Armada podcast review

Armada
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Hi all, I just had the opportunity to join the Man Battlestations podcast for a breakdown and discussion of Armada: its origins, where the game currently stands, and what the future may hold…

MBS Podcast Episode 90: Mantic Armada Update | Man Battlestations Blog

…take a listen on iTunes, the Man Battlestations podcast episode 90, and let me know if you agree with my conclusions, or if I got anything wrong.

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Will give it a listen! Thanks!

Edit: after havin listened to the podcast: you’re a great champion of the game! Thanks for doing this.

Fully agree with your assessment that the game is created to stay. Which is good, as it hasn’t really gained a lot of attention here, which is a pity. I love both the game mechanics and the ships and would love it to keep attracting new players.

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One of the largest issues I had with Armada during the discussion was templates breaking movement, specifically center rotations for squadrons. When I was later asked about how I worked around that, I thought I would put up my solution to retain precision for tiny bases… (actually, first I had to replace my card-cut originals with some prints designed around the same measurements that would be more photogenic)


The interior of the ring allows the 30 mm square tiny base to be spun around up to 270 degrees while keeping its center-point in the same position, and I made these 4 mm thick to have some stability on the table while moving the ship’s base back and forth.
More than these aids to pivoting, another template that I started using last year are these modified turning templates…


The production turning template is great for ships out in the open, but when you are close to other ships or terrain, we had continuing issues with trying to get that one in between obstructions to get a clear placement. By splitting the template, it is much easier to place it onto the mat when ships are close to each other and get a good turning angle away, and I made these reversible so it does not matter which side of the base is lacking clearance…


The overall size of the split template is a little more than half that of the production template, and still allows a little customization to match my fleets with the same red 45s and yellow 30s marked on each.

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Solid review, agree on most of the stuff. You seem to have everything very well thought through plus are an adept at putting these thoughts into words. Hats off.

Some thoughts of my own, basics my community arrived at:

  • Proper Speed and Damage counters are a must have. The way the game deals with these is just cumbersome. We use special dice for speed instead of switching between markers, to save time. We also use 0-100 wound counters for damage, small size, kept beside each ship so that everyone’s on the same page.
  • We quickly switched measuring tools for self made, more precise and less cumbersome substitutes.
  • We’ve errated Evade and Collision so that it’s simpler. Also no more Error 404 situations.
  • We all accepted this game, although a lot of fun to play tournaments of, is not a real deal clean tournament game. Mainly because of the things you’ve mentioned like pivoting on the centrepoint or “as close as possible”. We play highly competitive events of Armada on regular basis, but the entire community treats the game on easy mode with leeway and more like fun sidepiece, rather than ultra competitive zeroes and ones. Once we achieved the proper mindset - the game is golden.

Also have a question for you - did you see the unofficial errata? It cleans up some stuff.
https://scarhandpainting.com/kow-armada-unofficial-errata/
If so, what do you think of it?

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Thank you for the listen and comments, after reading the errata I need to practice some collisions on the table to see how those changes work out, but I am 100% on board with the direction of Gunnery, Indirect Weapons, and Ships on Fire and plan on using those.

Good job!

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Glad you like it.
The idea behind the Collisions errata is twofold.
The main issue with the current ruleset is ‘error 404’ situations where rules just does not cover a solution. Like what if there’s another ship in the way when you pass an Evasion test? Do you test again then come back to test against the previous target? Or what happens if you can’t physically change course? I’ll let the visual examples speak for themselves:

Kolizje Examples pic
Kolizje Examples pic1920×2716 233 KB

So the second reason is pure fun factor. My meta is pretty fun oriented but we have a lot of top tier players from other games. I’m talking national champions and in some cases seasonal world championship veterans. We quickly started using collisions to stun-lock large ships, steer them towards rocks and islands. Is super easy to do with the original ruleset. For this reason I figured a way to smooth things out both in terms of playability and casual play. Now you ignore anything in the way of the obligatory turn after passing an Evade test, or after the Collision. You set up in a way that will not take you into another collision in the following move step. 99% issues solved.

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