Next Year is upon us, and the release of wave 8, and then a long wait for clone wars begins. It should be a fun and exciting year, more stuff to shake up stuff even more than RITR has so far, and then more factions more upgrades everything is going to be crazy.
It will be exciting to see how the two new factions are different from the others and what new mechanics they will introduce.
It is still a bit of a wait, but it will give us something to look forward to by next year's end, but in the meantime what will we do?
Armada is a game that is ever changing, a new list comes in gets popular and then counters start to be made to cancel it out and repeated. They game is always in motion, and I think that is truer now than it probably has ever been. The SDD has been out for about 4 months, and I still we are having shifts in the game due to that one ship. We also have RitR out and well the dust has not even come close to settling with that one yet, and if that is not enough we got two more ships coming in January to just kick the dust up all over again.
It will be a while before everything completely settles in next year, it likely won’t be until late spring early summer before we have a firm grasp on the “meta”, and shortly after that we will likely get news of Clone Wars products, maybe even before that at Adepticon. Then just as the game finishes changing and evolving to adapt to the new “meta” the clone wars will come out and really shake up the whole game, and while the faction may not be super competitive on release the “rapid release” schedule for clone wars should bring them up to par fairly quickly with the two current factions, and with 4 factions in play the game will change an evolve more than it ever has.It’s going to be an exciting year for armada next year, but what about this year?
The SDD has had a larger impact on the game than I thought. This mostly due to first lasting it does not do a whole lot against it. Another factor is its defense tokens, most lists where just built to punch through tokens in someway, but now accuracies are coming back in style to force the SSD to burn tokens, or even things like intel officer I have seen at least a slight rise in use at least from what I can see. Also the treat of a DCO SSD has really taking a list with lots of crit effects a bit of a scary prospect.
The SSD has performed better than I thought it would, I would not say its overperforming, but doing better than I thought. It has won a few PRIME events, and placed well in other tournaments it's pretty much exclusively a single list, but it is performing well, with some minor changes from list to list.
SSD Assault Prototype (250) • Moff Jerjerrod (23) • Intel Officer (7) • Captain Brunson (5) • Agent Kallus (3) • Gunnery Team (7) • Quad Laser Turrets (5) • Phylon Q7 Tractor Beams (6) • SW-7 Ion Batteries (5) • Leading Shots (4) • Quad Turbolaser Cannons (10) • H9 Turbolasers (8) • Ravager (4) = 337 Points
Gozanti Cruisers (23) • Darth Vader (1) • Comms Net (2) = 26 Points
Gozanti Cruisers (23) • Admiral Titus (2) • Repair Crews (4) = 29 Points
Squadrons: = 0 Points
Total Points: 392
We also had RitR came out this year, and well it's done quite a bit for the game, I mean a VSD I is in half of the winning empire lists, and not even all of them are Harrow both Corruptor and Warlord where in winning lists. one list even had 2 VSD I's:
Quasar Fire I (54) • Admiral Sloane (24) • Captain Brunson (5) • Flight Controllers (6) • Expanded Hangar Bay (5) • Boosted Comms (4) • Pursuant (2) = 100 Points
Victory I (73) • Minister Tua (2) • Ordnance Experts (4) • Reserve Hangar Deck (3) • Quad Battery Turrets (5) • External Racks (3) • Electronic Countermeasures (7) = 97 Points
Victory I (73) • Commander Vanto (7) • Darth Vader (3) • Quad Battery Turrets (5) • External Racks (3) • Harrow (3) • Auxiliary Shields Team (3) = 97 Points
Squadrons: • Colonel Jendon (20) • Howlrunner (16) • Maarek Stele (21) • Valen Rudor (13) • Saber Squadron (12) • 3 x TIE Fighter Squadron (24) = 106 Points
Total Points: 400
Several of the new objectives have made a splash, Surprise Attack, Hyperspace Migration, Asteroid tactics, Infested Fields, are some of the more popular objectives right now.
Many upgrades in RitR have had an impact on the game, but many have not been fully explored, and nether have many of the aces, though a Moralo abuse list did win in Germany:
Victory I (73) • Grand Admiral Thrawn (32) • Admiral Ozzel (2) • Boosted Comms (4) • Harrow (3) • Fighter Coordination Team (3) = 117 Points
Quasar Fire I (54) • Skilled First Officer (1) • Expanded Hangar Bay (5) • Boosted Comms (4) • Squall (3) = 67 Points
Gozanti Cruisers (23) • Hondo Ohnaka (2) • Vector (2) = 27 Points
Gozanti Cruisers (23) • Comms Net (2) = 25 Points
Squadrons: • Darth Vader (21) • Moralo Eval (22) • 5 x Lambda Shuttle (75) • Major Rhymer (16) = 134 Points
Total Points: 370
There are still so many things to explore, I have so many builds and Ideas I want to try out already, and with wave 8 out early next year, and the Clone Wars fast approaching I am sure messing with everything will keep me busy for a very long time.
Next year should be a very fun year to be an armada player. what are you looking forward to doing, trying or getting next year for/with Armada? Anyways until next year, have a great week!