Armada Strategery: First Thoughts

So I've gone through a few 300 point fleet engagements now compared to the pre-Wave 1 demo games.  It's been interesting watching games go from Fleets having a hard time destroying enemy ships to one side being completely destroyed before the end of the game.

If there is one thing that Attack Wing teaches about this genus of games, it is the importance of both dice pools and dice fixers.  A huge dice pool is great but at a certain point fixing instead of increasing it returns better results.  These are especially important if they don't require any specific action(Worf) or if you can cheat the requirement(Spock) without action.

It is important to note that dice can be re-rolled multiple times in Armada compared to either X/A-Wing.  You can also use your rerolls and direct dice fixers in the order of your choice too.  Finally, the less your ships requires Concentrate Power to be effective the more it allows you to use the three other powerful commands at your disposal.  This is really important in squeezing the most out of your ships.

With that in mind, what upgrades jump out as me as worth building your capital ships around?  From top to bottom on that list:

• Admiral Screed:  A once per activation free ability to fix a die.  Especially powerful because the black dice have a crit/hit side so you can even upgrade a regular hit.
• Wulff Yularen:  Can constantly spend a concentrate fire token for a free re-roll.  More versatile than just a free re-roll too.
• Adar Tallon:  Lets a fighter activate twice.
• Gunnery Team:  More dice out a single quadrant but not focused.  
• Flight Controllers:  More dice from your squadrons.  Super annoying that this only comes with the VSD.
• Point-Defense Reroute:  A free re-roll against Squadrons.  
• Expanded Launchers:  Adds two black dice to your front.  I currently prefer the ACMs but this may depend upon Mon Mothma. 
• Assault Concussion Missiles:  Turns a black critical into a three damage hit.  Thankfully, the good Admiral Screed can help with the first part.  
• Leading Shots:  Sped a blue die to reroll as many dice as you like.  Incredibly powerful with larger dice pools as a fixer. 
• Enhanced Armament:  Adds an additional red dice to your left and right batteries.
• Dominator:  Adds blue dice for shields.
• Warlord:  Changes a accuracy to a face with a hit.  On a red accuracy this can turn into a double hit.
• Salvation:  Your crits count as two damage.
• Paragon:  If they cross the T you can gain an additional black die.
• Yavaris: Squads can attack twice.

From this, 4 fairly simply archetypes jump out at me.  The most obvious is multiple gladiators.  Screed plus Gladiators with titles to help them apply their black dice and Assault Concussion missiles are incredibly effective.  I wouldn't be surprised if this was released first wave to punish players who want to turn this more into a camping game(yay stupid X-Wing setups).

The other imperial build would be two VSDs with Screed again, dice fixing or adding titles, Gunnery Teams and Leading Shots.  This lets you get the best out of both VSDs massive forward arcs.  This build has real issues if the scenario forces you to spread out but should love parking on a station.

For the Rebels, double Assault Frigate is the first thing to jump out at me.  You take Mon Mothma as she can help counter Screed to an extent(probably wise to put some thought towards ECM too).  The Assault Frigate is a broad side ship which should be far easier to position and it really wants to stay at maximum range if at all possible.  From there Enhanced Armament and Gunnery Teams are the current easy choices.

The final archetype is the one I trust the least.  The Nebulon-B is great on paper, but has been awful in every game I've seen it in.  Building around Salvation and Yavaris has some real potential but I'm not sure it overcomes using two Nebulon-B's in the list.