Sorry guys, I'm just in a really good mood today!

But dude... I can go run a Wave 2 Ackbar build and it's still competitive against modern lists. Here we are, multiple years in, and every ship is still a viable ship!

It amazes me how well this game was designed. So few problems... And even the few problems are going to be fixed soon. I think Garm and Tarkin will both see more play in Wave 7. Also, the only ship that I genuinely feel is weak right now, (The Pelta) is about to find some new usage in wave 7!

It's a good time to be an Armada player! Just hope we get more stuff this year! Keep it coming FFG!

Just need to fix Relay...

Most ships are still competitive... not all.

But I agree that the balance int his game gets better with every wave/faq. They've done a superb job really

I'm pretty happy that old upgrades that were considered fairly useless can suddenly be valuable again after the release of a new wave. And there is very little power creep, which is great for new players like me.

Crabbok +1. The new waves add new stuff, new strategies, but never (almost) kill the previous ones. Good job so far.

10 hours ago, Crabbok said:

Sorry guys, I'm just in a really good mood today!

But dude... I can go run a Wave 2 Ackbar build and it's still competitive against modern lists. Here we are, multiple years in, and every ship is still a viable ship!

It amazes me how well this game was designed. So few problems... And even the few problems are going to be fixed soon. I think Garm and Tarkin will both see more play in Wave 7. Also, the only ship that I genuinely feel is weak right now, (The Pelta) is about to find some new usage in wave 7!

It's a good time to be an Armada player! Just hope we get more stuff this year! Keep it coming FFG!

As soon as they release more generic titles I'm making a 7 nebulon B fleet. I will call it the 'B Team'! That name is too good maybe I'll just do it anyways. Seriously though some generic titles would be really cool like a strike fleet title gives an extra dice/reroll on fc commands. Or as skirmish fleet title to activate an additional fighter or as long as the fighter is in between two or more ships with this title you can issue a squadron command to it. That would be really cool! Anyways B Team, titles, excitement, dice!

15 minutes ago, Noosh said:

As soon as they release more generic titles I'm making a 7 nebulon B fleet. I will call it the 'B Team'! That name is too good maybe I'll just do it anyways. Seriously though some generic titles would be really cool like a strike fleet title gives an extra dice/reroll on fc commands. Or as skirmish fleet title to activate an additional fighter or as long as the fighter is in between two or more ships with this title you can issue a squadron command to it. That would be really cool! Anyways B Team, titles, excitement, dice!

To complement that "B Team" you can use B-Wings as your squadrons

Armada is a fun game, but at the competitive level it isn't as fun and varied as you'd like to think.

Some food for thought ( I'm willfully exaggerating to make my points ):

Activations are king, and flotilla spam all too common as a result. It's not 2+3 anymore. Its 2+4, or 1+5. Ugh.

Being able to deliver a few, devastating damage spikes that bypass most defense tokens is more important than a well-rounded fleet. Demo always did this; now we have MANY more options.

Squads now offer excellent stand-off range, to the extent where Yavaris-relay and Sloane-relay is wrecking stuff long before fleets actually engage. Primary solution... do your own Yavaris or Sloane.

Some REALLY stupid cards. Yavaris continues to be a stupid good force multiplier. Toryn Farr the same. Both cards are so good they effectively shape each and every thing take can be added to the game, and that I think greatly limits development. Those were just 2 examples btw. Rhymer (old)/Demo (still) go into the same category.

Objective selection is laughable. Two words: "Most Wanted". While that's the most grotesque case, there are only so many strong objectives. The rest are mediocre at best.

4 minutes ago, Green Knight said:

Objective selection is laughable. Two words: "Most Wanted". While that's the most grotesque case, there are only so many strong objectives. The rest are mediocre at best.

I think no matter how many Objectives you have and how good they are a select few will always percolate to the top. Then there will be some niche objectives like Fire Lanes and Sensor Net. I honestly think it is impossible to come up with 5-6 great objective choices in a single category. I agree that Most Wanted is a little more extreme but most objectives will always see little play no matter how much thought went into each and every objective.

Also my local scene doesn't see Flotilla spam and that is a good thing.

I think it would be cool to see seasons of competitive play that show case new objectives. Armada has been around for what... 3 Year’s? So at the beginning of 4th competitive season FFG could release that seasons objectives. Call it 3 new objectives for each color.

Can never have too many.

6 minutes ago, PartyPotato said:

I think it would be cool to see seasons of competitive play that show case new objectives. Armada has been around for what... 3 Year’s? So at the beginning of 4th competitive season FFG could release that seasons objectives. Call it 3 new objectives for each color.

Can never have too many.

Cycling Objectives would keep them fresh but I stand by what I said in that one of each color will always be more popular than the rest. I would personally like to see more lengthwise objectives.

25 minutes ago, Green Knight said:

Armada is a fun game, but at the competitive level it isn't as fun and varied as you'd like to think.

Some food for thought ( I'm willfully exaggerating to make my points ):

Activations are king, and flotilla spam all too common as a result. It's not 2+3 anymore. Its 2+4, or 1+5. Ugh.

Being able to deliver a few, devastating damage spikes that bypass most defense tokens is more important than a well-rounded fleet. Demo always did this; now we have MANY more options.

Squads now offer excellent stand-off range, to the extent where Yavaris-relay and Sloane-relay is wrecking stuff long before fleets actually engage. Primary solution... do your own Yavaris or Sloane.

Regarding Flotilla Spam: I agree. As I get more experience with this game this is the thing that bugs me most. I've played a bunch of I-go-You-go type games, and also probably every naval strategy game ever made, so I've seen how potent activation advantage can be in any game like this. But I think SWA has a few unique factors that really benefit flotilla spam as pure activation-padding:

• Flotillas are cheap. Like really really cheap. 18 points can be something like 10-15% of a big ship. This ratio is way beyond anything I've seen in other games, and makes the inclusion of multiple flotillas a no-brainer.
• Flotillas are surprisingly hard to kill. Scatter/Evade means it's really hard to kill these guys without tools dedicated to the job. Shooting at them at long range is almost always wasted effort
• Flotillas give up no victory conditions. You just get those 18 or 23 points for popping one.
• Relay allows them to function from across the board, so a very viable strategy (I have lost to this numerous times so I might just be salty) is to have all your flotillas at max speed flying in random directions as far apart as possible. It's not even worth sending a combat ship to chase one of these things down.
• The movement-range to shooting-range ratio is way smaller than in many other games. Ships can go from completely out of weapons range to close-murder range in a single turn, making activation advantage massively important.
• Damage output does not degrade as a ship takes damage (barring certain crits) A 1hp ISD hits just as hard as a full hp ISD, which forces a kind of all-or-nothing focus, again making activation advantage very important.
• Flat card costs mean that upgrading flotillas is kind of discouraged. They are encouraged to be as cheap as possible, as Boosted Comms is simply more effective on a Quasar than on a Gozanti for the same price.

Now all that said, I love this game and think it's one of the best designed ones I've ever played. That said, some possible solutions that I've seen in other games that could maybe have similar tweaks for SWA?

• Without increasing flotilla points cost, perhaps allow for more objectives that grant VPs based on flat ships destroyed? In some other games, every ship or squadron regardless of size gives up a flat amount of victory points. So you *can* take a bunch of minimally sized frigate or scout squads, but you can be heavily punished if your opponent hunts them.
• Tweak their survivability somehow? I dunno. The amount of firepower you have to point at a flotilla feels disproportionate to what you actually get for destroying one.
• Relay just needs to work as a relay. The relay squadron must be in range of the activating ship.
• Flotillas either cannot interact with objectives, or do not count towards remaining ships for being tabled.

I dunno, hard to say. As to your 2nd point about the game being about damage spikes.... I don't really think there's an easy solution. There are too many base game mechanics that lead to this. I don't think there's an elegant solution without an overhaul of the game, which no one wants.

As for your final point with Relay... I agree! I think relay either needs to function as a relay in that the ship activating needs to be able to reach the relay squadron, or maybe relay squads shouldn't be so damned tanky? If they were easier to snipe, and required escort protection I think it would open up a lot of options for dealing with it. As is both Lambdas and especially VCXs can facetank a hit or two without a second thought. Or maybe Relay and Strategic shouldn't have been put on the same squad? Feels like a very safe inclusion for objective control *and* flotilla safety.

But I dunno. I have a lot of experience with other games but I'm still fairly new to SWA so it's possible I'm missing things. I would love to hear if folks agree or disagree or if there are perhaps easier solutions or if we simply need to git gud etc.

The positivity was sucked out this thread rather quickly.

I like where the game's at, I have fun every time I play it, and I never feel like I'm forced into running the same thing over and over.

7 minutes ago, svelok said:

The positivity was sucked out this thread rather quickly.

I like where the game's at, I have fun every time I play it, and I never feel like I'm forced into running the same thing over and over.

Don't exaggerate

Like I said, I enjoy this game, but the competitive aspect is more limited than you'd think. IMO oc.

57 minutes ago, Green Knight said:

Activations are king, and flotilla spam all too common as a result. It's not 2+3 anymore. Its 2+4, or 1+5. Ugh.

Being able to deliver a few, devastating damage spikes that bypass most defense tokens is more important than a well-rounded fleet. Demo always did this; now we have MANY more options.

High activations are popular because being able to go last is popular. Going last is popular because going first is popular. Going first is popular because burst damage is reliable.

Nothing wrong with any of the above.

Transports are perhaps too cheap, and therefore attaining last/first reliably does not require enough sacrifice to achieve.

40 minutes ago, duck_bird said:

• Relay just needs to work as a relay. The relay squadron must be in range of the activating ship.

That's how it should be imo

29 minutes ago, svelok said:

The positivity was sucked out this thread rather quickly.

I like where the game's at, I have fun every time I play it, and I never feel like I'm forced into running the same thing over and over.

Aw, that certainly wasn't my intention lmao. I adore this game. I've been hardcore nerding out over it for months since I started playing. I just wanted to point out what I think makes flotillas so potent!

I agree with the main post. This game is great!

Agreed. This game and X-Wing are two of the best balanced efforts in War-Game-Design I've come across, and I've had my share of Wargames.

Along the emphasis on maneuvres and relative positioning, there is next to nothing that cannot be dangerous in capable hands. The games offer a lot of ways to counter cold- and hot- dice, and place an emphasis on creating synergies outside of dealing damage.

The FAQs are frequent, yet not outrageously large, and even considering what problems the systems bring with them, there is far more opportunity to outmaneuvre opponents than simply sinking them with dice alone.

This is how it should be. I- along with many others, as it seems- am loving it.

... since the dissolving of the Senate.

6 hours ago, Green Knight said:

Armada is a fun game, but at the competitive level it isn't as fun and varied as you'd like to think.

Some food for thought ( I'm willfully exaggerating to make my points ):

Activations are king, and flotilla spam all too common as a result. It's not 2+3 anymore. Its 2+4, or 1+5. Ugh.

Being able to deliver a few, devastating damage spikes that bypass most defense tokens is more important than a well-rounded fleet. Demo always did this; now we have MANY more options.

Squads now offer excellent stand-off range, to the extent where Yavaris-relay and Sloane-relay is wrecking stuff long before fleets actually engage. Primary solution... do your own Yavaris or Sloane.

Some REALLY stupid cards. Yavaris continues to be a stupid good force multiplier. Toryn Farr the same. Both cards are so good they effectively shape each and every thing take can be added to the game, and that I think greatly limits development. Those were just 2 examples btw. Rhymer (old)/Demo (still) go into the same category.

Objective selection is laughable. Two words: "Most Wanted". While that's the most grotesque case, there are only so many strong objectives. The rest are mediocre at best.

I believe the game to be quite varied at the competitive level. I don't usually travel terribly long distances for tournaments though, so regionals is typically about as far as I'm willing to go.... but around Central Florida there's a TON of diversity. On any given tournament you aren't likely to see ANY very similar lists. You might see one Ackbar list, one Sloane list, 2 Dodonna lists, (One heavily squadron based, one more ship centric_, A Vader List, a Motti List, A Leia List..... I mean when I compare this to X-Wing events it's really significant, how much diversity there is and how almost every commander can win a competitive event.

Not just commanders, but build concepts, and ship selection too! And while I admit there are some bad ideas in the game right now... (I'm looking at you Garm), a lot of the shortfalls are going to become more viable next wave. Peltas will see a lot more play. Flotilla Spam may not be as common since Pryce is coming. More objectives are going to see the tabletop (Like Capture the VIP), and I think that's just awesome!

I do agree with Relay though. It's not unbeatable, but when taken to an extreme it completely removes the risk vs reward, and is also not even fun to play against. Fortunately here in Orlando very few people exploit that mechanic.

12 minutes ago, Crabbok said:

And while I admit there are some bad ideas in the game right now... (I'm looking at you Garm)

Garm is OP, how can you say he's bad?

10 minutes ago, geek19 said:

Garm is OP, how can you say he's bad?

I can't let a discussion about Garm Bel Iblis go by without pointing out his magnificent mane of hair. It brings a smile to my face every time I see those silver streaks flowing in the wind.

19 minutes ago, geek19 said:

Garm is OP, how can you say he's bad?

I mean Garm won a Regional and I haven't seen any threads about how FFG should nerf Garm yet.

That's how OP he is. Nobody dares to attract the attention of Garm or his dark apprentice, @BiggsIRL .

11 minutes ago, Snipafist said:

I mean Garm won a Regional and I haven't seen any threads about how FFG should nerf Garm yet.

That's how OP he is. Nobody dares to attract the attention of Garm or his dark apprentice, @BiggsIRL .

Or @shmitty . Both of us will gladly proselytize the way of the Garm.

Just now, BiggsIRL said:

Or @shmitty . Both of us will gladly proselytize the way of the Garm.

Truth.

Although given how much more common command tokens are currently I imagine if he were released to day he would work in 3 turns instead of 2.