Last week we talked about Point fortresses and a little bit about all ship vs squadrons. We wrapped up with a quote from Truthiness that said playing against squadron lists "I've proven that I can still effectively pressure a squadron heavy build. The key is tempo." Tempo has always been an interesting concept to me in all forms of gaming, so I know I wanted to cover this topic at some point and I thought why not next week. Well Ginkapo wrote an article about tempo, he covered the topic of timing your activations and that is a part of tempo (his wright up on it is great and worth the read, and sparked a great community discussion you can read it here). I rewrote this a little bit as to not step on Ginkapo's toes to much. While timing your activation is an aspect of tempo it is also so much more as well so lets talk about it.
Tempo literally means time, and when we talk about it in a gaming since it means having more time than your opponent. It is a little confusing so let me give you an example and then translate that into Armada terms. Two people are playing a card game on the first turn the first player plays a card that has no current in game effect, the second player does the same the first player plays a card that removes the card the second player played on his turn and uses the card he played last turn to do something, this is an example of the first player gaining tempo or time. The first player has taken 2 turns while the first player has effectively taken no turns in that the first player negated what happened on the second players turn and because of that has taken 2 turns while his opponent has effectively taken zero turns this is tempo in its simplest form, the first player gaining an extra turn or more time over the second player.
I hope that example made since, as we are about to dive into slightly more complex examples of tempo, because Armada is just not as simple as a card game it’s not your turn my turn with an unlimited amount of turns until someone wins. Armada is a game played over the course of 6 rounds with each round players taking turns activating ships. This setup is very similar to the setup of where the word tempo comes from, music.
I am no musical genius I don’t even play an instrument, but I did pay attention in my required musical theory class in collage so here we go. Music is played over the course of many measures or bars; measures are a segment of time that correspond to a specific number of beats, and each beat is is represented by a particular note. So what does that have to do with Armada, well lets apply that statement about music to Armada. Armada is played over the course of six rounds; rounds are a segment of time that correspond to a number of activations, and each activation is represented by a particular Ship or upgrade. It applies almost seamlessly to Armada the only thing that we had to drop was the word specific, because every round in Armada does not have a specific amount of activations, or even equal activations between players and this is probably as good a place as ever to jump into talking about Tempo as it applies directly to Armada.
The Activation game is part of Armada, and players almost never have an equal number of activations, this gives the player with more activations a tempo advantage, let me explain. Going back to music if Armada was exactly like music each ship would be given some sort of value for example sake let’s say an ISD has a value of 2 and a CR90 has a value of 1 first player activates ISD that has a value of 2 so the second player would activate ships up to the same value the first player had as in this example 2 CR90s, and so on so that each round would have an equal value of activations. This is not how Armada is played each ship has the same value of time 1, in this case we will call the value a turn. So in the case of a 4 activation fleet vs a 5 activation fleet the 5 activation fleet effectively takes one more turn then then the 4 activation fleet giving them a 1 turn tempo advantage, now what that player does with that tempo determines the value of it but it is a tempo advantage non the less.
First player in really any turn biased game always has a tempo advantage starting the game one turn ahead of the second player. It is the second player’s job to shift this tempo into their favor, it’s easier said than done, but when you understand how to gain or create tempo it becomes a little easier.
The most obvious way to gain tempo is to kill a ship, you kill a ship that is a little bit of tempo loss for the other player. When going for a ship the vast majority of the time it is almost always worth killing a ship that has not activated over a ship that has activated, because it creates a greater shift in the tempo. There are more ways to gain tempo you can gain tempo though objectives and upgrades as well. Let’s look at objectives first.
So the first player at the start of the game is always a turn head in the tempo game (if activations are equal), and the first tool in the second player’s belt to help gain control of the tempo is their objectives. Most red objectives don’t effect tempo directly but Advanced Gunnery and Most Wanted help kill ships faster so it can swing it that way, an argument could be made for station assault being something to help you gain tempo by having ships attack them and not your ships making your opponent “waste time” in a since an attack on something that won’t affect the tempo.
Most Yellow objectives effect tempo in some way, Contested Outpost forces the first player to get to the station before you rack up to many points allowing you to be in control of the pace or timing things happen giving you some tempo control. Fire Lanes is essentially the same thing, fleet ambush and fighter ambush can help with tempo as things happen sooner in the rounds, but are risky because first player can still engage you sooner than expected just like you can. Hyperspace Assault can set up some nice tempo winning situations for you like a forking position to threaten two ships.
Blue objectives that impact tempo are Salvage Run that does nearly the same thing as contested outpost forces the game into one area and players may rush in trying to get the tokens again allowing you to control the pace. Intel Sweep can do the same thing but also forces the objective ships to activate sooner then they may have wanted in order to get the token. These are just a few examples of how objectives can affect the tempo in the game. they are about controlling the timing of the game and forcing inopportune activation orders on your opponent.
There are some upgrades that also can help you gain tempo in Armada I could list quite a few but we are just going to talk about the most powerful ones currently in the game.
Raddus
He is a great commander the provides you with a large amount of tempo, you can position your Raddus drop in a spot where there was no way that it could have gotten to by maneuvering round 1 to the point you drop it, that is a tempo gain. You can set up a ship kill that is tempo even if second player you can set up a forking position with your Raddus drop. Raddus is a solid commander that can give you a lot of tempo in your favor when his ability goes off.
Rieekan
is another commander that is very good at the tempo game, he basically refuses to let you lose tempo. Your ship dies you will still get that activation this round, your opponent simply can’t swing the tempo into their favor with this guy at the helm unless they can kill two ships in a round.
Ozzel
it might seam weird, but the control he gives you over speed is great for controlling the tempo of the game. He is under rated, the reason he is not seen more is because the archetype he functions best in Imperil MSU is just hard to pull off right now. As a side note his officer card coming in the SSD is also a great little way to get slightly ahead of your opponent.
Thrawn
He gives yours ships one more commands almost like a extra turn granted you don’t get to shot 4 times or move twice but it is the little extra stuff that add up over the course of the game to swing the tempo into your favor.
Slicer tools
so this one is most effective against carries if 4 squadrons can’t activate until the squadron phase and they have nothing to shoot at that’s basically losing out on a whole turns worth of shooting, that’s a tempo gain. It is also okay against other ships as far as tempo, but is best vs carries.
Adar Tallon
he lets one of your fighters go twice in one turn it’s really the definition of tempo. A single fighter getting an extra turn each round might not sounds super cool but in case you have never faced off against this guy it can have a huge impact.
Yavaris
your squadrons attack twice sure they can’t move but getting two attacks is really what matters so you have 2-3 squadrons getting to have basically two turns a round. its really just a slightly more beefy, but less flexible Adar Tallon.
Strategic Adviser
He gives you more tempo or time in that he acts as an activation kind of boring.
Bail
He is pretty cool in that for one round the second player gets to be one activation ahead of the first player a great tempo swinging card, and when used on the key turn can be absolutely devastating.
Pryce
she is basically a strategic adviser on steroids where Strategic adviser only grabs you one extra activation Pryce on the turn she triggers guarantees that you have at least 1 more activation then your opponent unless you are booth running her, and on that key turn being a head in tempo.
Squall
it makes it so your fighters can engage 1 turn sooner, and being able to do something sooner is tempo, there is a fine line between Tempo and aggro play. Aggro is more reckless, and tempo is a methodical pressure.
Demolisher
So this is an interesting one you don’t normally think of Demo as a tempo card, but it absolutely is because of how a turn is structured. When a ship activates it shoots then moves, Demo can Shoot once, move, then Shoot again. Demolisher is effectively skipping an entire round ahead, that’s a huge tempo gain. Now it can only do that with one arch but it is still a tempo gain effectively skipping a round and then being able to do it again next round. I think it’s a fun card and a good card I like it because its fun, but personally I think it needs another nerf so that it only triggers when attacking the rear hull zone of a ship or that if you used this ability you can only attack once next round or something like that.
There are some other cards that gain tempo like Hand of Justice its a weird title to use but you get to refresh a token before you would normally be able to you just have to time it right. Example, brace on your ISD on a 4 point attack refresh with Hand of Justice have it ready to brace the big attack it can save you a decent amount of damage over the course of the game it’s just awkward to use well because of how activations line up, but anyway the main point is that there are some other cards we can cover, but hopefully with these examples you can see how a card can effect tempo in the game.
In short Tempo is being ahead or your opponent time wise, and forcing them to respond to what you are doing. We could dive into even more detail, but I hope everyone has a bit of a grasp of what is going on with tempo. We could talk more about Forking and tempo threatening you can read more about that Here at the cannot get your ship out blog. Hopefully this helped you understand the concept of tempo in gaming, tempo is having more time than your opponent or being one step ahead. However even if you have the tempo it does not necessarily mean you will win it is how you use that advantage. Have a great week everyone!
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