Hi guys,

I have been playing with my old man for about a year now and we still cannot get under the 3h30mins threshold to finish a casual game with 400 points unless it was a really bad beating at the start. I mean most games take in between 4 to 5 hours...

I guess we kind of still spend a lot of time making sure we agree on all rules while we play (I mean he is a bit older and slower, but it shouldn't slow us down that much)...

I believe that we spend a lot of time on the squadron "mini-game", which I find brings a lot of good stuff to the game, but really makes it longer. Our squadron mini-game is accentuated because we both tend to load up on ace squadrons to protect ourselves from the opposing man's bombing capabilities. It does offer a very "Star wars" experience though to have squadrons being so important.

Do you guys have similar experiences?

Depends on the person I play with. There's a couple of guys where we can get to the end state in 1 - 1.5 hours. Most other games last about 2 hours, maybe 2.5 hours if things are close and there are some very critical moves.

Squadrons can really slow things down, but communication helps a lot. If you tell your opponent "I'm trying to place Mithel so he damages these squads but isn't engaged with X", they can help you determine if that's possible and where 'close enough' is. It's a casual game, not a tournament, so shared understanding of intent can really speed things up.

Edit: Something else that makes games finish quicker is being able to identify when things are irrelevant. If it's turn 6 and all the ships are out of range and all the relay squadrons are dead, maybe don't bother with the ships. Just roll the dice on that final squadron fight. Or turn 5 and there's a flotilla at the far end of the table that's not going to run off the edge or get caught. Activate and then don't bother moving it. Should save you some time.

my average game is prob down to 1.5 hours(90 mins). My fast games run about 45 mins my slow games are around 2.5. It depends how much experience you have with the game, the more comfortable you are with the fleet your flying and the system the faster everything will go. if you two are ok with the length of your games then I wouldn't worry about it, especially if you don't ever plan to play competitively. if you ever plan on going to a tournament I'd try to get your avg game down to 2ish hours and you'll be fine(each round is a max of 2 hrs 15 mins).

again, if it's casual don't worry about it, sounds like you're just enjoying time with your father.

About the same as Valca for me and my group.

4 minutes ago, dominosfleet said:

my average game is prob down to 1.5 hours(90 mins). My fast games run about 45 mins my slow games are around 2.5. It depends how much experience you have with the game, the more comfortable you are with the fleet your flying and the system the faster everything will go. if you two are ok with the length of your games then I wouldn't worry about it, especially if you don't ever plan to play competitively. if you ever plan on going to a tournament I'd try to get your avg game down to 2ish hours and you'll be fine(each round is a max of 2 hrs 15 mins).

again, if it's casual don't worry about it, sounds like you're just enjoying time with your father.

Yeah, we are not comfortable with our fleets. Every single time we show up with something different that we want to explore. I guess you could say we play the game with a lot more curiosity than enthusiasm to win although we build every fleet as best as we possibly can.

And nah... I work weekends so tournaments will never work for me, although I don't see the particular interest of a tournament... A tournament winner in my region has generally >24 points over 3 games. Meaning that my cautious playstyle where I try to win most of the time without risking to much isn't good for tournament scoring.

1 minute ago, Darth Max said:

Yeah, we are not comfortable with our fleets. Every single time we show up with something different that we want to explore. I guess you could say we play the game with a lot more curiosity than enthusiasm to win although we build every fleet as best as we possibly can.

And nah... I work weekends so tournaments will never work for me, although I don't see the particular interest of a tournament... A tournament winner in my region has generally >24 points over 3 games. Meaning that my cautious playstyle where I try to win most of the time without risking to much isn't good for tournament scoring.

sounds like you're playing the game you want to play then, i wouldn't put anymore thought to it. I find most people that play Armada to be pretty laid back even in the competitive scene.

If you want to go faster you need to get used to making 50/50 decisions quickly. Whether you get them right or wrong doesnt really matter. That you make them and learn is all that matters.

Around an hour, hour and a half of we have fleets ready.

But we rarely play to the bitter end. We call it once everything interesting has been resolved.

9 minutes ago, Ginkapo said:

If you want to go faster you need to get used to making 50/50 decisions quickly. Whether you get them right or wrong doesnt really matter. That you make them and learn is all that matters.

Impossible! My old man really likes to evaluate his options. But as dominos stated, I guess there is no harm done if we enjoy our gameplay slow.

It sounds like you're playing often enough to have the basic rules down. The fact that you're bogging down in the squadron phase is actually pretty common, as each one ultimately acts like a miniature ship with all the choices that come with activating a ship (position, shooting, activation order, etc). As long as you're happy with that, this is fine. It certainly doesn't seem like either of you are trying to stall the game out, which is where problems come up in tournaments.

If you want to play faster games, I'd suggest the following:

1: Call games that aren't super close once combat finishes. You can typically see if the wind is decisively blowing one way or the other at the end of a nasty fight. One side is typically limping away to safety (if it hasn't been blown to pieces) and the other is flying proudly onward, ready to claim objectives. Remember, Star Wars is a story about making hard sacrifices to achieve critical objectives. If you're both playing casual, agree to end on narrative victories such as one side or the other decisively winning objective matches like Capturing the VIP or Defend the Station.

2: Modify your fleets to reduce choice paralysis. I play some hyper aggressive fleets with no squadrons. In addition to reducing the number of models I need to move, it often makes my decisions for smart play a lot clearer. I know for example that I don't need to worry about making any squadron commands, which often makes my game about maneuvering into and out of fights and repairing damage, with the occasional need to concentrate some extra firepower.

3: Play more low command ships with fewer upgrades, so you can more easily queue up the commands in the moment. You can even do this with some larger ships like the Relentless ISD.

4: Add the rules for Hyperspace Escape to your games from the Correlian Conflict: Hyperspace Assault lets you get ships on the verge of destruction to leave the game before they are lost. While it doesn't matter much in casual games and is usually a negative for scoring, it can let you claim a moral victory to either save or scare off a ship while reducing ships from the board. Technically it counts as the ship being destroyed, but it will slowly reduce the number of ships on the board and save you both a little time over the last 3 turns.

It can really depend on your fleets. Big and complicated squadron balls with lots of interactions can take up a lot of time as you carefully try to optimize where to put each one.

On the other hand, I took a hyper aggressive low squad fleet to regionals recently, and by flying straight at my opponent at full speed every game was over in around 40 minutes! Good times!

3 hours ago, Valca said:

Squadrons can really slow things down, but communication helps a lot. If you tell your opponent "I'm trying to place Mithel so he damages these squads but isn't engaged with X", they can help you determine if that's possible and where 'close enough' is. It's a casual game, not a tournament, so shared understanding of intent can really speed things up.

Above has lots of good comments on how to speed up.

To answer question:

At first, easily 3-4 hours JUST TO PLAY, while learning rules, and easily 1 hour each to set up and tear down.

Against talkative or distracted opponents, again, easily 3-4 hours.

Average vs regular opponents /tournament, 1.5-2 hours. Usually not lower than 1.5 unless someone dies in a very stupid fashion. (And then someone spends the rest of the 2 hours pretty grumpy).

I find set up tear down usually take an hour each too.

So I regularly say, 1 game of casual = 3 hours. 2 games, better put down 5-6 hours.

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To toot my own horn again.. if you play 200 pt Taskforce Armada, games generally take 45 minutes. With an average set up and tear down of 30 minutes. (I put all of my tokens and stuff in the cornelian campaign box, it takes me literally about 20 minutes to set up, and 10 minutes to tear down, its great.)

Only play sporadically so my games take about 3-4 hours... about the same time as the club is open

Back when it was announced the marketing department was throwing around a buzzword, refined.

I think Armada is a good game in its own right and I am sure they did take a few lessons learned from X-wing, but I wouldn't call it refined. Game length is one of those and given that they had to add in a turn limit so a game can be finished in less than half a day. In a way Armada is the inverse of 40k where 40k is the circle bases take objectives and the rectangles are the support, here the rectangles are the objective takers and the circles are the support and they can only fight up close. They did alright with squadrons but I sort of wished they did just a little bit more. Granted they did more than GW with Battlefleet Gothic. I wished BFG has unique squadrons such as Da Crimson Barron for Da Ork Pirates.

People say squadrons take the longest and that could be because they use more of a 40k style of movement (place ruler down near circle base move base). Maybe they could have made a squadron movement tool that curves around the base so all you have to do is get the size that matches the speed, place it down rotate it and then put the squadron on the other side. But then that could have made more cardboard parts to get lost or damaged. Just an idea though the measuring tool is rectangular and the base is circle so trying to put it straight along the base is similar to a round peg in a square hole.

Still fairly new, so we've got some reading to do almost every game still, as I like to bring something new every time. Still, the games usually average out to ~3h.

Even with squadrons, my games usually last an hour and a half, give or take. But then, I play lightning fast...

Others have mentioned set up time. OP, are you including setup time in your 4-5 hours? Because if so, you can easily shave a good chunk of time by having a small box which has all of the cards, models, dice, dials, rules, lasers, tokens, and squadrons you need for that specific fleet. This box *only* contains exactly what your fleet needs, nothing more.

I have a small $5 sewing box picked up from Walmart that can hold 2 ISDs, so plenty of space for almost any fleet I build. It has trays where I can stack the ship cards + upgrades so all I have to do is pull out the stack and basically spread it out on the table. Setup can take as little as 5 minutes this way.

I've got the same question as the OP. I've been playing casually for two years and still it takes 5 hours for a complete game: set up, play, and tear down. I've gotten lots of helpful comments recently on the matter. But basically it all comes down to: Play fast.

Last game, I set a two-minute timer on my phone and used it to help move towards a two hour game play. What it revealed is that the beginning is fast, but needs to be faster still: My sense is I need to deploy ships with little in-game planning, and execute Round 1 almost automatically. Because in Rounds 4 and 5, everything is crashing together (literally, the way I play with Jerjerrod), and every activation slows down to five to ten minutes. I have to save time up front to use in the later rounds, and also speed up the important tactical play.

I also got the recommendation to record (audio, for simplicity) the game, so I could review afterwards to hear where I was getting bogged down and on what issues, so I could work on those specifically.

Next game: 3-min timer (I need to be more realistic) and maybe record the game for later review. And maybe one day I'll replay a fleet to take advantage of flight experience.

10 hours ago, Valca said:

Others have mentioned set up time. OP, are you including setup time in your 4-5 hours? Because if so, you can easily shave a good chunk of time by having a small box which has all of the cards, models, dice, dials, rules, lasers, tokens, and squadrons you need for that specific fleet. This box *only* contains exactly what your fleet needs, nothing more.

I have a small $5 sewing box picked up from Walmart that can hold 2 ISDs, so plenty of space for almost any fleet I build. It has trays where I can stack the ship cards + upgrades so all I have to do is pull out the stack and basically spread it out on the table. Setup can take as little as 5 minutes this way.

Yeah it does count set-up time... We can't carry boxes and set-up in advance as one player holds all the armada stuff for both of us in their homes in nice boxes. We really want to keep the surprise of every encounter, so you only meet your enemy when we are at the determine initiative phase.

The set-up and tear down is about 1h30 all to itself

My games take anywhere from 50 mins to 3 hours. I play the campaign and this includes fleets up to 500 points. For us setup is 30 mins as I have a Feldherr Maxi bag with my chosen fleet already packed, and my list printed up.

We show up at 4:30 to the store and play by 5. I’m usually out the door on my way home by 8:30.

Now I just played in a tournament at my store and setup, three matches, prizes, and takedown took 8 total.