During this last Sunday, we finally were able to fit in another game of Armada, between myself (Rebels) and my son (Imperials). Mission selected was Precision Strike. My plan had been to video tape the entire session, and then edit the game together later on. Unfortunately, I had some technical problems – first I had incorrectly plugged the camera in, so it was not charging. As such, after 2 hours, the camera turned off. Then, during the end of the 4th turn, my jury-rigged duct-tape solution for positioning the camera above the board failed, sending the tripod and camera crashing into the table. Fortunately, the only casualty was a single TIE fighter squadron, but it disrupted the board enough that we ended up having to call the game.
By that point, the Empire had 2 victory points, and had destroyed 1 Nebulon-B. The Rebels had scored 5 victory points, and had destroyed the Imperial Raider Corvette. However, the positioning of the rest of the Rebel fleet was in a very strong stance to finish off both remaining Imperial ships. However, for sanity, we called it a draw, with perhaps a slight advantage to the Rebel fleet.
One interesting challenge we ended up facing – there tends to be a very large chance that ships in Armada will end up colliding and ramming each other. Perhaps this is intentional, or perhaps we are both just flying overly aggressively, but for Star Wars, it doesn’t really feel “right”. It seems almost every game, we end up with one or more pairs of ships stuck in a perpetual ram, until one is destroyed and clears the way. Or maybe neither of us really know how to steer 🙂
