"Control, Control, You Must Learn Control!"

 "Control, Control, You Must Learn Control!"

It amuses me sometimes to think about how the thing I like most about Star Wars Armada is precisely the thing at which I continually need to improve: patience. What really attracted me to Armada in the first place was the planning required to be successful. I loved the notion of setting a plan in motion from deployment and then watching it blossom into a beautiful disaster or a masterful success by the time we hit turns 3 or 4. It's like chess - the setup requires forethought, and if the first couple of moves are played well, the rest becomes a bit of a foregone conclusion. Sometimes, you hit a point in this game where you see the doom on its way, but there's simply not a darn thing you can do about it. I have always admired that element of this game. But it has always given me the most difficulty. It's hard for me to not react when I see a thing unfolding. And the typical result of that kind of panic (even if I don't think of it as panic, but instead see it as savvy - trying to cut off my opponent before they accomplish their aim) is I get caught somewhere between my original plan and something totally different and incompatible.

It happens with ships getting caught in a bit of a no man's land they don't want to occupy, and that's been especially true when I'm flying very light on squadrons and am facing an MSU fleet featuring a lot of small, fast ships that I have no hope of chasing or out-activating. But more often than not, the flaw is most evident in my squadron game. Patience is so key when it comes to playing the squadron game in Armada. Sometimes, I have every intention of holding back until I can dictate the battlefield on which my squadrons will exchange fire with my opponent; then I see those nasty bombers with a murderous glint in their eyes as they approach my flagship and I jump a couple of squadrons forward to absorb that attack or block off that avenue of approach. They get caught out of position or locked down and then I'm stuck in a scrum of my own making, but not in the place I wanted it to happen.

Please don't mistake what I'm saying as "you should never alpha strike," because that's not my point at all. My point is that while alpha strikes have their place, a player needs to be able to distinguish between an *actual* alpha strike and the illusion of one. Good players do an excellent job of laying out bait so their opponents start "seeing ghosts." In other words, they see opportunities that aren't really there. It's honestly my favorite part of the new Intel (aside from the fact that Intel is no longer totally broken): Grit was often overlooked even as a printed ability. But having a squadron that can quietly grant Grit to any friendly unit it can reach? It's a really terrific way to completely alter the terms of engagement. You can't always count on an opponent to underestimate or forget about Grit, of course. But it's still extra math your opponent has to do. And it's math one can exploit only if they're patient. Positioning becomes that much more important and often requires that the unit granting Intel stay back so it can leap into the correct position. This as opposed to the way Intel used to work, wherein so long as you had an Escort unit or two with it, everyone could jump out of engagement willy-nilly. But now, if all of your squadrons are lumped together, Grit doesn't help if that entire group gets tied down by several enemy squadrons. Intel/Grit hasn't been leveraged to the best of its ability.

I've been thinking about this more as I've been flying with more squadron-heavy fleets. I haven't been playing nearly as much as I'd like while navigating a new job, but when I have played, it's either been with my Dooku fleet or my Yularen fleet, both of which feature at least 123 points worth of squadrons (my Dooku fleet features 133). So I've had to get better at playing patiently and differentiating between opportunities and ghosts. When I was flying my Tarkin fleet, I was flying 1 ISD, 2 GSDs, and 1 Gozanti. I had two squadrons: IG-88 and Hondo. They were aces who had very specific purposes and I got pretty good at placing them where I needed them. But I bring this up because I had to figure out how to navigate flying against MSU, in which my opponent easily out-activated me and could stay out of my most brutal firing arcs. You can find some terrific advice about fighting against MSU here at CGYSO, but it took a long time for me to get halfway decent at "taking what my opponent gave me."

It's not a direct parallel I can draw, but it's the first thing I thought of, so here we are.

What it really came down to was making sure I closed in on one or two ships and set up a forking situation in which my opponent basically had two choose which of the two ships to activate with the knowledge that the other ship would most assuredly be destroyed. Because my ISD and GSDs were tanky (with the help of 7th Fleet Star Destroyer, Auxiliary Shields Team on the GSDs and Engineering tokens distributed amongst my ships rather liberally), it meant that I was now up on points. My opponent was forced into engagement range in order to go for the win. But now that my opponent was chasing me instead of the other way around, I could set the terms for further engagement and continue to plunk away at their forces.

It's definitely not the same exact tactic with squadrons, but there's an element of it. If my opponent has squadrons, it's unlikely they're all bombers. If they are, then my dogfighters can get in there and start delivering knockout blows. If it's all squadron-to-squadron fighters they've brought, then they're no real threat to my capital ships and I can afford to wait for them to approach me on my terms. Then, of course, there's the opponent who (like me) has brought anti-squadron fighters as well as bombers. Not quite a mirror match, but we both want the same thing: to clear out our opponent's squadrons so we can begin dropping bombs on our opponent's ships. Patience is vital here because you probably had a plan for your approach before you ever flew your fleet. Even when you were deciding on your squadron load-out, you were making those decisions based on how you thought matches might go, and therefore, what you needed. In my Dooku fleet, I knew I needed Hyenas to do damage to enemy ships. I couldn't afford to let my Escort units tank for a turn to protect my Hyenas because Seppies don't have any Escort units! So I needed squadrons that could proactively go out and murder my opponent's anti-squadron firepower. So I picked up DIS-T81 in order to Snipe the turn before engagement if possible. I also picked up General Grievous and a generic Belbullab that could fly in formation with the Hyenas so they'd have the advantage of Screen. This meant my opponent had a difficult decision: attack the Hyenas and hope they killed my bombers before the Belbullabs could tear into them, or attack the Belbullabs knowing they'd have the advantage of Screen 3. Knowing that I needed my Hyenas to be doing damage meant I needed to do whatever I could to ensure they wouldn't get locked down by a couple of aces that were difficult to kill. So I brought DFS-311 in order to provide Grit. But if he's going to do that, I need him in the right place. Which means he hangs back until he absolutely cannot afford to do so any longer. Then he jumps in and springs whichever squadrons most need to get to where they're going.

Now that's a plan! If this picture makes no sense to you, go watch Farscape and then come back.

Whether we think about it or not, we often have a plan for how we're going to leverage our squadrons. And that plan doesn't necessarily become invalid just because we've made first contact with the enemy. This is where I would often struggle, and still do, sometimes! I'd take bait my opponent laid out there. I'd outkick my coverage or rely on good dice rolls to make up for my impatience. I'd worry about how much damage my ship could really afford to take from an alpha strike, throw some squadrons out there to soak up some fire, and then my squadron game would fall apart because I was effectively feeding my squadrons to the meat grinder. It's not always easy to be patient. And sometimes, being patient looks like one of your ships weathering so much fire that it's going to be dead sooner than you planned. But shooting from the hip in Armada rarely benefits the player who tried to pull it off. I should know; I'm pretty familiar with that kind of panic.

Getting back to patience when dealing with someone else's squadrons, though, I think it's important to prioritize one's own squadrons while prioritizing their targets. The last time I flew my Yularen fleet, "Axe" went down way faster than I anticipated. But his job was to keep my bombers safe and help keep all of my squadrons alive just long enough for my ships to heal them with Yularen's ability, and thus win the squadron battle quickly through a war of attrition. Rather than push everyone forward to create a target-rich environment and hope that my opponent split their fire in my attempts to save "Axe," I made sure not to outkick my coverage or expose my other squadrons too soon. It's possible it might've kept "Axe" alive. If for no other reason than the sky would be so thick with a total number of squadrons that my opponent couldn't get enough guns on "Axe" for an alpha strike that would kill him. In the past, I might've done that, trying to preserve one of my favorite assets. Especially because "Axe" isn't really supposed to die. And certainly not before he ever fires a single shot. But in this case, I let him get ripped up, and then I jumped on the squadrons that had killed him. They'd done so very close to my Venator and I was first player. So by not attempting an alpha strike (my opponent is extremely skilled and he kept his squadrons either just out of reach or just inside a reach that would've ensured the battle was happening on his terms), I was able to quickly gobble up the squadrons that killed "Axe." After that, I could jump on his remaining squadrons, dismantle them quickly, and then my bombers could go to work.

I'm not saying I've got my squadron game on lock, because I definitely don't. But patience is very much a virtue when it comes to Armada. In a lot of cases, we only get one shot to get things right. The game is only 6 rounds long and oftentimes, once a ship has made its attack run, it's gone and out of the fight. It's pretty uncommon for ships to take a serious pass at one another and then re-engage. There are ships that are more likely to kite around a conflict and thus keep taking shots at one another throughout the engagement (I see you, Ackbar mirror match!), but even then, with only 6 rounds, we've limited opportunities to execute any plans we've got. We sometimes reach for kills we'll never accomplish in the time we've got left. That sort of thing often costs us more points and sometimes the game. If we're too impatient, we can often end up engaged in a scrum on our opponent's terms. And you can be sure that they've got a plan to take you down. It's like driving stick shift: there's a sweet spot in which you want to change gears. Too early or too late and you're creating problems for yourself and your car. As for me? I'll continue practicing patience in my matches. Sometimes I'll end up waiting too long and missing an opportunity or leaving my opponent with too much space and time to do damage. But as I continue to learn where the sweet spot is between patience and action, I suspect my Armada play will only get stronger.