have enough mental/physical endurance to not make too many mistakes at the top tables at the end of long days

On 23/11/2017 at 5:57 PM, Vergilius said:

Practice is a good thought, but what I find is that people have a hard time knowing what exactly they should be practicing at, and some of the advice above assumes that one is dealing with a high ceiling player. One of the reasons central Texas has done well is that we've had a very large pool of players who enjoy a lot of different fleet archetypes. That gives the better players a chance to play a lot of different match-ups and get better at their lists through them. It is common at a national or worlds level event to find players who have won a regional that are suddenly struck by a list that they'd not previously encountered. Another thing that helps is to surround yourself with other good players and play them a bunch. That's really a major portion of the success of the Toronto crew. They are capable of putting aside personal ego and fear of loss and just playing the game. The most recent Worlds victory was a direct result of that level of preparation.

It's helpful to see some recognition that just practicing isn't all the story, and it's how you practice that's also important. That's what I'm trying to tease out.

On 23/11/2017 at 8:03 PM, Ginkapo said:

10% power 15% skill 5% pure determination and will 20% pain 3% pleasure 100% reason to remember the rhyme

I feel like that's a reference to something that just shot over my head. I like it though.

On 23/11/2017 at 9:50 PM, Church14 said:

Back to topic. Every game, look at who lost and figure out WHY. Then work out what changes needed to be made to win. A different deployment? Better command choice? Different maneuver? There is always a way to win and you do that by learning.

Exactly this! Talking with my opponent sheet and trying to understand the game from their side, and what we would have done differently, has been very helpful.

23 hours ago, Dameon13 said:

Competitive tournament players come up with a list and then collect it.

Non competitive tournament players come up a list from their collection.

Granted, that changes if you already own a huge collection so don't need to buy anything new, but the point still stands. The competitive player sees the force that they feel they are competitive with and takes steps to make sure they have that force. The non competitive player just looks at their collection and makes up the best they can out of it.

I try not to let my S.O. see to much of my collection out at once, because it gives away quite how much I've brought home.

Thats not been my barrier so far, but it seems like a generally sound point.

21 hours ago, BrobaFett said:

I had a coach that put this as "Practice makes perfect, but only if you practice perfectly" - it is true in Armada and all things. The higher caliber of player you make your "regular" the easier you will surpass players not familiar with high level play.

But not everyone is so fortunate to be able to sharpen their iron against a champion class player. So this is a bit of a conundrum. Still, playing as many games against the best players accessible to you is a foundational way to learn play better.

Basically, I can blame my opponents for me not being better.

20 hours ago, kmanweiss said:

1. The ability to identify good synergy in builds. The ability to be able to identify it yourself is important. I've found this true in many games. You can couple down a build, a fleet, a strategy from someone on line, but if you can't understand the underlying elements at a base level, you won't likely excel. They need to also see the synergy in opponent builds, and identify how to disrupt those synergies.

2. The ability to critically analyze your own success and failure and most importantly, learn from it. You won, but how could you have won by a bigger margin? Did any of your upgrades fail to live up to their expectation? What mistakes did you make? Many times a winner can let their success blind them to what mistakes were made. Many times a loser can blame the opponents build, bad dice/luck, or some other external factor instead of learning from their failure.

3. The ability to 'read' your opponent. If you were playing that fleet against yours, how would you deploy. If you deploy this ship here, how would they deploy? If you move here, how would they respond. If you activate this ship now, which ship will they activate in response.

4. The ability to predict the meta. By following the forums, communicating with other players, seeing what types of builds are popular, they can craft something that is likely to have an advantage against the majority of the most common builds.

5. Practice. The best players are likely people that have been playing their builds in local tournaments and using that to fine tune and hone their builds and strategies. But that's just a start. They also likely play against their friends, and if they are lucky, they have friends willing to test common builds against them to test new strategies. On top of that, they may very well play against themselves. This gives them the ability to test even more scenarios, and really study what their build looks like from the other side.

6. Critical strategic consideration of objectives (currently my biggest weakness). They pick the best objectives. This isn't as simple as 'this objective would be good for me' but also 'this objective could hurt me against these types of fleets, so even though it's good for me, it would be better to take this other one that can't be used against me'. On top of that, they carefully consider how they would play against each and every objective if they are have to choose from the opponents objectives, and can figure out on the spot which objectives would benefit them more than the opponent.

7. Experience. Overall experience of the game helps to make the previous 6 points happen quickly and innately.

8. Solid, dependable opponents. If you win easily against everyone in your local area with nearly anything you take to the table...chances are you are going to fail hard outside that area. If one meta dominates your local tournaments, chances are you are going to struggle against anything outside of that meta. You need to be constantly challenged to progress.

You don't need all 8 of these factors to succeed, but the more the merrier. Being extremely good at 1 can make up for a weakness in another area. Say you don't have good opponents and friends to play against. This hurts 5 and 8. But if you make up with it more practice against yourself in a very critical fashion, then you can overcome the other issues.

Thank you! This is a really well broken down analysis. This is the sort of thing that helps form a methodical practise to make practice more practical. Practically.

I think that if you are a "good" player, it's not always easy to see why you're successful because the actual process isn't clear to you, you just experience the sum of all the variables. Asking people to explain why they're good can be like explaining why I'm good at parallel parking. I've just got a "feel" for it. However, it's possible to start picking apart the cues and processes that I follow so that I could explain to someone else. That wouldn't make them git gud straight away, but it could help them to understand what process I'm going through myself that translates as "feel" in my actual experience of the event.

15 hours ago, Ardaedhel said:

You would be excused for thinking I belong on that list since all you know of me is the way I talk on here, but I'm not actually that good at this game. Just very opinionated about it.

C'mon man. You've carved out a solid niche as a very strong MC-30 player. I've wanted to put a certain of the squadronless shrimp fleet on the table for a long while because of you, but have never quite had the balls to do it.

The rest of your post has loads of great advice in it; more than I can easily respond to piece by piece whilst typing in my phone.

Vassal is great, though. My current laptop stifles to run it and leads to horrendous lag (and really drags out games) but it's a property to make sure the replacement of will have enough computering inside it to run Vassal more smoothly in the future. I played some great games in there against other forum members and would like to do so again.

Oh, and MC-30s are by far my favourite ship in the game. I have 3. Just need one more for that shrimp cocktail.

15 hours ago, Ardaedhel said:

@ManInTheBox

Being particularly boring.

Competitive Strategy is like Starcraft 2, insanely competitive, delicately balanced and while may be interesting to watch it becomes repetitive to play.

Epic strategy is like TW: Warhammer 2, grand scale massive battles, but not so on the balance because the fights take too long to figure out if anything is OP or not. Even more so are the campaigns which takes days and weeks as they are battles linked to a larger strategic map.

X-wing is competitive strategy, Armada is grand strategy. If you want competition go to X-wing, if you want epic go to Armada.

1 hour ago, Ginkapo said:

@ManInTheBox

I am so not down with the kids.

A lot of good advice above. For me, Armada is a very unforgiving game for mistakes - so a +1 to the advice to debrief on the post match analysis. You can learn more from a big loss than any other game.

In my opinion, the key deciding factor between a good and average player is killer instinct. Knowing when to take a calculated risk (and not), understanding the game state which will likely unfold, and the risk/reward trade off of making a particular move. Playing too safe doesn’t win tournaments.

I am also a big fan of divide and conquer - get most of your force fighting a portion of the opponent’s. Figure out a manoeuvre plan to do that and achieve/mitigate the mission!

On 11/23/2017 at 3:04 PM, Ginkapo said:

Has anyone noticed that the repetitive winners are usually regular opponents of another regular winner?

Indeed. Iron sharpens iron. You need to play good or great players, often, to be the best.

5 minutes ago, Thraug said:

Indeed. Iron sharpens iron. You need to play good or great players, often, to be the best.

Kind of.

It is also in my experience that, occasionally, playing (and being stomped) by “great” players and champions can leave you no the more educated - if the “champ” isn’t willing to pass on their wisdom.

I’ve had some horrible games that way, where the only redeeming feature has been “its over now.”

Swearing, cursing, dice throwing included. While I stood there still losing...

So a letter to others that way: When you are playing, you are teaching, even if you are not having fun.

I just wish, overall, I was better at Armada...

8 hours ago, Marinealver said:

X-wing is competitive strategy, Armada is grand strategy. If you want competition go to X-wing, if you want epic go to Armada.

Not hardly!

Okay, so I know a thing or two about 'grand strategy' as someone who looks at that sort of thing in regards to what amounts to 'Grand Strategy' in the real world. Grand Strategy is the overarching level of war over the very long term (e.g. a human lifetime or longer, depending on your culture's time horizons). Usually, these levels of war number in the 2-5, but the tactical level is the lowest, which is where both X-Wing and Armada sit. Usually, the level above that is the operational level, which the Corellian Conflict attempts to model.

The closest we get to the grand strategy in FFG games is Rebellion, and even that I would say is really mostly operational, with some easy mechanics to model the tactical level.

1 hour ago, Mikael Hasselstein said:

Not hardly!

Okay, so I know a thing or two about 'grand strategy' as someone who looks at that sort of thing in regards to what amounts to 'Grand Strategy' in the real world. Grand Strategy is the overarching level of war over the very long term (e.g. a human lifetime or longer, depending on your culture's time horizons). Usually, these levels of war number in the 2-5, but the tactical level is the lowest, which is where both X-Wing and Armada sit. Usually, the level above that is the operational level, which the Corellian Conflict attempts to model.

The closest we get to the grand strategy in FFG games is Rebellion, and even that I would say is really mostly operational, with some easy mechanics to model the tactical level.

In a way, Armada is sort of fills the gap between X-wing and Rebellion. Sure right now the only thing is the Corellian Conflict but it is to be expected that there will be more campaigns. Given the set up of Armada the longer game length Armada fits the campaign system better than X-wing, while X-wing with its narrow scope is easier to keep in meta balance.

But still Armada seems more epic than X-wing in terms of strategic level.

Epic and strategic as adjectives refer to different things. Presumably, someone describing Armada as epic does not mean that it conveys a poetic story of the achievements of some great hero, but merely picks up on the idea that the scope that the game is intended to simulate is bigger than X-wing. That use is fair enough. This just doesn't have anything to do with strategic.

Now, I think it is fair to say that Armada has more strategic depth to it than X-wing, and by that I mean that the amount of effort that you have to expend coming up with a long range master plan is greater. But in the grand scheme of things, once you are at the board, as Mikael Hasselstien expresses correctly, you're looking at a largely tactical game.

If you want a game that focuses almost entirely upon grand strategy with almost no tactics, then Europa Universalis is a game that attempts to simulate that.