Star Wars: Armada

So, there seems to be some activity akin to X-Wing: after Armada got dropped, some community people seem to be preparing to support Armada. Not much to see on the page yet, but a good start I guess.

Popular Star Wars miniature games X-Wing and Armada are coming to an end, it seems. According to a new post from Atomic Mass Games, the developer will no longer be working on the two games. Though just because development is ending doesn’t mean the games are completely dead.

Organized Play and tournaments will still exist. But this seems like a heavy blow for the little miniature fighter game that revolutionized a whole new level of pre-painted miniatures and combat.

...

And it’s a crying shame because X-Wing leveled up the whole pre-painted miniatures game basically out of nowhere when it swooped in with S-Foils locked in attack position.

You would be hard-pressed to find cleaner pre-painted minis. But, alas, it seems they are expensive enough to make. It’s one of those rising problems in the industry. As things get more expensive, studios look for where they can cut costs. Sadly, this probably won’t be the last such occurrence.

So, we just came across this situation that we couldn't really solve. We're playing a round of Armada, with "fire lanes" as the mission:

I'm GAR, the other player imperials. Imperials are fielding an Onager, which gives them an ignition attack with extended range.

Can the imperials claim the fire lanes objective tokens using the Onager's extended range ignition?

So I got a package of Star Wars: Armada stuff. Nice. Still stoked. But part of that delivery were two packs of Hammerheads and they all lack an engine.

Like, look at this still from Rogue One...

... orthis image from the Wookiepedia...

... and compare it to the ship card's artwork...

...or this promotional picture of the Armada models.

Why did they remove an engine? What is going on?

Yeah... This might mean nothing, but it certainly doesn't mean much support for those systems either.

So, having recently gotten Star Wars: Armada, my son got hooked on it about as much as me, so we've been playing a few games over the past two weeks.

Today, we played our first 400 points game. I played Rebels: an mc75 ordnance cruiser, an mc30 scout frigate, a cr90a, a CR90 and the four x wings from the base game. He played Imperials with an ISD1 and carrier upgrades, an Interdictor with the two upgrades that could slow down nearby vessels and that created that speed-zero-zone when placing ships and lots of squadrons.

This was our initial setup. I navigated the cr90s quickly over to the the two mcs, the isd got stuck in the asteroids and the two mcs destroyed the Interdictor in turns three and four.

Here's the deal though... After that happened, I quickly glanced at his cards, figured I had a comfortable lead over him and simply left. Turns four and five were essentially just me stepping on the gas and getting away from his isd.

The whole game felt just so... I dunno, boring? Anticlimatic? It was one turn ramp up, one and a half turns of space battle and finally three and a half turns escaping and no fighting.

Is that really how the game turns out? Are we missing something? Forgetting something?

So... I'm new to this hobby. Not because I enjoy games that are already proclaimed dead by some but because a shop had a sale, the game and its rules seemed great and I just felt like treating myself something nice for Christmas.

However, what seemed really weird to me is how hard it was to get fitting sleeve sheets to store cards in binders, especially for us European A4 binder folks.

So, the odyssey started with Eric Taylor's "peripherals" article on "cannot get your ship out". He recommended regular trading card sheets for squad cards, BCW 8 pocket pages for a combination of ship and upgrade cards and BCW 16 pocket pages for more upgrades.

Now, the issues...

• These are all American style three-hole small sheets and won't fit in European DIN/ISO binders.
• BCW offers larger versions of these with more holes and it seems that even the small ones come with more punch holes to fit European binders, but they're all out of print.
• Similar stuff, like the 32 pocket sheet, is out of print as well.
• Postcard sized pockets (A6) are too big for ship cards and seem like a waste of space.
• Same issue for American mini cards (ie the upgrades) in standard sized pockets.

So... I ordered some sheets for trading cards with the expectation that (as I read somewhere) the tarot sized and mini sized cards were all dropped in favour of standard sized cards, but with the first ship that arrived at my doorstep I got a lot of small upgrade cards, two large ship cards and no standard sized cards, so there I was, again looking for fitting sheets.

Long story short: I haven't found any for individual cards but I'm now quite happy with sleeves that are meant for stamp, coin and cash collectors. Essentially, they just offer long, horizontal pockets which can be loaded from the top, which works well for any number of cards. I got some "Leuchtturm Grande" sheets which have a much better quality than those no name Chinese amazon sheets (at least those that I tried and returned).

Those work beautifully for 5 mini cards or three tarot sized ship cards side-by-side without wasting too much space. The black ones can be loaded from both sides (front and back), so a single sheet gives you space for 40 upgrade cards or 12 ship cards. I also think pulling them out is quite convenient, as the missing vertical separators make it easy to just get into a pocket with your fingers.