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2014/08/14 23:02:16
Subject: FFG's Star Wars Armada - first gameplay pics on page 10 & close ups of the models on page 11
Have we had pictures for a page and no Bothan jokes? You have failed me for the last time!
Many Bothans died to bring us this information.
Sounds like it is pointed a little more mercifully than X-wing. 3 Starters would max your Imperial fleet, while with X-wing it took 4.
Klawz-Ramming is a subset of citrus fruit?
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2014/08/14 23:31:26
Subject: FFG's Star Wars Armada - first gameplay pics on page 10 & close ups of the models on page 11
Way back in the 90s, I was in a WEG Star Wars RPG campaign with some friends, and we managed to get ownership of a Victory II in the course of the game. We named it Red Dwarf (I'd introduced them to the show not long before that), and painted the thing bright red...and so, the first Victory SD that I get my hands on WILL be repainted immediately.
2014/08/15 02:53:57
Subject: FFG's Star Wars Armada - first gameplay pics on page 10 & close ups of the models on page 11
The pics look good, I'm content with the scale even if I don't think it's perfect. Like HBMC I'm mainly concerned about relative power between the units and how accurately they reflect the "real" power of the units. I hope mass squadrons of fighters is a viable gameplay style, I imagine that would be either rebels or Imps with a dedicated carrier like the Carrier Escort, a 500 meter box that can carry up to 72 fighters: (disclaimer model not related to this game)
Jehan-reznor wrote: It would be interesting to see a campaign system that uses armada and x-wing combined.
This is the sort of thing I love to do too ; ) It's also one of the main selling points of the Mantic dungeon bash KS running atm and why I'm hugely getting into their warpath setting as it's got 3 game systems running in it already.
shade1313 wrote: Way back in the 90s, I was in a WEG Star Wars RPG campaign with some friends, and we managed to get ownership of a Victory II in the course of the game. We named it Red Dwarf (I'd introduced them to the show not long before that), and painted the thing bright red...and so, the first Victory SD that I get my hands on WILL be repainted immediately.
I still have the books for that system which I've been flicking through again thanks to this SW: Armada. I GMed a campaign and my players really enjoyed it, best accomplishment being getting a patrol cruiser (iirc) and a clan of Gammoreans to do their bidding. Getting ownership of a SD of any flavour would have been overwhelming but awesome ; ) Was a great game system.
Whilst googling pics I saw this: ... and decided I needed to replicate it ; p (even if those a-wings are somewhat larger than they maybe should be) ; p
This message was edited 6 times. Last update was at 2014/08/15 03:05:58
2014/08/15 05:40:12
Subject: Re:FFG's Star Wars Armada - first gameplay pics on page 10 & close ups of the models on page 11
The pics look good, I'm content with the scale even if I don't think it's perfect. Like HBMC I'm mainly concerned about relative power between the units and how accurately they reflect the "real" power of the units. I hope mass squadrons of fighters is a viable gameplay style, I imagine that would be either rebels or Imps with a dedicated carrier like the Carrier Escort, a 500 meter box that can carry up to 72 fighters:
(disclaimer model not related to this game)
Jehan-reznor wrote: It would be interesting to see a campaign system that uses armada and x-wing combined.
This is the sort of thing I love to do too ; ) It's also one of the main selling points of the Mantic dungeon bash KS running atm and why I'm hugely getting into their warpath setting as it's got 3 game systems running in it already.
shade1313 wrote: Way back in the 90s, I was in a WEG Star Wars RPG campaign with some friends, and we managed to get ownership of a Victory II in the course of the game. We named it Red Dwarf (I'd introduced them to the show not long before that), and painted the thing bright red...and so, the first Victory SD that I get my hands on WILL be repainted immediately.
I still have the books for that system which I've been flicking through again thanks to this SW: Armada. I GMed a campaign and my players really enjoyed it, best accomplishment being getting a patrol cruiser (iirc) and a clan of Gammoreans to do their bidding. Getting ownership of a SD of any flavour would have been overwhelming but awesome ; ) Was a great game system.
Whilst googling pics I saw this:
... and decided I needed to replicate it ; p (even if those a-wings are somewhat larger than they maybe should be) ; p
Best accomplishment for our little group was allowing our ship to be taken into the bay of an Eclipse class SD which was undermanned. Did I mention that we'd swapped out half of our turbolaser batteries for ion cannons? And the glee on our faces when we announced to the GM that, once inside, we fired all ion guns into the interior of that Eclipse, then unleashed several hundred combat droids armed with decksweeper stunners into the interior of the ship?
Fun campaign.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/08/15 06:09:39
2014/08/15 09:04:23
Subject: FFG's Star Wars Armada - first gameplay pics on page 10 & close ups of the models on page 11
So are a pair of Corvettes a match for a Victory I?
I'm no expert on Star Wars but this seems like cause for some concern... Can anyone more knowledgeable weigh in?
Victory is like 5x the size of a corvette and has around 6x the amount of turbolasers plus fighters. Corvettes shouldn't stand a chance.
This. The VS has 3 red and 3 black dice in the front arc. The Corvette only has 3 red in the same arc.
The VSD can only go Speed 2, though, and has no defense tokens.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2014/08/15 12:53:16
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2014/08/15 15:20:11
Subject: FFG's Star Wars Armada - first gameplay pics on page 10 & close ups of the models on page 11
They seem to imply that an ISD would be the size of the table and cost $400 dollars with only certain people being able to afford it. Stopped watching at that point. If they release properly edited footage of their game being demo'd i'll perhaps watch that.
That is nonsense.
If they had taken the time to perhaps scale the game properly they could have easily included things like multiple Star Destroyers in this game.
This is not a Fleet scaled game. We have an idea of what Fleet engagements should look like from Empire & Jedi.
Spoiler:
Spoiler:
If we take out the possibility of the Executor, then the rest of this game should have been very easy to scale. There have been plenty of suggestions in this thread about what to do with the smaller ships like selling the Blockade Runner as multiples of that type of ship in one box.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/08/15 13:25:09
Well for one, that guy was probably talking about the Executor, not an ISD. An Imperial class Star Destroyer is apparently double the size of a victory, very doable at this scale.
The executor would be giant, I forget what the true scale would be, but scaling it down would be easy. These are gaming models, not scale replicas.
The smaller ships will just be blisters, just like the X-Wing stuff. They're the same size and it'll be fine.
edit: Oh wait, did you mean stuff like the YT-1300 and Decimator?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/08/15 13:38:00
How about a summary of all this shed light for those of us who don't have time to watch a 30 minute video?
Thanks.
Aside from the basics I think that are well-covered by the announcement, the defenses aspect was most intriguing to me as the game has no defense dice. Each ship (and elite squadrons, apparently) has defenses to mitigate die rolls in various ways beyond the obvious shields/hull. The VSD has defenses to halve the number of successful hits and two "redirect" tokens that allow it to shunt damage to other arcs. Those can be used each round, and it sounded like if you're willing to lose it for the game you can use it twice in one round. In contrast, the corvettes get 1 redirect and 2 evade tokens, but the evades become less useful as the ranges close. At range 3 they cancel dice, at range 2 they force a die to be re-rolled and at close range they do nothing at all. Additionally the dice have "accurate attack" results that, while not doing direct damage, allow the attacker to negate one type of defense on the target.
This means that a VSD at close range will be rolling six dice in the front arc, and actually has much more impressive shields since it can use it's side arcs as well as taking what would be a ton of damage and cutting it in half. Meanwhile, the corvette with only one redirect and evades is stuck either plinking away at long range or having to close and weakening the defenses it has as the VSD's firepower increases dramatically.
The VSD's command value could be tricky, but it seems like the fact that it's slow (max speed 2) and speed persists from round to round mitigates that somewhat; you can likely focus on shields vs. firepower depending on how you think things will be in 3 turns but if you get caught out by maneuvers you're going to be sorry. I'm not sure two CR90s would be able to go toe-to-toe with a VSD, but I can see them being able to hurt one badly in tandem just by outmaneuvering it. However, I can also see a VSD laying waste to one on a single pass at close range; the dice seem weighted towards hurting things as the VSD at long range can, with luck, put out six hits on its three red dice.
Scoring is also a combination of points destroyed + objectives, and objectives are scaled point-wise to align with ship costs so it's an even system. So it's not always going to be who can win a slugfest, but who can hurt things while completing their mission.
Those are the things that were "new" to me, and they do add another dimension to things.
2014/08/15 13:49:12
Subject: FFG's Star Wars Armada - first gameplay pics on page 10 & close ups of the models on page 11
I can see some reasons for the size and power scale to be what it is. How many Rebel players would really be willing to have accurate scaling if it meant needing $80 worth of small ships to match one $20 VSD?
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2014/08/15 13:49:16
Subject: FFG's Star Wars Armada - first gameplay pics on page 10 & close ups of the models on page 11
Vertrucio wrote: The executor would be giant, I forget what the true scale would be, but scaling it down would be easy. These are gaming models, not scale replicas.
A lot of people on this thread are having a hard time grasping this.
2014/08/15 13:56:56
Subject: FFG's Star Wars Armada - first gameplay pics on page 10 & close ups of the models on page 11
Vertrucio wrote: The executor would be giant, I forget what the true scale would be, but scaling it down would be easy. These are gaming models, not scale replicas.
A lot of people on this thread are having a hard time grasping this.
Why would that be a bad thing? It's pretty difficult to obtain scaled versions of these ships. FFG could have created a product that was marketable to a wider array of buyers than simply those that want to play the game.
It wouldn't have been hard to do and it seems like this game isn't going to represent Star Wars fleet combat appropriately.
At this point FFG might as well have just invented their own ships.
If you have trouble finding a set of models properly scaled to each other, then that is not FFG's mistake or issue. Blame that on Lucasfilm's, now Disney's, poor license availability.
It's also a game based on an entirely fictional universe. Sorry, but "appropriately" is in the eye of the beholder.
That said, the VSD seems like it could definitely blast a CR90 out of the sky in one turn if one ended up in close range in front of it.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/08/15 14:03:19
I'm still excited for this but that's mostly because I see it as a chance to get to play capital ship games again. Something I haven't been able to do with consistancy since BFG's popularity. It might not be everything I want (i.e. 4-8 "Cruisers" w/3-9 "Destroyer/Frigate/LC") but it will let me play small scale fleet games regularly with tournament support if X-wing is anything to go by. And Star Wars will make it instantly popular.
And I don't think it's an actual cash grab. I will have to see what the pricing on the ships is though since I'm still a bit worried based on the starter cost.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/08/15 14:30:41
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2014/08/15 15:29:09
Subject: FFG's Star Wars Armada - first gameplay pics on page 10 & close ups of the models on page 11
Medium of Death, I think you make some valid points but I also think you're representing a "vocal minority" type of position- there are going to be fans that won't be satisfied with anything other than perfect scaling, but given what people who are actually at GenCon have posted, this is going down really well there. I'm personally quite happy with the size of the ships shown- if anything, I think they should be smaller! I would've loved to be able to field more ships (like 6 destroyers rather than 3) in a standard game, but that would also increase the cost of entry to the game. You can always play 600 points instead of 300 to run a true fleet.
2014/08/15 16:45:01
Subject: FFG's Star Wars Armada - first gameplay pics on page 10 & close ups of the models on page 11
Vocal minority sure enough. I'd imagine the collectors market would of been larger though.
This game doesn't seem like it's meant to last.
The bases are particularly troubling to me. I'm not sure why there's so many dials and gubbins involved.
This will be carted out and then disposed of. Definite cash grab.
Just another example of the problems that have plagued Star Wars merchandise before; people are so eager to eat it up that they don't know where to stop or to ask for better.
