Thursday, April 5, 2018

Star Wars Armada: A sideboard?

This week FFG introduced an interesting new variant to their GoT LCG: The Rookery.  It basically allows players to swap out some cards in their deck after seeing their opponents deck to optimize the match up a bit.  Sideboards are pretty common in a lot of games, letting people build for some edge case matchups that their decks/ lists aren't as suited to handle.  This development got me thinking about how Armada can have a lot of similar interactions in that some lists just suffer badly in matchups.  Running minimal fighters will typically get you pulverized against heavy bomber/Ace lists and running Electronic Counter Measures against a that list brings less utility than Early Warning System would.  At the last Store Championship I attended, I had put Reinforced Blast Doors on expecting a bomber heavy showing with the recent release of the Quasar.  Not a single fighter wing was there, leaving my list in a lurch.   A sideboard would have let me get ECMs on to battle the brawler lists I faced. 


Typically a very tough call

If Armada allowed a sideboard there are a few options for how it could look.  In GoT the player's deck is at least 60 cards, which means the sideboard makes up 20% potentially.  In Magic the Gathering, the Sideboard is at 25%.  That level of change is a bit drastic, changing the complete look of a list by removing whole ships or squadron complements.  A lighter touch would be better here, allowing just a few key changes.  20 points is 5% of the list, and could allow for some key upgrades to come in to make matchups a bit more competitive.  There would still need to be the 400 point cap, so it wouldn't allow a player to circumvent that to get extra points.  There would also likely need to be a one for one swap on cards to keep players from showing a super high bid and then just adding 20 points to their list.  I would also restrict it to Non-Title upgrades, mostly for thematic reasons, that some refits go on but the ships themselves dont change.  

Both players would see the current fleet lists, then secretly pick upgrades to swap.  Then there would be a check for initiative and the game would be played regularly.  A sideboard would add an extra layer of tactical decision making, and would help keep down some matchups that result in just negative play experiences. It would likely dramatically change the game though. Part of list building is deciding how to handle certain threats and what trade offs to make for that. But as the pool of ships and upgrades becomes larger a sideboard makes more sense to potentially allow ships that might have little value in certain matchups to at least be playable. 

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