Started From the Bottom: Fleetbuilding Tips for Beginners

 There's no way around it, listbuilding is an essential part of Armada. It's intrinsic to the experience of the game, know which upgrades you want and how they help your fleet achieve victory. But with hundreds of upgrades and a plethora of ships for each faction, building your first 400 point fleet can be an overwhelming experience. This article is my friendly attempt to explain some of the broad concepts of fleetbuilding for the newer or more inexperienced players of the game. Let me clarify: THIS IS NOT A DEFINITIVE GUIDE ON HOW TO EXACTLY BUILD YOUR FLEET. This is just some tips on how to get started. 

Step 1: Getting an Idea

The first step to fleetbuilding is having an initial idea. For a new player, it may be something as simple as "I want to use an Imperial-class Star Destroyer" or "I want to run a lot of squadrons", but for an experienced player, it may be "I want to make this particular combination of cards work" or "how can I include this objective to the best possible benefit", or something to that effect. For the purpose of this article we'll focus on the basics. Find something, anything, that looks interesting to you and start there. For my first full fleet it was the Interdictor that Amazon had on sale for $17. And remember! If there's a ship that you think looks cool, go for it! Armada is well balanced enough that all of the ships (except the Combat Interdictor) have a place in the game and can be used effectively. 

Step 2: Fleshing It Out

Okay, so you now have an idea to get you started, now what? Whatever your initial idea is, it's only a part of the full fleet. Let's say you've decided you want to run a bunch of squadrons. You'll need to lay out some guidelines for the fleet you're making in order to get a hold of things:
    1. You want to invest heavily in squadrons (no duh),
    2. You want enough ships to act as carriers to command your squadrons, 
    3. You want upgrades across your fleet to buff your squadrons and your ships' carrier ability, and 
    4. You want objectives to support squadrons.

So how do we do this? For guideline one, "heavy" squadrons likely means 110-134 points of squadrons, most probably ending up at about 8 squadrons with included unique squadrons. For the second, you want enough squadron value on your ships that can effectively serve as carriers to push your squadrons, and for guideline three you'll want upgrades that can help those ships do that job better. And last, you want objectives that can either let you get your squadrons into a better position or earn more points from your squad play. 

You also need to pick a commander for your list. A commander is required in a 400 point list, and their abilities will help define what your list can do. They may make your squadrons more effective against ships, boost your ships' commands with tokens or dials, keep your ships alive longer, or many other abilities. Choosing a commander who helps or maybe even defines your list will go a long way towards making sure your fleet does well.

While such synergies may not be obvious at first, reviewing the cards in relation to your ships and squadrons will start to reveal them, especially as you gain experience. Does your ship have one powerful arc than can likely hit two targets with full force? Consider Gunnery Team. Do you have a lot of red dice and you'd like some more consistency? Why not Linked Turbolaser Towers? And the list goes on. Of course, there will always be unconventional choices for certain things and some upgrades that may stand head and shoulders above others, but the recent changes to Armada with the Clone Wars release has brought most all of the upgrades into a usable position. And while it may be tempting to fill all six upgrade slots on an ISD or all four on a CR90, you'll find that it's far from necessary to do so, and that such "bloat" will only cause you problems. A good rule of thumb is that if you can't think of a solid reason for the inclusion of an upgrade, then don't add it on. This may take some practice to figure out what works and what should be cut, but we're getting there. 

Step 3: Trial By Fire

Once you've fleshed your list out to 400 points (maybe slightly less, depending on what you plan to bid), it's time to go fly it! Put those plastic spaceships on the tabletop (in person or otherwise) and see how it goes. You might not win. In fact, if you're a new player playing against a more experienced player, you probably won't. But don't be discouraged! Unless there's something truly and fundamentally wrong with your fleet, I wouldn't recommend starting from scratch again. 

Step 4: Back to the Drawing Board!

When you play your lists, try to take note of what worked, what didn't work, what you could improve on, etc. Try a couple of games to make sure it wasn't a fluke one way or the other. It'll take time and practice, but you'll learn what you need to tweak in your list. You may find that your list didn't need four kinds of dice correction for one ship, or that you really need some way to speed up those speed 2 ARC-170s or B-Wings you brought, or that you've got a nasty case of "dies due to lack of anti-squadron" disease. While there may be some things you can spot in the fleetbuilding phase, you learn the most from playing that list over and over. From here you can go back and forth between steps 3 and 4, testing new things and then reexamining how things work. 

And, that's pretty much it. It may seem confusing at first, but the more you play, the more you experiment, the more you'll learn about the game. As with all things, practice makes perfect, even if there is no such thing in Armada. It may take a while at first, but the more you do it, the better you'll get and the less time it'll take to make a new fleet. Now, this article hasn't discussed things like local metas, how many deployments/activations you should have, what the "ideal" fleet composition looks like for a given goal, or any of these other things (that I may write about later), this is just the basics of how to start with fleetbuilding. In the meantime, safe travels and may the your red dice always roll doubles!