I attended my first tournament on saturday and I want to revise my strategy for Prime this saturday. I did better than expected but saw a pattern. Two games I lost by less than 100 MOV and one I was tabled. In the close games I took out a large enemy ship and in the tabled game I did not. My strategy for all three was to deploy so that all my ships can fire upon the largest enemy ship at once without his other ships firing on me. In the close games I managed to pull that off but lost most of my fleet in the process.

I ran a guppy, two CR90A, pelta with intensify firepower, flotilla comms net, and 94 points in aces. I already have a new list so thats not what this is about. The point is that in the two close games my guppy was only even shot at once. I focused on taking down the large ship and my opponent seemed to focus on taking down as many of my small ships as possible.

TLDR: Is it generally better to ignore the enemy flagship and take out as many small ships as possible? Better than focusing on the large flagship?

I wish there was a hard and fast rule for this, but you can't just say "Kill the big ship" or "Kill all the little ships". If you can get points from Objectives, you might not even need to kill ships at all. Every game is going to be different.

1 hour ago, Andydabeast said:

Is it generally better to ignore the enemy flagship and take out as many small ships as possible?

If there was an easy answer to this, the game would be boring.

From before you choose 1st/2nd player to the end of the final activation, you should be continuously assessing what the best way is for you to maximise points, and how best to stop your opponent getting points.

With targeting ships (ignoring the objective game) you have to balance the likelihood of killing something with the chance of killing it with what you might lose in doing so. It will depend on what you have and what they have. It may even change in the middle of a game (if you get a lucky crit, your opponent makes a mistake or does something unexpected).

Kill the thing that will give you the most points whilst simultaneously reducing the amount of points you will lose

Give this tournament report from GiledPallaeon over at CGYSO describing how he makes decisions in-game. They do an excellent job of articulating their decision-making when it comes to priorities for each match, since it does change from match to match. https://cannotgetyourshipout.blogspot.com/2019/09/more-guest-posts-nova-winning-guest.html?m=1

This is actually a somewhat higher level concept for Armada, but a crucial one. You need to develop the following knowledge:

- How much are my ships / squadrons worth? You should ALWAYS know how valuable your own stuff is, because it lets you use the rest of the information here.

- How much are my opponent's ships / squadrons worth if I destroy them? This is part of the puzzle (and where I can get hung up). Basically it boils down to figuring out your path to victory...

- What will I need to commit to destroy "that"? ...but here is where you map that path out. This is tricky and a lot of intuition, and where I get in trouble by saying "I commit everything against everything!"

Basically you want to figure out what your opponent has that you can pick off to maximize your points, while minimizing what you lose. This may involve commiting to objectives, or this may even have you cutting your losses and bugging out a ship or two that haven't gotten into the fight if they're not going to be able to bring down what you need them to.

This is way too complex a topic to do it justice typing on my phone.

Also for consideration when choosing targets: how will it affect the activation advantage? Knocking out a cheap ship could stop that dreaded last/first, or give you that opportunity.

I have a engagement order:

- Flagship (stop admiral effect)

- Carriers (stop squadron commands)

- Large

- Small

- Flotillas (if no other target or they are harassing me)

- Squadrons (my squadrons are free to engage these first)

This is because Flotillas and Squadrons will be tabled if all standard ships are destroyed. So thats the order I try to determine engagement in, based on optimal firing.

For me, my rule of thumb is generally to:

- remove the easiest dice from the table first. If you can nuke a cr90 or raider early to remove dice from the table, do it.

- remove the enemy key asset. What's their strategy? If they are a squad based game, nuke that carrier. If they are going to try and outgun you, you need to focus that big ship to remove the admiral and stop it from shooting

- are they manipulating objectives? Kill that squad or ship to stop their points

After you get the key ship off the board, maximize by killing targets of opportunity. Pick off the transports or smaller support ships as they flee. The other key is trading. What are your acceptable casualties? Can you squads, raider or demo take out a flagship? Then it's acceptable to trade their lives for the big prize

Thanks for all the insight guys. I played a game last night with a friend with my new fleet and ignored his doom pickle and took out all his other ships. I won with 102 MOV. Small sample size I know, but I'll definitely take this info to Prime tomorrow!

Good luck at tomorrow's Prime. Assuming you will be at Huzzah's I will see you there. Remember that it is a long day. Eat a good breakfast, bring water to drink and perhaps some snacks you can grab quickly.

25 minutes ago, ptownhiker said:

Eat a good breakfast

☝️

I did well! 14th place! I got paired with my buddy @JKShulenburg and had a fun time tabling him. Lost to an SSD and got tabled by someone who knew how to fly an ISD, and won my other game. Twas a blast.

On both games I won I saved the ISD for last. The one where I was tabled I got caught in the ISD front arc after dealing with the Victory and small ships. Thanks for the tips guys!

That's the thing I like about this game. I've never been in any danger of winning a tournament, but I've always had fun at them. I've only dropped out of one tourney, but that was because I hadn't taken any Aleve, and it was 5 rounds on 1 day. I'm too old for that, unfortunately.

You got half the formula right.

It's about killing their ships and keeping your ships alive!