Star Wars: Armada

Can anyone else hear the theme song starting up? No just me? Okay well anyway, today I will be reviewing Star Wars Armada, a game of tactical fleet combat designed by James Kniffen and Christian t. Petersen and published by Fantasy Flight Games. This is a game originally for 2 players. One player will play as the rebellion and the other will play the galactic empire. Ships and squadrons will combat each other for supremacy of the galaxy. This game is on the longer side. It can typically take around 2+ hours to play. Sit tight and brace yourself for a torrent of turbo lasers and the sound of squadrons whizzing past. 

What’s In The Box?

So let’s dive into what goodies are inside this box. The core set itself, for Star Wars Armada, contains everything you need to get started. This includes 1 prepainted CR90 Corvette, 1 prepainted Nebulon-B frigate, 1 prepainted Victory Class Star Destroyer, 4 squadrons of x-wings, 6 squadrons of tie fighters, 9 dice, and all relevant dials, tokens and cards. You may be thinking wow there’s a lot included in this game. I will reply yes, however this comes at a cost.

The core set retails at a price of £99.99. However, Zatu Games has some irresistible offers so keep your eyes peeled. If the price is still a concerning factor you could go halves with a friend that you would play with!

Gameplay

Now for the good bit, gameplay will take place over six rounds. With one player taking charge as the rebellion and the other playing as the Galactic Empire. There are two ways the play Star Wars Armada. One option is to play with objectives and one option is simply without an objective. Before you begin your game setup includes designing your Fleet. This includes which ships you will take to battle. Also, which squadrons will support in battle, which commander will lead your fleet and what upgrades you will add to your ships to make them even more deadly.

You might be thinking well I want all of the ships and all of the upgrades however this is where you need to carefully design and strategize your ideas as there is a maximum point limit to which you can spend. Playing with just the components in the core set alone is 180 points. In other words, it’s like you have a budget of £180 the bigger the ship, the higher the point cost for example running a CR90 Corvette A will cost 44 points but using a Victory 2 Class Star Destroyer will cost 85 points. The learn to play booklet included in the core set is fantastic, to say the least everything is clearly explained and outlined with pictures and guides to help ease of play along the way. 

So you and your friend have each now designed a fleet to it’s now time to decide whether you’re playing with an objective. If no then you simply work out who spent the least amount of points and they will start the first round. If yes, whoever spent the least amount of point will choose whether to be the first player or second player these are key terms in Armada. Then if they choose to be the first player they will look at and choose one of their opponents objectives. If they decide to be the second player their opponent will choose from one of your objectives. I know what you’re thinking there is a lot of rules to understand and I’m bound to slip up what I say in response is don’t worry we all start somewhere and I’d recommend keeping the rule book at hand to keep as a reference. 

Setting up the games involves clearing out a 3x 3 playing area, choosing/ or not choosing an objective following any setup rules it has, placing obstacles and then deploying your ships and any squadrons you may have. The gameplay in Star Wars Armada is very different from any game I’ve seen. It involves setting dials, these dials have a symbol that then corresponds to a different command.

These dials are stacked on top of each other and the number of dials you need corresponds to the “command” value of your ship. This means larger ships will have more dials which lead to commands at the bottom of the stack will come into play at later stages of the game on the other end of the spectrum small ships have a lower command value meaningless dials and less forward planning. This set up very accurately describes how a small ship can very quickly readjust itself in combat whereas a larger ship will have a time delay and will adjust slowly.

 Each round consists of the following phases. Command phase; where dials are set. Ship phase; where players will alternate in attacking and moving their ships. Squadron phase; where players take turns attacking or moving their squadrons and finally the status phase; where players ready their defence tokens and flip the initiative token. This will then happen every round for 6 rounds. 

In the ship phase on your turn, you can pick one of your own ships that haven’t already activated. You’ll start by flipping over the top dial on your stack and following that command. Or, if you decide you don’t need that command, you can opt to take a token. At a worse effect example,  you can spend points equal to your engineering value. Whereas a token you can points equal to half your engineering value. These tokens can then be saved on a later turn when you need them more.

The ship that you activated can now shoot! Every ship can make a maximum of two shots, they have to be made from different arcs on your ship. On your ship card, you’ll notice squares of different colours; those squares represent dice that your ship will use when making an attack, those dice are in a way meant to represent turrets and guns that can shoot in that direction.

After you’ve finished your attacks you move your ship. To do this you have a speed dial that keeps track of your speed and your ship cards show how hard that ship can turn at any given speed. To move your ship the game includes a “manoeuvre tool” which obeys no laws of physics and is very fun to use. Slotting your ship at the “zero” number you then adjust the joints along with the tool then place your ship at the current speed you’re going along the tool. After you move your ship that ship then can’t activate until the next turn. 

Final Thoughts On Star Wars Armada Core Set

I had high hopes and expectations for this game and yes I must admit I have fallen in love with this game. The components in this game are very well made. They fit the star wars theme very nicely. The pre-paint ships speak for themselves. The detail is incredible and I could quite happily put these away on a display stand for all to enjoy. The artwork that also comes with the game is very nice. It ties the whole game together making it feel thematic. You could easily see this from a distance and be like oh they’re playing a star wars game.

As for gameplay, I thoroughly enjoyed each round planning my moves and surprising my opponent with a risky but high reward move. It’s satisfying rolling big handfuls of dice and seeing the enemy ship is destroyed.

This is a big game on the other hand which may push some buyers away. However, Star Wars Armada is a very memorable game. Once you knuckle down the rules they do tend to stick. There are plenty of how to play videos online.

But again it all comes back to the high cost for the starter and that is a downside. Also to really get the most out of the game it needs more dice as having three of each colour isn’t enough. An X-wing has four blue in its squadron battery however there are ways around this and is not a necessity.

The game itself is similar to battlefleet gothic. If you like that game you should give Star Wars Armada a shot.