So a lot of stuff is going on in the world and this has led me to cancel local game night until things clear up, hopefully sooner rather than later. On a bit of a personal not I was told about a month ago that my department at work would be closing end of March and I would be out a job, fortunately I was able to find another job at amazon, but it comes with mandatory overtime, it’s not ideal, but you gotta do what you got to do. This means I will be working 50 hours a week for at least a month this gives me less time to do AMM. Now I want to keep doing this as I enjoy it and while it's definitely not as big as other community created content I still think that the community enjoys these at least to some degree. So while I want to try and stick to Monday for the names sake it may or may not always happen, but I will try to keep it weekly. Lately articles have been getting a bit longer overall, that will likely no longer be the case we will be sticking a bit more closely to the minutia part of AMM moving forward. I will still have final thoughts on Starhawk and Agate commander, but with little to way to play right now makes that a bit hard as I want to get at least 2 more games in with the starkhawk and I still need to try agate on a ton of ships for a final thoughts evaluation, really need to learn and play on Vassal.
Now with all that out of the way what do we do when things is though in armada? I have played plenty of games where my back was against the wall in many games, but what do you do? Really the first thing I can say is don’t panic.
When a game is not going your way you need to stay calm and look at the state of the game and see where the points are. Where are the points you can get to turn the tide where are the points you cannot let your opponent have. Something I find key in close games is look at the squadron game even if you are going to lose all your squadrons against a larger ball can you trade up? That is if you have 60 points of squadrons can you take out 70 just because you lose all your squadrons does not mean you have lost the squadron game if you lost 40 points of squadrons, but killed 60 points worth you won the squadron game, never underestimate how decisive the few points from trading up in squadrons can narrow the gap.
Along the same lines killing flotillas can be a big deal in narrowing the gap sure it’s only 20-30 points, but as far as MOV is concerned it’s very easy to see that 20-30 points is a pretty big deal to get a higher MOV and thus more tournament points. Tournament point spread to get 6 points is victory by 1 point 7 points is 60, then an 8 is 140 a nine is 220 and a 10 is 300+. So it takes 80 points to go from a 7 to an 8 another 80 points to go to a 9 then another 80 to get to a 10, and if you’re bringing someone down 40ish points just by trading up in the squadron game and taking out a flotilla, you likely just narrowed the margin.
When a situation is bad sometimes you will be able to salvage the game and not just narrow the margin, but it’s still important to not panic look the table see where the points are you can get, and where the points are that you can’t let your opponent get. You might be losing but your opponent has a large point investment that is about to go down, and it can completely swing the game. It’s important to be calm and collected look at the table and see how you can best salvage what you have, sometimes it might be worth the risk to bleed a few more points to take out the big point ship your opponent has so take the calculated risks when you’re down.
However sometimes the risks are just a bit too great, and the best way to salvage the match is to disengage. This course should really only be taken when ether it is clear you won’t be able to take out any points, or that if you do claim a few more points of your opponents it puts more of your points at risk then you would be able to claim from your opponent, this principle of disengagement it true even if you are winning the game don’t risk your ISD for a CR-90, there may be fringe cases in tournaments where the risk is worth it as if you don’t you won’t be able to place where you would like to.
There is always something you can do when things are not going your way in a game to help salvage it, and if there is not it’s because you did not plan an escape vector and that is something you should always do. So the next time you are not doing so hot in a game of armada remember stay calm look at the table see where the points are and salvage the game. We got some clone wars spoilers and I hope to look at them next time. Until next time have a great week!
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