Star Wars Armada: Making Fleet Adjustments
I've been thinking about this a lot now that we're in the new year and Adepticon 2022 is two months away. And with it comes the first big Armada event I'll be able to attend since COVID started up just in time to cancel Adepticon in 2020. Crazy.
So I've been practicing with my Grand Moff Tarkin fleet, though I've not shared the regular reports as I said I would. I genuinely meant to, but I just wasn't in a place to write up batreps as they happened and I've found that trying to think back on matches usually elicited vague memories to accompany any lessons I learned. So a lot of my batreps to that end would've read something like, "Something happened that made me realize I should've burned my Brace earlier...I took a big shot from something, maybe? But I can't remember if it was before or after my Gladiator got that great double arc shot, and that shot would've changed my line of thinking. So...something about defense tokens?" I figured none of y'all wanted to read that, so I just hadn't been putting it together in writing.
I will say that for the limited amount of practice I've managed to get in with Tarkin, I've been happy with the overall results. Anytime I come up short (whether it's a loss or a win that has a smaller-than-expected MOV), I can always trace it back to user error. That's comforting, because it means the only thing standing between me and excellence is me! Seriously, though, there's something that is simultaneously frustrating and comforting about that. It means that my theory is all solid and it comes down to execution. Which means more practice. But it also means that my approach to fleet-building ends up being pretty solid overall, so I thought I'd share some of those thoughts here.
- There are no stupid ideas.
Okay, so there are definitely ideas that don't work. But unlike games like Magic: The Gathering, when we play Armada, we're not playing for a big cash prize. We're playing for swag and pride. And both of those things are great! But it also gives us some latitude because we're not any of us going to be professional Armada players. So yes, play as hard as you can for swag and pride, but you should also have fun doing it! I know triple Onagers have been a terror and likely will be in March when Adepticon rolls around. But if you don't have fun flying trip Onagers, then don't do it. Yeah, you might lose, but you should have fun while playing.
I stress this because we should all be flying fleets we want to be flying. It should be fun! So if you have an idea that inspires scoffing, then I say, "To hell with the doubters." Sure, it may not work. But if you like the idea, then you should keep refining it! It may turn out that the idea doesn't work the way you want it to, but give it a chance to grow and develop so you're certain that it doesn't work.
I spent quite a lot of time working on my Imperial Tarkin fleet and it went through a bunch of incarnations. And I got a lot of suggestions for alternate commanders. But Tarkin was who I wanted to fly, so I figured out how I could best make it work the way I wanted to fly it. So if you have an idea, explore it! That takes me to #2... - Really explore your idea if you want it to work.
What does that mean? It means don't just throw it at the table once and give up on it. If you like it, keep messing with it! What is your idea, exactly? Is it just a commander that others write off (like Grand Moff Tarkin at 38 points when I first picked him up) or is it a specific upgrade interaction (your black and blue crits with Fire-Control Team)? What does your fleet hinge on? Then build out in different directions from there. Before landing on my final incarnation, I flew Tarkin with a Cymoon sporting every Fleet Command aside from All Fighters, Follow Me! I flew for at least a month or two before trying the Seventh Fleet Star Destroyer title by way of suggestion from my friend, Damien.
Write down the crux of your fleet and then sort of build out in different directions from there. Do you use generics or aces if the crux of your fleet is not based in named squadrons? Do you try a commander in an MSU fleet as well as a squadron-heavy fleet? If tanking is your thing, do you try your combo on different large-base ships?
"But Chris, how do you keep track of all of these fleets?" - Don't delete any of your fleet lists.
Seriously, don't do it. Keep them all. You might return to an old idea or you might fuse two ideas (these aces worked really well in that first incarnation, but the chassis of this ship with these upgrades worked better in this other incarnation) before you really end up landing on the fleet you want. A lot of what you'll come up with will likely be crap, but you don't always know what's crap or why. Sometimes, we take the wrong lesson away from a match loss. That is to say that we sometimes think our problem is one thing when it's actually another ("I guess that fighter screen is insufficient to hold off squadron-heavy fleets," but the problem isn't your fighter screen; it's that it can't eat an alpha strike, so you need to be more careful about when and how you engage). So if you're really trying to make a thing work, keep your fleet lists. You may not be as nuts as I am about documenting (such as I was with my commander Palpatine experiment), and that's totally cool! But at least keep your old lists so that you can compare. You may find out that as you improve as a player, you can use a fleet that walks a fine line, and now you can actually fly an older incarnation of your fleet better than when you first attempted it. - Don't ask for feedback unless you want it.
I've gotten a lot of good feedback on fleets I've built, and I've been able to incorporate a lot of it! I've also gotten a bunch of feedback I never requested. And that's okay! But if you ask for feedback, you better mean it. That doesn't mean you have to incorporate all of it, but if you're going to ask someone for it, then you owe it to them to at least evaluate what they've suggested. - Don't fear big changes.
I really thought that a Cymoon with a Fleet Command was the right way to build out my Tarkin fleet. After all, Tarkin could easily fuel that Fleet Command whatever it might be. It ended up sort of being an easy way out. Not that Tarkin on a Cymoon with a Fleet Command isn't a good build; it totally works! Ultimately, it just wasn't what I wanted to be flying. So even though I was convinced that was the approach I had to take in order to make Tarkin worthwhile, I was willing to try some other stuff. I ended up switching to a Kuat, and I've never looked back. For awhile, I was still wasting Tarkin's tokens, at which point, why am I paying 38 points for him? (I know he's 28 now, which makes the waste more palatable, but at 38 points, it was sort of unacceptable) But with more practice, I hit a decent stride and was using tokens the way I needed in order to best leverage Tarkin's ability.
If I had avoided any big changes, I would still be flying a Cymoon and with far less success. Not because of the Cymoon itself, but because the Cymoon was at odds with the fleet I was trying to build and subsequently fly. Big changes do not invalidate your attempts at building a new and different fleet. When we fall in love with our original ideas, it can be hard to let them go. But it also makes growth difficult, if not impossible. Be willing to make the big change. After all, if you heeded my third bullet point of advice, you've got all your old fleet lists anyway, so what's the big deal? If you want to go back to what you were flying before, just go back! - Drop the dead weight.
Think about what your upgrades are doing for you. There's a threshold you need to set for your upgrades, ships, and squadrons. Not everything will work properly all of the time. But if a component of your fleet is not pulling its weight, you gotta drop it, or it's going to hold you back. It may be true that you don't know what you'd use to replace it, but even if it's just points toward your bid, that's better than cards that aren't pulling their weight.
An upgrade that nearly always fits that bill for me is the Officer upgrade, Director Krennic. He's 8 points and sits in the Officer upgrade slot on a ship, which is usually a pretty hotly contested upgrade slot. I love Krennic. When the SSD and its accompanying upgrade cards were spoiled, Krennic was reason enough for me to buy a $200 ship. That's nuts. But he's done nothing but disappoint me. I usually get maybe one good use out of him before my opponent closes and Krennic only works at medium to long range. At close range, he's 8 points of dead weight. He sits at his desk and catches up on paperwork or e-mails while the battle rages outside. Drives me out of my mind. I've tried using him in a bunch of capacities, but the truth is that unless I'm against an opponent who also wants to keep their distance, Krennic doesn't get enough use to be worth the points or space. Which kills me where I live, because I really want the upgrade to do what I want it to do! Now, if I really want to fly it, then sure, I can just fly it! But generally speaking, he doesn't do what I need him in order to earn his place in my fleets. It's weight I can drop. I don't always replace him with another upgrade, but usually, I can find something that is not only cheaper, but usually more useful. - Include answers to problems.
For instance, my Tarkin fleet effectively doesn't have any squadrons. Originally, I had Captain Jonus in there because he gave all of my ships an auto accuracy, and accuracy tech is terrific. I had him paired with IG-88. But it just wasn't enough to hold off enemy squadrons intent on wrecking my ships. Even though I really enjoy Jonus, I replaced him with several different aces before finally landing on my duo of IG-88, Murder Droid and Hondo Ohnaka, Friend to All.
"Aren't they just a 45 point speed bump?" I can hear you all asking the question.
If I don't fly them well, then yes, they totally are. But they've got purpose: they're present to mitigate the worst my opponent's squadrons have to offer. IG-88 can get the jump on anyone at all while ignoring Escort and Counter, thus negating those defense mechanics. If I'm worried I can't kill the worst of my opponent's squadrons, I can simply use Hondo to activate them (and he's speed 4 when activated by my flotilla with Vector, which helps him get just a little more reach, and it's usually unexpected because who the heck uses Vector?!). It doesn't stop everything, but it can often stop just enough for my Kuat and Glads to do the work they need to do without being killed by bomber fire.
I know this is pretty general advice, but I find it difficult to offer the really nitty gritty of this kind of work. But North Carolina friend of the blog, Josh, is someone with a ton of experience in this area and I gave him an idea of what I was doing, and he said the following: "Maybe I'm off base here, but I think it's interesting to really dig in, let's say on a particular upgrade choice. How do you evaluate if it's the best choice for the fleet? Test games against lots of different stuff, in a wide variety of game scenarios, in different objectives, etc? How do you compare it to other choices for the slot, or nothing at all? How can you do efficient evaluation without playing a million games using every possible combination?" So to that end, I'm going to start working on another series of blog posts, I think. I'm going back through some of the Armada fleets I've shared with y'all, I'm going to pick up some of what I think are my more interesting and unconventional choices, and do a deep dive on very specific choices I've made. Some of them will have been tested again and again, some will have only seen play a handful of times (or maybe just once!), and then some will be 100% theory-crafting. We'll see how this goes!
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