Well, things happened and I ended up getting back into Armada! For those of you who do not know what this is, it is an epic game of ship battles in the Star Wars universe!
Working on the Friday after Thanksgiving, I knew it would be slow so I brought it into the office to show my coworkers. I hadn’t played in several years and wanted to brush up on the rules myself, so I brought simple loadout ships. On the Rebel side I had a MC80 Assault Cruiser flanked by a Nebulon B and the space chonk. The Empire had the Onager Star Destroyer (I had never used one before and was eager to try it out!) with the classic Victory Class on one flank and an Arquiten on the other.
Squadron wise it was Han Solo and some B Wings verses TIE Interceptors, Defenders, and Phantoms.
The game started with a slow crawl towards each other. Just showing the basics and highly misunderstanding the Onager (corrected off camera). For those that don’t get it, the Onager special ability and some weapon upgrades throw a token at the weapon range (short by default, with long as the weapon I had selected). From there, on your NEXT turn it fires from the marker itself in any direction so long as it is still in the firing arc! This means the long variant can throw red dice up to 6 range increments away! Or all dice at 4, etc.
If I understood that wrong please correct me, I’m getting back into the game.
Han Solo showed his supremacy as always, moving in and getting some early shots on the Defenders.
Second turn saw a lot of Squadron fire happening, mowing down Phantoms and Defenders in a blender of fire! Han Shot first Disney!
Meanwhile, the capitol ships continued to close in on each other. The MC80 whiffed its attack and so did the Onager, making sad cannon noises. Han began slapping the Victory class around.
Getting a tad to close, the MC80 and Onager nearly docked before firing at point blank range. This time, the MC80 whiffed but the Onager did not! Despite the combined fire against it, the Onager was doing rather well while the MC80 left a significant portion of important ship pieces behind.
The MC80 got off one last volley and finally rolled decent, heavily damaging the Onager. In turn, it removed the MC80 from existence! The thicccccc space whale frigate finished off the Onager will a volley from its fore and starboard sections, leveling the field!
At this point in time I started doing something wrong. I forgot that at Speed 0 ships cannot use Defense Tokens. And when playing Mario Kart they temporarily go to 0. Both sides got to cheat but making a mental note for going forward.
A steady barrage of fire from the dorky assault frigate (I’m sorry I never could take this ship seriously, but it has great application) finished off the Arquiten. Meanwhile, the Nebulon and Han continued the slapping, slowly draining the shields of the Victory despite a steady stream of Engineering dials restoring shields.
The circle of death begins! Just out of range, the Rebels avoid a near head on collision as the Nebulon begins picking up speed. Han, in the meantime, kept riding the aft of the Victory and slowly beating it up and more or less ignoring its anti squadron dice.
Some Navigation Tokens later, the rebel ships began to pull in tight and hard, or in the case of the Nebulon, try not to eaten by chomungus. The Victory continued to try and keep Han away, but he always did as much damage as it could regain shields, so it was not getting ahead at all!
Both ships swooped in, but the Nebulon was out of range. The Assault Frigate joined fire with the Falcon and the inevitable doom began to set in!
Unsurprisingly, the Victory succumbed to its damage. Surprisingly, it was the Nebulon who stole the kill dealing a whopping 4 damage in a single long volley! With zero defense tokens left, it perished in a ball of fire before Han could claim the kill.
This was a simple match to get me brushed back up on the rules and show off the core mechanics of the game. Hope you enjoyed it!
Intergalactic Empire Productions 