At this point, we’ve (probably) all seen the wild spoilers and upcoming content for Armada, and are excited. I know there’s some contention over some of the upcoming stuff...some changes that we maybe don’t yet agree with, I know card size is an issue for some, etc. I know there are a couple of things I worry whether FFG will hit on or not. But with all of that said, I just can’t help but being super excited. I’ll be honest: any time I’ve had doubts about what FFG is pushing out for Armada, I’d argue that about 95% of the time, I’m proven wrong. Sure, it might be the new hotness for awhile, or it may make my life more difficult as I try to “unlock” something or someone that some other vastly more skilled player hasn’t already discovered. But truly, for the most part, I enjoy the hell out of this game from start to finish. That said, there’s already been some discussion about the changes in point costs. We all saw Leia drop by ten points, and suddenly, Geek over at CGYSO isn’t the only one flying her competitively! I mean, sure, he may know her best, but there’s gonna be some hard competition now, I think, at only 28 points.
Then, Ginkapo posed this question on the FFG forum: “What can 10 points get you?”
I don’t want to try and answer that question here - go read the thread on the forum, because I think it was a great question Gink asked, and a bunch of people smarter than me have already weighed in. However, the premise of the question got me thinking about other points changes I’d like to see. Because, at the end of the day, there’s almost always one more thing I want to squeeze into a fleet. So, what are some of the cards I’d like to see dropped in cost?
Commanders: So glad to see Leia dropped in cost! My next pick would be Tarkin. I’ve given this a lot of thought because I spent over a year trying to build a Tarkin fleet that I could fly competitively. I feel good about what I finally settled on, and I’ve posted it in a couple of batreps previously on the FFG forum for this past Primes season. I know the vast majority of people don’t use him (just look at the Prime percentages from this past season - ouch…). And I get why most people don’t. But as has been pointed out by others, there are ways to work around Tarkin’s difficulties of only handing out the same token to everybody in any given Ship Phase. But those workarounds require more points to be sunk into the mechanic, and so he started expensive, and then got more expensive. If Tarkin were to drop, I’d have a couple of things I could work around in my Tarkin fleet, or I could simply tack those aforementioned points onto my bid. I’m a happy guy either way! Honestly, even a small drop in points wouldn’t increase his play by much, but it would help. Such as offsetting the 4 points that Sovereign costs…
Palpatine. Yeah, I know, he just came out. But man, I want to like him. Hell, I do like him! But I just can’t get him to a point where I feel as though he’s adding to my fleet instead of subtracting from it. I keep thinking there’s some combination of ships and squadrons out there, and just the right order of named tokens to really make him shine. But I’ve yet to hit on him in a way that feels like anything but forced. And ultimately, any machine I’ve tried to build with him is rather fragile and easy to break, right? If you can lock down my bombers faster than I can free them, then you’ve broken my rhythm, and thus, my machine. If you mess with my speed or unexpectedly cause a drastic change in your own speed, then you’ve broken my rhythm, and thus, my machine. So, Palpatine is, I think, a tough build. I think even a slight decrease in points would help ensure that he was seen more frequently.
It’s been awhile since I’ve seen Sloane, but I’d be happy to see her go up a bit. Oh, I don’t have a good reason for that. I’m just taking her very personally, that’s all.
Defensive Retrofit: I guess I’d maybe like to see Redundant Shields go down? Nobody uses the card, and it’s already a modification (which it definitely should be). So I wonder if a slight decrease in points so that it’s more affordable than ECM or EWS might help it get a little love? I don’t think a points decrease fixes the inherent problems with the card, but maybe a slight decrease would help make it an option instead of an auto-ignore…
Ion Cannons: I’d like to see NK-7s dropped a few points. I spammed them in the jank tournament we held in STL a little while back (when we were still looking as though we handled Covid decently enough, before it started showing up in more rural areas and then spreading...yeah, turns out Missouri didn’t do such a great job of handling it after all….), and they rarely did what I wanted them to. But the threat of them was fun and helped me keep enemy ships honest! They’re obviously still crit dependent, they obviously require that your ships get into blue range (which is a really narrow attack band, easily opening you up to ordnance fire), they exhaust, and the opponent still gets to spend their defense tokens before they choose the defense token that goes, which will be the least useful one. I get why it doesn’t see play, but if we saw the cost drop a few points, maybe some of us would try messing with it some more? Don’t know.
Officers: If I really wanted to dig through this entire group, I’d probably make proposed changes for a lot of them, but in the span of 1-2 points, and it would really just be me working off of confirmation bias (“that time Toryn didn’t do enough work for her cost” or “Wedge made my life a freaking nightmare that one time I played against him”), so I’m only going to name a few.
I’d like to see Director Krennic come down a couple of points. I love the card, and I love his ability. But man, he really makes you pay for it between the points and the Con Fire command. I was so excited to field him on my Cymoon in the early stages of my Tarkin fleet. Then I did, and people closed on me SO FAST that Krennic was useless. It was really demoralizing. Now, I hear what you’re saying - ‘git gud, scrub.’ Okay. Fair point. You’re not wrong, Walter, you’re just an @$$hole. But with that said, I haven’t seen much of Krennic, and I’d like to. 8 points is just a little pricey for a guy who stops working when someone is too close or too far (Onager). My opinion.
I’d like to see Major Derlin come down in cost. Yes, I know, he straight up prevents damage. Under fairly ideal circumstances, he can prevent up to 5 damage throughout the game and save your ship as it flies off into the sunset and you walk away with a win. But let’s be honest: that’s not particularly likely. In my Tarkin fleet, I fly 7th Fleet Star Destroyer on my Kuat and 2 Glads. I love the title. If things break my way, I’m happy to gobble up something like 7 damage a game. I feel like it’s usually more, but my math could be off. I do know that the title rarely lets me down if I fly right. That said, Derlin only works on one ship, takes up a highly coveted slot, and can’t prevent as much damage as so many other cards can. Come on, FFG - let’s invite Cliff in from the cold of Hoth. He’s been out there long enough. Invite him around the fire so he can regale us with tales of working at the United States Postal Service. We’d love to see more of him.
Ordnance: I’m gonna be that guy: I want to see Ex Racks go up. When it first came out, I looked down my nose at spending points on a discard that may or may not get you damage. I’ve...well, I’ve changed my mind. I did it fairly quickly. Not quickly enough to avoid watching my ships blow up, but fairly quickly nonetheless.
I want to see Expanded Launchers go down. Not a lot or anything, but it’s just so infrequent that a black dice ship throws up an effective Ackbar slash that isn’t suicide. Maybe I’m totally wrong on this, as I never got particularly good at flying MC-30s (not really my kind of ship), so maybe they’d be an unholy terror if they could more affordably boast them. And I really don’t hear much of a call to drop the cost of Expanded Launchers, so I doubt anything happens here. But again, these aren’t predictions, just “the game as Irate Pooka would like to see it,” because I’m selfish that way.
Titles: There are a couple here, and my thinking is just that I want to see different titles more often. So any title I name here is one that I think should have a lower point cost, because that’s the only way it ever sees meaningful play.
Dominator, Devastator, Redemption, and Independence. I’d like to come up against these titles more often in the wild. And I’ve tried building around Redemption a BUNCH of times, and can never really justify the cost, since I feel like the cost of the title gets baked into the machine that needs to be built to make it a worthwhile endeavor. Sort of like how the high cost of the Interdictors have the ability to use Experimental Retrofits basically baked into their cost (thanks, Snipa!).
One title who I’d like to see get more expensive? Ravager. Man, I just hate that build. I love using EWS instead of ECM, but it’s hard to justify EWS with the possibility of Ravager lurking out there. Already got blind-sided and crushed by that build while fielding EWS on my Kuat once, thanks. Won’t happen again. But I don’t like a meta wherein there’s a “right way” to build something. And in a field featuring Ravager builds, the “right way” to not get dead is to equip ECM instead of EWS. I know, because I learned this the hard way.
I think that about covers the cards that jump out at me! That said, I really think y’all should be thankful I’m not a designer on this game, because I’d be TERRIBLE at it. But since I can come up with my own notions of point adjustments with no consequences, that’s what I decided to mess with here. Thanks for reading, feel free to throw up some comments, criticisms, whatever. Love to hear from y’all. In the meantime, don’t count on your dice, because “in my experience, there is no such thing as luck.”
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Okay, I mean, there is, but I’m messing with different sign offs, and ultimately, you wanna know what I really, really love about Armada? Luck rarely determines whether or not you win a game when you come prepared. I love knowing that if dice determined our game, I either flew extremely well against a very skilled opponent, or I flew extremely poorly against...well, anybody. And that is a comforting thought.
- IratePooka
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