I'll Never Turn To The Dark Side - Riekken

“I’ll Never Turn to the Dark Side” - Why I Won’t Fly Rieekan

Welcome to “I’ll Never Turn to the Dark Side,” a new series about cards (with a particular focus on Commanders) that I will never fly! Okay, but, we already have so much negativity, so why should you read about something based on that premise? Eh, bear with me. I’m actually not planning to focus on the negatives in this series. I’m not giving y’all names of cards that I think are terrible and so will therefore never play; it’s sort of the opposite, actually. I plan on picking out cards that I think have real value, but explaining why I personally am unlikely to use them.


To that end, I’ve decided to start with General Rieekan. There are, very obviously, a ton of reasons to fly him. Just….I mean, seriously, A TON. Mike (Comatose on the forums) articulated what I think is the best reason to fly him back in the GenCon write-up he did for Cannot Get Your Ship Out: Rieekan allows you to activate your ships and squadrons in the ideal order. Yeah, it’s cool and all that your ships and aces don’t die immediately if you don’t want them to, but how does that translate into a win? After all, they still die at the end of the round, and you can only save one per round. What General Rieekan allows you to do is activate in your ideal order; if you’re stuck in a situation where you’re first player, and either your very nearly-dead Yavaris goes first, or your Admonition takes that perfect double-arc before its prey moves, well, you’re forked. No, literally. You’re forked. “In chess, a fork is a tactic whereby a single piece makes two or more direct attacks simultaneously. Most commonly two pieces are threatened, which is also sometimes called a double attack . The attacker usually aims to gain material by capturing one of the opponent's pieces.” Thanks, Wikipedia!


Basically, in this situation, your opponent has ensured that you either activate Yavaris before it dies, and they steal away from Admonition before it lands a devastating blow, or Admonition takes the shot, but Yavaris is dust before it can activate again. As Mike points out in his write-up, in this situation, Rieekan allows me to activate Admonition first and take advantage of that brutal double-arc because even if you kill Yavaris, it’s not going anywhere until the end of the round. It’ll still unleash those nasty double-taps.


That ^ right there is the reason I am unlikely to ever field Rieekan, except when jousting against someone else who is looking for tourney practice and want to field their fleet against Rieekan Aceholes (which I’ve done twice, I think?). I recently started playing chess again. I was never very good, but I always enjoyed playing. The thing I say most often that I enjoy about Armada are the chess-like elements that it employs: planning ahead for the course of our ships as well as our command dials, forking as a tactic in order to force hard choices, the fact that most every element of the game is open information...these are things I love about the game. So, anyway, back to chess: I’ve been getting murdered for literally the last month as I keep running into a buzzsaw I call my friend. And inevitably, my matches begin to go downhill when I stumble into a fork that I didn’t see. If Rieekan existed in chess, then such a maneuver would not be nearly as devastating. It’s still not ideal with Rieekan if you’re trying to play a perfect game or if it deals a blow to your MOV (Margin of Victory) in a tournament, but it doesn’t take away an option you had previously.


“But Chris,” I can hear you saying, “that’s a good thing!” Yes, it definitely is! It’s an amazing thing! Rieekan does something that no other upgrade in the game does, which puts him in an extremely elite tier of upgrades. But he also sort of removes a consequence of the game that I enjoy, which is why I’m unlikely to ever play him. One of my worst faults of many is that I tend to be a contrarian. Back when I played the 40k LCG game, Conquest, I spent at least a year honing a Ba’ar Zuul deck because the Conquest community wrote him off as a total bust. A friend of mine did the same thing with Urien Rakarth. We worked and worked and worked those Warlords until we had competitive decks. And then Conquest promptly shut down. So, you know, that sucked. BUT! Before that happened, we had created decks that were pretty nasty and would’ve made some noise in OP (organized play). We were proud of that! I feel the same way with any competitive game, and Armada is the primary one I play. It’s a game at which I want to continue getting good and being competitive and striving to play at the highest level. I’m definitely not there yet. Still got a very long ways to go. But the only way I want to get to the top is by using something that isn’t fielded particularly frequently. I want to get there by either discovering or honing something that isn’t already at the top of the field. Rieekan has been at the top of the field for sometime, and he works with a lot of different builds. Aceholes is obviously the most well-known, but he really works with anything you build. He’s so good, that I’m just generally not that interested in playing him. And that’s why I won’t fly Rieekan.


-IratePooka