1 hour ago, kmanweiss said:

But a campaign isn't going to draw new players. A campaign may not even bring old players back. Most people only bought the last campaign for the squadrons. The same will be true for this one. People will buy it for the cards, not the campaign.

I whole-heartedly disagree with this statement. This campaign will definitely bring in new casual players and draw back old ones. As the events organizer for Armada at my LGS, the CC campaign has created far more new players than any scheduled tournaments ever have (because the casual player base far outweighs the tournament scene). My phone was buzzing with texts yesterday from players who had dropped away from Armada for over a year but are now inspired to play again in a smaller, faster and more narrative campaign. A new ship release would not have created that kind of hype for these players.

Armada tournaments are perfectly fine, but they require long days and a large monetary investment. Relatively few players are willing to make that kind of commitment to a game. Having a fresh campaign that focuses on smaller battles with improved campaign mechanics, new cards and a build-your-own commander option is a perfect way to attract new players and non-tournament players into the game. These players want to play in epic, story-based Star Wars battles like they've seen in the movies and on Rebels, and that's an experience most other games can't provide. I can definitely see this appealing to the dining room table crowd (brothers and sisters, close friends and father/daughter/son duos) which I saw a fair amount of with the CC campaign.

1 hour ago, bleezy said:

Sorry, but I don't think new ships are going to draw new players either. Wave 1, 2, 4, and the SSD are the only releases that will draw new players. "Wow, a Star Wars minis game where I can have a fleet of Star Destroyers! A fleet of Mon Cal ships! A SUPER Star Destroyer!" That might draw new players.

But, "Wow, an Imperial Support Vessel, just like from those old Timothy Zahn books!", or "Wow, prequel ships from those movies I love to complain about online!", or "Wow, a Nebulon B-2, just like maybe was in the old Lucasarts games, I don't even remember!"? In all likelihood that guy is already playing Armada, or else he never will because it is too expensive.

I am going to slightly disagree & w/ completely anecdotal reasons. Over the past 2 weeks at my LGS I have seen younger players get into X-Wing for the first time b/c of the Clone Wars release & another say they are waiting for Clone Wars in Legion (before yesterday's announcement) to start in that. I am not the biggest fan of 2 more factions in Armada but in the long run it could bring in more players who grew up on prequel trilogy media.

2 minutes ago, codytx2 said:

I am going to slightly disagree & w/ completely anecdotal reasons. Over the past 2 weeks at my LGS I have seen younger players get into X-Wing for the first time b/c of the Clone Wars release & another say they are waiting for Clone Wars in Legion (before yesterday's announcement) to start in that. I am not the biggest fan of 2 more factions in Armada but in the long run it could bring in more players who grew up on prequel trilogy media.

I completely agree that there is an untapped vein of prequel fans, and that a generation of people (including me) grew up with them and with TCW. It would also be highly unreasonable to expect two new factions hot on the heels of the SSD. That’s going to be a big release when we get it.

In my mind the two new expansions scale the game in both directions well, and especially with new missions and an option for quick, smaller games, that will draw in more new players and casual play. The Victory actually may become a solid option as a big bruiser unit for these small games; not tactically flexible, but just like in the old 300 point format they are the slow battleship option.

I think a campaign with a BUNCH of expansion cars and especially new standard missions (and special missions for small scenarios!) is the perfect thing that is needed right now. A good batch of versatile upgrade cards will have vastly more impact on the meta than a couple new ships (that would mostly just fill perceived holes in the currently pretty varied forces anyways). The game needs to scale up for us old players looking to do big space battles, and needs a better smaller "skirmish" format for fast play, entry level games, demos, etc. It actually makes the base set look like a nice option again for new players, although the pricetag is still a little steep (for a non-40k game....).

SSD will be interesting sideline, and will help draw a certain class of new players with how ludicrous it is, but ultimately I think this campaign is the perfect thing for the game right now for general play and for potentially growing the game back up again. If they can follow up with a simple wave (even just Dornean+U-Wing box to complement the SSD and bring a raid token squadron to Rebels), that would be helpful.

The CC did put bottoms on stools in the game store, and people were generally excited for it. In fact, I think that Armada is best played in a CC-like campaign, given the logistical issues with Armada tournaments. As fun as casual games are, when there's no stakes and nothing on the line, it can be hard to motivate people to turn out and play. Campaigns like CC make people excited to play, and keep playing, casual games of Armada, which is perfect.

While we did get a lot of people interested locally in our campaign groups... many of the groups fizzled out as the campaign became a run-away blowout. Of the groups that did slog through to the (obvious) conclusion of the campaign, few had any interest in doing another campaign. The last two CCs that I ran didn't make it past the third session without at least one player dropping and the thing losing steam.

I love the idea of the CC, and I really respect what FFG tried to achieve with it. That said, it had a a lot of issues, not the least of which was balance concerns and the fact that playing the smartest strategic game of Armada often meant playing the least fun game of Armada (e.g. the trailing team throwing their worst fleet into an Economic Mission to just run away, so that they wouldn't suffer any damage and the opponents wouldn't gain any Campaign Points from the match). Heck, any fleet that was in an underdog position had a strong incentive to run/hide and avoid combat until Turn 4 when they could hyperspace away, because lop-sided asymmetrical Armada is often a hopelessly uphill battle, and the last thing a player who is already way behind wants to do is to go get their fleet scarred up a bunch more against a Goliath-like opponent they can't hurt, and who even if they could be hurt has deep enough coffers to just unscar any/everything.


So, frankly, the CC was not good. The idea behind it is awesome, and it's exactly the kind of thing Armada needs to get players playing games. But it was horribly imbalanced [Ion Cannon was far and away the only base defense to take, Repair Yards and Spynets are worth their weight in gold, while Diplomats and Skilled Spacers are beyond pointless (yet Repair Yards tend to produce great money while Diplomats make "meh" money), the no-upgrades starting rule is a real head-scratcher that only discourages certain kinds of fleet from being taken at all into the campaign, Show of Force is free Imperial Money and Hyperlane Raid is... also free Imperial Money....and the snowball run-away asymmetrical nature of the campaign (this happened in every campaign I ran) makes the games increasingly less fun and kills enthusiasm rapidly as rounds progress.]

I really hope that RR has learned from the mistakes of CC and offers a substantially tighter and better-balanced campaign experience. I don't have any reason to think that it will or won't, so we'll just have to wait and see. But that the article/announcement doesn't claim anything like "and we learned a lot from the CC and have improved on many of the areas of that campaign experience" who knows if the FFG Devs even think that the CC was a poorly designed/balanced game experience that needed improvement? They did note that this new campaign eliminated a lot of the income "book-keeping" from the CC, but honestly neither I nor any of my CC groups ever felt that the bookkeeping was challenging or burdensome. *shrug*

24 minutes ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

I really hope that RR has learned from the mistakes of CC and offers a substantially tighter and better-balanced campaign experience.

I just wanted to say I completely agree with your entire post...


and that someone at Fantasy flight games is ******' with us...

CC & RR the two most technologically advanced forces in DBZ?





Coincidence? I think NOT!

45 minutes ago, The Jabbawookie said:

I completely agree that there is an untapped vein of prequel fans, and that a generation of people (including me) grew up with them and with TCW. It would also be highly unreasonable to expect two new factions hot on the heels of the SSD. That’s going to be a big release when we get it.

I doubt we would see Clone Wars so soon also. To clarify I have no objections to the Clone Wars era itself it is more w/ being the slow release schedule we already have trying to realistically support 4 overall factions. I don't say that to bash FFG or want an increase in production just stating the obvious. And as you said, it would have to be a large wave to make both factions viable. But who knows; FFG has new people at the helm w/ a flagship IP that is owned by Disney that has taken a much more hands on and mainstream approach. We could all be flying Venators by December.

Yeah, the main thing the Clone Wars possibility I think brings is the expansion into the older ship types we all want to be able to play with/against. But it will potentially be difficult to balance old vs new if they are able to mix between eras, so IDK. Clone Wars itself doesn't interest me, personally, but it would be cool to see nonetheless.

A game must always be good based the merits of what is currently released, the future of a games releases is always totally and absolutely irrelevant to the games present.

Which leads to the question, is Armada a good game right now?

Personally I think it is. If the game went end of life today, it’s a booming success and a standard by which all future ffg releases will be judged.

i personally find that x-wing, legion and runewars are all sub-par compared to what Armada is as a strategic list building miniature game. Anything that is added from this point is just iceing on a near perfect cake.

Call me insatiable, but I was really looking forward to a new Rebel ship. Don't get me wrong, I'm really glad a new campaign is coming, but I'm concerned that the Rebels won't get any new plastic for two years. I really hope they will surprise us with a Dornean gunship.

3 hours ago, Norell said:

Call me insatiable, but I was really looking forward to a new Rebel ship. Don't get me wrong, I'm really glad a new campaign is coming, but I'm concerned that the Rebels won't get any new plastic for two years. I really hope they will surprise us with a Dornean gunship.

I know... I want that too. And more ships are coming... but right now there's alot on the horizon and alot of potential for good things in the future! This announcement might have been PERFECT if there was also new ships included in it... but in the absence of that, it still represents a good path forward for Armada!

4 minutes ago, Crabbok said:

I know... I want that too. And more ships are coming... but right now there's alot on the horizon and alot of potential for good things in the future! This announcement might have been PERFECT if there was also new ships included in it... but in the absence of that, it still represents a good path forward for Armada!

And don’t forgot the new Organized Play format! What a week of news and support!

With all the news Armada have had, we can at least bury "armada is dead". Well at least for a while.

Love campaigne mode, love new upgrades, love new squadrons, love new objectives, love skirmish mode and finaly love sector fleet mode.

Yeah... "Armada is dead" is dead for good

The campaign will hopefully bring the old vets in my group back. I’m thinking a new way to play is a great catalyst for that.

Along those lines, new objectives are a huge boon and will hopefully shake a few things up.

Finally, I’m very pleased with FFG’s communications over the last few weeks. (ssd delay, announcement abt campaign and op stuff) Maybe it is just to line up with Adepticon news, but I hope this level of engagement lasts.

It is very heartening to be playing at Adepticon and having so many mini gamers really be attracted to the game. I sincerely hope it goes on because all things considered it is a pretty **** good game.

My two thoughts.

Recently I have had up to 10 players, 7 of them being new, at my home learn to play because of 200 point campaign rules we stuck together with help from @Blail Blerg . This campaign sounds like exactly what we were running, and it was extremely attractive to the new guys. The youngest was eight years old and the oldest was a 50 something retired lieutenant colonel. With everything in between. This campaign would be a boon for me peddling my armada wares in my hometown.

Most importantly to me would be if this announcement means they will continue to produce the current expansions in sufficient quantities for these guys to buy in. I have much more hope for that now after this announcement.

Same here with campaign play. My local group is excited to consider trying CC with 200 point fleets and the interest level spiked with the new campaign announcement. Most of this group stopped playing Armada once Legion came out.

20 hours ago, codytx2 said:

I am going to slightly disagree & w/ completely anecdotal reasons. Over the past 2 weeks at my LGS I have seen younger players get into X-Wing for the first time b/c of the Clone Wars release & another say they are waiting for Clone Wars in Legion (before yesterday's announcement) to start in that. I am not the biggest fan of 2 more factions in Armada but in the long run it could bring in more players who grew up on prequel trilogy media.

I have made it quite known on these forums I love the prequels 1 & 3, 2 was the weakest for me but brought the clones! though I didn't hate it, but I absolutely love the lore, ships, characters, story, and all of it. It is by far my favourite Era in Star Wars with the KoTOR being next in line and the GCW not far behind. With the reveal of clone wars factions and expansions for Legion I am 100% getting into legion now.

Yay Task force 😃

One cool addition would be printing legitimate ship cards for some of the ships at Mel's Miniatures. ( for ships that are for certain won't be printed by FFG )

I haven't played in awhile but all this news has me so excited to get playing again and with a new campaign I can get someone to join in one again. 200 point fleet's will be much more manageable

Call me crazy... but what if they are releasing CW later on this year/early next year... but they also knew that it was going to a long gap between 7 and 8... and wanted to drop the SSD to be the item between them after it had already been in development. But then (likely trade or production stuff) happened that had the SSD delayed.

The only reason I believe this, is at the hyperfake report, it was "Oh, yes... that does seem like an omission..." and this time it was, "We can say we are still making ships for Armada... but we are not currently at liberty to say..."

So they are likely riding the CW hype train, without overlapping too much to prevent conflicting launchs and try to get the most customers into every game they can. Now that CW is out for Xwing, it got announced for Legion. I expect once the core set for Legion is out, we'll see the announcement for Armada.

Legion is getting card packs. Armada needs some of that action!

A bit of good news is that I've had a few people, who haven't touched Armada in years, tell me they are definitely going to jump in on the RR campaign. The focus on rpg(Custom Commanders!) and a possible smaller starting force seem like a huge incentive for people to jump in.

29 minutes ago, ISD Avenger said:

Legion is getting card packs. Armada needs some of that action!

In the Q&A they said they intend to make them for us in the future, so that's good