Star Wars: Armada

Tell me you have heard of this game? You better have, because it's damn good.


If you have at all been following our facebook page, you will know that we have recently gotten obsessed by Star Wars Armada. Well, Spicerack and I have......okay really just the two of us. The others are enjoying 40k and X-Wing. Here is my take on the game:

Get it.

If you enjoyed X-Wing, you will love this. Don't get caught up in the whole "I don't want another X-Wing game" etc. It plays completely differently. X-Wing is all about small skirmishes that can turn on the luck of dice or a miss-measured placement. This game can suffer from it as well, but it's far more strategic in my view. You have so many more pieces to worry about in this game than just shooting at your opponents ships (that helps though). The objective system really works to make sure that no faction has the upper hand in a balanced points game (we will get to that in a sec). Some of them may favour the Imperials, and some the Rebels. However, overall you won't be completely hindered by having to choose a bad case scenario. You should be ready for most things anyway.

One of the most hilarious things in this game is the "recommended" points limit. In the Core set it tells you the official points limits for the game:
Core set: 180 points.
Wave 1: 300 Points.
Wave 2: 400 points.

Now, 180 points isn't that much in the grand scheme of things - but it is what you get in each core set. In reality though, I don't see anyone keeping to that points limit for very long.

.....Do you really only want one star destroyer on the board?

Thought so.

Being a ONLY Rebel player, it was easy for Spicerack and myself to split up two core sets with each other. We played one 180 point game.....but soon went to 300 points.....and now we don't even bother setting up for anything less than 400! The great thing is that we usually are playing doubles games. Casually of course, so we just split up the fleets accordingly and get going. Most games only take an hour and a half depending on how slow you play (for which I am notoriously hated for bordering slow play).

Here is how a game usually goes for our 300 point games:
Turn 1: 5-10 minutes (no shooting)
Turn 2: 10-15 minutes (the odd shot)
Turn 3: 15-20 minutes (Engagement begins)
Turn 4: 20-25 minutes (Squadrons and broadsides really kick in)
Turn 5: 20-25 minutes (Struggling to figure out movement)
Turn 6: 15-20 minutes (whoops, forgot that we had a turn limit)

Obviously it will be longer with bigger sized games.

........

Let me point out one thing though. Perhaps I am just rubbish at the game, but if you play outside of the recommended points limit, there is a serious warning. Imperial players have an advantage at the moment once you start to pile on the star destroyers. If you have 3 VSD opposite your 2 x Nebulon B's, 3 x Corvette's and a pile of X-Wings....you are more than likely going to get destroyed. I am yet to win a game in the bigger points limits, simply because I can't engage fast enough to start stacking damage. Wave 1 should bring a fix to this with a number of upgrades (for both sides of course). For which I can looking forward to immensely.

Anyway, if you can resist the call of the game whilst watching Return of the Jedi, then I applaud you...because we couldn't.

- Out.