Katso pelin traileri valmistajan Youtube -sivuilta.
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.
The Star Wars: Armada Core Set contains everything you need to get started, including the rules, an articulated maneuver tool, a range ruler, six command dials, nine attack dice, ten unpainted squadrons, and three pre-painted ship miniatures (Victory-class Star Destroyer, Nebulon-B frigate, CR90 Corellian corvette), plus more than 130 cards and tokens. All you need to engage the enemy and battle for the fate of the galaxy!
Space Battles on a Galactic Scale
Winning a battle between capital starships requires more than raw firepower. It requires the coordinated activity of hundreds – even thousands – of crew. As a ship’s commanders belt out orders, gunners rain fire upon enemy ships, and engineering teams race to keep their ship’s shields and hull intact, often rerouting power where it’s needed most.
Armada allows you to bring one or more of these massive ships to battle, along with whole squadrons of starfighters. To win, you must issue commands, direct your fleet’s movement, coordinate its fire, sustain its defenses, and do all of this while remaining mindful of your battle objective.
More than that, you’ll need to master every aspect of the ships in your fleet. You need to become intimately familiar with your ship’s design, its firing arcs, its attacks and defenses, and the way that it uses the game’s unique maneuver tool to set its course.
This maneuver tool is one of the game’s most innovative features and adds a unique feel to the way your capital ships must accommodate for inertia as they maneuver through the stars.
Capital ships can’t easily vary their speeds or execute hairpin turns like the starfighters that buzz around them. Accordingly, you only use the maneuver tool to maneuver your capital ships. Then, even as it makes it easy for you to set a ship’s course, the game’s maneuver tool lends an element of realism to its pitch and yaw.
As an example of how Armada uses its maneuver tool to realistically portray the different ways its capital ships can maneuver, we can consider the differences between the CR90 and the Victory-class Star Destroyer.
The CR90 is both capable of tighter turns and faster, with a maximum speed of "4" versus the Star Destroyer's maximum speed of "2." At speed "2," while the Star Destroyer can adjust the maneuver tool only one click at the second joint, the CR90 can adjust its course one click at the first join and two clicks at the second. Still, the faster the CR90 flies, the fewer clicks it can adjust its course through the initial range increments.
Another important consideration is that capital ships in Star Wars: Armada fire before they move, so when you set your ship’s course, you’re always trying to set yourself up for a good shot in the next round. However, the more powerful your ship, the less nimble it is, and the harder it is to adjust your actions on the fly.
Altogether, the maneuver tool and the rules for ship movement work in tandem to force you to always look ahead. Successful fleet admirals excel at planning their attack strategies well in advance of their initial engagements.
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.
The number and type of dice you roll for your attacks depend upon the ship, the hull section from which its attack originates, and the range of the attack.
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.
An X-wing squadron is shown connected to its base which tracks its remaining hit points (shown here at "5") and whether or not it has activated. Here, the blue tab on the left of the base indicates that the squadron has not yet activated. Once the squadron has activated, the tab is pushed through to the other side and displays its orange end.
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?
Importantly, the game’s objectives change the ways that you’ll score points in each battle, and they force you and your opponent to adapt your strategies, leading to tremendous replayability.
Executing Your Battle Plan
Games of Armada are played over six rounds, each of which is broken into four phases.
1) Command Phase
In the Command Phase, you and your opponent secretly assign commands to each of your ships. These are locked into that ship’s command dials and are placed facedown at the bottom of its command stack.
You can choose from any of four basic commands, each of which offers distinct advantages:
* The navigate command allows you to change your ship’s speed and increase its maneuverability.
* The squadron command allows you to order nearby squadrons to move and attack early.
* The repair command allows you to recover shields and repair your hull.
* The concentrate fire command allows you to increase the power of a single attack.
Importantly, each ship has a command value that indicates how many commands it will have facedown in its command stack at the beginning of the round. This means that, in the game's setup, before you have yet engaged the enemy, you need to issue commands for your first round or rounds of combat. Then, each Command Phase, you continue planning further ahead, reacting to the shape of battle, but issuing commands that you intend to have your crews execute one or more rounds later. Moreover, the 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 demand you plan your actions two or more rounds ahead of time.
Once you and your opponents have assigned new commands to each of your ships, you proceed to the Ship Phase.
2) Ship Phase
In the Ship Phase, you and your opponent take turns activating your ships, starting with the player who has initiative for the round. When you activate a ship, you first reveal its command for the round. You can either trigger the command’s effect from the dial for full effect, or you can store the command for future use, placing a token upon your ship’s card, and reserving the command’s effect for a more opportune moment, albeit at a reduced effect.
After you resolve a ship’s command, your ship can perform up to two attacks, though each attack must originate from a different firing arc. Each attack can target a single eligible ship, or it can target every fighter squadron within range of your firing arc. Attacks made against enemy ships use the type and number of dice indicated on the section from which they originate. Attacks made against enemy squadrons use the type and number of dice indicated by the Anti-Squadron section of your ship’s card.
Notably, while you must fire both of your attacks from different sections, if a single enemy ship lies within range and line of sight of both firing arcs, you can perform both attacks against that ship.
After your ship fires, it must set its course and move. You establish your ship’s initial speed during setup, and you must continue to move at that speed until you reveal a navigate command. Your speed determines both how far you can move and how many times you can click the game's maneuver tool to adjust your course at each speed increment.
This maneuver tool is one of the game’s most innovative features and adds a unique feel to the way your capital ships must accommodate for inertia as they maneuver through the stars.
3) Squadron Phase
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. If left unchecked, a swarm of starfighters can quickly tear down even the largest capital ship, and though capital ships can exchange fire with the starfighters that harry them, any shot directed at a squadron is a shot not taken at a larger ship.
In the Squadron Phase, you and your opponent take turns activating any unactivated squadrons, beginning with the player who has initiative. When you activate a squadron, you can move it or perform an attack with it.
Squadrons have 360-degree firing arcs, so a swarm of fighters can quickly menace even the greatest capital ships. Accordingly, every good fleet admiral needs to develop a plan for dealing with these fighters. You don’t want to reduce the amount of firepower that you unleash at your enemy’s larger ships, but you can’t afford to allow enemy fighters to attack you at their leisure. As a result, then, most fleets protect their ships by using screens of fighters to engage enemy squadrons.
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.
4) Status Phase
In the Status Phase, players ready their exhausted defense cards and flip the initiative token. Then the player with initiative increases the round count, or if you’ve just completed the sixth round, the game ends. Victory is awarded to the player who has scored more total points, counting both those awarded for eliminating enemy ships and squadrons as well as those awarded for completing objectives worth victory points.
Fighting for the Cause
Your Armada battles aren’t meaningless confrontations. You’re fighting them to make progress within the Galactic Civil War. You’re waging battles over key tactical concerns. The fate of the galaxy is at stake.
With twelve familiar objectives, Armada defines your confrontations and immerses you more fully in its Star Wars experience. At the beginning of each game, you and your opponent will select 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?
Importantly, the game’s objectives change the ways that you’ll score points in your game, and they force you and your opponents to adapt your strategies, leading to tremendous replayability.
Assemble Your Fleet
With its capital ships, starfighter squadrons, and accessible rules, Star Wars: Armada provides you an unparalleled take on the largest and most consequential battles in the Star Wars universe. What’s more, your first games are only the beginning of your involvement in the Galactic Civil War.
Just as it is your job as fleet admiral to assemble a battle plan, it is your job to build the fleet that stands the best chance of emerging from battle victorious. Rules for fleet-building allow you to handpick your strike force as you prepare to meet the enemy. Not only can you choose which ships and squadrons to bring to battle, you can upgrade them with powerful weaponry or call upon the talents of elite pilots and officers.
As Rebel and Imperial fleets collide, thousands of crew will heroically perform their duties, thousands more will die, but you are the one whose decisions will determine the course of the battle and help decide the fate of the galaxy.
Command your fleet, win the battle, and play your part in the Galactic Civil War!
• A two-player miniatures game of tactical fleet battles in the Star Wars universe
• Core Set contains includes three pre-painted capital ship miniatures, ten unpainted fighter squadrons, and more than 130 cards and tokens
• Ships utilize a unique, articulated maneuver tool to quickly set their courses
• Rules for stacked commands force players to strategize multiple turns ahead, even as they make difficult tactical decisions in the heat of battle
• Command the unmat
