Armada Teaching Fleets

 Fleets You Can Use to Teach Armada to a New Player!

Cutest n00b EVER.

So, you want to teach a n00b, huh? Take some poor sucker under your wing, introduce them to the glory that is Star Wars Armada, welcome them into the fold of one of the best gamer groups in the world, that sort of thing? Excellent! Glad you're here!

That said, no matter how good you may be at Armada or how well you may understand the game, teaching Armada is different from knowing it or being good at it. It's easy for me to get excited and worked up about how much there is to love about Armada, but that can be overwhelming for new players. Especially if this is their first minis game. Minis games can be really intimidating because they often exude an aura of...not inaccessibility, exactly, but maybe high complexity? A game in which there's no room for error because of how carefully we often move our ships and squadrons? Something along those lines.

To that end, I thought it might be useful for me to share how I've briefly introduced people to the game while doing demos at a game store (just as an ambassador of the game and community; I'm not any sort of representative of FFG or anything like that). The game has often been described to me as "you shoot, then you move." I know it's just a hair more complicated than that, but I appreciate the notion of keeping it simple and then adding layers later. To that end, the teaching fleets I've put together are focused on two things: keeping the game simple while still including upgrades, and using some of the more iconic elements of the Star Wars universe that often draw people to the game in the first place. I'll start with the Republic fleet.

Republic learning fleet (60/254/300)

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Venator II-class Star Destroyer (100 + 6: 106)

· Flight Controllers (6)

Pelta-class Transport Frigate (45 + 3: 48)

· Munitions Resupply (3)

Armed Cruiser (37 + 3: 40)

· Swift Return (3)

Plo Koon (24)

3 x V-19 Torrent Squadron (3 x 12)

To start, we won't be playing with any objectives in this learning game because they often introduce new and scenario-specific rules, and we're just trying to teach players the basics in this situation. You'll also notice that the fleet is smaller than the standard 400 point fleet. This is just to give them an idea of how the game works rather than teaching them the whole thing. If we get bogged down in every single little detail of the game or spend time building the fleet with a new player, we just end up spending a ton of time on everything but playing, and at some point, I think any one of us would decide it was not worth the time invested because we've been talking for an hour and still haven't even played the game yet.

I think including iconic ships and squadrons becomes important, since the interest in Star Wars is usually what gets people into Armada rather than simply looking for a miniatures game. To that end, I built this learning fleet around a Venator II. A lot of people skip upgrades in teaching fleets because upgrades increase the complexity of the game. I can appreciate that, and I don't disagree. But customizing our fleets is the best part of the game, and so it feels weird to teach the game and not include some of that element. But I focused on upgrades and abilities that aren't terribly complicated; I also chose upgrades that would make the game a little easier by addressing the mistakes a new player is most likely to make (in my opinion, of course).

I've got Flight Controllers on the Venator because it'll help the V-19s stand up there with other anti-squadron tech by adding a blue die to each attack. Plus, adding dice is an easy enough mechanic to understand for any new player. Speaking of squadrons, I've got a couple of V-19s in there with Plo Koon so that we can show off a little bit about what Republic fleet archetypes are generally about (buffing each other and being interdependent) without anything terribly complicated. Plus, Plo Koon is fairly well-known while his ability is a little easier to remember and play around than someone like Luminara or Ahsoka (again, in my opinion). Then we've got a Pelta with Munitions Resupply (to help with a little dice fixing and introduce Fleet Support), and a Consular Armed Cruiser equipped with Swift Return (an introduction to ship titles, as well as an effect that is decently easy to parse out, but also helps teach players how important positioning is in this game).

Separatist learning fleet (55/256/400)

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Recusant-class Light Destroyer (85 + 4: 89)

· Shu Mai (4)

Battle Refit (52 + 7: 59)

· Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)

Transport (47 + 6: 53)

· Beast of Burden (6)

General Grievous (22)

3 x Tri-Fighter Squadron (3 x 11)

I originally started the Separatist list with a Providence, but then I was running a little too over on points, and I'm trying to keep all of the learning fleets fairly close to one another in terms of how many points I'm spending on ships, upgrades, and squadrons. So I switched to a Recusant because it's cheaper, but still a large base ship. I feel a little bad about trying to teach the player how to double-arc with the weirdo arcs on the Recusant, so I put Shu Mai on there for extreme dice-fixing. The Munificent was also just a little too big, so I settled on two Hardcells, one of each chassis. The Battle Refit got the Linked Turbolaser Towers upgrade, and the Transport got the Beast of Burden title to try and keep the other two ships alive in the face of fire.

For squadrons, I went with Grievous so I could introduce players to the Screen and Relay mechanics, plus, he's the most iconic part of this fleet. Then I tossed several Tri-Fighters in there because they're mean, and it's an example of how other players can get punished for attacking Grievous before the Tri-Fighters, or punished for attacking the Tri-Fighters before Grevious.

Rebel learning fleet (80/256/300)

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MC80 Command Cruiser (106 + 4: 110)

· Boosted Comms (4) 

CR90 Corvette B (39 + 6: 45)

· Dodonna's Pride (6)

GR-75 Medium Transports (18 + 3: 21)

· Leia Organa (3)

Wedge Antilles (19)

3 x X-wing Squadron (3 x 13)

2 x A-wing Squadron (2 x 11)

As I mentioned earlier, we'd like to play to our strengths and show off the things we like about the game. So this fleet features some pretty iconic ships and squadrons between the MC80, CR90, X-Wings, and Wedge. I've got Boosted Comms on the carrier because as someone who doesn't have great spatial awareness and needs to learn distances through practice, I'd often find I had "out-kicked my coverage." That is to say that I'd moved my squadrons beyond my medium range ability to command them, and that is frustrating and demoralizing. This upgrade helps negate that particular likelihood, so it's helpful but not complex. To that end, it took me awhile to be confident enough in setting my command dials for bigger ships. Putting Leia on the flotilla to help save bad choices on the MC80 was a specific choice I made so dials didn't just feel useless. The Dodonna's Pride title isn't helpful, but I thought it was a good example of something fun that makes a fleet unique, and it's an indicator of just how niche some of these upgrades and fleets can be. My squadron choices were, again, built on what I think of as iconic as well as filling out some points (why field a carrier if you have no squadrons?). I knew I'd be selecting one ace so I could point to it as an example. Can't think of Rebels without thinking of X-Wings, Wedge is a pretty iconic character with a special ability that is easy to understand at any experience level, and A-Wings are just plain fun and round out the fleet.

Come on! Who doesn't like this guy?! I mean, besides the countless TIEs he has absolutely vaporized with his 6 or 7 blue dice...

Imperial learning fleet (60/259/300)

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Imperial II-class Star Destroyer (120 + 6: 126)

· Leading Shots (6)

Raider I-class Corvette (44 + 4: 48)

· External Racks (4)

Gozanti-class Cruisers (23 + 2: 25)

· Comms Net (2)

Ciena Ree (17)

2 x TIE Defender Squadron (2 x 16)

Tie Interceptor Squadron (11)

Though I skipped TIE Fighters with this fleet, I figured I'd be forgiven for including an ISD and fan-favorite TIE Defenders. The Imperials are known for overwhelming force, and so I decided to add Leading Shots to the ISD and External Racks to the Raider to fit in with that expectation. And again, these upgrades are very easy to understand (one gives you rerolls and the other is a one-time addition of ordnance dice). The Comms Net Gozanti is there to show how Fleet Support upgrades work and why flotillas are so common in Galactic Civil War (GCW) fleets. The reason I didn't spam TIE Fighters is two-fold and pretty obvious once I say it: there's no way this fleet can command that many squadrons, so it feels like a poor design to someone who doesn't know the game, and TIEs are squishy and easily mismanaged. If the Imperial player just sends forth the TIEs, it can feel like they're feeding them to the meat grinder, and that's not particularly fun. You need to be so very deliberate with TIE Fighters, and so rather than put that pressure on the Imperial player, I gave them a bunch of squadrons that could look after themselves. The TIE Defenders are bulkier than anything the Rebel Learning Fleet has to offer and they're one of the few multi-role squadrons that the Imperials feature (and the only TIE that can make that boast). Ciena Ree is tough to kill because of her special ability (which, again, doesn't have any weird interactions or is particularly confusing while still enunciating some basic game mechanics), and the other TIE Interceptor is there to round out the squadron contingent, given that the ISD can command up to 4 squadrons.

"They're coming to get you, Barbara..."

• I chose to omit commanders because they complicate the teaching process much in the way that a lot of objectives do: they break basic rules of the game. And when someone is first learning the game, it can be hard to remember if something happened because of the rules or because of an exception to the rules. For a demo, I think we want to avoid that sort of thing.
• These are perhaps bigger than other demo fleets, but each fleet only has 3 ships. So players have options as to what they will activate and fly, but not so many as to make it very difficult (an MSU fleet can pose that problem because they will not yet understand why they should activate this Hammerhead corvette before that Hammerhead corvette). Yes, there are a bunch of squadrons, but none have an AOE buff or debuff, so placement need not be as precise - the abilities of the aces I've chosen are not so dependent on placement that they just won't trigger all game without guidance from the teacher.

Keep it simple! These folks are interested in the game, and that's great, but they don't need the hard sell. As a director and an actor, there are often times when I read a script and think that the script basically takes care of itself. It's so well-written that actors and directors don't have to work so hard to sell it, and doing so is a real disservice to the script. When this happens, I often make either a physical or mental notation that the "script takes care of itself." That is to say that even if I see some of the worst actors in the world on-stage and hate the production, I can tell that the script was mismanaged rather than thinking the actors "didn't have much to work with." I feel the same way about Armada: the game takes care of itself, if only it is taught correctly. So you don't need to overcompensate to convince someone to play. As long as you teach the game well, I think they'll get on-board. If they don't, then I don't really think any type of convincing would have gotten them there. Maybe your hard sell would get them to buy in a little bit and get a starter kit on sale or something, but one or two games would confirm that Armada is not the game for them, and that'll leave a bitter taste in their mouths. It certainly would for me. And I wouldn't really trust anyone who gave me the hard sell and convinced me against my better judgement that I'd like the game after that.

Basically?