The Future of Armada! An Interview with Michael Gernes!

I was so fortunate to have the opportunity to sit down with FFG’s Michael Gernes, Lead Developer for Star Wars Armada!

We talked about everything ranging from The Clone Wars, to Wave 2, to future support for Rebels and the Empire!

Some highlights from the interview include:

  • Pass Tokens – Pass Tokens will be assigned at the beginning of the game, are partially influenced by the composition of your fleet (Large Ships will likely give you more), and also are influenced by weather you are 1st Player or 2nd.
  • Faction Identities – We talked about the new faction, and Michael spoiled a new separatist card that upgrades a token’s effect to a full dial effect!
  • Konstantine! – Everyone’s least favorite commander, Konstantine, is getting refined to be more playable and to work with Huge Ship! Konstantine SSD here we go!
  • The Future! Armada will continue to support Empire and Rebel fleets – players just need to be patient!
  • So much more!

Here’s the full video!

Starhawk Painting!

Had a fun time pulling out the airbrush and repainting one of my two Starhawks this weekend!

Started out with a grey prime and then taped off a few areas that I wanted to stay grey/black. Then I did a few types of blue, a darker base, and a lighter blue at an angle to give some depth to the paneling and greebles. Next step was a wash in the grey areas. Then to start a few grey panels as well.

After some more panels colored in, I got the engines and a few other areas with more of a greenish blue. The last detail was the lights. I always like to add lots of tiny lights on board a ship to make it look more alive!

In addition to the engines being the blue green hue, I also did the Magnite generator on the front as well!

Bellator and Executor Team Up!

The COVID-19 lockdown has us all going sitr crazy! To help pass the time, I’ve been playing more AI games. If you aren’t familiar, you can find my Armada AI system here.

The AI system is amazing for simply passing the time for the sake of fun! This makes it especially fun for huge crazy pitched battles! I wanted to battle two Super Star Destroyers and decided to use the second base that comes with the SSD to support my Bellator model from Mel’s Miniatures.

The results were spectacular!

This was a 400 point fleet for me, facing off against over 1,000 points of Huge Ship AI! Now granted, my AI isn’t exactly the smartest opponent, but it is unpredictable and that can be exciting!

The full video should be up soon on Patreon!

Something BIG is Coming!

A few months back I was asked to take down my videos that talked about the recent flyer in the December issue of Game Trader Magazine, you know… the one that had the massive Super Star Destroyer article in it?   Well I’ve got my own physical copy of that flyer in hand now so I figure it’s time to talk about ALL of that juicy goodness now, since FFG won’t do it!

Here are all of the images, I’ve taken newer photos of them, hopefully they are legible enough!  I’ll be doing videos on them over the course of the next few months to hold us over until this gorgeous model finally comes out!

First video went up this morning!

Gen Con 2018 – in Pictures!

This Year’s Gen Con was my first ever Gen Con!  Easily the busiest convention I’ve ever been to, it’s easy to get lost among the activity!   I took a bunch of pictures though so lets go through my time!

First up – I had to wait in a line that was nearly a mile long for Will Call to get my tickets to the In Flight Report.  I didn’t even have time to check into my hotel – went straight to the convention center!

But I made it!   Front row seat!   I was crazy nervous that I wasn’t going to make it in time but luckily I managed!

And was surprised with 2 KeyForge decks for attending!   I’ve got to say I’m pretty impressed with this game.  The concept of completely unique decks in every box is really ambitious!   And it plays quickly and is a bit of fun as well!

But THIS thing was the star of the show!  The Super Star Destroyer for Armada really stole my heart!   Finally being able to see it was amazing!   After the report I grabbed some dinner and made my way back to the hotel, to prepare to teach some Legion and Armada the next morning!

The next morning – right before they opened the doors and let everyone in!

Everyone wanted to get pictures of the incoming rush!

There was alot of cosplay!  X-Wing and Legion were the two biggest attractions right in front of the main door, and they almost didn’t have any Armada tables, but luckily I found a core set on a table and was able to get it set up!

We had a core set, Wave 7, and the Rogues and Villains pack for Armada!   Nobody was scheduled to demo it, but I jumped all over it and made alot of new Armada fans from Thursday through Saturday.

Andrew Cox, Fellow Orlando Gamer, took home the championship for Destiny!   Way to represent Orlando!   Now we just need to him playing Legion and Armada as well!

Got to check out some other games as well – Project Elite is being relaunched by CMON, and the new miniatures look awesome!

Finally got to see this giant Cthulhu miniature from CMON’s new Cthulhu : Death May Die kickstarter.  It’s amazing, but it’s just so big it reminded me of the fact that I wouldn’t have had the room to actually put it anywhere!

Got a nice demo from Ares Games on their new title Battlestar Galactica: Starship Battles.  This looks gorgeous!

And got some more pictures of new FFG releases!

Sunday I was judging for a Legion Team Battle!   2v2 Tournament!

There was also an X-Wing Epic Tournament going on!

And the Armada Finals!  Congrats to JJsJuggernaut on an extremely close finish!   Not exactly sure why they had Destiny promos for the Armada winners….

When all was said and done, I had a TON of stuff to bring home and just my carry-on – so I had to break everything down!

I managed to get it all to fit!   Yup I put the falcon in a sock for safekeeping!

 

All in all, it was exhausting.   Working for FFG, demoing games nonstop, over loud crowds can really drain you.   Next time I need to go as a fan instead of an exhibitor.   I’d love to play in the tournaments and have more time to actually shop and participate in the con a bit more!

I also managed to capture a bunch of video as well!   Here’s just some of what I caught!

Armada Nunchuck Expansion v1.0 Is Ready!

The Nunchuck Expansion is finally ready!

 

This expansion is a title-only expansion that has multiple new titles for every ship in Star Wars Armada!   It is NOT official and NOT tournament legal.  This was a project of mine and it’s now available! This expansion is free to everyone!  Download the FULL PDF here!

This is version 1.0.

 

More Custom Content!

If you like this expansion and want to support me on Patreon – hey that’s always an option!

Armada – Nunchuck Expansion Preview!

What is the Nunchuck Expansion?

The Nunchuck Expansion is a free expansion for Star Wars Armada.   It consists exclusively of titles for existing ships, which will showcase new strategies and new options for ships that only had limited roles.  The Nunchuck Expansion is NOT an official product and is not tournament legal.  I am designing the expansion and will be releasing them right here on crabbok.com.

Here are a few samples of just a few of the Imperial Titles that will be included.

Some of the details are still subject to change, and I’ll be letting my patrons on patreon vote on some of the names as well!   Let me know what you think!

Winners and Losers of the April Armada FAQ

With any major new FAQ and Errata there’s always bound to be a major shake up in the meta.   Today I want to discuss the winners and loser of this change, and how the meta may change moving forward.

Losers:

Some changes were good overall, like the change to Strategic Adviser and Biggs.   But ultimately, some things really got hurt.  Lets talk about the biggest losers.

Relay

Relay got hit hard, but in a way that makes perfect sense.  Now it simply extends range rather than making squadron range infinite.  Most would agree that this makes great logical sense, but this does hurt those fleets that were designed to exploit the old way of keeping ships far away from the fight, and removing all risk of their carriers taking fire.  The Lambda is probably hurt more than the VCX, considering it has twice the Relay value, but the entire strategy of using Relay now has to change to include some risk, keeping your fleet together, and keeping your carriers in the fight.

Gallant Haven

This one wasn’t as widely abused, but when it was used it had the potential to be significantly overpowered.  The power came from unique squadrons with the brace token.  Even if a friendly squadron was hit for two damage, they could just brace and reduce it to one, then having Gallant Haven reduce that one to zero.  And if you had Jan Ors nearby, you didn’t even need to have your own brace token, since you could “borrow” hers.  This title now will still help for larger attacks, such as three or more, but it will no longer stop the small damage from going through.

Yavaris

While Yavaris wasn’t changed too much, a very common crew combination certainly was.  Using Flight Commander and Fighter Coordination Team together, would allow you to delay your squadron command until after moving, and also after you gave your squadrons a free speed-one move.  It allowed you to partly ignore the restriction that came with this amazing ship.  But that isn’t the only nerf to Yavaris.  The relay nerf also hurts Yavaris more so than any other carrier, in that most Rebel Fleets that use Yavaris, often find that it’s the first target for the enemy fleet.   No more, can Yavaris dish out squadron double-taps from the rear ranks and relative safety.

Avenger

While not the worst nerf, the Avenger’s new requirement to exhaust will actually affect it in multiple new shooting scenarios.  The first case is the common use of boarding teams, where you have a double arc on the defender.  An enemy flagship, at full strength, would seldom be able to survive.  Another case is when using Gunnery Team, where you’d be shooting on multiple targets that may have spent some tokens already.   But a third scenario is when using the Advanced Gunnery objective and you were actually able to attack from your front arc even against the same ship twice.  At least in the case of this nerf you can still use it’s ability once, which still allows it to be used, and it will still probably be the most widely used Star Destroyer title.  Probably.

The Third Flotilla in Your collection

This was the one that bothered me the most.  Restricting flotillas to a hard cap of only 2 per fleet has a ton of implications.  First off, everyone who bought 3 or more are now unable to use them unless it’s a strictly casual game.  Second, those flotillas are now much less useful, in that they can no longer hang out around the edge of the board, supporting your squadrons, even while your ships are dead.  But another implication is that future flotillas are now at a disadvantage.  If FFG makes another flotilla in the future, you’ll have a hard time deciding on which 2 you want to use, considering the utility that GR-75s and Gozantis offer your fleet, it may force players into an uncomfortable decision.

Winners

When some things get worse, sometimes other things get better by proxy. Let’s take a look at the biggest winners that result from these changes.

Hera

With all of the VCXs and Lambdas getting nerfed, Hera remains the one that was untouched, keeping her original balance and power level.  Her ability still is able to ignore distance from ships, and she now has more of a unique ability when you consider that her counterparts with the nerfed relay are restricted to staying close to the fleet.   All rouges, actually, are winners here, but Hera is by far the biggest winner from the group, being able to still provide that autonomous activation to squadrons who lack rogue.

Boosted Comms

Boosted Comms started to see less and less play once relay came out.  It almost became irrelevant.  Now it is back and better than ever.  Considering it stacks, in a meaningful way, with relay now, you can layer these two extensions together and still get some distance between you and your squadrons if you really want to.   I expect to see more of this card in the future, especially on Quasars.

Centicore

Another upgrade that may see more play as a result of the relay nerf.  Centicore never saw alot of play, and one main reason for that was that relay was just so much better.  Now it can potentially help fill some gaps left by the nerf, giving squadron based fleet greater flexibility in activations.  And since fleets will likely be flying closer together now, you are more likely able to take advantage of this one.

Other Boarding Parties

Since Avenger’s slight nerf, Boarding Troopers might get taken a bit less, and therefore we stand a chance of seeing other boarding party cards showing up.  Cham Syndulla and Darth Vader might see a small rise in play in the coming months.

Ackbar

The nerf to flotillas is good new to slow-moving fleets, especially Ackbar fleets.  That classic broadside fleet that was never able to chase down distant flotillas will now have an easier time securing victory.  Additionally, Ackbar fleets have some extra flexibility in that Home One isn’t quite as crucial, in that you no longer HAVE to destroy enemy flotillas, so that one accuracy, while still great to have, isn’t quite as crucial as it once was.   Perhaps now we’ll see more Ackbar fleets with only Assault Frigates?  Same goes for any red-dice heavy list honestly.  Imperial Cymoons and Arquitens based lists will have similar flexibility, in that they won’t absolutely need that accuracy for flotillas as much.

 

Ultimately, only time will tell how these changes will fully impact the game moving forward.  All in all, I feel they are largely Quality of Life changes, meant to reduce negative play experiences and some “cheese” factor.  You can head over to the Armada Errata Page for a summary of changes, and links to all relevant documents.