Gaming | Star Wars Armada

2024 seems to be the year of variety, what with Mordheim starting up earlier in the year and now Armada. This is the 3rd game that I've played, but the first this year, the first to the full 400 point standard game, the first with the Rebels, the first with upgrades, and the first against an opponent that I'm not related to. Lots of firsts as you can see. 

We could, in fact, repel firepower of that magnitude

As I am what is a considered a total noob, I didn't know much about list building. In the interest of keeping it fluffy and as a way to give me some guide rails, I picked the fleet from my favorite Star Wars move: Return of the Jedi. 

Hoagie into attack position

The fleet was led by Admiral Ackbar, who would naturally be aboard the Home One, an MC-80 Mon Calamari Command Cruiser. Ackbar lets you add 2 red dice to your left and right arcs if you forgo shooting out of the front and rear, so I decided to double down on this. I added a Assault Frigate and MC-30 as they could take good advantage of the ability. I added a few upgrades to Home One that helped even more with red dice. The GR-75 flotilla tagged along with Boosted Comms, which would let me go around sharing it's command tokens with other ships. To round out the theme I had Wedge Antilles in an X-Wing squadron, Lando in the Falcon, and a B-Wing and A-Wing squadron apiece. 

The danger potato

My opponent had a double Victory-class Star Destroyer list with a pair of Arquiten cruisers and a whole host of ties. My opponent decided to forgo upgrades in favor of more ships, so this would be a good comparison of the two list building methods. Then we were off to the races. My opponent set up identical halves of his fleet on each end of the mat, which, seeing as my fleet was built around shooting out of both sides, kinda worked in my advantage. 

The game was a back and forth slugfest. My squadrons struggled to pin down all of the fighters and promptly took a beating, never getting to do much of anything against the enemy ships. The little MC-30 obliterated an Arquitens before trying to run away from the Victory's deadly front arc. On the other side of the map, the Victory and Arquitens were playing bumper cars, which slowed the Victory's arrival into battle. I was able to take advantage of this by killing the other Arquitens with the Assault Frigate, which then got stuck in the front arc of the Victory and died. 

This all gave Home One ample room to move up the middle of the board pumping out a ridiculous amount of red dice. I was able to take out a Victory, and at that point we ran out of rounds. I managed to eke out a win, but if things had gone another round, the Empire's squadrons would have had free reign to terrorize the remaining wounded components of my fleet. 

The game is a blast, with lots of very tactical decisions throughout and having to make your way through prior bad decision making. Hopefully we can scrape together a few people in the local area and we can have a proper league. 

-The Space Dinosaur