I Have You Now: Armada 1.5

We live in a 1.5 galaxy far, far away. We have two new factions. The rules have changed. The upgrades have changed (a fraction of them anyway). The ships and squads...are the same old, same old.

It's no secret that I think 1.5 is a huge wasted opportunity for Armada. It's also no secret that I think the changes we got were absolutely brilliant In other words, it's possible to be both happy and sad at the same time. Happy because a great game got better. Sad because they didn't go far enough.

The rules changes are great, no quarrels there. The only thing I haven't figured out is why they didn't give Contain a much-needed boost. What upgrades got tweaked or points changed, great stuff. Except for Avenger, who is worded as to make it useless.

But they only looked at older, over-used upgrades such as GT, ECM, and LS (why the Empire hate guys? win too many worlds with those cards?). Stuff that could 1-shot things (BTA). And upgrades that might interact poorly with the new Evade rules (Amdo would be bonkers).

What about 1-point Vader? What about Ahsoka that's everywhere? What about Hondo, also everywhere? What about Independence. What about...so many cards. They didn't need revisions all of them. But a few did and more could have used some points changes.

Then there are the ships and squads. Those are the core of the game. Looking at CW wave 9 I began to suspect that a great many GCW era ships were overcosted. TBH it started before that - we've known about the Vic-II since 2015 - wave 9 just confirmed it. Then we got a sneak peek at wave 10 and it turns out the existing larges are expensive too.

Squads are the same. The YT-2400 is laughably efficient for its points. The Aggressor a complete dud for the same points. Mithel isn't a 15 pointer (and why did they give reverse-Mithel to Seppies? two wrong do not make a right). The Lambda compares poorly to the VCX. Maarek + Jendon is a lame combo for 41 - but what else do the Imps have that's multi-role?

So what's my point here?

My point is that FFG gave us Armada 1.1. Maybe Armada 1.2. For the game to become truly next level we needed MORE tweaks to upgrades. We needed squad and ship cards. But that's not happening now. At the very least we would get some X-wing style pdfs that list out points changes for all the cards in the game. But I guess that too was too much to ask for.

I'll happily continue to play Armada. But I'll do so knowing that it's a project less than half completed.

Here are links to all posts focusing on the 1.5 meta.

GENERAL

The Rules Have Changed

UPGRADES

Pt. 1 Empire Commanders

Pt. 2 Rebel Commanders

Pt. 3 Ordnance

Pt. 4 Ion Cannons

Pt. 5 Turbolasers

Pt. 6 Empire Officers

Pt. 7 Rebel Officers