8 minutes ago, ptownhiker said:

I am having fun in my RitR playing a Victory and Quasar (w/bombers) list. We are a few rounds into it, and I have Master Navigator II as an ability, and the maneuverability of my Victory is crazy. It is giving me a "wrong" impression on what they are able to do.

If you have RitR, you've got the 'Harrow' title for the Victory. Try that with an engine tech sometime in regular play - you'd be surprised how squirrelly they can be. (And with Jerry, too, it gets even more ridiculous - at speed-II with a nav dial you can effectively move II-II-II ...crazy seeing a Victory basically just spinning in place, doing donuts, throwing blue sparks all over the place...)

After only one round, the big thing I've noticed is how useful it can be to take a "strategic loss."

For some crazy reason I've gone with an Interdictor build (for the pivotal battles and to prevent hyperspace escapes), so my first assault was against a place with the Experimental Retrofit upgrade. Even though it was the hardest option, I went with the Campaign Objective (Volatile Cargo; it ended up on an MC75, Shara and Tycho - the latter being almost impossible to kill with what I had). While winning would have been nice (to get both Grav Shift Reroute and Targeting Scramblers), I think it was still worth it to lose horribly to get Grav Shift Reroute and the Grav Well Projector. My opponent didn't get anything useful from the location (no experimental retrofit obviously, no ion cannon slots so that was useless, and no strategic reward), my ship gets to be repaired anyway, we get the same XP (145 loss!), and the team is only down one Campaign Point.

Obviously I haven't played this out yet so no idea if it will actually work, but I think losing the right battle could be far better than winning the wrong one. Which is odd for Armada; it being Ok to lose.

5 minutes ago, Grumbleduke said:

Which is odd for Armada; it being Ok to lose.

Armada is different from most in that a close loss is just as good as a phyrric victory anyway 🙂

3 hours ago, Grumbleduke said:

After only one round, the big thing I've noticed is how useful it can be to take a "strategic loss."

For some crazy reason I've gone with an Interdictor build (for the pivotal battles and to prevent hyperspace escapes), so my first assault was against a place with the Experimental Retrofit upgrade. Even though it was the hardest option, I went with the Campaign Objective (Volatile Cargo; it ended up on an MC75, Shara and Tycho - the latter being almost impossible to kill with what I had). While winning would have been nice (to get both Grav Shift Reroute and Targeting Scramblers), I think it was still worth it to lose horribly to get Grav Shift Reroute and the Grav Well Projector. My opponent didn't get anything useful from the location (no experimental retrofit obviously, no ion cannon slots so that was useless, and no strategic reward), my ship gets to be repaired anyway, we get the same XP (145 loss!), and the team is only down one Campaign Point.

Obviously I haven't played this out yet so no idea if it will actually work, but I think losing the right battle could be far better than winning the wrong one. Which is odd for Armada; it being Ok to lose.

I am currently engaged in three RitR campaigns. In one of them, while I had the initiative for a round I was able to choose 2 assaults that were effectively useless for the opposing team. Even though my team lost all three battles, we were able to get the upgrades we wanted (mostly due to understrength bonuses). The opposing team got 1 upgrade they wanted (their assault), 1 upgrade from a base (sub-par though) and nothing for their third fleet.

This campaign is rich with strategic decisions and has directly influenced which fleets are defending and why. Receiving the "understrength" reward bonus is almost equivalent to a win.

4 hours ago, Grumbleduke said:

Obviously I haven't played this out yet so no idea if it will actually work, but I think losing the right battle could be far better than winning the wrong one. Which is odd for Armada; it being Ok to lose.

You probably haven't been to a tournament yet where you rather take the 5-6 then risk to lose for 2-9 and fall back several places

7 hours ago, Rimsen said:

You probably haven't been to a tournament yet where you rather take the 5-6 then risk to lose for 2-9 and fall back several places

But even then you wouldn't pick the worst objective for you; one that almost guarantees a huge loss (equivalent of giving your opponent 180 free points, plus no way to kill a third of their fleet). I didn't just play it safe for the equivalent of a 5-6; I deliberately went for the 2-9 knowing that it would be better for me in the long term.