Its been awhile since ive played Aramada, Many things contributed to my selling off of most of my collection but ive always loved the concept. Star wars space battles, yes please!

However though I enjoyed the original game I was always left with a bittersweet taste when it game to the actual games. With the exception of fighter combat which was mostly great ship combat felt off to me, and with more expansions more and more the game became about what "upgrades" you had as opposed to what tactics you used. I think most people who play FFG games prefer this kind of game to the closer to simulation games that I like. Although I am not married to complicated, I just wanted the emphasis to be on maneuver rather than upgrades and the meta there. Sure there is a "kind" of maneuvering in the game but its nothing like what I imagine real large scale capital ship combat to be like in star wars. It reminds me more of Patrol boats swerving and shooting at each other in some shallow water battlefields.
Anyway, I did enjoy the time I spent with the game but ultimately moved on, to create/modify my own version of armada. Its based on Halo Fleet battles rules for those of you who know what that is and uses the same scale 1/20000.

And the scale specifically is what id like to talk about, actually Im excited to buy the new SSD thats coming out (I check back every once in awhile, wasnt it supposed to be out already?) because it is MUCH closer to my scale and will look GREAT next to my force as opposed to the armada destroyers.
I think 1/20000 would have been a much better scale for armada, sadly there is no going back now and I know this has been brought up many times for discussion. This really isnt about rehashing that debate, more its just a post for me to showcase my own work and a sort of tribute to what could have been.

That said, I HOPE that Armada is not dead as I often read and is just in a kind of hibernation.
Here is various images of my work in 1/20000 scale

They look fantastic.

Where do you get the ISD's from?

I have the Sith Planet SSD at 38" long, which is 1/20000 scale I think and I'd love some of those ISD's to sit next to it for a true scale in my model cabinet.

EDIT: At 38" long and with the accepted wisdom that an SSD was 19km, the Sithplanet is about 1/22500 scale, so close enough.

The FFG SSD at 24" long is ~1/36000 scale.

I too kind of wish the game leaned a bit more towards simulation than it does.

@Englishpete Everything was made by me, both modeled and printed.

I cant recall how big the SSD is at 1/20000 scale atm, but I do know the FFG one coming out isnt quite that scale (its a bit smaller) but it works for me and will DEFINATELY look better next to my ISDs than FFGs ones hahahahaha not to mention I can actually do an OOB accurate battle of Endor. Somthing like 33 ISDs and various rebel Cap ships, I already have that many.

@Wintercross well I like the Halo Fleet Battles Rules modified to my own liking, from FFGs other miniatures properties I knew it was never going to be exactly what i wanted, but it was fun for a time XD
And others seem to enjoy it greatly.

Looks great, really wish FFG had gone with something closer to this scale with Armada, as it would have allowed getting more ships on the board (and approaching something like an actual Armada , instead of say two ships duking it out with two other ships... to say nothing of Legion 's misnomer...).

Nice work.

Yes I agree, I have a remedy for Legion too. In 6mm hahaha XD
https://www.shapeways.com/shops/wakes-emporium

That looks quite epic. I will echo the call for where did these come from? I might have to acquire some ...for reasons.

Thank you, I made them.

6 hours ago, Lurtz said:

Yes I agree, I have a remedy for Legion too. In 6mm hahaha XD
https://www.shapeways.com/shops/wakes-emporium

More coming? Espaccally Galactic Civil war?

47 minutes ago, DScipio said:

More coming? Espaccally Galactic Civil war?

of course.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1682441262062813/

This link takes you to my SSD (painted by the very talented Mr. Haller, whose page this is.

http://www.orionpaintworks.com/2016/08/video-showcase-build-review-sith-planet.html

I too would have preferred such a scale, where we would have actual "armada" battles rather than skirmishes.

Makes me want to play halo fleet battle again.

I think this is a case of something I didn't know I needed until I saw it.

I still have no idea what they were thinking when they made the Armada ships so big. And don't get me started on the SSD, it's size is ridiculous for the size of the playing area. Way too much clustering and bumping. Id prefer smaller ships/bases, longer movement ranges, and longer firing ranges.

If you measure the distance ships move over the course of a game you will see how short the diatances they travel, which, for me, doesn't give as much strategic play as it would if there was more movement, and longer firing ranges.

Games would be quicker too because the engagement part of a match would start sooner, instead of having to wait to rounds 3 4+ to start firing.

47 minutes ago, Thraug said:

I still have no idea what they were thinking when they made the Armada ships so big. And don't get me started on the SSD, it's size is ridiculous for the size of the playing area. Way too much clustering and bumping. Id prefer smaller ships/bases, longer movement ranges, and longer firing ranges.

If you measure the distance ships move over the course of a game you will see how short the diatances they travel, which, for me, doesn't give as much strategic play as it would if there was more movement, and longer firing ranges.

Games would be quicker too because the engagement part of a match would start sooner, instead of having to wait to rounds 3 4+ to start firing.

I'd guess that they where trying to find a happy medium with ships and squadrons.

If you go with smaller ships, but keep the squads, they look really mismatched. Making significantly smaller squadron tokens is difficult, plus can start to lose definition and be harder for players to finish by painting. Since fighters are such an essential part of Star Wars cinematically (more so than capital ships), they decided to keep them at a larger scale that was easier to handle...this mean the ships had to be their current size.

Having smaller and properly sized ships in comparison to one another is absolutely amazing to see in person...but it minimizes the visual impact of the most iconic part of space combat in Star Wars.

6 hours ago, kmanweiss said:

I'd guess that they where trying to find a happy medium with ships and squadrons.

If you go with smaller ships, but keep the squads, they look really mismatched. Making significantly smaller squadron tokens is difficult, plus can start to lose definition and be harder for players to finish by painting. Since fighters are such an essential part of Star Wars cinematically (more so than capital ships), they decided to keep them at a larger scale that was easier to handle...this mean the ships had to be their current size.

Having smaller and properly sized ships in comparison to one another is absolutely amazing to see in person...but it minimizes the visual impact of the most iconic part of space combat in Star Wars.

I feel the 1/20000 scale ships look fine next to the normal ffg fighters. Some in the pics i posted. Though then the question is where is the cut off for size? such as 300meters?

A better solution and one I am implementing is a transitional scale to 1/2256 most fighters will be this scale. Some in my shapeways store already with more to come. But things like frigates etc will be of a slightly larger scale. (based on length) up too the smallest ship that will be 1/20000 which if I recall offhand is CR90s. I think, id have to double check that. I have a master file around here somewhere.

Coincidentally everything is for sale, and will proabbly make it onto my shapeways shop eventually.

7 hours ago, kmanweiss said:

they decided to keep them at a larger scale that was easier to handle...this mean the ships had to be their current size.

LOL, wut... why? Squadrons and ships are already in radically incompatible scales, so why would the desired size for the abstract squadron miniatures have any necessary bearing on how big or small the ship models could be? Whether an ISD is four inches long or eight inches long, it's still grossly out of scale with the squadron stands. So I can't buy that that they settled on a size for squadron miniatures and were then forced into any particular size for ship miniatures.

Someone asked about fighters scale, heres just a quick photo i did with 1/2256 scale fighters to show what it looks like.

On 6/23/2019 at 5:57 AM, Lurtz said:

Someone asked about fighters scale, heres just a quick photo i did with 1/2256 scale fighters to show what it looks like.

I am usning 1/2256 fighters for my 1/7000 Armada too. Looks much more fiittng.

ohh yea? post em. I plan to do the full GCW range of fighters in that scale for my shapeways shop eventually. But life is always so busy I dont have time for much else than school and work atm.

On 6/20/2019 at 7:42 PM, Lurtz said:

I feel the 1/20000 scale ships look fine next to the normal ffg fighters. Some in the pics i posted. Though then the question is where is the cut off for size? such as 300meters?

A better solution and one I am implementing is a transitional scale to 1/2256 most fighters will be this scale. Some in my shapeways store already with more to come. But things like frigates etc will be of a slightly larger scale. (based on length) up too the smallest ship that will be 1/20000 which if I recall offhand is CR90s. I think, id have to double check that. I have a master file around here somewhere.

Coincidentally everything is for sale, and will proabbly make it onto my shapeways shop eventually.

Can you post a link to your shapeways shop? I'd love some 1/20000th scale SW ships, CW era preferred.

These are awesome, well done. I never got to play HFB but it looked fun. From the looks of it, they got the "fleet battle" aspect much better than Armada did.

Good point you made about upgrades. I've personally always found that really intimidating. I've never had the time or money to really invest so while I have a moderate fleet, I don't really get all the "combos". I've read quite a few blogs but have been frankly overwhelmed by the sheer number of choices.

I would like to see the game be more about maneuvering and less about which cards you brought but that's maybe for a different game.

I was initially disappointed that you wouldn't really ever see fleets of ISDs vs fleets of Mon Cals with swarms of fighters but from what I've seen of the new larger-format games, it's starting to happen.

What do your smaller ships like CR 90s look like?

I've seen some modelers fit three to a base because they're so small in-scale to Star Destroyers.

Did you modify any rules like ranges movement?

14 minutes ago, FortyInRed said:

These are awesome, well done. I never got to play HFB but it looked fun. From the looks of it, they got the "fleet battle" aspect much better than Armada did.

Good point you made about upgrades. I've personally always found that really intimidating. I've never had the time or money to really invest so while I have a moderate fleet, I don't really get all the "combos". I've read quite a few blogs but have been frankly overwhelmed by the sheer number of choices.

I would like to see the game be more about maneuvering and less about which cards you brought but that's maybe for a different game.

I was initially disappointed that you wouldn't really ever see fleets of ISDs vs fleets of Mon Cals with swarms of fighters but from what I've seen of the new larger-format games, it's starting to happen.

What do your smaller ships like CR 90s look like?

I've seen some modelers fit three to a base because they're so small in-scale to Star Destroyers.

Did you modify any rules like ranges movement?

I typically use the same few upgrades on all my ships as long as the slots and points work out, maybe not the best upgrades but it works for me.

And yes, HFB captures the "fleet" feel much better. In armada 8 ships is a lot, in HFB 65 individual models might be a lot (around 25 stands I think). And that's only if you stick to games of 1000 points or under, the rules give examples for up to 3000 points. It really looks amazing.

This reminds me of what I wished Legion was- AT-ATs being "our" ISDs. Not re-skinned Imperial Assault.

I've heard the complaints that Armada was "too big" since even before the starter kit's come out, so the sentiment isn't new. My way around it is to believe that an Armada is several players together for the vast campaigns FFG has been handing us. After all if you think 400 points is small, remember, the game was originally 300. ISDs sucked up a huge amount of points in that scale.

Anyways, were this a product I'd be buying into it because I also like the larger fleet scale. However, I think FFG went with the scale they did to give ships more individual character and customization without upping the complexity. For better or for worse, your Star Destroyers can feel a bit more customized with specific upgrades that would either get lost in a large field or end up bogging down the game in complexity. Clearly they wanted to take the model that worked so well for X-Wing and transpose it into the bigger ships, after some fixes.

Would like to hear more about your customization. Never had the chance to try HFB, but I did a smidge of Firestorm Armada before SW Armada came.