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Star Wars: Armada...or why I'm going to be poor forever.

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I think FFG have finally gone and done it.

This game looks awesome.

Now you guys must know by now that I love sci-fi minis and especially spaceships and that I'm pretty picky when it comes to licenced stuff and accuracy but honestly these look amazing. So here's a rambling review of things I'm reading off the FFG announcement as I go and kinda inferring by looking at the pictures a lot.

By the looks of it what you get in the starter set is a CR90 corvette and Nebulon-B frigate for the Rebels and a Victory-class Star Destroyer for the Imperials and 'ten squadrons' of fighters in total. Plus a bunch of cardboard tokens and reference cards and the pretty awesome ship steering template thing. The thing that has me the most excited: they look sorta to scale with each other. The Victory-class hull is about three times as long as the Nebulon-B, though the CR-90 should be smaller (only about half the length of the Nebulon-B). But this is a lot better than most companies have managed.

Now I think these are interesting choices. The CR90 and Nebulon-B are obviously very iconic rebel ships. The CR90 being the first thing you see in ANH and the Nebulon-B being pretty much the last thing you see in ESB. The Victory-class was never in the films, but has been in the expanded universe (EU from now on) for a very long time. Obviously looks similar to the Imperial-class but is about half the size and considerably weaker so this could actually be a vaguely fair fight.

I particularly like the inclusion of the Nebulon-B as an early ship as if you know your EU the Nebulon-B is actually a ship the Rebels captured from the Imperials so the Empire should be able to use them too. In fact its primary role is as a light carrier for sub-lightspeed fighters like TIEs.

The inclusion of ten squadrons of fighters is a little odd, the Victory should only be able to launch two squadrons of TIE fighters which require a capital ship to actually get to a fight unlike the Rebel's X-wings. It also looks like the TIEs are a lot weaker, with only 3 hit points to the X-wing's 5.

The turn sequence seems very similar to their X-wing game which I know most people here are familiar with. Briefly summerised:
Command Phase: Each capital ship picks either to: maneuver better, call in fighters, repair itself, or shoot better.
Ship Phase: You then do these things based on initiative order. Delaying is possible but makes you worse at the thing you're doing. You get to shoot twice but it has to be from different fire-arcs. If someone is stupid enough to let you get their ship in two arcs at once you can use both too shoot it. Weirdly movement happens AFTER shooting.
Squadron Phase: Fighters do their thing of whizzing around and looking cool.
Status Phase: Extra card based stuff and board keeping it looks like.

Dice! Yup its FFG so that means proprietary dice. This time it seems like you get different kinds of dice for different range bands. Presumably these match up with those on the ship bases:

So the Victory II-class here on the front arc will get three red a long range, three red and three blue at medium range, and then the same at close range as it has no black spots on the base. Seems like a fairly flexible system and easy to keep track of bonus fire ('cos you know there's going to be upgrade cards). Also worth noting the spinny sheild tracker-do-dads on the base, kinda silly but its four less things to write down or have to drag along after the miniature.

It seems like they're trying to make this game very objective based and not just straight up fights which I'm all for.

So yes. Overall very excited so far given then incredibly small amount of information there is to go on. Think more of my old minis are going to have to end up getting sold so I can buy in to this when it happens.

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jogar_t_hutt

Re: Star Wars: Armada...or why I'm going to be poor forever.

just take my money lol

MarkRG

Re: Star Wars: Armada...or why I'm going to be poor forever.

In reply to this post by BobbieTheDamned

When I have the money I will be buying this. Looks great.

-- Mark RG (Game on)

General Biakal

Re: Star Wars: Armada...or why I'm going to be poor forever.

In reply to this post by BobbieTheDamned

I have a large x-wing TMG collection, but to be honest im getting ready to sell. the game has gone weird and its too easy to break. Spam TiE's=win.

but this looks pretty, and I like the style of the models.

"WAAAAGH! VROOM VROOM!!! DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA! Dead gud innit yoof?!" - typical Mekboy sales pitch

BobbieTheDamned

Re: Star Wars: Armada...or why I'm going to be poor forever.

In reply to this post by BobbieTheDamned

Update to those paying attention. Fairly slow video here explaining the basics of the game and also showing the minis on a table:

Have to say that's done nothing but make me want it even more. Nice looking mechanics and it seems to play quite well.

Also all of the rest of the wave 1 ships have been revealed:

For those not so familiar with the EU and not in the mood to squint the ships for the Empire are: Gladiator Star Destroyer, TIE Advanced, TIE Bomber and TIE Interceptor. For the Rebels there's the Assault Frigate Mark II, Y-wings, B-wings, A-wings. Pricing is $29.99 for the Gladiator, $39.99 for the Assault Frigate, and $19.99 for the fighter packs (8 squadrons per pack, which I'm assuming will be a mix of all types so swapping/buying multiple packs looks like its required to get decent numbers of anything).

Its also been mentioned in another video (which was a little boring) that you'll get 6 TIE fighter squadrons and 4 X-wing squadrons in the starter box.

Hull damage and critical damage kinda works like x-wing with cards but you can repair damage.

The way objectives works is that there are three types of objective (attack, defence and maneuver), each player must pick one of each. The player who has initiative has to pick their objective from the opposing players hand of cards.

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