Since it’s release, I've managed to
play 3 games of the new Star Wars -
Armada game. What follows are the first impressions of a long time 40K gamer
and occasional X-Wing player on the latest offering from Fantasy Flight Games.
First thought? It feels like a $50
game in a $100.
To begin, what I like about it:
The Commands system for the
capital ships. It forces you to think ahead, plan for expected
engagements, and use your resources as a fleet, vice individual ships.
The Engineering Commands’ ability to automatically repair your ships
without having to resort to dice tests is an elegant mechanic – its limited to
set levels of repair by ship, modifiable to a limited extent, but doesn’t rely
on the vagaries of chance. I think it
neatly captures the realities of trained crew without creating a panacea (*even
the 3 Engineering points of a Star Destroyer for example, cannot outstrip the
potential damage of a single turn’s shooting, but over time, will quickly restore
that vessel to full working order).
Command Tokens: An interesting mechanic that builds a layer of
flexibility into the game without unhinging the Command Dial mechanic. If, for example, you're not 'doing anything'
beyond moving and shooting in a given turn (for example, as you maneuver into
position before you lock S-foils and begin your attack run), you can choose to
convert your Command Dials to tokens to save for a lesser effect in later turns.
This means you can store up multiple bonus effects – and use then burn them all
as needed in subsequent turns (including all at once) to really go over the top
and press your attack or execute a daring maneuver, etc. In particular, this
provides the Imperials a balancing mechanism of sorts against the 'I react
every turn' nature of the smaller, faster ships of the Rebel Fleet. Case
in point, a movement dial converted to a movement token lets you execute
tighter turns, or speed up/down when you might otherwise be focused on shooting
or engineering. This means a more
cumbersome Star Destroyer that needs to turn that extra notch to line up an
attack on a more agile Corvette can do so (with proper planning, which again
speaks to the think ahead nature of the game).
The Defenses mechanisms
allowed in the ships – the combinations of shields, bracing for impact, and
evade – makes for an interesting mechanism that blunts much of the damage a
ship might otherwise suffer. Hence, ships
can be more survivable than you’d expect – yet still very vulnerable if poorly
maneuvered or confronted with Accuracy dice.
All in all, it’s much cleaner to use than the damage tables of a game
like Battlefleet Gothic (* I’ve no
experience with Firestorm Armada, so
I can’t compare it to that system).
The maneuver system is a little wonky at first with its bendable measurement
stick, clicks, and oddly marked ‘clicks on the dial’ notations on the cards, but
once you've got the hang of it, it's easy and readily captures the feel of
ships trying to move in time and space (*albeit in two dimensions). And
while its much less complex than the maneuver dials of X-Wing, maneuver is very much the heart of the game and the bendable
measuring stick creates an excellent sense of momentum and the challenges of
maneuvering.
And both fleets have their challenges.
Where the Imperials tend to lumber forward, the faster Rebel fleet takes
a good deal of finesse to ensure they go where you need them to be in good
order. In my first game (on a 3x3 space) I promptly ran a Nebulon B off
the board edge – and my opponent did as well with his Star Destroyer. In my third game, my attempt to spread my
fleet and then move quickly to concentrate on my opponent’s left put my Nebulon
B Frigate squarely in his front firing arc, which soon saw it destroyed. By contrast, the Corvettes, particularly when
armed with Maneuver Tokens are very agile and I ran them around quite neatly,
threading through asteroids and other ships quite neatly.
 |
| So close you can hear the rulebook scraping the paint off the starboard side! |
|
|
I also learned a good deal about Ramming,
namely don't try to stop if you can't avoid another ship, because the rules aren’t
written to make you come to a dead stop.
Use your speed tokens to speed up to get clear the following turn,
because you just take damage and then pop out the other side if you can in the
next turn ... so if you're going to overlap, don't try to slow down ... just
put your shoulder into it and press on. Squadrons: Very flexible if properly
resourced (*with the 'Squadrons' Command, they can move AND shoot – otherwise,
it's just one or the other, which leaves the vulnerable); suitably dangerous to
smaller ships; and adequately 'defended' from attacks by virtue of how the dice
roll (i.e.: critical hits and target results don't count as hits, so there's a
lot of room to miss when shooting at them).
 |
| I'll hit the brakes and he'll fly right by ... or not. |
TIE
Fighters in large numbers
are, as I'd expected after my first two games, dangerous. In our third game, my opponent had 11 stands
of them (within the legal 30% limit in Fleet Building Rules for a 300 point
game), and used them quite effectively to strip the shields from my ships and
set up one of my ships for a kill shot. You still need Squadron activation
commands to make the most of them, but properly supported, they've pretty
dangerous. It will be interesting to see
how many ‘Squadron’ points other ships get – whether either fleet will receive
a ‘carrier’ at some point to maximize their use of squadrons.
 |
| Ahhh... I'm
covered in bees! Bees that strip away all my defense mechanism dice and
set me up for a 6 dice shot to the head from the Star Destroyer. |
By contrast, X-Wings make better for
a anti-air defense than any rebel ship is capable of putting out, but at 13
points each they’re not a cost-effective way to defend against 8 point TIE
squadrons. That said, their Bomber Rule
(*which means your critical hits cause damage) is nasty. And while Luke Skywalker costs 20 points for his squadron he rolls a
black die that ignores shields, which means that can will hurt you badly if let
him get into Range 1.
I know there’s an effect on
squadrons related to ‘being engaged’ that we didn’t account for in this first
couple games – but my suspicion is that the Rebels will suffer for that rule,
because they can’t match the Imperials for numbers. So it will be interesting to see what comes
out with the B-Wings and A-Wings. And God help us when the TIE
Interceptors show up.
Grand Moff Tarkin is a helluva
force multiplier. Every turn he can give tokens to your entire fleet.
Expensive in a 2-3 ship fleet at 38 points, but will be well worth it when they
release smaller Imperial ships (i.e.: when you can have more of them that don’t
cost 75pts each).
Initiative really matters: Going
first means that you can set your ships up to shoot and scoot because you fire
first. Especially useful for the more
agile Rebel Fleet. So game your list building to exploit that – don't go for
300pts when 295pts will get you the first turn.
Free
Rules:
FFG has done a great service to the community by putting their rule sets
online. Unlike some other companies (ahem, talking to you, Mr. $80 BRB), FFG understands
that the best way to sell models is to get folks excited about the game.
But all that said, here's what I am
concerned with ...
From a maneuver perspective, the proposed
3x6 space will, I think, restricts the movement of the Star Destroyers.
To remain on the board they really need to slow down and do laps ... which
takes the maneuver out of the game (*and as an occasional X-Wing player, that's been something that I've always considered
essential to the spirit of these games).
This obviously isn't dog fighting on
that scale, but to succeed in the
long run, the game needs to be more than just the Rebels doing laps around the
lumbering Star Destroyers. I suspect that this problem will
resolve itself to some extent with larger fleets and larger playing spaces. And
Speed 0 ships lose all their Defense Mechanics, but it could still be challenging
for the Rebels.
By contrast, in our third game we
tried a 4x5 space and both really enjoyed it for the running room it gave the Rebels,
and the defense in depth space it allowed the Imperials. As always, House Rules have their place.
The Star Destroyer, by virtue of its
heavy armaments, high hull value, and 4 Engineering tokens has the possibility to simply 'castle up' in
the corners or near the board edges, thereby denying the Rebels their
key strength - agility. This means they'll need to slug it out with the
Imperials, which they really can't do
with the current ships available. This will be especially true if the Imperial
player keeps his fleet together where they can support one another.
Building on that, 6 game turns is far too short.
Easily discarded, but I can see it becoming a factor in tournament play. When
we did discard it, we had a lot more fun. But without it, I am not sure the
Rebels can really go toe to toe.
Multiple
ships and a bigger play space make for more fun. I eventually got behind one of the Star
Destroyers - and was never really going to be out of position at that point --
but my opponent would have been able to bring his other ship to bear to block
the move if we'd gone into more turns. Regardless, that wouldn't have
been possible on the more constrained 6x3. (*as I said, we played on a 4x5
space). All in all, though, I think the standard 6x4 mats we all own for
games like 40K will be pretty great for playing on, even if they're not
regulation standard.
The Maneuver Tool feels cheap
... expect it to break, and expect to buy an after-market model one too.
So
do the Fighter Squadrons. Set against the high quality of the capital
ships, the fighters that sit atop the squadron stands look like they come from
the travel edition of Risk.
Which brings us to what I see as the critical fault with the game – Star
Wars Armada is too expensive.
At $100 for the starter set (or $75 on sites like Warstore and Amazon) it's
double or triple what the X-Wing
starter set was - but doesn't give you any more game. It's still just
three capital ships – which is what the game is really about. The ample
supply of squadrons is nice, but they typically won't carry the day in terms of
who actually wins the game.
Most of us purchased multiple copies of the X-Wing
starter set to build out our core sets. At $100, however, this isn't
really much of an option – particularly for the Rebel faction, where those two
extra little capital ships don’t buy you any significant increases in firepower
or survivability. It’s not until you're
down into the $60 price range offered by Walmart.com that you stop feeling like
getting a proton torpedo in your exhaust port.
And even then that's still double the cost of the X-Wing starter set online.
So what, right? It’s still a fun
game, right?
Of course it is.
But …
… this means that would-be players will need to be far more selective in which
of the Wave 2, Wave 3, etc ships of the subsequent releases they buy to build out
their fleets. And at $30 and up for the bigger ships, buying those ships
will be a more selective prospect than doing so under the price points of the the
X-Wing fleet expansion model. With
Armada, those high prices make much
harder to justify just picking up an extra ship to see what cards it might
contain.
Of course, there will be cheaper online
options for these ships; you can already see some of those in the pre-orders
available (*just look at Walmart's $60 offering, for example).
The high costs of buying the new
ships will dampen the 'impulse buy at the FLGS' factor. Armada’s ships are two to three times more
expensive than those used in X-Wing …
and you’re still just getting a tiny little piece of painted plastic and a few
cards.
It’s literally the same amount of
treat in a bigger box.
Rather than make the ships cost
fewer points each to sell more of them and set up larger fleet battles, FFG is
instead pursuing a pricing model that recalls GW’s approach – mark up a few key
elite items and let the consumer deal with the consequences.
It’s unclear, for example, what’s
gained by having a 300pt game have just 3 Star Destroyer at a minimum of 77pts /$40
each, vice larger fleet actions of 9 Star Destroyers costing 25pts / $15 each. The
latter would cleave more to the BFG / Firestorm model of true fleet actions …
whereas Armada looks to be more about
a few great ships slugging it out amidst swarms of fighters.
This makes me think it’d be better to
wait to see if you really need that
ship … and then get it online because it’s just too expensive not to. Why, for example, give your FLGS (or Barnes
and Noble, that great stalwart of propagating X-Wing) $40 of your money for a new Star Destroyer when you can get
it for $25 online?
And that’s a disservice to the very
people that helped make X-Wing so popular.
All this said, these are my thoughts after just three games. I'm still
intrigued to see what new ships, different fleets, different play spaces, and
modification cards will bring to the game. It's not X-Wing, and it's not
going to be.
But it's definitely overpriced.
.JPG)
