May the Sith!

It's even funnier when the 2 year old is wearing it and yelling Norman Price! (the naughty kid from Fireman Sam) at us all. Still the ten year old and I are super excited with out new toys. Before you all go "yet another game", this one has pedigree. Honest. Jason and I (and sometimes John and Chris) have played a fair bit of fleet scale Star Wars using proxies and the BFG rules. Last year, Jason was even trying to meld those with X-Wing. Then Armada was announced. It's not the cheapest. However, when I ordered it was almost $20 cheaper than that price. Pretty good for a big-box game shipped to NZ. In case you somehow aren't aware by this stage, its by the makers of X-Wing but the unit is the capital ship rather than the fighter. Fighters are now grouped into squadrons and, come wave 2, we will even get Imperial Class Star destroyers on the table. I wasn't going to get this but changed my mind after an Easter holiday and was hoping it would be here for Star-Wars day. Still, May the Sith is the next best thing...

 I also apologise for the photos, my tablet has died and this phone is something handed on via an overseas student... Here is the massive box. It's mainly empty space inside but I forgave them once I found out it allows me to put the Victory class star destroyer inside still standing up on its base.

 Here the ten year old surveys my puny rebel ships. He approves of the inclusion of Grand Moff Tarkin in the start box. Uh oh.

 This one is blurry but not much time for pics after ages assembling those squadron markers. Note however the absence of tokens on the game table. Damage now gets recorded on the bases themselves and then some ships have a few discardable tokens that you put on the unit card. Nice and tidy.

 Here is the Victory Class. It's my favourite of the Star Destroyer models. I understand that in pulp culture theory, it's what you were into when you were 12 that has the biggest pull on you for then on. I played Tie Fighter on the PC.

Likewise, this is the Nebulon B. While I'm not wasting time duplicating reviews that are already all over the internet, I can confirm the rear detail (which you totally can't see, because phone) is not up to FFG's usual standards. In fact, a lot of the plastic, for example the movement template and the stackable order tokens, is pretty nasty and cheap.

 Ships are still overall as good as ever though. The Squadrons may be small unpainted models in that cheap plastic. However, the only problem with the cap ships is that some areas probably could do with a touch-up wash. You get a Corvette, Nebulon B Frigate, 4 x-wing squads (with Luke) and the Imperials get the Victory and six TIE squads (with Howlrunner).

I have high hopes for this game. 180 pts, which is what the starter is, is apparently not a good game. Most seem to recommend putting two sets together and playing 300pts. Still the WWPD guys seem to have been having a blast in their earlier reports getting to grips with the rules using one set. So I am game.

Then of course comes the escalation.... and I really believe it is time once again for a fleet based Star Wars campaign.   Who is with me?

 In other star-wars related news. Adam is our loss and Wellington's gain, as he moves north. So we tried organising a multiplayer game as a farewell. Given the exceedingly specific scheduling requirements, it ended up being 3 player. These days, my 3 player game of choice is X-Wing, one faction per player. I drew short straw and was Rebels.

Photos lack audio so, Jason was saying in each of these cases: "the view is much better where I am standing". The Imperial wolf-pack hunted together and picked off my ships one by one.

In this final (blurry... camera) pic they've blown through two of my ships and are now picking on Adam's pie-rats. My phones battery totally died at that point but we  killed two of Jason's ships before admitting defeat. Adam then started discussing plea-bargains! Good game and good banter too see Adam off: Good luck man!

As an aside, I really like the Most Wanted box for Xwing. It's got ships but it also has heaps of extra cards to repurpose Y-Wings, Firesprays, and HWKs that people already own into pirate ships. I hope they do upgrade boxes like that for Armada too.