Star Wars: Armada

Not to pour fuel on the fire but if anyone is picking this up for sure, I have a hell of a deal for you. The first wave of expansions (everything sans fighter packs) is listed for an absurdly cheap price at GoHastings.com right now. I just placed an order for one of each and saved around $40 from what it would cost to grab this stuff from MM/CSI.

www.gohastings.com/catalog/search_all.cm...e=global&condition=0

Wow, have they sent yours out yet? That has to be a mistake.

They're not released yet, this a pre-order although it's not labeled as such.

They had the core set marked down to $53 a couple weeks ago and supposedly mailed that out at that price before jacking it back up.

Thanks for the heads up!
The Victory Class I was able to add to my cart, but went out of stock by the time I went to check out. GoHastings has a history of being a three sided coin flip, sometimes they'll honor, sometimes they'll cancel and other times they'll ship out the wrong item. And considering they're owned by NECA I don't know how they screw up game stuff regularly.

The website says those armada ships are in stock at my local store, but the store itself says otherwise

Ugh, they're Imperial Assault expansions.

These are not the expansions you're looking for.

Sorry. I was intrigued myself, but the track record didn't seem great.

I can't stand it anymore. I gots to have it.

I realised I must have looked at it every day for the last month lol. So fuck it.

The first step to curing addiction is accepting that it exists. You go, gurrl.

I can quit anytime.

Alright dudes. I didn't buy any of these products in the coolstuff blowout, though I was sorely tempted. I want to talk about the actual game now, though, instead of bitching about marginal increases in price or whatever I'm doing in the Asmodee thread.

I had a couple of questions for anyone who is getting a lot of play out of Armada...

a) are you buying both sides and providing them? Do you have a friend who plays and you do rebel/imperial? To me the second sounds like the most realistic way (financially) to play this game, but I don't have a friend to do it with.
b) how is the fleet building? Fun? People seem to be getting way into it in X-wing, is it just as good in this? Does the fact that Imperial ships are so expensive (I'd have to field a real star destroyer or mc80 (home one)) limit fleet building flexibility? Is there a fun meta, and I'm not necessarily talking about tourney level meta but just between two friends?

No expert here but I'll give you my take.

I did not plan on buying Armada since I'm pretty heavy into X Wing but one of the local guys brought over his starter and after one learning game I was hooked hard.

I've been buying both sides so far, mostly one of everything but I did two starters and a few other doubles. Put on a game for the club Sunday and everybody seemed to have a good time. I left out the upgrade cards, objectives, obstacles, and went pretty light on the squadrons but by the end of the day everybody had the basics and I think we can go whole hog next time.

The "Gen Con Special", 3 X Gladiator I-Class Star Destroyer and one Victory I-Class Star Destroyer, seems to have dominated last year but it got beat at the World finals by someone running an A Wing swarm with a few cap ships.

With Wave 2 out now there is a lot of theory crafting going on about fleets with the tournament fleets going up to 400 points from 300. I've seen large squadron fleets and no squadron fleets and any where from two to 4 cap ships. I think there is a lot of territory to explore as far as fleets go and a lot of options now.

Besides the FFG forums and reddit I've been looking at

lkhero.blogspot.com/

and

xwingtactics.blogspot.com/

Count me as a novice.
The guy who beat the "Gen-Con Special" at Worlds manages a FLGS here, I was hoping to get out last night to their game night where there'd be players, but it wasn't in the cards.

The build and other pre-game activities, before minis hit the table, I think has been the most interesting part in learning the game. Bidding to determine who picks and controls the missions. Knowing your fleet's strength and weaknesses and putting together a strong strategy and game plan. Setting up smartly. Preparing for the fighter game. Since the ships aren't agile, you basically pick a flight path and can't deviate much from that because you don't have the time with six turns and the ships don't have the agility. The ships themselves, they have a role and the upgrades don't allow much variance from those roles, just enhancement and so far out of all the upgrade types, many have less than a half dozen different cards so there isn't a whole lot of variety in some areas yet.

Myself, I'm picking up one of each and then filling in where I'd like dupes - Gladiator and Assault Frigate are next on my list for sure as well as a few more packs of the new fighter pack. If you're playing casually you can easily proxy the cards that are limited to one side at the moment so sticking with one side isn't a problem.

So last night I'm talking to my work friend at the bar. We're talking about games (he's my primary opponent these days, old school AH era gamer), and he's like "I used to play this game called Star Fleet Battles when I was younger. I loved it." My ears perk up and I'm like "ORLY?" Which makes me think about Armada and that I might have an opponent...

I may have posted this somewhere else around here, but the toy factor on Armada is stunning when you see it in person. I don't regularly go into game stores or chain book stores, but while I on vacation I stumbled into Barnes and Noble and saw the base copy of Armada and was pretty blown away by the models and oh shiny factor.

It really does look amazing on the table. Even though the fighters are "relative scale", they look great on the different formation stands.

I've just played the intro setup, but it seems less cluttered than X-wing. Having one of each, there are like 1/10th the chits and 1/5th the cards.

It's really, really good. It's tragic that it is so expensive, but it is definitely a Cadillac game. Lots of custom engineered pieces, great minis...if you can get it played, it may actually be worth it.