Star Wars Armada Faction Breakdown

 Star Wars Armada Faction Breakdown

With the first major sanctioned Armada event since the start of COVID nearly 2 years ago happening at Adepticon in March, I've been thinking a lot about what the meta will be. I don't play online, so I don't really have any guidance from there. And I've been busy with other things lately, and so have not prioritized listening to or watching any of the Armada podcasts or streams. I don't plan on taking a fleet that's specific to the meta, mind you. But I do try to be aware walking into any given tournament so that I have solutions for whatever I'm fighting. Back when Thrawn two-ship was a thing, I didn't build a counter-fleet for it, but I did make sure that my tourney fleet had an answer for it.

Anyway, as I consider what I might see at Adepticon, I couldn't help but think about what I perceive as the current strengths and weaknesses of each faction. I've talked about them with friends who are either new to the game or haven't played in awhile. So I thought I'd share a few of my thoughts here.

Republic is the Most Difficult Faction to Play

This is a bit of a no-brainer for me. To be clear, this is NOT an indictment of the faction with regards to what it brings to the table and how strong Republic fleets can be. Overall, Republic is probably my favorite faction to fly. But I also think it's the least flexible faction *in-game*. The faction can field any of the MSU, big heavy, squadron-heavy archetypes, but I think when you're building your fleet, every ship, squadron, and upgrade has to be chosen carefully and with a specific goal that works in concert with the other components. There's simply no room in Republic fleets for dead weight because you're nearly always strapped for points while building, and once you're in the game, flexibility just isn't in their vocabulary. Their Consular can turn, no problem. But the Pelta maxes out at speed 2, which is limiting for a small ship. The Acclamator and the Venator simply don't want to turn without help. And because neither chassis of either ship has a support team slot, it's not even like you can take something like Nav Team to be that help.

Their single large ship, the Venator, cannot go toe to toe with a lot of other larges unless its dice behave - the Venator doesn't have a lot of dice fixing capabilities, it doesn't have any duplicate defense tokens, and the bulk of its firepower is in its front arc, so good positioning of this ship is essential to its success. With so many variables (to say nothing of the fact that it's really most effective at close range but doesn't really want to be there), I really like the Venator, but it's just not very flexible. While the ship can fulfill any number of roles in a Republic fleet, once it has been outfitted for that role, it *needs* to stick to it.

Again, please do not not read this as "Republic isn't good" or "Republic is the weakest faction," because I don't believe that to be the case. It's just my experience that the faction is reliant upon fleet synergy for success, and user error with this faction is much more likely to result in catastrophe. My experience with the faction (both playing with it and playing against it) has shown me that when players deviate from the way they planned on flying the fleet when they built it, there simply isn't any room for error. And because the faction as a whole relies on synergistic relationships, losing just one or two cogs in the machine can lead to a complete system meltdown.

Separatists Facilitate the Most Creativity

The Separatists are weird. I like them a lot! But damn, are they weird! Okay, some of them are, anyway. I think the design space in which they were created is great, because you've got some wildly different ships and upgrades (even if the squadrons are almost all based on TIE equivalents), and they all need to work in concert. It really captures the notion of a Separatist Confederacy, and I dig that. I think that players can be creative when building a fleet of any faction in this game. Seeing what kinds of fleets Armada players build is one of the best parts of this game, and why I think jank tournaments can be so much fun.

But in my opinion, Separatists take this the furthest because the design space for so many of these cards is just WEIRD. Great, but weird. At this point, anyone who has played with or against a Recusant has made note of the weird firing arcs. They allow the Recusant to do some wacky things, but man, they also make the Recusant a very appealing target. Tikkes offering up a free command token while locking you into that command the next time you set a command dial is cool and useful, but can also contribute to some really interesting synergies for any player interested in figuring out how to leverage it best. I'm not particularly fond of Hyperwave Signal Boost at present, but again, the design space is interesting and encourages players to be creative in trying to figure out the best way to use such an upgrade. Even a number of the commanders encourage and reward creative fleet building and play. Admiral Trench is expensive, but offers a lot of upside for players who figure out how to best leverage him without trying to treat him as though he's "basically a Separatist-version of Thrawn," because he most certainly is not Thrawn. Count Dooku does *fine* on his own in any fleet, but he's begging players to build a fleet around doing a better job of leveraging the Raid tokens he hands out so it's not just a passive or lucky advantage for the Separatist player.

Also, the Separatist player who wants to field squadrons absolutely needs to be creative. There are no squadrons with Escort to protect the Hyenas, which are very frail for bombers. The Belbullabs are really cool squadrons with their Relay and Screen abilities, but they need non-Screen squadrons around them in order to take advantage of it, so what does your fighter presence look like? Creative thinking is what has gotten us a Recusant throwing 4 red dice, 2 blue dice, and 2 black dice out of their front arc at long range (4 red dice as a base, 2 blue dice from the Patriot Fist title, 1 black die from Swivel-Mount Batteries, and an additional black die from a Concentrate Fire dial). I can't wait to see what continued Separatist play discovers for the faction and for the meta at large!

Rebels Are the Swingiest of the 4 Factions

I think this is probably the "hot take" that folks are least likely to agree with, but stick with me for a minute and see if I can't convince you. I mainly base this off of two observations. The first is that Rebel ships are much more likely to be focused on tossing red dice than the Imperials or the Republic. The Separtists currently outstrip the Rebels in throwing red dice, but this is also obviously extrapolated from the 4 ships that the Separatists currently have to their name. I suspect the gap between a red dice focus between Separatists and Rebels will close given some more Separatist ship drops. Extrapolation is also the name of the game for a comparison to the Republic, but I would argue that the only Republic ship that is truly a consistent threat from long range is the Consular Charger. Long range attacks from all other Republic ships can do damage if they're built that way, but they're not necessarily *meant* to be built that way, and so aren't built that way in every Republic fleet one encounters. Red dice are swingy. *Period* There are ways to mitigate dice luck, and those are obviously a central consideration whenever we're building fleets. However, even with dice fixing, you never *know* how dice will roll or reroll. This faction relies on red dice and generally not sticking around the scrum once they've engaged the enemy. Because they're unlikely to survive said scrum if they stick around for more than a turn or two. I have seen MC-80s under the direction of Admiral Ackbar level ships over the course of two turns. I have seen LMC-80s catch two ships unawares in their Gunnery Team-enabled front arc and just turn them each to dust one at a time before flying through the remaining debris. But I've also seen both of those ships throw something ridiculous like 7 red dice only to come up with every Accuracy and blank in the book, reroll those dice, and land something like 2 damage off of their "big shot." Those ships then promptly asploded. Swingy.

The second of my observations is the Rebel commanders as compared to the commanders in every other faction. I think the Rebel commanders are almost all terrific commanders. I stop short of calling Cracken terrific simply because his impact on any given game can be difficult (if not impossible) to measure because who knows what that obstructed die would have done? Would you have been better off not flying at speed 3? You were obstructed anyway, so Cracken effectively did nothing for ya. I think the Rebel commanders are the swingiest commanders the game has to offer.

• General Dodonna lets you pick damage cards when they're dealt faceup to an opponent. Cool! You gotta do the damage first. AND you're still at the mercy of the draw, even if your odds of drawing into a damage card you needed or wanted are increased.
• Garm Bel Iblis hands your ships command tokens equal to their command value on two non-consecutive rounds of your choosing. Did you pick the right rounds for this to be effective? Did you use the tokens you already had so that Garm hands your LMC-80 a full complement of 3 tokens, or did the game go oddly and so Garm only dispenses 1 instead of 3?
• Admiral Raddus lets you drop your ship in all sorts of wacky ways, but did the lack of a ship at the top of the match mean your deployment was poorer than it would've been without him? Did your big bad ship chuck a bunch of red dice and only deal 2 damage, thus leaving it in perfect position for a bad time?
• Both General Cracken and Mon Mothma are simply at the mercy of dice. They can absolutely mitigate incoming damage, but will they? I don't know, and neither do you a lot of the time!
• Admiral Ackbar helps you throw more red dice. You know: the swingiest of the swingy!

I'll say it again: I think these are all good commanders. I think Rebels are an excellent faction. And even if I didn't, years and years of them winning Worlds championships proves they are. But I also think they're the swingiest faction of the four we have.

The Empire is the Most Reliable Faction

Thought you were gonna get a pic of an Imperial Star Destroyer, didn't you?

I think that between their commanders and the abundance of Swarm, the Empire is the most reliable faction. I do think that, in a lot of ways, they are the least creative. Don't take that as hate; if you're new to my blog, you should know that my fleet of choice for the past three years or so has been a Grand Moff Tarkin fleet and its various predecessors and spin-offs. And all signs point to continued Tarkin use, as I still love flying this fleet. But there are so many reliable Imperial builds, and I think they're the faction that best lend themselves to that kind of reliability and predictability. From a lore standpoint, it makes sense: you've got an established power that rules through overwhelming force and technological superiority. Thematically, the design space is spot-on. I don't need to be cagey and kite my capital ship back and forth like the Rebels, I don't necessarily need to hit and run like the Republic, and I don't necessarily have to find a way to pull seemingly disparate elements together the way Separatists do. I've got an Imperial Star Destroyer and I can just cram it down your throat.

The Imperial commanders usually have pretty straight-forward effects, such as Ozzel's speed changes, Jerjerrod's extra yaw, Motti's additional hull, Tarkin's tokens of choice, Thrawn's bonus dials...so many of the Imperial commanders simply buff your ships and don't ask for anything in return. You only get to pick one type of token for Tarkin each turn, and you need to select your bonus dials upon deployment with Thrawn, but otherwise...

Again, please don't take it as my hating on the faction. And I know not all of the Empire's commanders are so straight-forward. Tagge and Konstantine get cute, Sloane and Romodi get a little involved, etc. But I think that if you're looking for reliability, Imperials are the place to go. And I think that the statistics prior to COVID and version 1.5 back that up. We saw more Imperial fleets make it to top cuts more consistently than Rebels, but Rebels won the whole thing way damn more often than the Empire did. The Rebels have always had a lower floor, but a higher ceiling. I still think that's true in 1.5. I think the Empire continues to be the steadiest faction of the four, and I think players can see great success with the Empire. But I think that same steadiness and reliability means we always see them doing well, but will often see other factions ultimately end up winning the whole thing through creativity, cleverness, and niche design.