Our first catch of the day...

Something a little different today... Star Wars Armada.

I've had this for a while but never actually gotten around to playing it.  At the moment I only have the core game and a CR-90 expansion so I managed to cobble together one Rebel and one Imperial 200 point fleet to try out.

So, after one little read-through of the rulebook and creating the fleets I just dove straight in...

The Imperial fleet:

The Rebel fleet:

I wanted to stay clear of using too many squadrons for my first play-through, just wanted to get used to the mechanics and see if it was worth investing a bit more time and effort in the game or if I should just stick to Attack Wing & X-Wing.

Initial setup was on a 3x3 table with only 4 obstacles, smaller fleets, a little less room should get the action started more quickly.  Also, I was going to play until one fleet was destroyed, not bothered with the 6 turn limit (not sure how long a smaller fleet game should run but hey-ho!).

Turn 1:

Basically, every ship moved closer with the two CR-90's attempting to rush off to the near side of the table in order to get better position on the VSD in following turns:

Turn 2:

The CR-90's continued to move into flanking positions on the VSD, with Dodonna's Pride being swarmed by the TIE squadrons:

Turn 3:

The CR-90's open up on the TIE squadrons, doing significant damage to them but not finishing any of them off.  Dodonna's Pride managed to knock off a couple of the VSD's shields at extreme range and took a bit of a beating in return.  After all ships and squadrons had activated it looked a little like this:

Turn 4:

Dodonna's Pride activated first and opened up on the TIE squadrons, managing to eliminate three of them before turning its weapons on the VSD, taking a few more shields off it.  I actually forgot to move the CR-90 at this point, but live and learn!

The VSD then activated, taking a point blank range shot at the Dodonna's Pride:

This was enough damage to overload the remaining shields and destroy the Dodonna's Pride.

With its next shot, again from the front arc thanks to the gunnery team, the VSD took aim at Jaina's Light:

Having already taken some damage from the TIE's this was enough to wipe it off the board.

The Nebulon fired at the VSD, tearing through it's remaini shields and causing damage to the hull.

After movement, the remaining ships ended up at point blanks range of each other:

Turn 5:

This was a very interesting situation.  The Nebulon activated first, ripping though the remaining shields of the VSD and causing damage straight to the hull.  Its second shot proceeded to pile on yet more damage and when it came to moving, there was no position it could get clear of the VSD, so they each took a point of hull damage due to the ram.

The VSD only got the one shot in return, and most of that damage was redirected to the port shields.  Again, not fast enough to clear the Nebulon, a ram and hull damage to each ship... Hmm...

Turn 6:

Two shots for the Nebulon, this being the second:

Coupled with the damage from the ram, this managed to destroy the VSD, leaving the Nebulon on  one hull remaining...

Well... a win for the Rebellion by the slimmest of margins and I must say considering the limited ships at my disposal I quite enjoyed the game.

Learning when to use the correct command dials is going to take a bit of getting used to and the continuous ramming during those last couple of turns was very odd.  Other than that, I think I will be picking up a few more ships shortly...

Thanks for having a look, I'll be back soon with another report of one form or another!