We had two players with about 3 games experience, one player with about 10, and me with about 6.
So we had the following builds:
-dual gladiators (10)
-dual CR90 and a hammerhead (3)
-Single MC80 Command (6)
-Single Victory with Boba Fett (3)

Turn one and two saw no combat as we all went full speed to the middle
Turn three saw the Gladiators and CR90's meet as the two single ship builds chugged along with Engine Techs and speed 2.
Turn 4ish saw a corvette drop and a gladiator got 50 points from the station.
Turn 5 and 6 everyone was shooting and the hammerhead, CR90, and a gladiator dropped. One gladiator escaped with one hull left. Victory dumped his token for 40 points for the win.

I swung my MC80 wide which was a mistake and never got to dump my token. Never took hull damage so going straight down the middle would have been fine for survivability and would have gotten me another 40 points and a dead gladiator.

We ended with my MC80 side arc aimed directly at the bum of the Victory. Another turn may have seen it dead. We finished in under 2 hours.

Conclusion:
The Victory won with 190 points and my MC80 was in second with my starting 148.
It was a lot of fun but seemed very flawed. There is a good reason we play deploying on the long ends. The first two turns for everyone was just flying relatively straight to get in range. Also a large ship kitted out for defense was overpowered. It would have required team-ups to take it down.
I think if we played again we would definitely move the deploy zones maybe range 3 or even a whole ruler closer to the middle (along the edge of course). Speed 2 ships took half the game to get to the middle with some engine techs sprinkled in. I also don't think 200 points and banning large ships would be unreasonable.

Take the station is armada at the beer and pretzels level. It's not meant to be competitively balanced, half of the fun is finding the broken things and lol'ing about it with your mates while you charge blindly into a cluster in the middle of the board.

I personally love the format and wish it got more play attention just for how quick and fun the game is.

Huh. Proximity Mines could be pretty good here.

6 hours ago, The Jabbawookie said:

Huh. Proximity Mines could be pretty good here.

An Interdictor with a raider partner could do well, too.

I'll point out, I was the dual gladiator in this. And what op left out is that he took his single large ship with redundant shields and then proceeded to actively avoid combat.

Hinestly, I felt all the problems in this particular game came down to driving

You will never have a fun game if you avoid battle. It's one of my armada pet peeves.

Not losing isnt the same as winning.

On 10/14/2019 at 1:02 AM, JKShulenburg said:

I'll point out, I was the dual gladiator in this. And what op left out is that he took his single large ship with redundant shields and then proceeded to actively avoid combat.

Hinestly, I felt all the problems in this particular game came down to driving

I made a mistake by swinging wide but if I had gone down the middle I still don't think either I or the vic would have gone down.