Thanks for leads everyone! I managed to get everything except Arkittens from Warstore. Ryanabt, college station is a little bit of a hike for me, I am actually just southeast of Houston. Otherwise I am always looking for new games.

Does anyone have any leads on places to find wave 5 either in Southest Texas or online? I have been hounding my two FLGS for almost a month now, but both of them have no idea the wave 5 shipments will finally come through. Distributors apparently have no idea either. At the same time I have noticed that online sales have dried up as well. Anyone else having a heck a of time finding the new releases? (side note: both FLGS get fully restocked with X wing and Imperial Assault twice weekly). I have been trying to hold out to support my brick and mortars, but at this point, I will buy from the first place that can get me my new ships.

That's really too bad about SWAFT. It was my go to for quick list builds. I hope he brings it back online... I also love to use Warlords, but when I want to make lists during lunch at work, the big pictures of the cards in the screen make it obvious I am taking a break.

I second this immensely. I have been a been associated with teaching MtG, 40K, WFB, Mage Knight, Battletech (FASA and Wizkids), Babylon 5: ACTA, and Star Wars: Armada. No matter the game, there are certain things I have found to hold true. 1) A player's first game should never be considered an actual game regardless of his past experience with complex games. In fact, if anything, those experiences make losing worse. Most people that enjoy complex games and stick with them pride themselves on understanding the rule interactions that govern the game. By having upgrade cards he didn't yet understand be his downfall, it sounds like it was a double shot to self esteem (I lost the game and I couldn't seem to understand the rules well enough). 2) You should play poorly. You mentioned you got Dodonna's Pride around for multiple rounds of double arc shots. This tells me you must be decent at maneuvering. He probably wouldn't have believed if you didn't take obvious shots or moves, but I would have done a very sub-optimal deployment, and in particular, set your ships speeds poorly. Scatter poor choices of commands to boot. 3) Make it simple. Upgrades at all were probably a mistake. The ships are gorgeous, the movement and commands work great, and the theme is already a home run.I know its hard to kill ships without upgrades at all, but I have found that actually works better. It means you get to trade shots, play with the mechanics of the rules, but not take ships off the board. For admirals, I would have run Motti and either Cracken or Mon Motha. Taking an offensive admiral ends up with the scenario you got, where you couldn't not give him the worst crits. Defensive admirals would have prolonged the game and at worst made it closer as less ships died. The golden rule is always to get the player loving the game first. There is plenty of time later win. You beat him once, but it is unlikely he will come back for another try, so you miss out on years of kicking his ass. Sidenote: One of the best places to learn is to go to a gaming convention, listen for people laughing or cheering, then hang around and watch the company guy demo the game right. Alternately just watch for the people demo-ing in relative silence, getting trounced in a game they don't understand, then walking away as soon as it is over to see the wrong way to do it.

If you want a great Babylon 5 space combat game look up old copies of Babylon 5: A Call to Arms (by mongoose publishing). Prior to Armada it was my groups favorite space combat game. It has several very unique mechanics, in particular the beam weapons, boresighting lasers, and fleet composition were like nothing I have every seen before or since. But it also has several rules that will feel familiar to armada players, like movement restrictions,command orders, and brutal critical effects that can cripple a ship long before it burns its hull. If you try it, note that the fleets are not inherently balanced. As in the show, a Minbari, Shadow, or Vorlon fleet will wipe the floor with against everyone else, but unless you build for cheese, it is still a blast to see the iconic ships on the tabletop. Old copies of the game are pretty cheap and come with cardboard versions of the ships to wet your appetite with. If you like it the models are available on eBay, but expect to pay a pretty penny. I can't recommend it highly enough.

My I suggest for those of us not intimately familiar with the Clon Fleet that you post what was fielded that gave other fleets such trouble. Kind of hard to comment without knowing exactly what the issue was...

How about: Emperor Palpatine: 44 points "We Shall Double Our Efforts" - Once per turn, immediately after its activation, the flagship may deal itself a face-down damage card. If it does so it may either: 1) Immediately Fire once at any target in range, even from an arc that has already fired this turn or 2) Immediately Execute a Maneuver at its current speed. This would create a powerful, but indirect admiral. In keeping with the dark force user theme, he would be similar to Vadar's effect of sacrificing survivability to get the most out of your ships. His high point cost rationale is so he wouldn't be an auto-take. However for player that like to gamble, he can help push an ISD to the limit or even turn a VSD into a agile nightmare.

I always use Dengar as a mobile wing. I run two bomber wings (one of 2-3 TIE Bombers and the other of 3-4 firesprays). Both Dengar and Rhymer are used almost solely for their abilities, move rhymer first to where the team is going, then Dengar follows next. If they get a shot off here or there, great, otherwise I don't count on them throwing dice. I have been very happy with the results on the table from both.

I am a little surprised at the length of time people are needing for bigger games. Our routine fleet size has settled into a comfortable 600 points and we haven't had one go over 4 hours yet, most take 3-3.5. A couple local meta points have come up, but I would love to see what other people are noticing when they play in bigger battles. 1) Everyone takes at least 150 points of fighters. With 600 points, it is easy to fit a 4 firespray, vader, punishing one, and major rhymer (~130 points give or take) into a list as well as a small anti-fighter group of TIEs with howlrunner (~48-64 points). This has forced the rebels players to never so up with less than 4-5 x-wings and jan ors. Also, It does seem like the larger fleet sizes seem to favor the imperial fighters over the rebels, especially when VSD's become a great choice with so many ships running around. 2) Everyone tries to use fighter spam to draw out the opponent's deployments. With large numbers of fast fighters floating around, everyone in our local group has at least 5+ deployments of swauds to try to figure out where the opposing ships will end up. 3) Certain objectives have become death traps. Most Wanted is never picked since with so many ships it becomes very hard to hide. Same with Opening Salvo, since you never know if the other fleet will put 8+ ships down.

I have run a fireball several times and my favorite build is: Admiral: Ozzel (20 pts) ISD-II: gunnery team, ECM (134 pts) ISD-II: gunnery team, ECM (134 pts) Punishing One (20 pts) Darth Vader (21 pts) Major Rhymer (16 pts) Firespray x 3 (54 pts) The two ISD-II with gunnery teams make a great firing line together and if fighters try to flank, they both bring two blue AF dice, which can help quite a bit to break fighter scrums. I like Ozzel better than Motti just because jumping from speed 1 to 3 or breaking from 3-1 just from a token is absolutely gross on ISD's. Normally I start at speed 1 or 3 (play it by ear). Turn one is a navigate bank, turn two is a engineering bank, turn three is a navigate again which is generally spent as normal (normally at this point I need to turn/speed up/slow down to keep things in front of me). Turns 4-6 you have to play be ear, but I do pretty well with just navigates and engineering. The fireball gives you the ability to keep your ISD's outside of red dice range and still put out hurt. Meanwhile if your opponent engages the fireball with their fighters but doesn't bring up their ships, two ISD's throwing two blue each will shred the opposing screen. Yes, this does take careful movement, but it is actually pretty easy once you get the hang of it. Also Ozzel is insanely helpful to make the ISD's dance across the board. I tried running Motti, but I had to give up one of the firesprays to fit him in since I would never leave home without at least a gunnery team and ECM on an ISD. When I did run Motti I ran: Admiral: Motti(24 pts) ISD-II: gunnery team, ECM, Tractor Beams (140 pts) ISD-II: gunnery team, ECM, Relentless, Tractor Beams (143 pts) Punishing One (20 pts) Darth Vader (21 pts) Major Rhymer (16 pts) Firespray x 2 (36 pts) It played OK, but I really think the third firespray makes the fireball so much more powerful (6 blue at medium range). The tractor beams were nice to prevent little ships from flanking, but Ozzel plays more to my style.

I agree with AdmiralNelson, our multiplayer games go much much quicker than our large single player games. Since each person only has control of a couple ships, they tend to know exactly what they plan to do when their turn comes up and tend to forget upgrades much more rarely. We haven't capped upgrades, but since many of the games are multiplayer, it tends to be easier to keep track of who has what. Upgrading the cost of an admiral is an interesting idea, we will take a swing at it this weekend and see how the group likes it. I think it is a pretty good idea, since none of the current admiral limit their abilities to a given range. Interestingly we haven't had to put any caps on fleet composition (particularly requiring a set amount of fighters). Our group uses communal figures, so we have one of every ship with doubles of raiders, corvette, and victories. We also got two rebel and two empire fighter packs as well. The power of 200 points of fighters to vaporize ships if you don't field a decent counter has created in internal meta in which players either put 180-200 points of fighters on the board or a 80-100 point holding force. Especially since due to an amazon mix up we got sent 4 packs of R&V. It took one game of 4 Firesprays, Darth Vader, Rhymer, and Punishing 1 face wrecking a fleet with no fighter support before everyone learned the lesson. For example last week I fielded 5 x-wings and moldy crow as my token anti-fighter force. My opponent fielded a full 200 points of fighters (mix of bombers and anti-fighters) and blasted me off the table by turn 5, but it was still awesome to get to use fighters in large numbers.

Hi Everyone, Recently our gaming group has begun to play more and more games over the 400 point standard limit. Each time we bump the point limit and play, everyone seems to agree the larger fleet size has made the game more enjoyable. We have been working our way higher and higher and are currently playing 600 point games, which seems to be a great sweet spot for our group. This size of fleet allows for plenty of ships for each side (we normally field 4-6 ships each), enough so that doing multiplayer games is actually fun since two people per side each still have 2-3 ships of their own. Also we really enjoy that this gives 200 points to squadrons, which allows for both a strong bomber force and a strong anti-fighter wing, giving the squadron game a big bump in interaction with the larger ships. It also gives you the option of going fighter heavy to suck deployments if your opponent goes fighter light. I understand this isn't what the game is "balanced" for, but I am curious if others out there have been playing with larger fleets and if so they have house ruled anything to help smooth out any unintended rough spots in game play. As we have gone bigger and bigger we have put a couple house rules into place to try to keep things stable. 1) Bump the value of victory points gotten from objectives. Most objectives with points, as they are written, generally give out 75 points. To keep the objectives important and to keep things from devolving into just fleet destruction, we multiply any points gotten from objectives by 1.5 at the end of the game. 2) Increased table size. 3 x 4 starts to get really tight at 600 points, so we found bumping the size to 3.5 x 5 (conveniently, the biggest table we have is 3.5 x 6) gives us the space to let ships move around without turning into bumper cars. The distance between the deployment zones is kept as normal, the deployment zones just get bigger. Does anyone else has things they have found to help with larger games?

Has anyone tried this list yet? My big concern would be that while the four raiders with ordinance experts will shred the heck out of any fighters that come near, squadron commands will still let them alpha strike you. The 11 point bid is to emphasize just how important going first with this list is. Fleet Summary Page (389 of 400 pts) Faction: The Empire Commander: Admiral Screed (26 pts) Flagship: (80 pts) Victory I-Class Star Destroyer (73 pts) Gunnery Team (7 pts) Fleet Ship 1: (71 pts) Gladiator I-Class Star Destroyer (56 pts) Demolisher (10 pts) Assault Proton Torpedoes (5 pts) Fleet Ship 2: (53 pts) Raider I-Class Corvette (44 pts) Ordnance Experts (4 pts) Assault Proton Torpedoes (5 pts) Fleet Ship 3: (53 pts) Raider I-Class Corvette (44 pts) Ordnance Experts (4 pts) Assault Proton Torpedoes (5 pts) Fleet Ship 4: (53 pts) Raider I-Class Corvette (44 pts) Ordnance Experts (4 pts) Assault Proton Torpedoes (5 pts) Fleet Ship 5: (53 pts) Raider I-Class Corvette (44 pts) Ordnance Experts (4 pts) Assault Proton Torpedoes (5 pts) Squadrons (0 of 134 pts): Objectives: Opening Salvo , Hyperspace Assault , Superior Positions

This is a empire list I am putting together for a friendly game this weekend against a rebel fleet. I know the ships he has access to are: AFMKII, C90, C90, Neb B, Neb B, X wing x6, Y wing x2, A wing, x2, B wing x2. This will be his first time playing rebels (he has only played twice before, both as empire), so I am trying to make a friendlier list to play against him. The ships I have access to are: Vic, Vic, Glad, TIE x8, TIE Int x2, TIE Ad x2, TIE Bomber x2. I am hoping for board feedback on a couple quick questions. 1) What objectives should I take with this fleet? I was thinking "Most wanted" "Contested Outpost" and "Minefields" 2) I am at a 7 point initiative bid. Is it worth it to bid "0" and take ACM on one of the Vics? 3) Does this list seem "friendly" to you? I am happy to take a sub-par fleet while he gets his bearings if it means he has a good time and wants to play more games. (393 of 400 pts) Flagship: (114 pts) Victory I-Class Star Destroyer(73 pts) Admiral Screed (26 pts) Enhanced Armament (10 pts) Expanded Hangar Bay (5 pts) Fleet Ship 1: (88 pts) Victory I-Class Star Destroyer(73 pts) Enhanced Armament (10 pts) Expanded Hangar Bay (5 pts) Fleet Ship 2: (88 pts) Gladiator I-Class Star Destroyer(56 pts) Demolisher (10 pts) Engine Techs (8 pts) Assault Concussion Missiles (7 pts) Wulff Yularen (7 pts) Squadrons (103 of 131 pts): 1x Howlrunner Tie Fighter Squadron (16 pts) 1x Major Rhymer Tie Bomber Squadron (16 pts) 2x Tie Interceptor Squadron (22 pts) 2x Tie Advanced Squadron (24 pts) 1x Tie Bomber Squadron (9 pts) 2x Tie Fighter Squadron (16 pts)

Agree with LCapArcana totally, the game is a blast and even butchering the rules as we did, everyone had a great time. Lot's of "pew-pew-pew" noises before dice rolling and non-stop quoting of "You cant repel firepower of this magnitude!"

I would be happy to bare our rookie mistakes in the hopes they don't catch another victim. We played our first game during a bachelor party back in July, (Saturday morning while we were sobering up) and I can tell you some of the big mistakes we made. We had the Core set + Glad + AFMKII, each person controlled one ship, no upgrades, no objectives. I also realize these were major errors, but these were the rules we failed to interpet correctly/missed in the rulebook while we were playing the initial scenario. 1) Ships can start a any speed they have on their card. We spent the first three turns just getting up to speed from a zero start and only had two turns in which people were in range. 2) When you place the movement ruler, the ship must end its move on the same side of the ruler, no jumping left to right side. We had ships jumping everywhere. 3) Crits on dice from ships to ships also count as hits. Crits on die from fighters to ships do not. This dropped our damage output so that no ships ended up dying, just got battered. 4) Ships shoot then move. We realized this after one turn of shooting and it made the initial approaches much more cautious as everyone tried to stay ridiculously far from each other.

I agree with fickle, as a Nebulon B Snipper fleet it is subpar for sure. As a Nebulon B Sniper fleet, it shows promise.

Hi everyone, Just got into armada and have been having a blast just making fleets using SWAFT. I know bidding for initiative is important for a lot of lists, but without many games under my belt, I am unsure what would constitute an aggressive bid? I have seen that 3 points or less is considered conservative, but if you build a fleet that needs one of its objectives picked, how many points under do people go to guarantee their objectives. I.E. would an 11 point bid be a good move, or is it overkill compared to a 5-8 point bid?

I have used the Merrick Farrow deck in the last two runs through the campaign and I can say without any hesitation that it is a incredibly fun deck to use. Having two cards that require 0 threat to use is really nice. Most groups will never take the Dark Pact offer, but the Dark Mark is one of the best cards in the game for bypassing defense. Plenty of hits will only do one or two damage, and transferring it turn after turn to the marked character keeps that hero in check by forcing him to constantly heal (or stay next to the healer). Masques can also be a game breaking card. For a single threat you get to force a auto miss...yes please. How many missions come down a single roll for all the marbles? Its particularly good for negating powerful mage and warrior heroic feats in the second encounter of a quest. Grasping grave can be really good as well, but I often find that the fortune tokens for the heroes are not worth the reduction in healing it gives. Still, if a hero gets off by himself, I could see its worth. Bolt from the Blue is not worth it. If it was an auto hit then it would be a no-brainer, but since the heroes get the fortune token regardless of if you get the range or not, a single blue-yellow hit is not worth it to me. Summon Merrick - No, don't. Mystic Might, Cabal, and Thaumaturgy - Meh, you have to stack your OL deck with "magic" cards to really take advantage of these, and that is not a deck I am big on running. Although I am currently running an "infector" deck with Basic I, so maybe it will change my mind on these. Overall I highly recommend this deck. It tends to be a very low threat requiring deck and gives the OL some nice abilities without feeling cheap like Baron Zach's deck.

While I actually appreciate bringing up mistakes to our attention, I have to say that your assumption that because we played some rules wrong, we must have messed up innumerable more incredibly insulting. While some people on this forum have been fantastic and discussed good points (whitewing and zooeyglass in particular), jnad83, you have been shockingly unhelpful to a new community member. Whitewing's argument on the use of "danger sense" was a excellent example of a good argument. He postulated that our group had to decide for ourselves if the OL wanted to be able to continue using these strategies that wildlander needed the use of this skill. Since then we have allowed the skill back in and it has increased the tactical nature of the game tremendously as the wildlander now has to balance action use of danger sense against search deck running. Zooeyglass pointed out politely that we were playing rules incorrectly. Any way the thread is pretty much dead, but I wanted to thank everyone that took time to help us understand the route our game took.

Yes we read both encounters before hand, as I said, this is not our first time through the game. We were both familar with the objectives. My point was the victory in the first mission had no bearing what so ever on the ability to win mission two. My issue was that the victory conditions and their effects should have read: heroes win - nothing happens, OL wins - heroes autolose, heroes win but stop to do anything other than run - heroes autolose. To me this is a bad mission design. Victory in encounter 1 should mean something, and it should be more than not autolosing the next mission. But that was incidental...he had no idea runeplate was up for grabs. If it had been his strategy I would have said it was a good move, but it was his consolation prize. So we actually have a gentlemen's agreement not to take danger sense. Destroying the OL's hand seemed too spiteful. We are both experienced wargamers, having played a variety of different board and tabletop games over the past 25 years. We switch back and forth between playing the OL and the heroes and often times discuss the best moves for whomever with each other. In fact the turn 1 victory was in large part due to my friends input on monster placement on the bridge. I am basically hearing from the community that the mission is designed in a way that nearly guarentees a win for the OL in encounter 2 with the party listed. So now let me ask you this, what house rules have people come up with that they feel improves this aspect of the game. Please don't bother with "it is just the way the game is designed, go play a different one if you don't like it". As I mentioned before we are happy to house rule things and the goal is to ensure a competitive experience in all missions.

Hey Everyone, Over the weekend my buddy and I played Death on the Wing for the first time. As background, we have already finished playing through base campaign with Alaric (disciple), Syndrel (berserker), Jain (thief), and Lorec (runemaster). This time we thought we'd try the other characters and the other classes, we also got LoR and Trollfens and are using their mechanics as well. Death of the Wing was the third quest we played in this campaign. Heros won Intro, lost Castle Danerion (when an ettin double double dashed, double furied to open a hole, and double threw Sir P into a gang pile of Volcrux Reavers) , and ended up losing Death on the Wing. Secret room has come up in every mission, and treasure chest came up in all three as well. Castle Danerion was a tight game and lots of fun, with the OL pulling out a victory on the last turn before the heroes won. Death on the Wing was a different story altogether.The characters, their equipment, and skills for Death on the Wing are below. Widow (necromancer): immolation rune, corpse explosion, fury of undeath Tomble (wildlander): accurate, eagle eyes, bow of bone, leather armor Grisban (knight): oath of honor, advance, steel broadsword, wooden shield, chainmail Ashrian (spirtseeker): healing rain, belt of alchemy, shield of light, leather armor, iron spear The OL had: Dark Power Plot Deck (Lord Merrick Farrow's): Dark pact, Dark mark, Grasping Grave, Masques (0 threat) Basic 1 with two Web Traps added. Encounter 1: open group - Arachyura Arachyura are ridiculous. Their damage output for an act one monster is off the charts. First search token was Overgrown Chasm, which was too good to pass up. Heroes dove in and two turns later got Runeplate (went to Widow). Between the secret room detour, the boulders, and the spiders stalling, the heroes got through only after the entire OL deck had been drawn. Heroes win. Encounter 2: open group - Merriods, placed master by entrance to right guard room, minion by the left. Hero turn 1 - Elemental minion on the bridge is killed, 6 hearts put onto Belthir. All heroes still on bridge. OL turn 1 - Elemental minion reinforces behind heroes uses water and earth to immobilize tomble and widow. Elemental master uses fire to put a couple hearts on grisban and ashrian, then earth and immobilizes ashrian. Merriod master gets frenzied, moves into the guard room, flails to hit both guards, OL rolls 5 hearts, drops dark might for a surge to seven hearts. One guard dies, the other gets 5 hearts. Frenzy attack finishes guard two. Minion Merriod gets frenzied, moves in attacks guard one, OL drops dark might, critical blow which kills guard three. Frenzy attack gets a critical on the dice and OL uses dark fortune to maximize wounds. Guard four has 5 hearts on him. Belthir gets dash, dash, attack final guard and OL uses dark fortune to maximize damage. Guard four dies. Heroes do not get turn 2. As you can see, the second mission took more time to set up then to play out. Was there any chance for the heroes? Should we have admitted they had no chance with how long it took them to do the first mission? Is this a flaw in the mission or a design in the mission? Personally I am surprised that neutral characters like the guards do not get more health as the player numbers go up. Four players gives master monsters which insta-gib with ease. Also, for once, it would be nice if the heroes got an actual benifit to winning encounter one, instead of needing to win it to not auto-lose encounter two. It seems like winning encouter one rarely provides a benifit to the heroes. Some asymmetry to the mission design would be a welcome change where the winner gets something they can use in encounter 2. As an aside, I was the OL for this mission. I just don't like that the heroes had no chance unless I purposefully held back in encounter 2.