Star Wars Armada, Kanban EV, and Unsettled

 Star Wars Armada, Kanban EV, and Unsettled**

**Allow me to start by saying that this is a post o started either just before or just after I injured my finger and went on hiatus from blogging. I'd written a good amount of what I intended before I put it down, but now it's been awhile since I started it and it'll be difficult for me to pick up the thread. I think there's some fun and interesting stuff in here, so rather than scrap it, I'll just note where I left off back in May and see where I can carry on!**

It had been a minute since I'd gotten to play anything, so I had a deluge of games in the last little bit, here, and man, it was great. It started with the first game of Armada I've gotten to play in maybe a month. I had so many fleets to fly that I had trouble deciding! I ultimately settled on my Bright Choir fleet because it was freshest in my head and I was curious if it could tread water. Kyle brought a Madine fleet to the table; his fleet featured 2 MC-30s, an Assault Frigate, and a tough little squadron ball: Luke, Hera, Biggs, Tycho, and 2 generic X-Wings. I thought it would prove a good test for my squadrons and see how much damage they could do before those sturdy Rebel squadrons ripped them up like so much tissue paper.

I've mentioned before that I'm very unfamiliar with Separatists; I've only flown them a handful of times and haven't actually played against them that much. So I'm still learning the ropes of how I want to fly them. I knew I'd need to be extremely patient with my squadrons because I couldn't risk Kyle getting an alpha strike on them. I had the bid and chose to go second because I thought I'd be happier flying my objectives and if I was careful, his X-Wings couldn't catch my droids before I committed them to the fray. He ended up picking Planetary Ion Cannon, which I was happy with. It won't score me points, but I'm grateful for any source of damage. I set them up in a sort of triangle around the station. Kyle deployed far away from them, so it looked like we wouldn't be engaging for a minute. But I know those MC-30s are real fast and would only be able to do more with the aid of Madine. So I called out rounds 3 and 5 on Shu Mai.

The thing is that I just didn't use Hondo early enough in the game. I was saving him for I don't know what later in the game. An emergency of some sort? But it was foolishness. As soon as I saw that my Providence would be out of position at speed 2 with squadrons dialed up as far as the eye could see, I should have tossed it a navigate token. But I didn't. The result was that my Providence fired one shot the entire game. No joke. It was only able to issue meaningful squadron commands because the squadron battle broke so hard my way and my Belbullabs were little Relay nodes. Honestly, it was bonkers just how much work my squadrons did. Kyle happily delayed engagement because that would work in his favor, both in limiting the number of attacks my Hyenas would get and in avoiding my ion cannon tokens. 

My little Gozanti led the charge and we didn't really get into it until round 4. At that point, he was flying REALLY wide around my ion cannons so I could pepper him with shots from my squadrons. DIS-T81 gave up any cover it might've had from an obstacle and just jumped into the fray; it lasted far longer than it had any right to do, and it dealt out some deadly damage. Biggs died quick and then the X-Wings were on my Tri-Fighters while Tycho jumped in to lock down my Hyenas. But DFS-311 had been held in reserve and was able to spring the Hyenas so they could toss some red bomber dice at Kyle's two MC-30s. The rolls averaged out, so no big swings, but very few straight misses.

Ultimately, once my Belbullabs were hammering away at the X-Wings, the squadron battle was all but over. I was able to sweep away all 5 X-Wings and Tycho while only losing DIS-T81. Pretty unlikely, but I can really see the value of relentless offense making up for my lack of hull on these droids. My Gozanti finally went down, but it just took too long for Kyle to kill it. By the time he did, it had pushed so many squadrons against his own with the benefit of Flight Controllers that I had easily traded up.

**This is where I stopped writing. I've got some scores noted, but that's it.**

I don't remember how the rest of this played out. I know that I won 177 - 50, so it was a convincing one. But also, our main sources of ship firepower kept straying wide of the fight. I remember I was surprised at how the squadron battle went and that I had enough fun that I wanted to keep using this iteration of my Bright Choir fleet.

Next up, Chad introduced me to Kanban EV! It was designed by Vital Lacerda and Chad knows how much I enjoy The Gallerist, which Lacerda also designed. This one is a winner. I've mentioned before that I generally trust Chad's taste when it comes to games. I also know from experience that I shouldn't let themes discourage me from trying a game, since I was very quickly sold on games such as Viticulture (a game about making wine), The Gallerist (a game about fostering artists and selling their art), and Power Grid (a game about power plants). But I'll admit that when Chad explained we were placing workers in a car factory to build cars, my inclination was to pick a different game instead. I'm glad I shrugged off that inclination, because I really enjoyed Kanban EV! Chad whooped me, 185-117, but it was a lot of fun and I suggested we play it with more than two players at Geekway. Which we totally did: played it with four and I lost again, but it was even better with 4.

The components were really cool, the iconography is really good once one gets a handle on the gameplay, and I like the way players interact with one another in this one. A couple of posts prior to this one, I wrote about how excited I was to get a copy of this game for myself. But I also included a game called Unsettled in the title of this post.

Unfortunately, there are only a couple of things I remember well enough to share:

• I had a lot of fun playing this game!
• The premise of this modular game is players are explorers on a new world and trying to survive whatever it throws at them. Through science!
• Our particular planet had a ton of alien plantlife and we needed to figure out how to survive toxic and psychedelic spores from these plants.
• We definitely didn't make it. It sort of wasn't close. But it was so fun!
• I really appreciated the design space, but almost more impressive was how self-contained each planet is from a storage standpoint.
• It made me think of how they break down different T.I.M.E Stories while still using the core set, but I think Orange Nebula does a better job of it based on what I've seen so far.
• I'm absolutely buying my own copy of this. I think it's terrific co-op fun. Highly recommend.

Like I said, I had a good stretch of gaming! And with CabinCon coming up, I'm really excited to share more great gaming with y'all. This time, with more detail, so long as I don't chop off a part of my finger again or something!