To shamelessly plug in the discussion about how the sequel stuff could be transported into Armada, besides my hobby horses of incorporating the new Star Destroyers and Resistance Cruisers, the squadrons offer a bit of a conundrum: Since those come unpainted, T70s and TIE/fo wouldn't exactly differ much from the original ones. One could do different angles, but it will be almost impossible to differentiate them on the table in the classic form. So one possibility would be to do two fighters per base, so you get the nice middle ground from the tanky one-per-base-ships like the Decimator or VCX100, or eschew new models entirely by simply doing alternative squadron cards for the ramped up new versions.

This would mean you get a T70 squadron card that has a nice, shiny new keyword and is priced at around 15 points, a TI/fo squadron card at around 10 points, a A-Wing RZ2 card at around 12 to 13 points.

I guess you'd need models - either one or two per base - for the Resistance bomber (come on, that's an auto-include), the TIE Silencer and the Special Forces TIE. This gives you a total of three First Order and three Resistance ships, which means you'd need to get one more each in order to reach the usual "four squadrons" number that happens to fit in those packs. The Imperials could get the Batwing (perhaps as a faster variant of the Lamda, or one with more HP, but that would essentially be the VCX100, so...), while the Resistance might get either a new Falcon card (booooooooring) or perhaps Leia's transport from Episode VII (ugly, but hey, it's a new ship).

I don't think one should temper with the speeds and hit points the "original" models have, since those numbers are too senstitive, so a new key word or one of the old ones seems best.

So, what do you guys think?

Poe (T-70 Squadron)
4 Blue Anti-Squad | 2 Black Anti-Ship
Unique * Bomber * Escort * Rogue * Snipe 4
When attacking a ship, you may spend 1 Die with a [Crit icon]. If you do, the hull zone you are attacking may not perform any more attacks for the remainder of the game.
When attacking a squadron, instead of rolling dice, you may instead destroy every enemy squadron at Range 1.


Kylo (TIE Silencer Squadron)
3 Blue / 3 Black Anti-Squad | 2 Black Anti-Ship
Unique * Bomber * Intel * Counter 4 * Rogue
When attacking a ship, you may spend any of your dice with a [Hit icon]. If you do, for each die you spent you may discard one upgrade of your choice from the defending ship, including Commander cards.



People complain about squadrons being powerful now... just wait until we get them new trilogy "hero squadrons," which are capable of killing 12 TIEs in 8 seconds (TFA), destroying every single cannon on a massive and still-shielded dreadnought (TLJ), or can destroy the hanger bay and bridge of a monstrous still shielded warship (TLJ). Then we'll really be complaining about squadrons...

The New Trilogy : the worst thing to happen to Star Wars space combat since the Suncrusher bulldozed its way through a few fleets...

Thanks for that valuable contribution.

Seriously, though, the best option in my opinion would be to make Resistance and First Order separate factions.

This would allow more controlled design space, would mean you don't have to worry so much about keeping T65s and T70s both interesting, viable options in the same faction that offered something unique and didn't obsolete one another. Also, since a fleet couldn't bring both TIE/FOs and TIE/lns or both kinds of A-Wings, visually differentiating the models wouldn't be as important.

I think it would also make fleets more internally thematic, which I appreciate.

I fear that there simply aren't enough ships for that. X-Wing ran into the same problem.

No, NOooooooo NO NO NO DISNEY CRAPWARS. Dont Ruin Armada with the "Sequel"

I think there's enough there, especially if you delve just a little ways down into the Canon EU, for things like "Starhawks" and the like, which we haven't yet seen on screen. We've got at least three classes of First Order ships (including some things from the Poe comics and beyond), and at least four kinds of ships for the Resistance.

The biggest issue would be that the First Order doesn't seem to have anything smaller than a Resurgent Star Destroyer, which is already about twice the size on an ISD and hard enough to bring into Armada. Then they've got the Dreadnaughts (ridiculously massive) and Snoke's ship (absurdly massive, I've seen sources put its wingspan as large as the first Death Star's diameter....). Even the Raddus is like, what, 6 times the size of a standard MC80a? But this "size" issue of everything in the new trilogy being "bigger and badder!!!!!!" than what came before is a problem for Armada regardless of if the First Order was brought in as its own faction or as a sub-faction of the Imperial fleet. When your smallest ship is twice the size of the largest ship currently in the game... how do you make that work, even with a sliding scale?

For scale, to bring in Snoke's Super Super Hyper Ultra Stardestroyer Dreadnaught of Death Star thingy to X-Wing, it would prob be the scale of a large SUV or truck.

or maybe not, prob a limo or 16 wheeler.

Funny thing is, those numbers are essentially in a vacuum (huh). On screen, they don't look any bigger than ISD or Super Star Destroyers. And the numbers of Star Wars never made any fig of sense.

New Keyword confirmed!

Plot Armor:

"While defending, stand up, walk over to your opponent and softly press your finger to their lips while making a quiet hushing noise. The attack is canceled"



Both Kylo's and Poe's squadrons have this.

18 minutes ago, Stefan said:

Funny thing is, those numbers are essentially in a vacuum (huh). On screen, they don't look any bigger than ISD or Super Star Destroyers. And the numbers of Star Wars never made any fig of sense.

I mean, I guess, but that "vacuum" is the official Disney/LFL-curated source material. They explicitly state that Snoke's Mega-Class Star Destroyer is 60km wide, which means you'd have to lineup 38 Imperial-Class Star Destroyers to equal its wingspan (or somewhere between 3-6 Executors , depending on which sources one uses, which are now all defunct as "Legends" anyways). It has an official crew of 2,225,000 ... over two million ! (Which sounds really high when Rian Johnson tells us in TLJ that the entire resistance was <400 souls... or, put differently, 0.018 % of just the crew of the Supremacy ). The Mandator-IV "fleet-killer" dreadnought is as long as 4.8 Imperial-class Star Destroyers. Which is tiny compared to the Supremacy, but still huge compared to anything in the Galactic Civil War era aside from the various SSDs.

We do see some "new tech" juxtaposed to "old tech" on Crait, where we see the new M6 Imperial Walkers towering over the much smaller, more classic AT-AT design, just to continue to remphasize the point that everything in the new trilogy is bigger, badder, and better than the old stuff we've seen (the characters, their power in the Force, the heroics they pull off (think Poe's 10-second clip of TIE carnage vs anything we see pilots do in the first 7 films), the amount of cannons strapped onto their vessels, think the "fleet-killer" or the M6 Walkers, etc. ... ). What Disney has failed to anticipate, I think, is that for a lot of Star Wars fans, "bigger, badder, stronger!!!" doesn't make something more interesting or better.

- We're getting told the Empire has 25.000 ISD Star Destroyers in its service, but it can't cough up more than ten to defend its own Emperor.

- The Battle of Geonosis in the Clone Wars involves around 1,5million Clone Troopers, which is, we're told, practically the whole army. Hitler invaded Russia with 4 million Wehrmacht soldiers alone.

- I could go on.

I mean, who cares about this stuff? Those numbers were always made-up nonsense. The important thing in Star Wars is the feeling of it, the narrative sense. Whether the Resistance consists of 400 people, 4000 or 4 million is meaningless. It's FEW. That's the important thing. If Snoke's ship is 60km or 6km, it's BIG. That MC85 looks smaller than the MC80 did in "RTOJ", but really, what does it matter? We're told it's bigger, because in Star Wars, bigger is always better, not only since the sequels. They just cranked that **** up to eleven.

But could we return to the issue of the squadrons instead of to the tired questions of whether the actually servicable (Episode VII) and very good (Episode VIII) sequels are abominations?

17 minutes ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

What Disney has failed to anticipate, I think, is that for a lot of Star Wars fans, "bigger, badder, stronger!!!" doesn't make something more interesting or better.

Or it's quite possible they're just trying to emphasize the philosophical differences between the First Order and the Empire.


Even with the Death Star(s), the Empire was practical about it's reign over the galaxy, the First Order isn't. Where Palpatine manipulated and measured his moves, the First Order meets them with brute force.

(A lot of this is explained as part of Hux's design in the books. The man has a hard-on for shows of force instead of tactical advantages. Snoke realizes this as a flaw, but also understands that Hux's technological advances are necessary to the FO. They even call this out in TLJ with that line about "why he keeps a rabid cur in such a seat of power" or whatever.

I'm not gonna start up the whole "quit ripping on the new movies" BS, but in relation to the statement I quoted from you, I think Disney failed to anticipate how basic the Star Wars fanbase is and how little nuance they could get away with.

Thanks!

Like others here, I wouldn't like to see sequel stuff into Armada, but since that is the topic I'll say that in my opinion the models could be the same as the ones we already have and be differentiated only by its squadron token for the abbilities or unique pilot. The same way that we can differentiate today a generic X-Wing squadron form the Rogue Squadron for example, or Luke from Wedge.

EDIT: by the way, maybe you saw it, but Mel has the Resistance fighters models for Armada and they look really cool

https://www.shapeways.com/product/P6LY6ADWS/armada-resistance-squadrons-set-i?optionId=63721874&li=marketplace

Yep, but those have the problem I mentioned: those X-Wings and A-Wings are virtually indistinguishable.

Wow this thread got off topic, anyways

2 hours ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

Poe (T-70 Squadron)
4 Blue Anti-Squad | 2 Black Anti-Ship
Unique * Bomber * Escort * Rogue * Snipe 4
When attacking a ship, you may spend 1 Die with a [Crit icon]. If you do, the hull zone you are attacking may not perform any more attacks for the remainder of the game.
When attacking a squadron, instead of rolling dice, you may instead destroy every enemy squadron at Range 1.
Kylo (TIE Silencer Squadron)
3 Blue / 3 Black Anti-Squad | 2 Black Anti-Ship
Unique * Bomber * Intel * Counter 4 * Rogue
When attacking a ship, you may spend any of your dice with a [Hit icon]. If you do, for each die you spent you may discard one upgrade of your choice from the defending ship, including Commander

The New Trilogy : the worst thing to happen to Star Wars space combat since the Suncrusher bulldozed its way through a few fleets...

I would say change it to

Poe (T-70 Squadron)
4 Blue Anti-Squad | 1 Black Anti-Ship
Unique * Bomber * Escort * Rogue * Snipe 2

Black crit: you may discard all of your attack dice, if you do the defender rolls 1 fewer anti-squadren dice for the rest of the game

Blue crit: remove one non-unique squadren at range 1 from play

(An imperial tie squadren according to lore is 12 fighters and an xwing tie swarm is 8, so distroying more than 2 squadrens is unrepresentivly op)

Kylo (TIE Silencer Squadron)
3 Blue 2 Black Anti-Squad | 1blue 1Black Anti-Ship
Unique * Bomber * Intel * Counter 4 * Rogue
When attacking a ship, you may spend any of your dice with a [crit icon]. If you do, for each die you spent you may discard one upgrade of your choice from the defending ship, including Commander cards

I'd love to see everything we see in the films in Armada (prequels and sequels alike). Consequently It's really interesting to see people moaning about sequel/prequel era ships in one thread, and then about the 'death' of Armada in another. The GCW only has so much content and if the game is to continue then these timelines will have to be explored.

However I do think new timelines would require new factions, and all of the complexity that entails. Perhaps even a 2nd edition or faction specific rule releases or something.

Specifically relating to TIE/FO, they had shields unlike traditional TIE's, therefore an increase in cost over traditional TIES may be better or possibly a single use defense token? the number of models on stands doesn't need to change, IMO, it's purely aesthetic. The TIE/SF is a completely different beast and I have no idea how that would be implemented, they have four weapons systems and two pilots so.. Kinda the same problem we might see if ARC-170's were introduced. Perhaps by then an increase in scale (i.e from 400pts to 800pts) via the implementation of an SSD or something would also mean that certain units (TIes vs TIE/FO) would be more viable. It's really difficult though, IF the First Order is ever released, the Empire would, I think, become what it always should have been 5+ Star Destroyers and countless squadrons as opposed to one RSD and a fighter screen of elite TIE/FO(SF). It really would make the game super interesting. I've thought about it in regards to the sequels too, and how the Separatists would essentially be the zerg of armada - endless amounts of squadrons. Given the release cycle this is all pretty unlikely though, but I wouldn't enjoy Star Wars if I didn't toy with Hope.

The point and squadron increase brings with it an incredible amount of playtime, so I'd not look forward to that. But else, sure, make two new factions. I just hope they don't try and bring Scum in.

I think if we get new squadrons for 1st order and resistance versions there should be more customization.

for instance:

FO Tie fighter:

10 points
Speed 4
Hull 3
4 blue AA 1 blue AS
swarm
upgraded (new keyword)
(Each squadron adds the effect of the attached upgrade.)

T70 X-wing:

15 points
speed 4
Hull 4
4 blue AA 1 black AS
bomber
upgraded (new keyword)
(Each squadron adds the effect of the attached upgrade.)




Upgrades that can be attached:

-Ion Torpedoes: squadrons upgraded with this card gain bomber , if they already have this keyword increase their AS value by 1 blue.

-Boosted engines: squadrons upgraded with this card gain +1 to their speed value to a maximum of 5.

-Improved shields: At the beginning of the ship phase, squadrons upgraded with this card may recover 1 hull.

-Astromech: At the beginning of the squadron phase, unactivated squadrons upgraded with this card may choose to push their activation slider to the activated side to recover half their hull value rounded up instead of activating this round.

-Gunner: squadrons upgraded with this card gain counter , if they already have this keyword increase their counter value by 1.

Oooooooh, those are nice.

1 hour ago, Darth Sanguis said:

I'm not gonna start up the whole "quit ripping on the new movies" BS, but in relation to the statement I quoted from you, I think Disney failed to anticipate how basic the Star Wars fanbase is and how little nuance they could get away with.

I mean, I'm not opposed to such nuances and commentaries (e.g. extravegent demonstrations vs tactical restraint). What I, and many others I've talked to do not like, however, is that there is absolutely no context provided for this, to the extent that it feels so utterly artificial.

Despite the Empire being beaten in the OT (or, at least, fatal blows being dealt to it at Endor culminating in it's slow and eventual defeat at Jakku) and the Jedi defeating the Sith, we're supposed to just accept that a mere 20-30 years later, a new "First Order" emerges from the ashes of this defeat with a more powerful Dark Force Lord (from out of nowhere) and an army with bigger, better vehicles and a navy with bigger, better ships capable of taking over the entire Galaxy again within the span of a few days (as per the opening crawl of TLJ). How is this possible? Where did the resources and manpower come from for the First Order to be able to pull this off? If they were militarizing to this degree, why did the Republic not view them as a serious threat (as per the opening crawl in TLJ)? It's just plain lazy, and there is no interesting philosophical difference here of "inefficient demonstrations of power" vs "tactical cunning and restraint" because the First Order is just granted, carte blanche, a powerful Dark Force master, a navy that puts the Imperial vessels to shame, and an army of even bigger and less efficient vehicles. If the First Order had to work to get any of those things, then one could have an interesting commentary on Displays of Force vs Tactical Need, but when the audience is told "hey, remember that faction that was defeated and viewed as so inconsequential that the Republic simply ignored them?? Well guess what!!! They're back, with bigger, better, badder stuff than ever before! Oh, and they're stuff is so cool and their armies so big they've taken over the Galaxy again in the course of a week!!!!!"


If not liking that profoundly lazy and context-less stage-setting is basic, well then I'm ok being "basic."

The Rebellion at the end of ANH had, like, two X-Wings and one Y-Wing left. When they evacuated Hoth in TESB, they had a few X-Wings, yet at the end of the movie, there was a complete fleet. Why did you believe that back then and not now? I'm not saying this stuff makes sense in the sequels; it just never made any sense in Star Wars. But this wasn't a problem for six movies, and suddenly, it is?

Besides, we're shown a pretty garguantan FO military in Episode VII, the movie where it's clearly established that the Republic does not have any army whatsoever, so the takeover isn't exactly unbelievable.

1 hour ago, mad mandolorian said:

Blue crit: remove one non-unique squadren at range 1 from play

(An imperial tie squadren according to lore is 12 fighters and an xwing tie swarm is 8, so distroying more than 2 squadrens is unrepresentivly op)

It all depends on how long a round of Armada represents.

Unrepresentative, though, I don't know, since in the actual TFA clip, Poe kills a literal 10 TIE Fighters (and three Storm Troopers) in a mere literal 16 seconds. If we assume the entire rest of his squad was capable of killing 2 TIE Fighters in that same amount of time, that's an entire TIE Squadron dead in 16 seconds. So, if a Round of Armada is anything greater than 16 seconds, it wouldn't be unreasonable (per TFA Logic, at least) for Poe to kill more than one per Round, especially since his squadron base represents his wingmen as well.

Personally, I think Rounds in Armada represent a lot more than 16 Seconds, but that's an abstraction open to subjective preference. In Armada, a fleet can kill a large ship in 2-3 Rounds. At the Battle of Scarif, it takes pretty much the entire battle for 3 ISDs and a lot of TIEs to defeat the Profundity , and it takes almost the entire battle for the Profundity and around nine corvettes/frigates and four fighter squadrons to incapacitate one ISD. We don't know how long the Battle of Scarif actually was, of course, but we know it started while Jyn and Cassian were looking for files, and in that time Bodhi ran across a beach and back, some other guys got to a switch and flipped it, and Jyn and Cassian talked a bit, scaled a file storage hard drive, almost fell off of a platform, climbed back, listened to Krennic talk for a bit, shot him, sent the file, climbed back down, and waited on the beach for the blast wave from the Death Star (which arrived before the Devastator ). Maaaaaaaybe all of that happens in like 90 seconds... but my head-canon interpretation is that the Battle of Scarif was at least minutes long and that Rounds in Armada are longer than 16 seconds of in-game-universe time.

15 minutes ago, Stefan said:

The Rebellion at the end of ANH had, like, two X-Wings and one Y-Wing left. When they evacuated Hoth in TESB, they had a few X-Wings, yet at the end of the movie, there was a complete fleet. Why did you believe that back then and not now? I'm not saying this stuff makes sense in the sequels; it just never made any sense in Star Wars. But this wasn't a problem for six movies, and suddenly, it is?

Well, a few reasons make that more palatable. We know that the Rebellion consisted of multiple cells (per Rebels ), so it's not necessarily the entirety of the Rebellion that was Yavin. Even then, the attack force was reduced to two X-Wings and a Y-Wing, but that doesn't mean the Yavin Cell didn't have more personnel or ships present that weren't participating in the snubfighter attack (even in the film, think of how many people, including those wearing naval and pilot suits, are present at the Medal Ceremony in the temple).

But, even that is all irrelevant because there is a long stretch of time between ANH and ESB, and it was a stretch of time were more and more people and systems were joining the Rebellion in the wake of the Death Star. On the one hand, after the Empire murders Alderaan, a lot more people are less willing to tolerate its existence and are motivated by the Rebel cause. Also, the Rebel victory at Yavin was a huge point of propoganda that proved that the Empire wasn't immortal. Tarkin's "doctrine of fear" was all based upon the Death Star, and the Empire's dissolution of the Senate and the outright murder of Alderaan (both of which happen only at the beginning of ANH) were deemed tolerable because, once armed with the Death Star, fear and coercion could keep every system in line, regardless of how evil or tyrannical people started to view the Empire as. But once that weapon of fear is destroyed, that "doctrine of fear" and the destruction of Alderaan and the removal of the Senate were now huge backfires that really made the galaxy view the Empire as the "bad guys," which they were happy to be as long as their Death Star could be pointed at any enemies. Which is why there is such a growth in the Rebellion over the three films and why the Empire scrambles to build another Death Star to cement its legitimacy.


But the FO goes from being the defeated, hated, reviled, "evil Empire" to somehow gaining a galaxy-conquering fleet and army (by kidnapping children... uhhh, why didn't the Republic frown on this? Especially when the FO was doing it millions of children, just to staff the Supremacy alone). Also, TFA and TLJ take place in the same week, whereas the OT takes place over a few years, which makes the changes, developments, and growths between films feel less artificial.