Hastatior
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Posts posted by Hastatior
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Well said, DUR.
I think this is actually one of the key lessons to learn about Armada.
It's funny cause during a match of our CC campaign where I started with only 3 activations, I knew my opponent had likely lost the game the second he placed his first ship. Yeah, it can be that important.
While training up my CC partner who is a veteran war gamer but new to Armada, all I had to say to him was "before you place that ship, where is it going to be on turn 3 and why?" and he was instantly a better player.
The problem happens when you get players that have exquisite deployment and maneuver skills AND they bring a high activation fleet. It then becomes exceedingly difficult to have a level playing field with fewer, heavier ships. Ergo, all other things being equal, high activations are a clear advantage in the game due to sheer mechanics. Personally I wish this wasn't true, and I feel a simple rule that game a lower activation player "passes" equal to the higher players activation count minus his activation count minus two would still keep some of the MSU advantage without devaluing large ship lists in equal-skill competition.
For example a 7 activation MSU list versus a dual ISD list (7-2-2) the ISD list would have 3 "Passes". MSU still has significant activation advantage without it being a joke where one player can walk away and have a sandwich after the first 4 activations.
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Just recently finished a CC campaign, we played 4 players.
We divided the players up very evenly with regards to experience and skill level, however, it was a bloodbath from the get-go.
Having never played the campaign we didn't realize that assaulting a base can be a painful proposition left to when you maybe have an enemy on the ropes, so when I assaulted a likely rebel "presence" and found out that my opponent (we were both the more experienced players) was going to add 4 Y-wings to his bomber fleet, against my modest squadron complement I was ready to take some beatings.
Unfortunately for him I deployed better, maneuvered like a boss (front-bumped his pickle with my ISD1) and won the match only losing Demo and 1 squadron where he ended up tabled (he could have potentially retreated his MC80 before it died but he didn't think of it since it was our first CC match). My partner also won (but by a closer margin).
Now, the problem became that the rebels had lost like 40 resource points on the very first turn. To compound this, they lost their attack on the neutral system meaning they couldn't replace the loss. At the same time the empire got to build a base there and gained those same resources! Double jeopardy. I think this is a major problem (considering house ruling that you can't build a base over a destroyed base until a full turn passes, pacifying the locals or whatever). Rebels were at an effective 80 point disadvantage. It turns out that its impossible to make up that kind of a blow and there is nothing in the campaign mechanics that will help you.
3rd round was the final battle (we called it to put them out of their misery since they lost both second round battles as well). Their 840 points went up against our 1000 points and the outcome was a foregone conclusion.In summary, we will have to look at a bunch of different house rules to prevent or mitigate blowouts.
Our next run through we might implement the base build delay rule
we might also implement a rule whereby the team that is currently winning has to pay a token repair cost to remove damage cards from ships that survive (we did it for everyone last time and it certainly added a dimension of consideration since taking 13 damage cards on a Motti ISD was no longer "free" and therefore not a complete waste of time and effort for the opponents, it still didn't make enough difference)
Considering some other modifications that impact only the team that is currently losing on VPs, like for example having the option to retire a fleet yielding 2 VPs to field a fresh 500pt fleet (sounds harsh to give up 2, but those extra 100 pts can make a huge difference). Might also introduce other mechanics like the ability to trade VPs for resource injections (1 VP for X resources after a bad round can save a snowball of many VPs in the next round)Will keep an eye out here for other ideas.
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16 hours ago, Muelmuel said:I still don't understand why rhymer was not restricted to just bombers only
I guess same reason Yavaris wasn't limited.
Rhymer is pretty powerful vs ships but he does nothing for the AS game. Yavaris with a token can end a squadron battle in 1 activation if well leveraged
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On 2/17/2017 at 5:07 PM, pt106 said:1. I think its most likely a Decimator (VT49)
2. Nope, Rhymer extends anti ship range for everyone, including non-bombers
yes, sorry VT49, they both start with Vs!!
and also yes, Rhymer is gravy for all squads. Works amazing with decimators. 2 points cheaper than 3 tie fighters and more durable vs AS despite 1 less hull, a little decent rolling and those things are a serious thorn in the side in a rhymerball
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Jendon is one of my new favourites. All you have to do is lurk at range 2 and he is basically a mini Yavaris with no movement restriction.
You figure "so what" until you get 3 turns of a VCX firing twice in a turn and/or use his relay to tap parts of a rhymerball that were previously just out of reach
Just the other night I had a VCX mercilessly picking away at an MC30 pivoting around Jendon. he just sat there and activated to keep that thing double tapping. no joke the VCX finished the admonition 1 turn before it would have unloaded an expanded launcher double arc on the side of my ISD, thanks to Jendon.
Edit: I should add that Rhymer was facilitating the VCXs range + Jendon. Brilliant combo.
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Thats nice. I can't go into my personal insight into this, but you are confirming is exactly what I just said. The distributor probably dropped the ball in this particular case for whatever reason. Would you expect FFG to randomly print a quantity determined by voodoo magic to cover your store? I won't comment on the Asmodee takeover and its impact, but believe me when I tell you if everyone in the chain does their job FFG does a very good job of supplying OP materials.AFAIK these will be POD (Print On Demand) for a while, but FFG does not and cannot randomly guess how many to print and hope it all turns out OK. This is why YOU are the most important piece of this process. IIRC when the existence of these was made public the pre-order window was still open, so the way it's supposed to work is bottom-up demand generation.
People who play Armada bug their stores and give them an idea of how many they will need, stores bug their suppliers to make sure they get an order in the pre-order window and then suppliers/distributors tell FFG how many they will need to cover store demand and i assume FFG will typically print exactly that many and a few overs just in case. This explains why there is a gap between pre-order window and delivery and why if you miss the window you likely will not get one as none was printed for you!
From the outside looking in it seems "stupid" because somewhere in this chain where you can't see, something broke down and it's frustratingly out of your control, but when it works as intended it works well for everyone.
Sometimes people assume (incorrectly) their store will order these automatically
Sometimes stores forget to put in their orders and miss the window OR simply underestimate the demand!
Sometimes distributors don't think to order a couple extra to cover those stores (can't blame them, cause if no-one wants them they get to eat the cost)
so their numbers aren't counted towards the total and Bobs your uncle.
Thanks for that, but a little info on myself, I have over 20 years of Supply Chain experience, so when I said it was stupid, it was not a fanboy I want my stuff rant, but an educated "it is stupid". Our local store orders all the FFG promo kits for the games they have an active community for (Xwing, Armada, Netrunner and several others) so it was not their doing not ordering. They order through a distributor (like most stores that don't do MM, CSI or Amazon quantities) and the distributor did not order any for their customers. FFG has never had a good track record with their supply chain and the take over of Assmodee has not seemed to improve this very much.
Players (and retailers) of Destiny would disagree strongly with your claim FFG does a good job of providing supply.
Reading comprehension: FAILURE. I said OP materials specifically.
I an not able to comment on the destiny launch but that is 100% off topic. We are discussing OP materials and that is a completely different department and supply mechanism.
Idle speculation, sour grapes and frustrated fans do not facts make.
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So you play with yourself, but you think you need to come on here and tell everyone else how you would "fix" the game?
What monumental conceit.
I think before you decide you have the experience and knowledge to "fix" the rules you should try playing a wide variety of opponents in tournament, casual and campaign play and you will learn why some if not most of your suggestions are both nonsensical and irrelevant.
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AFAIK these will be POD (Print On Demand) for a while, but FFG does not and cannot randomly guess how many to print and hope it all turns out OK. This is why YOU are the most important piece of this process. IIRC when the existence of these was made public the pre-order window was still open, so the way it's supposed to work is bottom-up demand generation.
People who play Armada bug their stores and give them an idea of how many they will need, stores bug their suppliers to make sure they get an order in the pre-order window and then suppliers/distributors tell FFG how many they will need to cover store demand and i assume FFG will typically print exactly that many and a few overs just in case. This explains why there is a gap between pre-order window and delivery and why if you miss the window you likely will not get one as none was printed for you!
From the outside looking in it seems "stupid" because somewhere in this chain where you can't see, something broke down and it's frustratingly out of your control, but when it works as intended it works well for everyone.
Sometimes people assume (incorrectly) their store will order these automatically
Sometimes stores forget to put in their orders and miss the window OR simply underestimate the demand!
Sometimes distributors don't think to order a couple extra to cover those stores (can't blame them, cause if no-one wants them they get to eat the cost)
so their numbers aren't counted towards the total and Bobs your uncle.
Thanks for that, but a little info on myself, I have over 20 years of Supply Chain experience, so when I said it was stupid, it was not a fanboy I want my stuff rant, but an educated "it is stupid". Our local store orders all the FFG promo kits for the games they have an active community for (Xwing, Armada, Netrunner and several others) so it was not their doing not ordering. They order through a distributor (like most stores that don't do MM, CSI or Amazon quantities) and the distributor did not order any for their customers. FFG has never had a good track record with their supply chain and the take over of Assmodee has not seemed to improve this very much.
Thats nice. I can't go into my personal insight into this, but you are confirming is exactly what I just said. The distributor probably dropped the ball in this particular case for whatever reason. Would you expect FFG to randomly print a quantity determined by voodoo magic to cover your store? I won't comment on the Asmodee takeover and its impact, but believe me when I tell you if everyone in the chain does their job FFG does a very good job of supplying OP materials.
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AFAIK these will be POD (Print On Demand) for a while, but FFG does not and cannot randomly guess how many to print and hope it all turns out OK. This is why YOU are the most important piece of this process. IIRC when the existence of these was made public the pre-order window was still open, so the way it's supposed to work is bottom-up demand generation.
People who play Armada bug their stores and give them an idea of how many they will need, stores bug their suppliers to make sure they get an order in the pre-order window and then suppliers/distributors tell FFG how many they will need to cover store demand and i assume FFG will typically print exactly that many and a few overs just in case. This explains why there is a gap between pre-order window and delivery and why if you miss the window you likely will not get one as none was printed for you!
From the outside looking in it seems "stupid" because somewhere in this chain where you can't see, something broke down and it's frustratingly out of your control, but when it works as intended it works well for everyone.
Sometimes people assume (incorrectly) their store will order these automatically
Sometimes stores forget to put in their orders and miss the window OR simply underestimate the demand!
Sometimes distributors don't think to order a couple extra to cover those stores (can't blame them, cause if no-one wants them they get to eat the cost)
so their numbers aren't counted towards the total and Bobs your uncle.
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Just to prevent people buying up all the stock to collect ship cards?If they did new ship variants they would have to be unique variants.
Imo it would be a good place for new titles.
I've been thinking a combo - new titles that have unique ship cards. Imagine a different Nebulon-B shield and armament setup, but it's unique to a specific title.
The Title just has to say:
"Increase your Maximum Side shields by 1 (to 2). Decrease your Front Battery Armament by "RED"... Modification" X Points.
No ship card required
Because we already modify Tokens and Cards through Upgrades (such as Enhanced Armament)
I mean, don't get me wrong.... Variant ships cards would no doubt look cool... But we might as well more Alt-Art things that everyone can use
No, I can see them making a unique ship card and cardboard base, that's within the scope of an all-paper campaign box and a good way to add balanced value to the box for campaign-only and tournament players that is similar to, but different from new fighter bases.
It has to be unique for the reasons of 1) you don't want people feeling they need to gobble up 4 boxes to make some crazy tournament build which results in an unreasonable artificial meta of haves and have nots 2) casual players have a chance to pick it up before the hardcore guys do #1
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If they did new ship variants they would have to be unique variants.
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Man that sucks!
My big problem right now is just stopping myself from buying MORE...
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My immediate thought when I saw this card was not "oh boy I can get bombers to targets"
As has been said before, as an imperial player, your bombers are fast enough.
What I initially envisioned is instant anti-bomber screen on the cheap. Hold 4 basic tie fighters in a heavy hitting, hard charging ISD 1 to be dropped right in a bomber cluster as you plough through it at speed 3 or hold them in reserve against a low-squadron fleet to give 4 extra blue dice when you close to black range and the enemy ship has better things to do with their arcs than AS (e.g. shoot at an ISD1)
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Yeah. A bit of a drama queen here I think.
Official release is the 22nd but I think people should be content to get them on the 23rd. Remember, this is the busiest shipping time of the year and product has to actually GET to stores by being shipped there.
DOMSWAT911 reacted to this -
I would bet my entire Armada collection v.s. any takers $10 (Canadian even) that barring some natural disaster, we will have CC and wave 5 to play with over Christmas.
DONE!
I hope you are right, but if not i will have your Armada collection as a consolation prize!
My only regret is that you were the only taker...
Now, how would you like to pay me the $10
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The 22nd, however, is a Thursday...
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I would bet my entire Armada collection v.s. any takers $10 (Canadian even) that barring some natural disaster, we will have CC and wave 5 to play with over Christmas.
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this Admiral has a problem in that you probably NEED squadron superiority to use him reliably, but that usually means skimping on firepower on actual ships. If you come up against the increasingly common squadron-shredding builds (possibly helped by wave 5 squads) and lose the squadron game you now have a 32 point brick.
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I wouldn't be expecting CC to hit stores any time before mid-December ish.
I feel like they will be timing to ship the X-wing movie tie-in SKUs before the movie hits and likely CC and wave 5 for Armada will be with that shipment.
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At regionals my last opponent ran a Demo, 4 or 5 naked Gozantis 3 tie bombers, Rhymer, Howl and full points of tie fighters (9). he slow rolled and made sure to have squad tokens on the flots and with some expert positioning he was able to use the tie fighters to good effect. I shredded many squadrons but he was careful to distribute his fighters rather than ball them up and used obstruction where possible. Tie fighters have low health but 1 blue die is still only 1 blue die in AS and its a 50% chance to hit. Mostly it was a couple of Mauler procs and my imperial aces that did all the killing.
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I don't even play X-Wing, but this indicates FFG is running out of ideas:
[...]
Seems like they just made this ship as filler:
[...]
That said, I don't play X-Wing. Maybe the ship is going to be good. But from the outside looking in, new X-Wing content looks really boring and bland. Like Sabines Tie or the new Falcon.
I do play X-Wing, and the Quadjumper looks like a fun addition to the game to me.
But, you know...
Yeah but in general, if you talk to your FLGS or even look at how many sold on Amazon or whatever, the newer X-wing stuff simply does not sell like it used to.
X-wing is still good, still has a large player base, but it's only natural that as the inevitable SKU growth gets crazy your new player uptake is going to decrease and maybe not keep up with people leaving the game.
Therefore, having rather obscure ships and adding more and more mechanics (with all the balancing issues it introduces across 10 waves and 3 factions) probably doesn't help the community in general, it almost starts to look like a reach, like they are scraping the bottom of the barrel.
At this point you almost expect them to do some sort of reset or something.
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We were talking about that at regionals on Saturday. The idea that with such a large range of Objectives it becomes possible to fine-tune your fleet to the point where every single objective card you bring with your fleet absolutely sucks for the opponent.
As it is, there is always one that is "less bad" and never "worse than not going first" so going first is the business for (most) strategies and approaches (even if your fleet doesn't NEED to go first, if you get it you don't complain much), with the possibility of every objective option being a kick in the face will people build lists tailor-made to objectives and bid aggressively for second? Will that then allow for people to gamble with first-dependent fleets with unusually low bids?
Will the ships and squadrons from wave 5 fine tune our ability to build for objectives? Or will they be niche and costed a bit wrong like the interdictor?
Will there be an upgrade card that makes the interdictor more appealing?
EXCITING TIMES IN ARMADA LAND BABY!
On deployment, MSU, activation advantage, Large Bases, and meta
in Star Wars: Armada
Posted
I think you aren't understand what I mean by "ALL ELSE" being equal. I mean skill level, experience etc.
It is ABUNDANTLY and mathematically clear that you
A) have a finite number of movements to affect the game state
B) have a finite number of deployments, which is a metagame on its own
C) have a finite number of attacks to make
All of these things automatically are way better with MSU. Add to this the simple mathematical truth that the very way the mechanics of defense tokens work is less effective/impactful v.s. more small attacks than less/bigger attacks means that if you clone a top level player who is equally skilled at both fleet types the very mechanics of the game clearly stack up for MSU. Argue the point all you like, but the proof is in the pudding. If you want to be competitive at a high level and show up with 4 or less activations you better be really really good or really really lucky because you start at a disadvantage.