Top 5 Reasons Star Wars Armada Deserves Your Attention

The test monkeys discover the hidden camera.

For years and years, Star Wars had been kind of a stale thing.  Like, since BEFORE the prequels, for those of you that remember.  It was X-Wing that got me back on the Star Wars hype train, and the Force Awakens trailer made me cry.  Before I saw it, of course.

Either way, I've always been a Star Wars fan, and I finally just accepted it a few years ago.  I finally saw how hard it was to have lived with that denial all my life.  My 'movie' was Return of the Jedi, and I was four years old when it came out.  I remember watching it on laserdisc in 1984 or something.  It made an impression, and I've had a lightsaber in my heart almost my entire life.  Figuratively.


#5 - Star Wars & FFG

Fantasy Flight Games must be commended on their Star Wars lines.  They dovetail nicely with each other and hit all the major beats - ship to ship combat at fighter and fleet scales, several RPG's covering facets of the universe, card games, board games and an upcoming miniatures wargame, Star Wars: Legion.

You can wage war at every level in the same universe, a feat that has only been matched by a few franchises.  Star Wars has never matched this impetus before, but now it's a cornerstone (or should be) of every gaming club.  Kudos to FFG, you knocked it out of the park.

#4 - More Complex Mechanics

Veteran gamers will enjoy the depth of the system, while simultaneously realizing it's not as complex as some other systems.  The mechanics are MORE complex, than say X-Wing, but not TOO complex to put off newcomers.  This gives Armada an appeal to a wider audience that goes beyond the Star Wars branding.

#3 - It's a Great Introduction to the Space Navy

Fleet-scale games require a little more imagination to get the most out of.  A lot of the movement and positioning has to be abstracted because of the sheer scale involved in the simulation, which is usually measured in kilometers.  To simulate the sluggishness of some ships, and the dependency upon support and distance, some different mechanics are utilized that might trip up some casual or X-Wing newcomers.  However, if you are introducing new players to different types of games all the time, Armada provides a quick jump off point to fleet scale space battles for newbies.  Everyone knows what a Star Destroyer is, and even if they aren't familiar with some of the ships or terminology if they are a budding gamer they'll quickly grasp the conventions and be able to take them along as they explore more complex rulesets.

#2 - Models & Dice

The models rock, end of story.  They are well-painted right out of the box, and you can have a ship ready to fight in a few minutes after purchasing it.  That alone is worth the price of admission.

However, the dice have got to be a selling point as well.  Many of us old-timers balked at having to use these colorful dice with strange symbols at first, but the novelty of them has grown on me.  These dice simplify the mechanics and playability by removing a lot of the math traditionally associated with combat calculations.

I think the dice mechanics, across all of FFG's Star Wars line, are the single most important thing that allows the games to attract and retain 'new' players, and by 'new' I mean brand new gamers.  The dice may have been off-putting at first, but they are colorful moving pieces whose symbols are easy to read and understand without any involved calculus or trigonometry.  Not that math is a bad thing.

#1 - Relative Snootiness

Yes.  It's a well known fact that if you play both Armada and X-Wing you are allowed to be snooty toward "X-Wing Only" plebes.

Top 5 Reasons X-Wing is Still Cool

So, I'm into Star Wars X-Wing.

Pish-posh, how does this belong on a miniatures wargames blog?  Well, the answer is self-evident - it's a wargame, with miniatures.  Realism aside.  We ARE playing Star Wars, after all.

Anyway, why should you care?

#5 - It's easy.

Like SO easy.  A few weeks after starting your collection you'll have a nice fleet, star mat, storage, yadda yadda.  Ok, so what I meant was it's easy to PLAY, to TEACH, and most of all to TRANSPORT.  So I guess really that's three reasons, but to me it's all the same.  You're welcome.

Rebels 2017

#4 - The Rebel Fleet

You need more X-Wings, alright cuz?  I always liked X-Wings - they are like, iconic or something.  Dead sexy, they are ... all in a formation and all...

Scum 2017

#3 - The Scum Fleet

Really though, the entire scum fleet is sexier than the X-Wing.  I mean really.  Even that Y-Wing looks cool.  Also - turret squadrons rule.

Imperial 2017

#2 - The Imperial Fleet

Even my cat knows what a TIE fighter is and what it can do.  The quintessential villains of the Rebellion Era, the Galactic Empire is a freakshow of space nazi proportions destined to explode in nearly every game.  Every collection deserves a few handfuls.

#1 - Pew-Pew

By far the best reason to collect and play X-Wing is the fact that you now have a reason to make blaster and spaceship noises, so therefore do not need to make excuses anymore.  To anyone.  "The TIE itself entices one to vocalize."

Top 4 Wargaming Genres

Inspirobot beckons you onward.

I'm keeping it real here.

In reality, you can break down setting genres and all the other stuff, but the truth is I have a lot of rulesets that I shuffle models between.  Sure, I collect a lot of models with specific games in mind, but I like models in general and sometimes get them because I like them.  As the lines between things blur, it's often better to compartmentalize.

For myself, I have organized all the genres, eras, scales and such into four easily discernible categories.  Yes, only four - despite all the little variations that will be contained within them.  This is really just to keep myself sane so I can easily find particular models and rules in my expansive collection, so don't take this as gospel.

It's just how things will be organized here for the time being.

1. Historical
• Any game set in the 19th Century or before, or a facsimile thereof.
2. Modern
• Any game set in the 20th or early 21st Centuries, or a facsimile thereof.
3. Fantasy
• Any historical setting with fantastic elements.
4. Sci-Fi
• Any modern setting with fantastic elements.

Doop!

So, it's a little simplistic but it does the job.  All the games we're going to be playing with fall into one of those categories.  Further, the scale and setting does differentiate each game...but we'll get to that in due course.

Steampunk stuff will usually fall into fantasy, and Cthulhu horror will be Sci-Fi if it's set in the 20th century onward.  Dead Man's Hand is Historical, but Wild West Exodus is Fantasy.  Flames of War is Modern, but Konflikt '47 is Sci-Fi.  It's doesn't have thirty categories of games, but it fits all the subgenres neatly into these categories.  And if we can't have it nice and neat, do we really want it?