With the first wave of Clone Wars expansions out and more coming, there's probably some players either getting into Armada or who have recently got into the game. With that being said, Armada can be a rough game to get into. This is largely because Armada emphasizes the big picture decisions over the small picture ones to a fairly significant degree.
Normally, you start a game by learning the basic mechanics and then start applying them to a gradually larger understanding of how a game resolves...Armada just doesn't let you do that to the same degree. If your big picture decisions ire poor enough, you simply don't get to make meaningful decisions. Sure, you can decide what your Imperial Star Destroyer will shoot at while it's surrounded and taking torpedo volleys to the bridge or you can choose if a ship's maneuver take it into the dead center of nowhere or slightly to the left or right of nowhere as the rest of your fleet gets tabled, but none of those decisions qualify as meaningful.
This is probably the biggest strength and weakness of the game. While it can be hard to learn, its also a core engagement that few other games really offer, or at least I can't name one off the top of my head. This can create situations where, in order to dissect a mistake, you almost have to rewind to turn one. There isn't that more immediate feedback that many other games offer when decisions are correct or incorrect.
Since I've played this game somewhat successfully since launch, here's some of my tips.
Fleet Building
I can't offer specific advice because fleet building is going to be very meta dependent, but there are some general rules.
My first piece of advice, and this applies to any of the Star Wars miniatures games, is that "You aren't done when there are no more upgrades to add, you're done when there are no more to remove". I definitely have a more minimalist approach to upgrades than most, but I found being able to prune down upgrades to only things that you know will get some value in areas that directly contribute to victory versus just filling your upgrade bar because you have unused icons is just a better approach.
For a starting point, I would strongly advise just running no upgrades (outside of the Admiral because they're mandatory) and just adding some in as you need them. If you start with the opposite approach of a pile of upgrades and try to trim them down, you don't have as much to compare them to. Conversely, if you start with nothing and have to remove or downgrade ships or squadrons, you have a good frame of reference for exactly what you're losing for example: A Linked Turbolaser Tower is only 1pt less than a Vulture Droid squadron...is it worth losing a Vulture Droid squadron along with its dice and health for the added consistency on a ship of an LTT? It helps to contextualize better what you're adding and losing.
In terms of squadrons, one day I will release the Squadron Manifesto, but that will be utterly useless to new players as it will just be the insane ramblings about how all over the place the meta has been around the usage of squadrons. How many points you invest in squadrons and what squadrons you invest in is somehow even more of a meta call than the rest of a fleet and has a lot more nuance to it. Generally, you need to figure out what you can effectively coordinate each turn and by "effectively" I mean, "how many ships want to be using squadron commands and what is their squadron value?". I'll go into some sample fleets in a minute, but because squadrons require a squadron command to move and shoot instead of moving or shooting, an uncoordinated squadron is really inefficient and won't get enough value. That being said, you should already have a general idea how heavy you're going in squadrons at the beginning and this, in turn, should at least be informing to some degree what ships you're using. Obviously a dedicated carrier with 3-4 squadrons is not a great investment, but going a full 134 into squadrons with no real buffs is also kind of questionable....and all of this has a giant asterisk that it's really meta dependent *mimes shooting myself*.
Flight of the Intruder was a great movie...okay it wasn't , but I want to quote the main character "Fighter pilots make movies, bomber pilots make history". Destroying enemy squadrons gets you space control and some minor points while destroying enough enemy ships will instantly give you the win. The more you invest in squadrons, the more they have to be capable of bringing down enemy ships on their own and be a viable combat element of your fleet as opposed to simply a support element that facilitates your fleet. There's no magic number and you can use more multi-role squadrons (although those usually have their own issues such as high cost), but just bear in mind that destroying one large base ship like an Imperial Star Destroyer or MC80 is equal in victory points to destroying all enemy squadrons combined.
For a sample fleet:
2016 Atlanta Regionals
2x Assault Frigate MKIIB (one is flagship with Admiral Ackbar)
-XI7 Turbolasers
MC30c Torpedo Frigate
-XI7 Turbolasers
-Ordinance Experts
-Assault Proton Torpedoes
6x YT 2400s
3x Y-Wings
This was built for a meta that was basically full of Gladiator/Radier/Gonzanti spam. High activation, high bid, no squadrons. It has a very high emphasis on long range and reach. Obviously my squadron rating is less than the 9 squadrons I have, but the YT2400s run themselves with rogue and the Y-Wings can either be set in ambush ahead of the rushing close range enemies or coordinated and of course the Ackbar frigates can throw 5 red dice at any range. The MC30 was a reflex (as were the the Y-wings TBH because I figured the Y-Wings would be completely uncontested and they were), but the call with the MC30 was both to use Hyperspace Assault objective (well talk about objectives in a minute) and force shots on something other than the frigates (a Gladiator almost never survives one broadside from that ship). It's not a meta fleet, but it's based around beating the meta and you'll notice the upgrades are incredibly sparse and deliberate with XI7's to focus down a single hull zone and the MC30 to just kill anything that wanders into close range.
Objectives
Objective selection is completely fleet dependent. My best advice for a new player is to always play different objectives. I could try explaining to you why Most Wanted should be borderline unwinnable for first player, but honestly, one game against a half-decent player will clearly and unambiguously show you. Just accept that you will punt a lot of casual games as a learning experience and, these games won't take that long. You'll usually know by turn three or four if a mission was just a massive punt, so feel free to extend hand and reset. Ideally, your stack of three objectives should present a choice to an opponent where they are picking what is less bad. If this is not the case, then your are basically ceding first player for no benefit. This means that objective selection is incredibly important because it's the only thing that counters first move advantage (well, okay, activation control also plays a part).
Sample Objectives:
For the above fleet
Minefields
Hyperspace Assault
Advanced Gunnery
So, Minefields was a meta objective because, again, large activation and very aggressive fleets. It's useful to funnel them into more manageable lanes or at least get some free damage if they try to flank. Hyperspace Assault existed for the same reason. If the MC30 can reliably one-shot anything, having it appear right next to your opponent will make them regret their life choices. Also, the shorter range and more numerous fleets meant they lacked the ability to spread out to avoid the tokens especially because I could just hang back and pelt them with the YT2400s. Advanced Gunnery is a slight risk because they get more points if they kill my Advanced Gunnery Frigate, but an Ackbar and XI7 Assault Frigate can absolutely murder a target at any range, especially the smaller ships in the meta (this is the greediest objective, but most opponents won't pick it). It worked out pretty well.
Setup and Movement
Setup and movement have to go together because Armada has a lot of limitations on movement and only lasts six turns. So, maneuver chart, go!
In X-Wing, you can broadly contextualize the maneuvering possibilities as a fan, but things like boost barrel roll and slam make that less true. In Armada, it really is just a fan. The speed and number of clicks only dedicates how wide or long the fan is, but wont change the general shape. Unlike X-Wing, you also don't just pick whatever speed you want, you set a speed at the start of the game and generally need a Navigation command or token to change it. This means that it is very uncommon for a ship to be able to surprise you with it's maneuvering.
By extension, where you deploy a ship and what speed you deploy it at is a big deal as both you and your opponent should be able to reliably predict where it will be in 3-4 turns (realistically turn 6 if you have enough experience). This is one of the reasons why a game can be lost so early (in addition to fleet-building issues and objectives) is because deploying a ship out of position and/or at the wrong speed can be fatal for that ship meaningfully contributing to the game.
Much like with objectives, you'll probably just have to punt a few games to figrue out exactly how ships move and how to get your firing arcs on targets at the same time. Even if you get all of your ships in one place, if they get there on different turns you're just throwing points at your opponent.
Significantly, you shoot before you move in Armada unlike most other games, so it's important to remember this when you're moving. When you move, you are setting up your shot for next turn, not this one. This also means you shouldn't regularly be racking your brains on what target to shoot because you already selected it in your last activation.
Command Stacks
Anybody still reading is like "What the hell, we're not even to first turn. I came here for advice, not a dissertation". Realistically, though, the big picture pre-turn one stuff really does have the greatest impact, so it's worth the most focus.
Obviously this is more for bigger ships with larger command values. If you have a command value of 3, you are literally setting command dials for half the game when you deploy it. Referencing back to movement and setup though, it's not actually that hard to predict where both fleets will be in 3 turns. The biggest questions on command stacks really are about when/if you'll need to change speed. This tends to be the biggest grumble for carriers specifically because they obviously want to be coordinating squadrons.
This is where you start asking the serious questions about what tokens to "bank" because you often won't need your commands on the first 2 turns or so. Engineering and Navigation tend to be the most impactful (changing speed is important and moving shields can be done very easily for low engineering points), but that's not universal. Also, spamming navigate commands early, even though it won't let you bank tokens, will give you more versatility for positioning and thus can be viable depending on your fleet (MC30s in particular gain a lot from being able to move at speed 4 with extra clicks).
Conclusion
There isn't much reason for me to go too in depth in things like shooting and defense token spending. If you aren't getting the above factors right, you likely won't be making meaningful decisions in those areas and if you are getting the above factors correct, a lot of the decisions on shooting and defense tokens are simple calculations. I'd liken a game of Armada creating and running a program. By the time you're running the program, you're just looking to see what mistakes you made and will need to be fixed next time.
This is also while I find Armada weirdly relaxing in general. You get to watch your well-made plan come to fruition optionally taunting your opponent about how they've fallen into your trap..I'm joking, it's not optional. Or, alternatively, realizing the absolute train wreck you set in motion and trying to steer it away from total disaster into merely acceptable disaster.
...that fleet actually worked somehow
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