Where I am, I think there are the seeds of community but its almost like it needs to crystallize. Need more stores to support/sell Armada. I recently have visited all of the game stores within my city and many if not all of them in neighboring cities and there is always very limited if any Armada stuff even for sale. I think the perception is that because of the cost of the game there is a very high barrier for entry. The core set for x-wing is less than half the core set for Armada, and even though you can have all the ships you might ever need to draw a deep set of lists from in the current meta for LESS than you would need to do the same for X-Wing, as soon as people see the cost of that core set its a big ask without playing the game and seeing that you would like it. If stores were to give people the opportunity to learn and play the game they would see more buy-in but a lot of the store owners I speak to tell me that space constraints are a big problem (6' x 3' table for 2 hours/game compared to how many MTG players they can fit in that same space, it's just Math). My local store that is owned by a big Armada fan doesn't even have the floor space to have 1 Armada game in the store proper, much less an entire tourney. This is why I have taken it on myself to buy a lot of ships for both sides and teach the game to every one of my game playing friends, also reaching out to the local community of stores and players to set up practice games and encourage tournament participation. As soon as a store sees that this game can draw revenue and foot traffic they will stock it and promote it. Yes the delay to wave 2 has hurt (I mean, they should have been in stores what? 2 months ago?) but that can't be helped. If you love the game and want to keep playing it, you have to do something about it!

I painted mine with flat black enamel paint from a model store, the finish is smooth and really recedes when on a dark playmat. Its very noticeable with a clear stand that any reflected light "reads" to the eye as light or white having the opposite effect of what they are going for with the clear (that it isn't there). I did my fighter bases as well but not the fighter stands, i'm not sure why not...

im pretty sure anti-squadron dice POOL operates at short-medium range regardless of color. can anyone confirm?

You are probably right. Even across into Canada I'm not sure how they plan to structure it. I'm incorporated as I currently work as a contractor but I don't see people paying $200-500 to get incorporated for something like this.

Amazing! You are inspiring me to do things I might regret as I clearly do not have your skill level...

Applied! I already evangelize and teach Armada among other games, why not do it for a few bucks?

**** good prices, too bad that the shipping would murder me

All very interesting. Now who wants to come with me to help push that **** cargo ship faster?

Have you considered investing in a laser line projector? Its the best. You can pick one up for like $20 and it allows you to check for LOS and arc without getting hands and rulers in the mix that can nudge and tip things and its way more accurate than a piece of cardboard.

Fantasy Flight does care, because it ruins their perception and advertisement. They set rules, those rules are to be adhered to, because otherwise, it can look very bad for their advertising and public relations. On the case of Lion Rampant, I can tell you, Lion Rampant Cares. They Care, because FFG Cares, and Lion Rampant bends over backwards to retain their EXCLUSIVE right to distribute FFGs products in Canada. That is a very big deal. Ok, so where is all this "in Italics" care and concern? From what I hear from Sullust events around here (if you could find them) is that only one or 2 stores did them "correctly". When does this Hammer come down? How does this hammer come down without negatively affecting good and loyal customers like me that spend thousands on FFG products? How does it happen without shattering any toehold this game has in a region? Why exactly would any store host a tournament where the publisher was so draconian in enforcing the LETTER OF THE LAW that running a tournament is an unnecessary risk? I agree that in the case the OP posted, some action may be justifiably taken, but don't underestimate the damage that can be done by being a hostile supplier, it can FAR outweigh the supposed (and I don't really understand how you come to the conclusion that what my local store did damages the FFG brand in ANY substantial way) damage done by punishing a small store owner for doing what he thought is best for growing the client base for the game (which he does, above and beyond manning a counter and ringing up purchases). You will find smaller stores will just stock product and end participation there, making it much harder for FFG to scale perception and advertisement. Any intelligent company will have a pretty good idea where to draw the line on what damages perception. What the OP describes is an action that can cause grief and consternation in the local community, what mine did only improves it. I can't wait to play in upcoming tournaments at that store, I have already pre-ordered multiple wave 2 ships there and have already recruited 2 of my friends into the game. Reality check. I agree to a certain extent a distributor probably wouldn't completely cut off a store but let's say something only available in limited quantities comes out (say regional kits, or a inventory falls short on a new release, like a new Aces pack) they could preferentially give those to the stores that do follow the rules. It isn't perfect but if inventory does fall short of pre-orders for example the distributor has to decide somehow which stores get their's first or how much they get, and this seems as like as good of way as any to "punish" the rule breakers. Sure, but again, that punishes the players. Especially in a situation like mine where there are only 2 small stores, I'm not even sure the other one carries Armada...so if my store "breaks a rule" I have to drive 45 minutes to buy something without having to eat shipping? I don't think FFG wants that. In any case, I imagine rule breaking like this is what they call "complaint driven enforcement" in other words, no one has the bandwidth to monitor all the stores that run these things so only things like what the OP posted that antagonize a bunch of players and lead to a complaint being registered will lead to a response of any sort (still struggle to understand what the response would be that doesn't ultimately penalize the players, the only thing that comes to mind is if the prizes are provided at a discount, the retailer be made to pay full price for not correctly using them). I think FFG already has a pretty hard time handling the logistics of actually designing, manufacturing and producing their products. I don't think they want to be nannies to naughty stores too.

well, I was looking for an excuse to buy another gladiator and another guppy before wave 2 came out lol

My scene is virtually non-existent. My first tournament experience was a poorly attended Massing at Sullust event put on by 1 of only 2 local game stores. From what my FLGS tells me there is a base of customers that buy it but not many at the point at or with the interest in playing strangers. Most of the "scene" is focused in Toronto with several medium to large stores but that is a good hour away for me (can be 2 with traffic), with some activity in Burlington (20 mins away) and Mississauga (45 minutes).

Fantasy Flight does care, because it ruins their perception and advertisement. They set rules, those rules are to be adhered to, because otherwise, it can look very bad for their advertising and public relations. On the case of Lion Rampant, I can tell you, Lion Rampant Cares. They Care, because FFG Cares, and Lion Rampant bends over backwards to retain their EXCLUSIVE right to distribute FFGs products in Canada. That is a very big deal. Ok, so where is all this "in Italics" care and concern? From what I hear from Sullust events around here (if you could find them) is that only one or 2 stores did them "correctly". When does this Hammer come down? How does this hammer come down without negatively affecting good and loyal customers like me that spend thousands on FFG products? How does it happen without shattering any toehold this game has in a region? Why exactly would any store host a tournament where the publisher was so draconian in enforcing the LETTER OF THE LAW that running a tournament is an unnecessary risk? I agree that in the case the OP posted, some action may be justifiably taken, but don't underestimate the damage that can be done by being a hostile supplier, it can FAR outweigh the supposed (and I don't really understand how you come to the conclusion that what my local store did damages the FFG brand in ANY substantial way) damage done by punishing a small store owner for doing what he thought is best for growing the client base for the game (which he does, above and beyond manning a counter and ringing up purchases). You will find smaller stores will just stock product and end participation there, making it much harder for FFG to scale perception and advertisement. Any intelligent company will have a pretty good idea where to draw the line on what damages perception. What the OP describes is an action that can cause grief and consternation in the local community, what mine did only improves it. I can't wait to play in upcoming tournaments at that store, I have already pre-ordered multiple wave 2 ships there and have already recruited 2 of my friends into the game. Reality check.

I'm actually dying to try this. How do you guys find it is best to handle activations 2 on one side then 2 on the other? or alternating turns? Are there any imbalance concerns when activating more than 2 players? Is a 6x3 table enough? Do you straight up double the # of rounds? What about objectives?

Yeah, I don't know what the rules are exactly, I just show up to play. I think from a publishers perspective, however, I doubt FFG really cares a lot if the store does this as it is not worth the expense and time to ship the items back, and at the end of the day it's probably the best use that could be made of the items. (store is in Canada and is fairly small, I think that FFG does not deal directly with stores in Canada and ordering of promo kits and all that stuff is done via local distributor Lion Rampant, in other words, another layer of middle man that wouldn't care enough to manage the return of some items.)

My local Sullust event was plagued by a bunch of no-shows. It ended up being 3 people, with the TO/Store owner stepping in as one of the 3 so that we could actually play a round robin. I took first prize and bought 3rd prize off the 3rd place guy while the TO took second prize. I'm not sure what he was supposed to do vis a vis the rules regarding the remaining items, but "paying more to split them" sounds like some serious bull. I know I offered the store owner to buy the remaining prizes at the end of the event and he said it wasn't allowed! He decided to use the remaining prizes in a future tournament to encourage the growth of our local Armada community. Please note that he is a huge Armada fan and I could virtually see him salivating at the possibility of owning the rest of the prizes, and he could also have sold them to me at a profit, but he did neither of those things because he has integrity. The situation you describe sounds like a violation of the rules, if not in letter then in spirit and should be reported.

I used a Boosted comms/hangar/wing commander ISD the other night to push a Rhymer ball for incredible effect

The wait has been killing me ever since Sullust. I have an ISD and an MC-30 and I badly need to balance out my collection... need 2 or 3x raider, 2x MC80, 1 or 2x MC30, 1x ISD and 1 or 2x rogues. My local stores better stock up fast up here in Canada or I'm driving to the **** US and buying them there!

I bought a third VSD when I got my ISD from Sullust. There are probably some pretty fun 3 VSD fleet combos in a 400 point fleet I would love to explore. Monday night I played a 400 point game where I fielded a Rhymer Ball, an ISD Carrier (Wing Commander/Hangar/comms), a demolisher and a fairly Vanilla VSD The rebel player had initiative and chose the mines as the objective, I placed the mines in such a way that the centre would be painful and then stuck my ISD carrier in the corner at speed 1 with the Rhymer ball near by, the Demolisher and VSD took the other channel. The idea was to **** the rebels with either obvious choice. Charge into the rhymer ball sitting by the station trying to get to the ISD and all those tasty points and get flanked, go after the flankers and get pincered by the ISD and harassed by the RB, or go down the middle and eat mines and face both. It worked disgustingly well. Wing commander got abused all to heck as I could set a bunch of concentrate fire and maneuver dials and switch them to Squadron at need meaning the ISD used 4/6 commands as squadron and had concentrate fire at just the right time to nearly one-shot an assault frigate. Activating a Rhymer ball at long distance so they could fire at medium distance was pretty OP and I crawled my ISD up at speed 1. The rebel fielded Luke and Wedge and the Y wing Hero (way too few) and was going for an activation strategy with 3 corvettes, an MC30 and the assault frigate. At the end the Assault frigate, MC30, and a CR90 were cindered with another CR90 limping away half dead and the last CR90 shieldless and damaged running for the edges at full clip. I lost the VSD (was finished by 1 blue die lucky shot right before it activated an engineering dial) the Demolisher was badly damaged but still kicking and the ISD had lost just 1 shield and had 1 damage from the assault frigate suicide ramming it in vain. I guess my long-winded point is that the VSD is still an incredibly viable ship that can be included in a whole bunch of potential scenarios. The Neb B suffers in wave 2 as the case for inclusion over an MC 30 is going to be for a very specialized role or very advanced strategy.

Well, I know those more expensive options are pretty great, but I like to save maximum budget for more ships! I currently use a good sized tackle box I spent a whopping CND $40 on (less than a VSD) In this box I currently comfortably store: Core set including all cards and tokens, extra move tool, extra obstacles, laser line tool Ships: 3 x VSD 3 X Gladiator 1 X ISD 2 X Imperial Squadrons exp 1 X Core set squadrons 4 x CR90 3 x Neb B 1 X MC30 2 X Assault Frig 2 X Rebel Squads 1 X Core set squads All the token types (defense, command, etc.) get their own individual trays which is great for quicker setup. The ships and squads can't stay on their bases but I find that it's sometimes easier to find the right squadron disk if they aren't assembled. There is still room in the case for the wave 2 ships I plan to get. It might get a little crowded if I go for 2x ISD and 2x CR80 but I can make it work if I separate the ship stands from the bases. At the end of the day you save a ton of money and have a lot of room to grow without spending more and I don't see any damage to my ships (they are plastic, not porcelain and the box travels very gently with no shifting). I had to visit like 3 or 4 sores to find the right tackle box but I am very happy with it.