I came into some money from a photo job that I honestly thought I would never see, so I paid my bank account back for my recent purchases just as they started to arrive.
A clean account and actual ships in hand.
Lovely. My spurge seems to have been blessed, with sales and rare ships popping up fortuitously. I was even home when the posty came.
Armada is not just a different game to X Wing, it is a deeper and more mature game.
This is jazz where X Wing is pop (and Attack Wing Country-Rock?).
I can see why it is less popular. The higher entry point, deeper rules, more game time required, the less intimate scale and coming a distant second in the release race, but to be honest, if I had gone this way first, I would have likely stayed here at the expense of X Wing and Attack Wing (and likely Fed Commander). Remember also I am Trekkie at heart.
The maximum comfortable size for X Wing for most, this is two small pieces on the Armada map.
I love the Star Wars swarm against the capitol ship vibe and always have. It is Star Wars (actually in the name).
X Wing is sometimes frustrating for me because it cannot be played solo as is and is too small in scale to do big battles. I am less interested in Luke Skywalker’s one on one theoretical battles against a myriad of foes, than his role in bringing down the Death Star and Tarkin/Palpatine/Vader commanding a lowly X Wing Raider?!
All of the characters are there and in context.
Like X Wing, it has gone through some power creep and the problem of points printed on cards, which I like by the way, but for the price of one X Wing ship you can get (soon) the near 300 card upgrade pack that replaces all of the out of date cards and like Attack Wing, the builds seem a little squishier, less twitchy or potentially catastrophic. It is naturally more about the flying.
Also for the price of one X Wing ship you can get 24!
How did my resolve hold out?
Not well, but not too disastrous either.
I have easily limited myself to the smaller Rebel ships (MC-30 added to strengthen the fleet and complete the small ship offering), with a second Transport pack, because I am more interested in scenarios than tournament games. The bigger ships played an immensely important but climatic role in proceedings. The Rebels were best at and most commonly found executing raids, scouting missions, evacuations, etc. so a small ship, fighter heavy fleet makes so much sense.
I then added the Onager as a super weapon/filler and pre-ordered the last Separatist ship, because they looked a little thin one ship down (even with all those fighters). The Onager adds Super Weapon upgrades only leaving Experimental’s un-accessed. In some parts of the world, using 2-3 Super Weapon ships in a fleet is ruining the competitive circuit with boring and unfair long range sniping antics, but one against a fleet of small ships offers a tactical challenge, something for the Imperial and Gladiator to escort/protect and a scenario driver. The other reason for the Onager is I really only like the three Imperial ships I have (ISD, Gladiator, Onager) and the fighters, so I guess I would make a lousy Imperial tournament player.
Long term I can see Home One-maybe (although this would unbalance the fleets so maybe the Interdictor to round out the Imperials and Upgrade options), probably the Rebel Fighters II (Ghost), any new Clone wars fighters (Obi in an Eta-2 please) and maybe the Raider if I can get a reasonably priced one.
Longer term, TFA period would be an instant buy.
Ironically, the higher entry point disguised the lower end point for me.
One final point is the smaller range of ships seems to have been better supported by FFG. There are a few rare ships (Raider), but on the whole, you can enter now and get up to speed without issue. X Wing has still got some holes to be filled, forcing me to buy 2e or Spanish language ships and second hand cards or, in the case of the Star Wing, just give up.