Pass tokens are the best thing since sliced bread. Of course, sliced bread is disgusting, so that’s not saying much. But enough joking — let’s be serious for a moment.
Because the real question is this: do we really want to go back to the age of last-first MSU?
Do we really want Demo and MC30s dictating the pace of the game, flotilla walls stalling until the perfect strike turn, and one bad tempo mistake costing you the match?
Pass tokens may not be perfect, but all things considered, they’re arguably the lesser evil.
The Pros of Pass Tokens
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They killed the activation arms race
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No more “who can bring more flotillas” contests.
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Fleets aren’t auto-penalized for running 3–4 ships instead of 6.
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You can bring the fleet you want without stapling Gozantis or GR-75s to it.
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They weakened the last-first hammer
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Last-first was oppressive. It decided too many games by itself.
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Pass tokens take away the inevitability of always being outactivated.
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Now smaller-activation fleets at least have some counterplay.
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They made large ships playable
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Before 1.5, large ships often felt like point sinks waiting to be deleted by MSU swarms.
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Pass tokens let them survive long enough to matter, giving new life to designs that had been languishing.
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The “big centerpiece ship” archetype is actually viable now.
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They improved variety in fleet design
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With flotilla spam and MSU dominance gone, we’ve seen more experimentation with medium-large ships.
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Salvo, new commanders, and Clone Wars designs would have been impossible to balance in a pure last-first meta.
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The game has more archetypes in circulation, not fewer.
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They made second player less of a death sentence
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Previously, losing the bid and being forced into second was often a nail in the coffin against certain fleets.
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Pass tokens gave second player at least a fighting chance to control tempo on a key turn.
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The Lesser Evil
Here’s the real rub: are pass tokens actually the best solution, or just the least bad?
On one hand, they solved the last-first nightmare, opened up large-ship play, and killed the flotilla arms race. On the other… they also gutted black-dice MSU, skewed the game toward tanky red-dice bricks, and left small ships languishing.
So, is this really a binary choice? Pass tokens forever, or last-first hell? Not necessarily.
A Better Fix for Last-First?
I’ve already suggested a simple alternative: the ship that activates last in round N cannot be the first to activate in round N+1.
It’s clean, it’s intuitive, and it’s already baked into the game in spirit (e.g., a Raddus drop ship can’t activate first). The initiative token could easily be repurposed: place it next to the last ship to activate, then flip it as normal at the start of the next round. Done.
That would break the hard last-first loop without needing pass tokens at all. Sure, you could work around it, but you'd have to work harder.
MSU Isn’t Coming Back Anyway
Even if pass tokens disappeared tomorrow, we wouldn’t suddenly snap back to the wild west of pre-1.5.
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Evade is still buffed.
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ACM/APT are still exhaust-nerfed.
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OE is capped.
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Flotilla spam is gone.
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Thermal Shields exist.
MSU has already been clipped in half a dozen ways. The “problem fleets” of the past are unlikely to dominate again.
The 1st Player Penalty
Another wrinkle: the first player gets one fewer pass token when outnumbered. This often hands second player a free double-activation at the end of a key round — exactly the kind of thing pass tokens were supposed to prevent.
Why does this rule exist at all? Even if pass tokens stay, that clause should be adjusted or removed.
The Pragmatic Take
Here’s the other angle: pass tokens are already baked into the ruleset. They aren’t completely busted, they aren’t universally hated, and the game is at least functional with them.
Would removing them make for a more dynamic, explosive, small-ship-inclusive Armada? Maybe. But the longer we go forward, the more the game becomes balanced around their existence — and the harder it becomes to remove them. If there ever were an Armada 2.0, then yes, maybe it would be the right moment. But in all likelihood, we’ll just have to live with pass tokens.
And if that’s the case, then the focus needs to shift. Small ships must be revisited.
It’s not a good game when you (almost) never see a Battle Hardcell on the table. Or when a Torpedo Hammerhead (36 points) feels flatly worse than a Consular Cruiser (37 points). If pass tokens remain, smalls — especially those that need to knife-fight — need point tweaks to make them viable again. Do that, and we might see a resurgence of MSU-style play even with pass tokens in the picture.
Proof of concept: I spy a 7-ship Anakin list in the distance...
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