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Great on the token side, but you don't need to put tokens next to the ships in xwing, you can put them on the pilot cards.

I find it increasingly hard to choose between Star Wars Armada and Dropzone Commander for my newest, non-28mm game.

 yakface wrote:
With Armada, they've clearly considered this and I'm happy to say there doesn't seem to be even a SINGLE TOKEN ANYWHERE ON THE GAMING SURFACE! That alone is an epic achievement in my book.

This shocks me, what have they done to the FFG we all know?

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I find it increasingly hard to choose between Star Wars Armada and Dropzone Commander for my newest, non-28mm game.

Do both!

I'm kinda thrilled we have so much choice.

I'm definitely interested in this, though I'll give it some time once released to see where they take it.

Thanks for the review Yakface, was probably going to get this just because of the Star Destroyers, but if they have made a cracking game as well then that just makes the whole thing a no-brain purchase!

yakface, do you foresee any problems arising from the rules encouraging everything to clump up in the middle of the board? I figured using the non-collapsible measuring stick and the fact that you have to access all 4 facings of the ships' bases with your fingers would end up being rather clunky when all the ships mash together to get into the first range band.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
yakface, do you foresee any problems arising from the rules encouraging everything to clump up in the middle of the board? I figured using the non-collapsible measuring stick and the fact that you have to access all 4 facings of the ships' bases with your fingers would end up being rather clunky when all the ships mash together to get into the first range band.

Its a little hard for me to say based on the fact that I only saw 2 turns and I don't know what the standard size of games will be compared to the demo. We played on a 3x6 (two 3x3s next to each other) and there seemed to be a pretty decent amount of space available. Also, the captial ships essentially *have* to move a certain distance each turn based on the speed band they're at, so I think it will be more of the capital ships passsing in the night instead of just clumping up in the middle.

My biggest concern (if it is a concern) are the fact that the fighters *aren't* just glorified tokens...their position on the table totally matters. And given that when you reach down to their base to try to spin their damage dial there is a fair chance at fudging the model a tiny bit, I am concerned that fighter placement might be hard to keep track of in competitive/tournament situations. The guy running the demo suggested moving fighters out of the way temporarily to make it easier to lay down the capital ship measuring tool...I don't know if that's part of the rules or just something he did to make it easier for the demo, but that seems like it has a big potential to screw things up.

They do have a mechanic on how to move ships/fighters you end up on top of after moving that works really well, but I don't know yet if there is anything addressing issues with trying to move completely over other models in the way.

 Killionaire wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I find it increasingly hard to choose between Star Wars Armada and Dropzone Commander for my newest, non-28mm game.

Do both!

I'm kinda thrilled we have so much choice.

Not really a good option, unfortunately. Too many other games already (and a new baby). Both are games I will definitely have to buy both sides of for any likelyhood of playing, which for each of these is about a 200 dollar investment for two 300pt fleets for Armada or two 1500pt forces for DZC.

 Peregrine wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
Not sure about Home One, but the A-wing size actually came from behind the scenes material rather than from the EU.

No, it's definitely EU. The model used in ROTJ clearly shows a tiny ship, the interior shots confirm it, and in previous debates over the size of the FFG model nobody has ever provided a non-EU source for the 9.6m length. And according to http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/RZ-1_A-wing_interceptor nobody knows exactly where the 9.6m number originally came from.

From what I recall it was more a matter of them changing which scale figure they used for the pilot. If they used the same scale figure they'd used with the X-wing and Y-wing models the A-wing would be 9.6m. I have to agree with the EU numbers because a starfighter the size of a compact car and a star destroyer the size of Manhattan is functionally slowed.

RogueRegault wrote:
From what I recall it was more a matter of them changing which scale figure they used for the pilot. If they used the same scale figure they'd used with the X-wing and Y-wing models the A-wing would be 9.6m. I have to agree with the EU numbers because a starfighter the size of a compact car and a star destroyer the size of Manhattan is functionally slowed.

I guess you missed the "enough of the scale debate" mod warning from the previous page, so I'll keep this short and not continue the debate beyond this post: the sizes of the a-wing and Executor are not up for debate. Canon film evidence (the highest form of canon in Star Wars, that trumps all other sources) indisputably shows a tiny a-wing and a 15+ km Executor. This isn't something you can "agree" with, the EU numbers are the equivalent of saying "Biggs didn't die in the trench run" and writing a story about him surviving to blow up the death star instead of Luke. It's nice to speculate about your own personal fanfiction, but it's not canon.

Keeping it even shorter: Lucasfilm has the final say and when consulting FFG on the game they decided that the A-Wing needs to be that big to be of a reasonable size for all the stuff in it and so this is the final canon-size.

@Aegis
Both games are great and Dropfleet coming out near the end of the year does not make the coice easier, but they scratch two quite different itches so better prepare to get them both sooner or later.

I'm seriously considering getting into this.

A bit of big fleet combat, considering all tactics, thinking ahead, analysis.....just like my day job!

On a plus point, it sounds like the scale issue may keep away some of the nerdy pedants who probably wouldn't be fun to play against anyway.

"I think you'll find that an X-Wing isn't structurally capable of making a turn like that" whilst not questioning the whole moving spaceships by utilising a mystical energy field or other such goofery.

alphaecho wrote:
I'm seriously considering getting into this.

A bit of big fleet combat, considering all tactics, thinking ahead, analysis.....just like my day job!

On a plus point, it sounds like the scale issue may keep away some of the nerdy pedants who probably wouldn't be fun to play against anyway.

"I think you'll find that an X-Wing isn't structurally capable of making a turn like that" whilst not questioning the whole moving spaceships by utilising a mystical energy field or other such goofery.

The baseless generalisation is strong with this one.

Scale matters to me because I like the miniatures to look 'right' on the table. So, say, a blockade runner being 40 times bigger than it should be is as much of a distraction as would be a model of the millennium falcon with a square cockpit. The model doesn't accurately represent what it is supposed to be... And having models that represent what they are supposed to be is what, for me, makes miniatures games interesting.

I couldn't care less about physics. It's space opera.

 insaniak wrote:

alphaecho wrote:
I'm seriously considering getting into this.

A bit of big fleet combat, considering all tactics, thinking ahead, analysis.....just like my day job!

On a plus point, it sounds like the scale issue may keep away some of the nerdy pedants who probably wouldn't be fun to play against anyway.

"I think you'll find that an X-Wing isn't structurally capable of making a turn like that" whilst not questioning the whole moving spaceships by utilising a mystical energy field or other such goofery.

The baseless generalisation is strong with this one.

Scale matters to me because I like the miniatures to look 'right' on the table. So, say, a blockade runner being 40 times bigger than it should be is as much of a distraction as would be a model of the millennium falcon with a square cockpit. The model doesn't accurately represent what it is supposed to be... And having models that represent what they are supposed to be is what, for me, makes miniatures games interesting.

I couldn't care less about physics. It's space opera.

OK.. I think it's fair say though that the kind of scale mis-representation in this game matters less than a square Millennium Falcon cockpit to most people!

For those that have played, would it be fair to characterize this as a capital ship skirmish game?

From the sample fleets, it appears it will be less than a dozen models on table at any given time.

Yes it really plays like a capital ship game and not like Attack Wing which did quite a fair job at transfering dogfight-rules to bigger ships, but can´t fully hide the fact that at the core they are still dogfight rules.

 Gitzbitah wrote:
For those that have played, would it be fair to characterize this as a capital ship skirmish game?

From the sample fleets, it appears it will be less than a dozen models on table at any given time.

I would somewhat expect that for tournament play and certainly the early days of Armada that will be exactly the case. For the competitive scene it's more a function of being able to play quickly without abstracting everything to the level of the fighters. For the overall life of the game it's an outgrowth of the fairly limited amount of ships you have to choose from. I have nothing to base this on other than gut reaction, but the objective cards seem likely to be somewhat unwieldy in games of dozens of ships per side.

I'd expect the arc of the game will largely mirror X-Wing's development. A year or two down the road when more waves are released you'll see "Epic" format coming about wherein the game will take on more of a full fleet battle feeling.

 Gitzbitah wrote:
For those that have played, would it be fair to characterize this as a capital ship skirmish game?

From the sample fleets, it appears it will be less than a dozen models on table at any given time.

Yeah, it's a capital skirmish game because all the capital ships move and fire individually. Each fighter stand also technically moves and fires individually as well, but there are rules that allow you activate multiple fighters more or less simultaneously.

Youtube the demos from last years GENCON. They had some good demos there on this. From what I saw, facing definitely mattered. You brought more guns into a firing arc.

The guys at my FLGS told me Friday that it would be in next week.

I suppose if anyone's on the fence about Armada, this video could help...

Sure makes me want to play X-Wing!

That video (and also having watched a demo of the game).. now I have to.

I have seen the "trailer" for that for years, I am really glad to see it kept on going! Even if the Imperials won...

I think it works both as a hype train for Armarda and X-wing as there seems to be enough elements of both.

Cool short film.
And gets me to want to play X-Wing too.

Armada, not so much...
I do like the models, i play X-Wing, but on this scale i do prefer another type of wargame ruleset.

Being the crazy person I am I would totally play Armada if I could have a dozen ISD on the table. I don't think my wallet or the game system will aloow that. :(

M.

Anyone got the starter set yet? I heard it might hit stores this week.

 infinite_array wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
Because scale is for girls.


I wanted to be excited about this game, but the lack of adherance to even a semblance of scale killed it for me.

What is this?

Seriously, what is it?

Especially coming from people who play a game where guns have a lower range than thrown footballs (assuming there's an accurate ground scale).

ANY space combat game should be played with grains of rice (or maybe grains of sand) on a gym floor if you want an accurate scale, otherwise you've already given up.

Hey, real men play games that are perfectly in scale.

Like Battletech.

you owe me a new monitor I just spit taked. battletech's scale can be pretty messy at times.

 Josey4u wrote:
Anyone got the starter set yet? I heard it might hit stores this week.

Miniaturemarket.com got them in yesterday. Still tempted, but think I'll stick to X-wing due to prices.

Hoping to see my shipping notice from MM here in the next day or so and to have it sometime next week.