A Miniatures Game of Tactical Fleet Battles in the STAR WARS Galaxy
“General, there’s a fleet of Star Destroyers coming out of hyperspace in sector four.”
–The Empire Strikes Back
Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce the upcoming release of Star Wars™: Armada, a two-player miniatures game of epic fleet battles in the Star Wars galaxy!
Massive Star Destroyers fly to battle against Rebel corvettes and frigates. Banks of turbolasers unleash torrential volleys of fire against squadrons of X-wings and TIEs. Engineering teams race to route additional power to failing shields. Laser blasts and explosions flare across the battlefield. Even a single ship can change the tide of battle.
In Star Wars: Armada, you assume the role of fleet admiral, serving with either the Imperial Navy or Rebel Alliance. You assemble your fleet and engage the enemy. Using the game’s unique maneuver tool, you steer your capital ships across the battlefield, even while squadrons of starfighters buzz around them. Then, as these ships exchange fire, it’s your job to issue the tactical commands that will decide the course of battle and, perhaps, the fate of the galaxy.
Capital Ships in Combat
Armada balances the awesome scale of the Star Wars galaxy’s ships and space warfare with intuitive ship designs and accessible rules for issuing commands and resolving combat that make for rich, engaging, and highly tactical play experiences.
Capital ships are extremely powerful war machines, but they’re also massive and sophisticated vessels that can’t swiftly react to every development in the heat of battle. Accordingly, the key to flying these vessels effectively is learning how to plan ahead. You want to issue your commands in such a way that your crews will be ready to execute them at just the right times.
Each of your pre-painted capital ships has a command value, which determines how many commands it will have in its stack at any given point in time. During setup, you secretly build your initial command stack, selecting from any of four different commands, each of which provides a different advantage. Once you have locked your selections, you place the commands in your stack in the order of your choice. Then, during each round of game play, you secretly select and assign a new command to your ship, placing it at the bottom of your command stack, before you reveal the command at the top of your stack and gain its benefits.
You might launch a screen of TIEs to intercept incoming X-wings. You might concentrate your fire on an incoming capital ship. You might scramble to repair your shields. Or if you reveal a command that doesn’t offer an immediate benefit, you can place a token on your ship and save a lesser version of that command’s benefits for later use.
Notably, the larger and more powerful your ship, the less quickly it can react to your commands. Most of the more powerful ships, like the Victory-class Star Destroyer, feature higher command values that force you to plan your actions two or more rounds ahead of time. In this way, the command stack doesn't just reflect the various actions your ships can take; it also reflects how swiftly they can adjust to the changing tides of battle.
After your ship resolves its command, it can perform up to two attacks. These can be directed against the same target or against different targets. However, these attacks must originate from two different hull sections and can only target ships or squadrons within range of those hull sections’ firing arcs.
Meanwhile, each ship offers a number of defenses from enemy fire. Each ship’s hull is reinforced to withstand enemy fire, though larger ships like the Victory-class Star Destroyer can withstand much more than smaller ships like the Corellian corvette. Meanwhile, each section of your ship’s hull has a shield rating, indicating how many hits its shields can absorb before enemy fire damages the hull directly. Moreover, in the heat of battle, you need to decide when and how to make use of your ship’s defense tokens. With these, you can angle your deflector shields and perform evasive maneuvers to reduce the amount of damage your ship suffers.
Squadrons of Starfighters
Although Star Wars: Armada is built around the galaxy’s many capital ships, you’ll almost certainly want to fly one or more squadrons of starfighters in your fleet, both to threaten enemy ships and to defend your ships from enemy squadrons.
Your squadrons are highly adaptable and flexible collections of starfighters, and only a foolish fleet admiral would overlook the tactical options that they can bring to a battle. While squadrons don’t pack the raw power or resilience of the capital ships they accompany, they come with their own rules for movement and combat that make them far more capable of occupying and threatening the exact portion of the battlefield that you choose.
If left unchecked, a swarm of starfighters can tear down even the most massive of capital ships, and while capital ships can return their fire, any shot directed at squadrons is a shot not taken at a larger ship. Furthermore, capital ships don’t use their primary weapons while attacking squadrons; they have to use their anti-squadron armament, which is typically much less effective.
Add to this the fact that some squadrons are led by such skilled pilots as Luke Skywalker, who can bypass a capital ship’s shields when he attacks, and you’ll find that squadrons are far more than an afterthought. They’re powerful weapons that skilled fleet admirals will be able to integrate into their larger strategies.
Meanwhile, even though the squadrons in Armada aren't pre-painted like the capital ships, they are presented in colors intended to complement their fleets.
Winning the Battle to Win the War
In addition to its ships and squadrons, Armada shapes your Star Wars battles with twelve different objective cards. Each game uses one of these objectives, which introduces special rules and helps to define the narrative of your battle. Are you tracking down a specific target? Are you contesting a key outpost? Are you trying to intercept key intel?
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