Star Wars Armada: Get Ready For Bigger & Better Battles
Let take a look at the new rules for playing large fleet battles in Star Wars Armada.
Armada is an amazingly fun and tense game. It’s one of my favorite games currently on the market, but occasionally when playing battles I wish they were a little larger. Sometimes the games of Armada feel more like smaller skirmishes than massive fleet battles. The Corellian Conflict campaign expansion did something to remedy that by allowing for 500 pt games. It also introduced rules for even larger multiplayer battles. That helped scratch the itch but was only relevant for the campaign itself.
With the Super Star Destroyer expansion coming out soon it’s clear we need rules for bigger games, given that a base SSD can, by itself, exceed the 400 pts of a standard game. This week FFG addressed the issue by releasing a set of rules for lager games, called Sector Fleet. Let take a look at these rules!
Bigger Battles
The Sector Fleet rules allow for larger scale Armada battles with a minimum of work and extra rules. The rules allow for Two Player games of 600, 800, 1000 or 1200 pts. No matter what size you pick players are limited to 3 flotillas each and no more than 25% percent of their points can be spent on squadrons. Sector Fleet battles use a standard 6″x 3″ play area so you don’t need to worry about getting a new table or extra mats. Given that the play area hasn’t changed limiting games to 1200 pts is pretty wise since the table would start to get very crowded and hard to maneuver on over that.
An expanded deployment area is also part of the Sector Fleet rules so the start of the game won’t feel super cramped. Outside of that the game plays out like normal, just larger, with the standard objectives and rules still being in force. A revised margin of victory table is in force for tournaments as well. It’s something I’m very eager to try out myself. Not only is the extra size needed to really field the new SSD, but I’d simply be pretty happy to be able to put all 9 of my ISDs on the table at once!
Multiplayer Madness
In addition to rules for larger games the Sector Fleet rules also introduce rules for multiplayer games. These rules allow for 4, 6 or 8 player games with point values of 600, 800, 1000, or 1200 a side. The points are equally distributed between players on a side, though no fleet can be less than 300 points. An 8 player game for example will always be played at 1200 pts, with 300 points a person. You could also play that 1200 pt game with only 4 players with each taking 600 point fleets.
The fleet composition rules are fairly similar to those form the Corellian Conflict. Each team must pick fleets from the same faction, no mixing Empire and Rebels, unique cards are one per side not player, and there are limits to flotillas and squadrons. Each player has their own commander who only effects their own ships or a single enemy players ships. Each side must nominate one player as a Grand Admiral and she or he makes most of the overall choices for the team, including activation order and picking objects. There are a few tweaks to how some effects are resolved and setup, but overall its pretty straight forward.
Final Thoughts
Overall I’m very happy with these new rules. I’ve talked before about how I’d like to see the game move to a higher point value for battles, and this seems to be the fix for that. I really enjoyed the slightly larger games in the Corellian Conflict. I don’t think I’d play all my games at 1200 pts, as it takes a lot of time, but I can see myself mostly sticking with 600 pt games in the future. This is especially true if players want to field SSDs. It will be interesting to see if any local tournaments or FFG Organized play provides any support for the larger point values. For now, I’ve got my thinking cap on and I’m focused on coming up with the best large fleets I can think of – See you on the tabletop!
Let us know what you think about these rules, down in the comments!
