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Norsehound

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Posts posted by Norsehound

  2. Posted

    15 minutes ago, Vlad3theImpaler said:

    Where are you getting that rule from?  I don't see anything about half points in the Rebellion in the Rim document, only for Huge ships in the SSD rules.

    These are custom rules Blail has been working on for a while to introduce shorter-format play for Armada.

    I wish they were more widely embraced, I feel I can't get an Armada game to the table now without setting down a 2.5hour commitment. There are other games I'd rather play in that time (even if they don't scratch the fleet battle itch Armada always gave).

    Blail Blerg reacted to this

  3. Posted · Edited by Norsehound

    On 1/6/2020 at 8:56 AM, Fyeya said:

    I honestly am shocked to hear this - there are almost no new ships from the FO/Res era - barely a fraction of the diversity provided by Clone Wars. Most of them are barely different versions of GCW ships.

    I guess I just don't see why options bringing in new players is bad.

    Also, Armada is quite well balanced in general, and they've managed to keep their various ships relevant even after 8 waves of releases, so I count that as a win for game balance. I doubt Clone Wars will be so overpowering that the other factions can't hold up.

    The last time I looked, VSDs, Assault Frigates, and Non-Yavaris Nebulons were hardly been on the table competitively. The only time the VSD has been competitive (before Harrow at least, in the latest expansion) was before Wave 2.

    Jabbawookie hit it best in his list. Besides, all of film Star Wars only has a handful of ships, and the majority of them were Rebels (Empire Only has the Imperial Class and the Executor Class). The recent Starhawk and Onager only show up in books- the Onager comes from one image without even a name! Certainly this gives FFG the permission to come up with new craft extrapolated from other sources- I'm itching to see their take on the Maxima-A from the comics.

    Along with the aforementioned Arrestor, Dreadnought, Dornean Gunship...

    I'd be pleasantly surprised if they decided to release sequel trilogy ships in tandem. I'd make the effort to play a Resurgent as much as possible, as that's now one of my favorite ships in all of Star Wars.

  4. Posted

    10 hours ago, thestag said:

    It's funny, because my gaming group is very excited about prequel era ships coming to Armada. Two of my friends have already said they are going to go in as soon as the new factions are released. They're waiting to see if a new core set is released for republic and CIS before they buy anything though. Personally, I'm not excited about either era, but I am excited about more people playing Armada.

    And with plenty of folk having grown up on the prequels and the clone-wars cartoon, it makes perfect sense to start depicting those ships, especially since there's been demand. I could wish FO and RES based on the hotness of the new films, but I think any chance of that sunk with the controversy of The Last Jedi (and probably died with Rise of Skywalker).

    Really I'm just bummed at the slow release cycle of Armada. It would be a thing if it's a year out before FO/RES, but likely not since Clone Wars has to catch up. It's not my thing, and with this being the next thing for a long while it's a bit hard to get excited about the future, personally.

    To each their own.

    thestag, Rmcarrier1 and The Jabbawookie reacted to this

  5. Posted

    9 hours ago, Forresto said:

    With the ISD being a symbol of power and terror it’s not unsurprising Palpatine would demand they would build them that way.

    I'd think he wouldn't care as long as it got the job done. The Executor class wasn't just an upscaled ISD, after all.

    Again, lazy. Take this asset, make it more intimidating by just making it bigger and adding a gun to it. Even VSDs had wings and a different bridge arrangement to make it out as a different class- is it so much to ask for other modifications?

    Guh.
     

    My wonder is only for the future of Armada. I don't think it's too far of a stretch to imagine the First Order... but would they go as far as to create a "Final Order" faction, or would they just merge it in with the First Order? Which ever they choose, are they going to model the Xyston or make it a title for the ISD?

     

    Norell reacted to this

  7. Posted

    On 12/31/2019 at 2:10 AM, The Jabbawookie said:

    Why are we convinced there are no new GCW ship classes coming for so long?  Have they said so?

     

    kmanweiss pretty much summed it up, but I'm going off precedent with what we saw in X-Wing 1.0. Releases there were much more frequent and populous, and even then Scum got the lion's share of every wave. It wasn't a faction I was interested in, and honestly I was miffed to see 1. Space and effort given over to this faction I didn't care to be a part of and 2. This faction given power cards and combinations that made many working combos in the current factions obsolete.

    So I'm wary of a time when some power combination comes out from the new factions that makes them the hotness while the GCW factions rust, getting only choice upgrades out of packs but can't compete with faction specific ships and cards and squadrons. Unless those card packs contain new ships to radically refit some of them into new roles (looking at you, VSDs), I'm worried competitiveness will rest with the Clone Wars factions and the GCW is going to be pushed out.

    I'll be honest, I'd be over the moon if we were getting first order vs resistance instead, so half my muttering is over the era itself. Starting on clone wars now we have to dig through 2 ships a year for nothing but clone wars into the future, putting us further from the sequel era which has my interest better. Honestly with how hard it is to get an Armada game going for me now I wonder if I should just wait for that era to be announced before getting excited about the game again.

    Rmcarrier1 reacted to this

  8. Posted

    4 hours ago, The Jabbawookie said:

    FTFY 

    ...and I'm not looking forward to four years of Clone wars ship releases into the future. Lets hope card pack releases can ease the sting of no new ship classes.

    I was looking forward to the Imperial Dreadnought and the Arrestor Cruiser. I was also holding out hope for the Legends MC40a and the Nebulon-B2. Fat chance of those happening while we play in Clone Wars.

    LordCola and thestag reacted to this

  9. Posted

    8 hours ago, Kramerr said:

    Is Armada seeing the same fate as Imperial Assault ?? Looking at getting into this game, but if it is on its way out......there is no sense in starting.....

    We're facing what X-Wing experienced with the release of scum... except it's worse then that. There's stuff for you if you enjoy clone wars.

    Nothing for you if you don't.

    Formynder4 reacted to this

  10. Posted

    10 hours ago, D.Erasmus said:

    The strengths of TLJ are - for me - simply outweighed by its weaknesses. It only has one interesting story arc: Rey’s. The stories of the supporting cast are meandering and borderline nonsensical. Poe’s conflict with Holdo is very poorly setup and the less said about Canto Bight the better. The humor of TLJ falls flat more frequently than it lands. RoS incorporates humor more effectively in comparison. And while RoS has manic pacing, TLJ drags interminably. Plus the central conflict of TLJ was farcical on its face. The slow motion chase of the Raddus was I think a weaker plot than the RoS macguffin fetch quests.

    TLJ was stronger in two ways: it was easily the most beautifully shot film of the saga and it felt more coherent. But as the second movie in a trilogy it failed to set up any kind of meaningful conflict for the final movie. I left TLJ thinking it felt like a finale. Reducing the Resistance to a handful of people on the Millenium Falcon was poorly thought out. It’s hard to imagine how RoS could have concluded the saga after picking up from that storyline.

    Thats not to say RoS is a great movie, it’s a 5/10 for me. The whole sequel trilogy feels like an enormous waste of potential.

    I need to re-watch TLJ...

    I will agree that TLJ dropped the ball in a few places. I think the distrust between Holdo and Poe would have been better served if there was rumor of a spy in the fleet to give away the Resistance's position (rather than a tech gizmo). This fuels Poe's suspicions about Holdo while Finn and Rose depart to find some way to disable the Supremacy. I agree the slow-motion chase was a disservice, because clearly the First order could have surrounded and pummeled the Raddus into submission. Why they didn't do that isn't clear when it seems obvious and an explanation would have been nice.

    I don't remember there being a problem per-se about Canto Bight, but I do like the lesson we take out of it (about Arms dealers supplying both sides of the war). I also like how it touches upon what, really, makes up the meat of the resistance: The oppressed. It's also a nice touch to revisit these same kids in the finale to set up that they are the future of the Resistance, even if for now the Resistance has been suppressed.

    It was hard for me to really enjoy the humor in RoS when the story pacing and integrity suffered so badly. I liked some of Threepio's lines (Is this the afterlife? Are droids allowed in here?)- but many of the moments that were good (like Threepio's "last look") were suddenly muted by off-timed comedic lines. I'm thinking of the one where Threepio thinks of something just before being unplugged in the very next scene. It was supposed to be funny, but it destroyed the gravity of the previous moment. Same with Threepio being effectively dead and suddenly reversed with R2's reset.

     

    I'd say where TLJ left us off was loaded with a lot of interesting leads that RoS refused to pick up upon because Disney, driven by TLJ critics, was hot to abandon them. The Resistance has a major challenge ahead of them of rebuilding their numbers to take on the First Order. The kindling is there- the children of Canto Bight are indicative of the potential.

    In the wake of Snoke's death we're obviously set up for a power struggle between Hux and Kylo Ren- both men are immature, so the struggle between them would be a clumsy one... and something the Resistance could use to their advantage when taking on the First Order.

    The blade of Skywalker is asunder, the last in the bloodline has been turned to evil, and TLJ leaves us with the thought that the Jedi and Sith were not the proper way to understand the force. Rey could have been the one to find new understanding on how to draw from both sides of the force without succumbing to both of them. She could have been the first of a new kind of force user, who shares this understanding with Kylo Ren as both of them try to understand their place in the Force.

     

    So much of this potential I found beautiful, and I want to know the answers to these points. When all is said and done though, the answers provided in RoS are disappointing. Even that last point defaults back to the Jedi/Sith split that refuses to even ask the question of whether there are new ways to use the Force (Rebels was starting to ask this question as well, with the Bentu). We'll never know the answers to these directions now, not without setting everything back to the way RoS was (Like... Ben will be dead. There will be no explaination of who he can be as a grey force user).

    It's like TLJ asked a very interesting and thought-provoking question, and RoS's answer was a shrug and saying, "I dunno, Lol." It's unsatisfying, hollow, and essentially leaves the question unanswered. And everyone seems to be happy with this.

    3 hours ago, Badly Browned said:

    Yeah. To me TLJ works best if it was a bookend to the new trilogy, either the 1st or 3rd one. If the 1st, it's setting up the rest of the trilogy for a different feeling Star Wars, and for the people who want all the fan service and things that feel like the "old" Star Wars, they had the spinoff  Star Wars stories like Rogue One and Solo.

    As a finale, TLJ could have cemented it's themes on letting the past die and that a nobody can still save the galaxy.

    Instead, we get movies where each one tries to "fix" whatever happened before it. Instead of getting setups and payoffs,  it feels more like damage control. 

    I can agree with this.

    If it were up to me I'd let Rian Johnson direct 9 as well, to give us interesting answers to all these leads he set up. But "the fans" would have pitched a fit if that had been the case because how much "they" hated The Last Jedi.

    I had apprehensions when I heard JJ was cast to direct 9 because I remember well how awkward Star Trek Into Darkness was as a sequel. I doubted his ability to do it, so I wasn't surprised RoS came out so awkwardly.

    The Jabbawookie and LennoxPoodle reacted to this

  11. Posted

    21 hours ago, Grumbleduke said:

    I'd argue the Prequels were well written in terms of the story, but badly-written for the dialogue. It was very well acted, but then you had all that post-production directing and acting-in-the-edit that makes things look and feel so weird.

    As for a Thrawn Trilogy of film; I think a TV series would be needed instead. It's hard to cut down a book to a film, but a TV series (8-10 episodes, 3 seasons?) gives you the time to really get into things.

    Many have ridiculed the prequels for the... well, wooden dialogue (and for me personally, Hayden Christensen's very awkward performance in II). I don't think it was written to be bad, but delivered badly, and I rest blame at the feet of Lucas' directing. This does not mean the actors were bad, but they performed badly since they were directed by LUcas to do so.

    But I think even Lucas admits he's not good on dialogue.

  12. Posted

    Part of the reason this movie makes me sad is that we get this Final Order crap instead of more First Order equipment. The Final Order is just a bad, juvenile idea that....ughf. And these ISDs with guns glued to their bottoms is just a highlight of it all. The actual, interesting new stuff (Sith Troopers and their TIEs) make such a limited appearance the entire faction is a cop-out.

    1 hour ago, xanderf said:

    While I'm in total agreement, for this exact reason, TBH...

    ...the same problem exists with the Victory-class.  Aside from a slightly different bridge structure, and those 'wings', it's again the same exact design, just...smaller.  I guess the Victory-class had really tiny ceilings and bunks and computer consoles with itty-bitty buttons on them???

    The original VSD artwork was ambiguous enough that differences can be pulled out of it... in fact... the original flight simulators did just that (adding twin antenna, two engines instead of three, splitting the wings). It's only things like Empire at War that re-uses the ISD model that makes the impression it's just a shrunken ISD.

    DR4CO, Aldaros and thestag reacted to this

  13. Posted

    3 hours ago, D.Erasmus said:

    The most you can say about Rise of Skywalker is that it’s a better movie than The Last Jedi. 

    Trying to understand it in a technical way (since I'm biased as fan of the Last Jedi) but... I can't agree to that. But I also think Rise of Skywalker is worse than the prequels too, from the standpoint of storytelling and cinematography.

    I've heard people say the Prequels were well written but badly acted, and RoS is badly written but well acted. I think that's an apt statement about all this.

    You may disagree with the conclusions TLJ reached, or some of the decisions they made in terms of where to take the story, but I'd argue it was still a better made movie. The pacing was better than in RoS, and TLJ holds suspense and unexpected surprises for the audience that just isn't there for RoS. RoS feels like a melodramatic bad fan fiction from high school, TLJ is like a novel you're assigned to read from class. It has a deep, central point, but it may not be your kind of read, and it was published before the author could finish editing it.

    The Jabbawookie, Wulfrain and Rune Taq reacted to this

  14. Posted

    A bit of trivia I discovered recently, but evidently the corvette the resistance uses is the Tantive IV. The very same one from A New Hope.

    If this isn't a statement of the movie's character, I don't know what is. We didn't need the Tantive IV to come back, and I'd rather have a new corvette to add to the list of named ones so we can develop its new history. It was completely unnecessary to make it the same ship except for fan pandering. Same with Luke's X-Wing. Same with Palpatine. *angry sigh*

     

    So now that superlasers can be mounted to Star Destroyers, A. I guess the death stars are obsolete then and B. When can we get our special title card to mount superweapons to ISDs?

    Also I wonder which is the stupider idea: Superlasers mounted on ordinary ISD-Is, or the Sun Crusher?

    xanderf, thestag, DR4CO and 3 others reacted to this

  15. Posted

    1 hour ago, Ewok on Stilts said:

    Nah man, not even we like it. Yeah its supposed to be a course correction from the last Jedi, but is handled so ham-fistedly that it doesn't make anything better. If anything it ends this trilogy on a huge wet fart.

    But it was made for you! Doing nearly everything it could to ignore or subvert where we left off in TLJ! If not your audience or mine (those who like TLJ and the questions it asked) then... for whom was this $300 million budget movie made for?


    I agree with you, though. In spite of a lot of people saying they like it, I think in the long run, it's going to be remembered as a dismal concession to the perceived desires of the fandom.

  17. Posted

    This movie was full of so many missed opportunities and moments.

    Coming off of The Last Jedi I was expecting Hux to quietly stage a coup, and sometime during the plot he'd launch it at Kylo Ren's moment of weakness to unseat him. I was expecting a cool moment like that to happen early and deflate- I didn't expect it to not happen at all, and I didn't expect Hux to be nothing more than a one-not disposable character motivated out of spite.

     

    There's another point. When our heroes return to base after rescuing Chewbacca, this is after Leia has died. When he hears the news Chewie falls to the ground, irreconcilable, and waves away Poe. This is also after 3PO has had his memory wipe- effectively killing him, too. Chewie has had to witness all of his friends from the original trilogy die and leave him behind. It would have been a good reminder to us that this is the final installment, and with character deaths earlier it means nobody might come back from this one.

    Except... with one jump-cut, 3PO is back. Even Chewie himself came back from the dead after his transport seemingly exploded. With so many fake-outs (and revealing them so soon after these characters "died") it removes any tension or emotion from doing these things in the first place. In fact, I'm surprised any characters died with how many fake-outs there were.

    I really did expect Pryde to be the real double-agent, fake-killing Hux to preserve their cover so they can have a bigger say in the plot.

  18. Posted

    When we walked out you'd think we were at a funeral. I was bracing for disappointment based on what I was hearing... I'm sad my fears were validated and more.

    Most Star Wars movies end with some kind of discussion over how cool parts of it were, or at least applause at the end for being a good film. There was silence as people filed out of this film that, I think, none of us could believe was a Star Wars movie. The movie had no soul, no narration tricks or double-crosses, it's a parade of wish fulfillment fan-fiction with useless exposition sprinkled in for the purpose of generating Wookiepedia articles. The only big secret this film held- Rey Palpatine-  was so melodramatic I'd think it was written in high school.

    Even my baseline of entertainment - more spaceships and cool First Order vehicles and vessels- was not met. Apart from the TIE chase at the beginning (which was neat to see TIEs use their hyperdrives finally) the Finalizer and a montage of crashing Resurgents... where the **** is the First Order? For an organization poised to take over the galaxy and forcing the resistance to be, well, a resistance, by indications here the First Order is so on the ropes they need Palpatine's "Last Order" (Are you serious!?) in order to carry out their plan of universal domination. Even giving the Finalizer some new escort ships would have gone a long way to showing us that the First Order is still out there.

    I often rag on how bad the prequels were by pointing out Hayden Christensen's cringingly awkward performances as Anakin in 2 and 3 (why does Padme like him? persistence?), but I'd say this was worse. In fact I'd say it's the worst out of the saga. It's one thing when your lead actor is awkward... other plot threads and characters can pick up the rest of the story and make it good (as Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor did). It's another thing when the plot is this threadbare, serving only to lurch from one exposition scene or firefight to the next.

    TLJ left us with some interesting questions and thoughts. What of the Skywalker legacy, now that the saber is broken and its last member is committed to the side of evil? What if the Jedi/Sith split understanding of the force is, in fact, wrong? What of the arms merchants perpetuating war so they can profit off it? Can Rey be a hero even though she comes from nothing?

    NOPE! Here's your cheap cameos, a re-heated villain from the original trilogy, and some useless facts that don't matter to the plot. Enjoy moments that nobody asked for like Chewbacca finally getting his gold medallion from ANH!

    DR4CO, LennoxPoodle, Darth Sanguis and 1 other reacted to this

  20. Posted

    The way 7 and 8 went it didn't feel like they were ramping up into a "grand conclusion of the saga". I expected 9 to show us how the new generation breaks out of the cycle of empire-rebellion or somesuch... passing the torch on to new characters, not bring back defeated characters from the dead for another showdown. I wanted the sequel trilogy to be comfortable doing its own thing, but I feel like backlash from 8 eliminated any chance of finding a voice on its own. Now it's gotta lean on Leia and Palpatine to find an ending, when this wasn't their story to tell.

    I'm skeptical.

    LennoxPoodle and Ewok on Stilts reacted to this

  23. Posted

    Well, might give the game a bit more of a rest if there are no GCW factions in the near future. I have little interest in collecting either faction- Clone Wars isn't my jam.

    This is feeling like S&V for X-Wing all over again. If you don't like the new ships/factions... tough. But if you want to stay competitive you need the cards in those packs.

    I was also looking forward to the Arrestor vs Dornean gunship... or even better, Resurgent vs MC85 to go along with the conclusion of the trilogy.

     

    In terms of new ship content... We need patches badly for a lot of the starter ships. The Harrow may have buffed the VSD but the class in general needs improvements. I always wanted the VSD to be a staple medium ship useful in any list... I hope with new content for the factions, the VSD can finally be this. The Rebel Assault frigate could get bailed out in the same way.

  25. Posted

    6 hours ago, Rmcarrier1 said:

    What I find interesting about the Onager and the Starhawk is that it's almost like FFG is daring us to use Speed 0 for the first time (in the Onager's case, so that it can pivot on its axis and use its long-range cannon; in the Starhawk's case, so that it can tractor opponents down to a point where they can't spend their defense tokens). I think both ships have the potential of really shaking up game play.

    It's a few years ago now, but in the SF bay area Mythics was crushing tournaments with his Yavaris speed 0 activation padding shenanigans. Speed 0 tanking is nothing new.

    Now if only the Onager had come out way back then... forcing static lists to move.

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