So I come in to work this morning and walk past a co-worker's desk. He's got a copy of Twilight Imperium on his desk, and he's just staring at it in wonder. I didn't think much of it at first, because he's always buying stuff and bringing it in to work to sh ow off. But then he says to me, "Hey Brawndo, Kyle from the Dev team has a pile of board games at his desk that he's just giving away." He knows I'm a big Star Wars nerd, so he then tells me: "There's some kind of Star Wars game there."

Naturally, I sprint over there to see what's up, expecting it to be something lame like Star Wars Monopoly or something. Nope, it was the Star Wars: Armada core set. I've always been interested in Armada, but considering how much money I've pumped into X-Wing over the last couple of years in spite of rarely finding the time to play, I wasn't like $100 interested in it. And now I have it.

I also got a copy of Mage Knight and Through The Ages. It's a pretty good day for free games where I'm sitting.

So... what are the must-have expansions for this thing?

Welcome to the game! Congrats on the lucky break!

Do you plan to play competitively or for fun? Everything is good, but the order of acquisition varies depending on the answer. Also, which side do you intend to play? And do you like brawlers or snipers?

If you want fun, I recommend:

Rebels:
MC80 Home One
MC30c Torpedo Frigate
Rebel Fighters I

Imps:
Imperial Star Destroyer
Gladiator Star Destroyer
Imperial Fighters I

For starters. These will also be decent competitively. However for the latter you'd also want to add the flotilla expansions pretty quickly to your collection, whereas if you're playing casual they can be put off for more fun ships. I definitely suggest @Snipafist's and @geek19's two articles (and their entire blog): Getting an Imp fleet for $250 and Getting a Reb fleet for $250 as they lay out the order of ships and the reasoning behind them.

Have fun and once more, welcome to the game!

Armada hasn't suffered from new expansions making old ones obsolete the way X-Wing has so buy whatever expansions you want to play everythings still viable.

Id suggest to look at the Fleet list forums, lot of ships pop up regularly, go for those, ignore the upgrade parts.