This may be a dumb question I’m just misunderstanding, but what happens when I and my opponent have a different number dials? Say I only have 3 overall but I’m up against someone who has 5 overall. They end up being able to pelt my ships over and over. Is there some kind of balancing mechanic for this?

I'm... not entirely sure I understand what you are asking here.

Are you activating a ship each round for the number of times it has command dials?

I think the answer to your question is yes? Lol I’m not sure if we’re on the same page or not. I guess what I’m asking is what happens if I exhaust all of my command dials but my opponent has not? Does my opponent just issue command after command and I do nothing? Or do I continue to fire and move after each command dial my opponent uses?

Welcome to Armada!

Read the "learn to play" guide that comes with the starter set in detail. In particular, during the ship phase you activate ships one ship at a time, flipping over one dial on each ship. The act of flipping over a command dial is part of the bookkeeping for the game, and indicates that the ship has activated during the ship phase of this turn. Each ship can only activate once per turn.

So, activations aren't driven by the number of dials in total, just the number of ships.

If you have 3 ships and your opponent 5 ships, then regardless of the number of command dials you have in total, you will get to activate three ships per turn and your opponent 5 ships (until you blow them up, of course!).

13 minutes ago, jbrandmeyer said:

Welcome to Armada!

Read the "learn to play" guide that comes with the starter set in detail. In particular, during the ship phase you activate ships one ship at a time, flipping over one dial on each ship. The act of flipping over a command dial is part of the bookkeeping for the game, and indicates that the ship has activated during the ship phase of this turn. Each ship can only activate once per turn.

So, activations aren't driven by the number of dials in total, just the number of ships.

If you have 3 ships and your opponent 5 ships, then regardless of the number of command dials you have in total, you will get to activate three ships per turn and your opponent 5 ships (until you blow them up, of course!).

to add on, at the start of a round there is the command phase. this is where everyone sets a new command for all their ships, placing it at the bottom of their individual stacks. For 1command ships this means they get to use that command on that round, when they activate. for 3command ships this means the command u just set will only appear for that ship 2 turns later.

This is meant to simulate how information travels across small ships and big ships and how quickly they can respond to situations

Note: during the ship phase, Each SHIP can only activate ONCE a round. first player activates one of his, then second player, then alternate until both are done. If one player has no more ships to activate, the other player then activates his remaining ships in the order he wishes.(one of the strengths of muliple small ships)

Hi Matt. I think there are two possible situations that you are trying to describe.

The first is that you are activating ships back and forth until you are out of command dials each round. Each round, each ship flips only their top command dial to reveal which command it is using. For ships with multiple commands, this means that you need to carefully plan you commands a few rounds in advance. Learning how and when to time your commands can be tricky, but you'll soon start to see patterns for how to best command your ships after a few games. If you really can't get the hang of it or find yourself constantly picking bad commands, there are upgrades to help you change your command choice on the fly. Here's a tip: Navigate commands are always valuable for ship to ship engagements, and Carriers rarely go wrong by choosing the squadron command.

The second option is that you are setting your dials and revealing them corercly, but then not reseting the dials each round. At the start of each round, you take the revealed command dial, set the dial to the command you want, and place that command on the bottom of the stack. For ships with multiple dials his will keep your dials cycling upwards to appear in a future round. If something causes you to reveal or discard multiple dials from one ship in a round (perhaps a Skilled First Officer or a Veteran Captain), on the subsequent start turn you will place those dials on the bottom of the stack in any order you choose. Note that if you somehow revealed or discarded all your dials on a multi-dial ship, you'll get to reset all of them in the order you choose!

This is a very important part of the game, so in either case I think you might be well served by playing a few rounds of the Learn To Play scenario or watching a demo game from GenCon or a similar event. You can find plenty of those on youtube or your favorite streaming video site.

urge to play a game like this rising.

only if the ISD title that allows it to set one fewer than normal command dials get a minus price tag as it now makes the ISD worse rather than better

12 hours ago, mattyoung said:

This may be a dumb question I’m just misunderstanding, but what happens when I and my opponent have a different number dials? Say I only have 3 overall but I’m up against someone who has 5 overall. They end up being able to pelt my ships over and over. Is there some kind of balancing mechanic for this?

As others have noted you are clearly having a misunderstanding of the rules.

Thanks everyone who explained and offered help, I get it now! My brother and I played a round last night with our new understanding and the proper way of playing vastly improved the experience.

If you are new to the game, what can help you to understand the rules is look at tutorial.

I'm dropping this tutorial made by one of our forum member (and one of my favorite youtuber for the game... Crabbok).

1 hour ago, DOMSWAT911 said:

If you are new to the game, what can help you to understand the rules is look at tutorial.

I'm dropping this tutorial made by one of our forum member (and one of my favorite youtuber for the game... Crabbok).

Crabbok quit? Noooooooooo

4 minutes ago, dominosfleet said:

Crabbok quit? Noooooooooo

"Forum" member, not "former" member...

1 minute ago, OlaphOfTheNorth said:

"Forum" member, not "former" member...

That's maybe what he read