Armada, #2

I played my 2nd game of Armada at the club this week, with Princess Leia leading the attack against 2 Imperial Destroyers with a Corellian Corvette, an Assault Frigate and a host of fighters.

I'd hoped that my advantage in fighters would enable me to drive off the opposing TIE fighters and that my bombers and Ships would then be able to get to work on the enemy destroyers but I sadly forgot a couple of factors.  One was that my opponent, Andrew, had put more thought into his fleet design than I had and has a better grasp of the rules and was able to use his fighters far more effectively.  His fighters were able to swarm round my fighters and pick them off one by one before they could get into an effective position.  My only fighter than proved his worth was an A Wing Squadron that managed to take on Darth Vader and almost (but not quite) destroy him before succumbing to his attacks plus fire from an Imperial Destroyer.

The 2nd factor was the fact that I'm rubbish at steering the ships and, just like in the previous game, managed to crash headlong into one of the opposing ships with my Assault Frigate.  This didn't cause much in the way of damage but did leave me stuck right in front of him and I quickly paid the price.

With both ships destroyed and having narrowly failed to claim some kind of moral victory by killing Vader we called it a night with a comprehensive victory for the Empire.

I enjoyed the game although I did repeatedly get confused by the sequencing of actions: at points in the turn ships either move then shoot, or shoot then move.  This caused me no end of problems as I never managed to get the ships and squadrons in the right place at the right time.  I'm obviously blaming the rules here and not my rubbish tactics!

The other issue with the game is the huge range of cards and counters that are used.  They do add lots of flavour and a huge variety of bonuses, tactical choices etc, but it meant that there was a lot to remember and of course we tended to forget things that could have helped either side.  I'm not sure we missed anything that was game-changing though.

All in all it's a great game despite the plethora of rule, cards and tokens and I'm sorely tempted to get a set at some point.