I'm about to get into Star Wars: Armada and have essentially no idea. Any advice for newcomers?

EvaUnit02, 5 months ago

I used to play Armada competitively.

Armada is a fabulous game with a rich set of lists to choose from due to the objective-based gameplay. The Rebel side is losing options with a lack of squadrons but that's fine.

If you want to find a list that may be competitive, you can check here: https://armadawarlords.hivelabs.solutions

Note that haven't played Armada competitively since 2017; so, things may have changed since then. However, back then, there was, in my opinion, a big problem with how tournaments were played. Because Armada is such a long game and because players expect swiss rounds (read: a full day of gaming), tournaments couldn't determine top 4 by W-L record alone. So instead, they implemented an 11-point scoring system which heavily favored tabling your opponent. As a consequence, competitive lists tended to be nearly identical.

That may have changed since then. However, if not, understand that you may have to adjust lists you find to suit the models you have. Regardless, the game is brilliant and a ton of fun. I would wager you will have a blast with what you've purchased.

Opafi, 5 months ago

Hey! Thanks so much for the info! And wow, that was a great, in-depth reply!

I really don’t plan to play competitively… It’s really just to have some of those big dinghies on the field and a nice time with a friend or my son, so odd rating schemes on tournaments or competitive lists gravitating towards an optimum doesn’t really concern me. Yet. ;)

I would wager you will have a blast with what you’ve purchased.

Awesome! That’s what I needed to hear! Thank you! :) I am still concerned about the lack of rebel squadrons though… And it seems that the rebel units I got are worth about 400 pts in total (which is the standard play size if I understood that correctly), so I hope I won’t be annoyed by the lack of variety after a few matches. You saying it’ll be good gives me peace of mind for now though.

To be fair, I have kept spending money after I posted this and ordered a 6x3 neoprene mat with a fancy space image to have something to play on and I’m looking for some Armada dice sets which seem to be no longer available in Germany, which is probably going to annoy me terribly as online people seem to agree that more dice are kind of required. I learned that custom dice are expensive though, so I’ll just see how to deal with this.

EvaUnit02, 5 months ago

While by no means required, getting an extra set or two of navigation rulers can be really helpful. You can just put them together at different lengths so you don't have to mark and move a bunch of ships out of the way when you only want to move forward at a speed of 2 but the 4-end of the ruler is getting in the way.

Opafi, 5 months ago

Ah man, this comment… 😅

I now also ordered the Separatists’ and Republic’s starter sets as well to get more dice and additional rulers as well as those ships for maybe some smaller games. They’re about 50 bucks each while dice and rulers seem to be unavailable and sell for about 20 each, if you can even find some. Man, I’m hyped for the stuff to arrive.