Rogue Fleet - Lessons from an Armada Noob

When Star Wars Armada first dropped I was pretty interested. I love capital ship warfare in games. I love the look of Star Wars ships. I love Star Wars. The price was daunting but thanks to an Amazon screw up I managed to pre-order the core box at almost half price. I played it once or twice. Then I put the ships on my shelf and the game away for quite a while (see early overview review here).

Many things contributed to its premature retirement. The main factor was the price. I am still highly committed to X-wing and buying two miniatures game expansions is quite pricey. The second thing was a bit of mental fatigue. While I could understand and appreciate the design of the game, I couldn’t separate it completely from X-wing. My mind wanted to compare the two and I wasn’t liking the comparison. They really are completely different games. But because they were Star Wars miniatures games my mind couldn’t accept that. Additionally with Armada being so new it really had a very limited array of choices whereas X-wing had been around for a few years.

The final contributing factor was personal. I attended a pre-wave 1 tournament. I went in expecting the same atmosphere as X-wing, which has always been very welcoming with an attitude of “Fly Casual.” Everyone was new so I assumed this would be a good learning experience for everyone. What I got was a very competitive environment. Now, it isn’t fair to judge the game or the tournament scene entirely on one experience so I want to make it clear I have no knowledge of what Armada tournaments are like. Some people I play X-wing with who are good people enjoy Armada tournaments. But at the time, that one experience was enough to deflect me away from further investing in the game.

Now, fast forward more than a year. Wave 2 had been out for long enough that I was able to find the Imperial Star Destroyer and the Mon Calamari cruiser on sale for near 50%. That price point was low enough to be worth getting the ships even if they only sat on my shelf and looked pretty. I had also picked up one or two other packs at big sale prices. I have a buddy who was in a similar position to me and we decided to get some games in.

My son, who I’ve been teaching X-wing, wanted to play so I let him control one of my ships during the match. Building the fleet turned out to be a lot of fun since there are now four waves of upgrades instead of just the core box (we’re going full proxy on upgrades and using online fleet builders). The games are fun and my son became obsessed (as little kids are wont to do). I’ve now played with him almost every day for a week. And now we’ve both really into it, so much so I’ve picked up a few other expansions and am reminding myself that Christmas is only a few months away and not to spend more money.

So what have I learned from this new foray into the epic battles of Star Wars Armada?

This isn’t X-wing

If you’ve never played X-wing this won’t matter to you but if you have, the transition can be difficult. But they really are two completely different games. Aside from both being Star Wars and both using dice they are very different. Less apples to oranges and more apples to carrots. Let go of any assumptions you have about how you think the game works that you might carry over from X-wing. It can be a hard transition to make but a worthwhile one. Because they are different you can have two very unique gaming experiences.

Keep it Simple

Don’t jump into the game building a 400pt list with upgrades on all your ships. This most recent time getting into the game I was teaching my son the basic rules. Because I had to distill things down to the level of a 4 year old, I had to make it simple. And I found I got more enjoyment out of it. I had been playing X-wing so long that building complicated squadrons was second nature. But since I didn’t yet understand Armada, my complicated fleets didn’t work well together.

We started with just one ship each and focused on moving and understanding the rules. When and where you can fire takes a little bit to grasp. Figuring out where ships are going to go when they move and what kind of maneuvers can be made is a long term prospect.

We’ve slowly ramped up the complexity to full 400pt fleets with a mix of fighters, ships and upgrades. Now that I’m not confused by the basic rules, I can start to appreciate all of the upgrades. This makes them less overwhelming.

Think Strategically

Armada is not a slugfest game. With only six rounds you quite often will have lots of ships left on the board. Big ships , like Imperial Star Destroyers and MC80’s, don’t die quickly unless you really plan for it. So don’t go into a game with the mindset of “kill everything!” Go into it thinking about how to survive for six rounds and gain the most objective points.

Now, certainly, killing enemy ships is the best way to win. No enemy ships means victory. But depending on the objective you can win without any kills. You can go into a game with the most powerful ship killing build possible but lose because your opponent is using more maneuverable ships and you just can’t get that powerful forward arc attack from your ISD. Meanwhile, his quick corvettes have racked up victory points by grabbing objectives or getting some damage cards on your vulnerable rear arc.

This is where the six rounds and the command dial stacking really comes into play. For a ship with three command dials you essentially have to plan your actions for half the game before you even begin. Do you put a squadron command on the third dial or will your squadrons be too far away to activate? What about an engineering token? That might mean the difference between surviving the game or dying. But then, you might never get shot at.

Upgrades start to play an important role when you’re ready to think strategically. Wing Commander, for example, can really free up your command dials. Now you never need to plan to activate squadrons but can just do so at the perfect opportunity. Engineering Captains can also be useful for getting that life-saving repair. So far I wouldn’t recommend Tactical Expert because you probably want to be setting Concentrate Fire most of the time rather than changing your dial to that.

The other part of thinking strategically is accepting that you may only get one good attack in a game. With the size of the board and limited number of rounds it is entirely possible for ships to end up in a situation where they will engage, shoot and they fly past never to get in range again before the game ends. This is particularly troublesome for ungainly ships, like the Victory Star Destroyer. They want to shoot at you from the front but suck at turning. If you can get past them it’s pretty easy to stay there.

This can even be a problem for the faster ships. MC30’s and Gladiators don’t have very good turn options at their faster speeds. You can get one of them into a situation where their maneuver options combined with the close range limitation for most of their attack dice means they are always just out of range of each other.

All of this combines to making your initial approach very important. If you rush in at full speed, and don’t plan a future maneuver command to slow down, you might end up with ships at full health but floundering useless out of the fight. Or if you play it cautiously, you might not engage until the later rounds and you just don’t have the time to do the damage necessary to kill that big ship.

Don’t Neglect Your Fighters

One of my earliest thoughts about the game was that fighters seemed pointless. Unless you activate them with a command, they are only moving OR shooting. Not both. For inexperienced players this usually meant we would move fighters one round, the ship we were trying to engage would move before the squadrons got a chance to fire, rinse and repeat. Also, TIE fighters appeared to just be worthless. Three health against an X-wing’s four attack dice? Boom, dead.

But the more you play the more you’ll understand that fighters play an important role. It’s very hard for a big ship to kill a large group of fighters. With a single blue die on average for anti fighter attacks, they usually 0-1 damage. Even against TIE fighters that’s a minimum of three rounds to kill. And by shooting fighters, you’re not shooting twice at big ships. A fleet with absolutely no fighters is very vulnerable to getting overwhelmed by a swarm of fighters.

Similarly, spending the maximum allowable points on fighters can result in so many points tied up in an ineffective group. With so many fighters it’s hard to make the best use out of the Squadron command. You can end up with them scattered across the board constantly trying to catch up to your opponent’s ships.

Fighters are just as important as any ship. They need to be planned as part of the fleet. Do you take just a handful of cheap ones whose only job is to tie up enemy fighters? Or do you go offensive and get some Bombers with Escorts and a dedicated carrier commanding them?

Well that’s my quick run down on what I’ve learned getting back into Armada. I’ll start toying with some fleet builds, ala my typical Rogue Squadron articles, soon. I don’t plan to get into the Armada tournament scene anytime soon so these probably will never be designed with that in mind.