Firstly a massive thank you to all who responded to my earlier post regarding my first list. Will be using it on Thursday against my son's Rebels. I can only apologise for my son's rebellious ways, but he is a teenager! If it's good enough for Darth Vader and Luke, it's good enough for me LOL!

This isn't asking for a critique of a list, or what else to add, but more some guidance on list building in general.

I've only played 2 games, both of which came with pre-made lists by friends, who also gave a lot of advice while playing.

From these games I can see how important activation is, and whether going first, last or having some ships left over to activate when the other side has completed their activations.

However against this is the upgrades for each ship, which obviously take up points and potentially reduce the number of ships in the list.

If it came down to a choice of number of ships or upgrades, which would you take and why?

First and most important step is what do you want the fleet's strategy to be. This will help narrow your focus on what ships, flotillas, squadrons, upgrades and objectives to pick.

Also, try to have multiple threat sources, 3 is a good target. This can involve squadrons, or not.

One way to start is to pick a commander, and then make a list around them. If you are taking Mon Mothma, you probably want all your ships to have an evade defense token. If you are taking Ackbar, you want ships that will be broadsiding a lot. If you use Sloane, you will want a lot of squads.

Browse some of the articles people post on the main section of the forum. There are some great ones about list construction. The biggest lesson is don't try to do too much. Pick one or two things (heavy squads, one or two big ships, lots of little ships, things that bypass shields, things that get rid of shields) and make your list very good at those things.

On 7/11/2018 at 6:49 AM, RedDogReb said:

Firstly a massive thank you to all who responded to my earlier post regarding my first list. Will be using it on Thursday against my son's Rebels. I can only apologise for my son's rebellious ways, but he is a teenager! If it's good enough for Darth Vader and Luke, it's good enough for me LOL!

This isn't asking for a critique of a list, or what else to add, but more some guidance on list building in general.

I've only played 2 games, both of which came with pre-made lists by friends, who also gave a lot of advice while playing. I still like having friends watch me play and offer advice. IMO it's an incredible way to grow as a player, learn to see things you normally wouldn't see, and start to consider more varied approaches to strategy and play.

From these games I can see how important activation is, and whether going first, last or having some ships left over to activate when the other side has completed their activations. - Activation Quality and Activation Quantity are a sliding scale. As your quantity goes up, your quality typically go down. Some small point packages also have high quality (Demo, Admonition, Hammerheads) and some large point costs have low quality (Interdictor). Part of learning to play is learning to balance your point/quality on the table because only one ship can shoot first, and only one can shoot last. If you have a ton of ships to guarentee last shot every game, but that last shot is weak and ineffective, and their first shot can destroy you in one go, you lost too much quality in your pursuit of quantity.

However against this is the upgrades for each ship, which obviously take up points and potentially reduce the number of ships in the list. This is a continuation and refinement of the point above. You slap a ton of upgrades on a ship it's quality goes up, but it eats up room for more quantity. When you are upgrading ships, ask what the most effective use for them is. You CAN throw 50 points in upgrades on a support Gozanti. But does that help it complete it's role if it's mainly going to be adding tokens to your ISD via com's net? If they aren't essential, then cut them.

If it came down to a choice of number of ships or upgrades, which would you take and why? There is, of course, no magic answer to the question of how do you balance upgrades for quality vs quantity. For a very base, typical, generic, meta fleet you will want 5 activations. You will want at least *2* of those activations to generate a large amount of threat. That means in a 5 ship list, I would say minimum HALF of your points should be invested in 2 activations. Squadrons being activated from a ship count as points associated with that ship.

So for instance, you have a fleet with an ISD, Demolisher, and 2 Gozantis. You add Strategic Officer to the ISD to give you 5 activations, and upgrade your ISD so it's about 140pts before commander and then demolisher so it's 95 points. Then you add slicers for the gozantis because you decide that you want them to be disruptors, bringing them to 30pts each. So you have 235 points in "Threat" ships, 60pts in support ships, 30ish points in commander, and that leaves you 75 points for a light squad screen so you take Ciena, Valen, and 4 ties and since you are using Demolisher you decide you would like a bit larger bid for first. Now when you look at your fleet you can see that you have 2 ship based threats and a decent sized anti-squad threat.

You have 5 activations, a bid that fits the goals of the fleet, and a clear path to winning which in this case is get first player, use the ISD/Demolisher to move in, activate first, and remove a target while moving out of threat themselves. As you get more comfortable with the game and the mechanics, you can play around more and more and more with them. Right now, I have begun completely eschewing support/activation padding ships and running just the 2 threats, which lets me incorporate nearly all 400pts of my list into the "threat" column but at the utter expense of any sort of activation advantage meaning that if I misplay my ships, they are very likely dead. I don't recommend it yet, but I only say it to say that once you learn some the guidelines, the game opens up a whole new world of breaking them and moving out of the box into what works specifically for you.

Those are my thoughts in red. Welcome to you and your son Rebdog! Hope to see you around more.

Good answers to a good question; glad this thread was made. Just to add my two cents, here are four questions I ask myself when building a fleet.

When beginning to build the fleet: “do I have a clear idea of how I want this to work?” (this can mean choosing a well-established archetype like MSU or dual large, or it can mean saying something like “I have Dodonna and I want to trigger APTs as much as possible.”)

Once the fleet is built: “does this do what I intended?”

For every card in the list: “does this need to be here, and is there a more effective option?”

And as a general consideration: “what would be effective against this list, and what can I do about that?” (Through modifications, tactics, or both.)

@BrobaFett wow! Thank you for spending time for that response.

Thank you too for everyone else who has commented.

In answer to BrobaFett, yes you will see me around here more, but it will likely be with stupid/nooby questions etc plus some batreps with lists that I'm sure some will say "You took what...???" while exposing my own ineptitudes as a commander. Please bear with me LOL.

Played my first 'proper' game (ie my own list with my own ships, and making my own decisions and 3rd game overall) last night against my son, and had an absolute blast. I'll put a short batrep up (sorry no pics) which will, as I said above, show a schoolboy error on my part.

I liked x-wing, but love Armada. Wish I'd gotten into this sooner.