Unfortunately my local Armada scene is pretty dead. We used to be quite a few people, but no one seems to really want to play anymore. There is talk of playing, but no real... play. So my IRL Armada is limited to going to tourneys anywhere but locally. Which involves AT LEAST 3h in a car - or even a plane trip. So I guess I'm going to have to rely on Vassal even more in the future.
But Vassal doesn't satisfy the need to push plastic around. So I've gone ahead and invested in the next best thing: X-wing 2.0! It's only been out a week, so listbuilding and play experience still quite limited. But it's a blast thus far. So quick and fun. Listbuilding is fast (though I'm still learning the cards and ships), setup is fast, play is fast. Although similar to Armada in some regards, the overall experience is very different.
Anyway. This is an Armada blog, so I'm not going to talk too much about X-wing. The point of this blog post is to compare some of the squads from X-wing with how they've turned out in Armada. After all, both games are made by the same company, and Armada is kind of descended from X-wing (or at least it came later).
One of the really weird ones is how they made the X-wing so slow compared to the TIE Fighter. In X-wing a TIE has a slight edge in speed, but the X-wing can boost (I guess it couldn't in the 1.0 version) and effectively achieve the same speed. It also has an arguably better maneuver dial.
So when I fly X-wings and Y-wings, it feels weird, because the X-wing is MUCH faster and more agile than the Y-wing, yet in Armada they are the same speed. And that bugged me BEFORE I ever played X-wing. If they ever make Armada 2.0 the X-wing should be speed 4.
The B-wing is another weird one. In X-wing is does indeed move like slug. It can barely even reach speed 4, and only if it takes stress. That is true for the Y-wing as well, but at least it can bank at speed 3 without stress and hard turn with stress. B-wing is pretty much locked to speed 2, although they do have access to stuff like Advanced Sensors or even Afterburners, which can make them more agile.
So I guess the Speed 2 in Armada is warranted. But I must say it feels incredibly contrived to have a fighter-bomber that's slower and less maneuverable than a dinky YT-1300 (and from Rebels we known that the B-wing prototype is a speed demon lol). Speed 2 for a squad in Armada is just lame btw. Just look at all the crap they made so they could go faster: AFFM and FCT in particular. Sigh. At the very least, if the B-wing MUST go speed 2, give it the amount of hull it deserves. It's even tougher than a Y-wing, because it has more shields and the same amount of hull/shields.
Speaking of squadron hull points: in X-wing TIEs are very fragile, this is true. But they have great agility and access to evade (and focus oc). Y-wings on the other hand are VERY easy to hit, so although they are tough, they get hit a LOT more. I guess Heavy in Armada, and the fact that there is no 1-1 conversion of hull/shields does explain some of it. But the fact is the TIE (and other squads like it) should have either a defensive buff or more hull. On the other hand TIEs get more offense, so maybe the designers figured it evens out. It does, however, make TIEs hopeless vs flak.
Ah well, rant over. Time to start work.
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