Weekly Armada #1

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After a hiatus from blogging (and everything else enjoyable in life) because of school related activities, Matt and I finally had a chance to get back to Armada this past weekend. After throwing his wife Sierra a surprise birthday party, we broke out Armada for a quick round. We haven’t played since the last blog post, but we quickly got back into the swing of things.

To make the round a bit more dynamic, we chose to only use 150 points worth of ships, which left me with a Nebulon Frigate, a Blockade Runner, and 4 X-Wing squadrons. Matt played as the Imperials, so I faced a Victory Class Star Destroyer and a crap ton of TIE fighters, Bombers, and Interceptors.

I was also able to use several asteroids as cover as I moved my ships up in a single force. After several turns I was able to maneuver the Blockade Runner around the map, running at speed 4. That allowed me to slip directly past his Destroyer unscathed. We eventually agreed that Matt would forfeit if I took out all of his fighters (despite going over 6 rounds).

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I was eventually able to engage the Victory Star Destroyer from behind (oh baby), but only after destroying all of the TIEs he had left. That meant for the first time in our campaign I was able to win, but only by his forfeiture. He also ran directly into some debris in front of him during this turn, so he must be taking after me somehow when I play…I was lucky enough to not lose a single ship during this game though, which was really nice.

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Overall we both can’t wait for the wave 2 ships to be released, as I have them on pre-order. I also ended up ordering another core set, so both sides will have more ships to chose from when we play. Hopefully we can play a bit more often because we both seem to really enjoy this game.

Friday Night Armada

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As a kid, I had always really liked the idea of huge battles. Big warships pulling up along side each other, cannons firing, and smaller engagements in the mix of it all. The idea of massive battles has always fascinated me. The idea of strategy, flanking maneuvers, and strong arming a victory, it all was, and continues to be something I find pretty awesome.

Recently I got Star Wars Armada, a tabletop game that allows two players to do the above, just on a smaller (and much safer) scale. Originally, I had wanted this game just for the miniatures. It’s really the first time that anyone has made nice scaled miniatures of these ships, so I wanted them for the displayability. The only thing holding me back was the fact I had bought WOTC’s StarShip Battles line like 10 years ago, and didn’t want to purchase the same ships twice, even though these Armada ship are much nicer.

I hadn’t really considering playing the game, until my friend Matt showed interest in it as well. Neither of us have ever played a tabletop game, so we were both curious about how fun it would be. After receiving the game in the mail (thanks to my mom), we busted it out at my apartment and played our first round together. I think it took about 3 hours and 45 minutes total, as we started to learn how to play, and discover just how careful we had to be with ship and fighter movements. I played as the Empire, and Matt was the rebels.

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That next Friday we played again, but changed venues and sides. The match went surprisingly fast, no less than an hour. Of course, I knew as soon as I started that I wouldn’t last long. I had started a maneuver (manure) that had taken any advantage I had away, starting my ships too close together, miscalculating distance,etc. Trapped, my three Rebel ships collided with other ships, debris, or were flat out destroyed before I could even make a dent in the enemy Star Destroyers. My fighters turned tail, but were cornered and destroyed before they could make any sort of counter attack.

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Overall, Matt and I are super excited about the game, and hope to continue to play it every Friday night. One element I really need to work on is my strategy, as I tend to over think my ship movements. I’m pretty sure Matt is golden, because he won both of our practice rounds. One thing that we do plan to start is keeping a record of ship loses, and to begin a psuedo-campaign, to give the game some sort of story. Instead of just playing these small skirmishes, we’d have some sort of overall goal to look forward to: galaxy wide war.