Editing Star Wars: Armada (section)

=Gameplay=
[[File:ArmadaCommanderBattle.png|300px|thumb|right|Two Victories and an Interdictor flanked by an MC80 Liberty, Nebulon-B, and MC30 Frigate.]]

The game is played on a standard 6'x4' table, with 6'x3' dedicated to gameplay and the remaining six inches per side for cards and tokens.

The first player activates a ship, and then reveals a command dial set in secret often several turns in advance. If it's a squadron command, the ship activates a number of nearby squadrons which can then engage enemy fighters or make a bombing run on an enemy ship. Then the ship fires if any targets are in range, and then after shooting, moves - making positioning a game of cat-and-mouse as you try to predict where your opponent will be, rather than being able to shoot at where he is now. Huge ships can also choose to pass, delaying their activation until later in the turn. 

Ships attack with one or more of three colors of dice, each with a different combination of results and a different range, making up to two attacks a turn; with each of the ship's four firing arcs potentially having different numbers and colors of dice. The new category of Huge ships is an exception, with six firing arcs (the basic four, and the new left-auxiliary and right-auxiliary) which can make three attacks per turn. 

While defending, ships have a variety of defense tokens that can be spent to reduce or redirect the incoming damage, with the remaining damage reducing their shields or damaging their hull. Ships move using a maneuver tool that restricts turning based on the given ship's maneuverability and current speed, creating a feeling of momentum and further rewarding skilled positioning and spatial planning. 

Squadrons - representing groups of X-Wings, TIE Bombers, or aces like Tycho Celchu or Boba Fett - zoom forward, engaging in dogfights or bombing enemy ships. Squadrons can only make attacks at range 1, regardless of dice color. In addition, squadrons can only move ''or'' shoot (not both) unless activated by a squadron command. On the other hand, squadrons can move in any direction and any distance up to their maximum speed, and can do their movement and their attack in either order, giving them great flexibility. If two opposing squadrons move into range 1 of each other they become ''engaged'', meaning they are locked in a dogfight, unable to attack ships or move. Capital ships and squadrons both have separate attack profiles for attacking squadrons or attacking ships. Like ships, squadron aces gain defense tokens of their own to reflect their superior piloting or uniquely modified starfighter.

Activations alternate, with the first player activating one ship, then the second player, until both have no unactivated ships; then players begin activating any squadrons that weren't already activated by a squadron command, with first player activating ''two'' squadrons, then second player activating two, and so on.

==Rules Summary==
Each round is divided into a number of phases.

===Command Phase=== 
[[File:ArmadaCommands.png|right|200px]]
*Both players set a stack of command dials for their ships in secret, with each ship having a number of command dials equal to its command value. A ship's top command is revealed at the beginning of its activation, and new commands are placed on the bottom of the stack; meaning that ships with Command 2 or 3 require planning well in advance. However, even Command 1 ships have to account for the actions of any other ships that may activate before they do in the turn. Instead of providing the command's normal effect, you can gain a command token of the same type, which offers a lesser version of the ability but can be saved for a later turn. Each ship is limited to no more than one command token per type, and no more total command tokens than its command value. A ship can spend a command token ''while'' taking the effect of the same command from a dial, to augment the effect - for example, spending a token while using a navigate command to change speed by 2, or a squadron 3 ship spending a squadron dial and token to command 4 squadrons.
**'''Navigate''' - When your ship executes a maneuver, it can make one additional click to the maneuver tool over what its ship card allows, and can also raise or lower its speed by one. Navigate tokens can be spent to change speed by one. Note that these are normally the ''only'' ways to change your ship's speed.
**'''Squadron''' - You may activate a number of squadrons at close-medium range equal to your squadron value, which can then move ''and'' shoot in any order. In addition to bypassing the normal restriction that squadrons can only move ''or'' shoot, this allows you to activate them earlier in the turn for an alpha strike. A Squadron token can be spent to activate exactly one squadron, regardless of ship. Squadrons can only attack at range 1 - regardless of the color of their dice or the target - and if opposing squadrons enter range 1 of each other, they are "engaged" - unable to move or make attacks targeting ships.
**'''Repair''' - Your ship gains a number of engineering points equal to its engineering value; spend one to move a shield from one hull zone to another, two to regain a shield, or three to discard a damage card (regaining one hull); taking each option multiple times if desired. Engineering tokens provide half your engineering value, rounding up.
**'''Concentrate Fire''' - Add one die of a color already in the attack pool to one of your attacks. Concentrate Fire tokens instead allow you to re-roll one die. If using both in the same turn, they must both be used on the same attack.

===Ship Phase===
*The player with initiative chooses a ship to active, revealing its top command dial. You immediately must choose to either convert it into a token for later, or to use it that turn - if applicable (squadron or engineering), resolving it then. The ship can then make one attack each from up to two of its hull zones, declaring an attacking hull zone, the target, and the target hull zone if targeting a ship. Then the ship must execute a maneuver, after which the other player activates one of their ships. Players continue activating ships back and forth until all ships have activated.

====Attacking====
[[File:ArmadaAttackDiagram.png|thumb|200px|right|It's less complicated in practice than it sounds.]]
*The ship can then make one attack each from up to two of its hull zones, declaring an attacking hull zone, the target, and the target hull zone (if targeting a ship).
**First, determine arc of fire, following the lines printed on the ship's cardboard as if they extended out (a laser line tool is useful for this). 
**Then measure range, from the closest cardboard on the attacker to the closest cardboard of the defender, using the range ruler. The attack can only consist of dice that match the distance of the target.
**Finally, check line of sight, from the yellow diamond on the attacking hull zone to the yellow diamond on the defending hull zone (or the closest cardboard, of a squadron). If line of sight passes over a ship or obstacle, the attack is obstructed, and you must remove one die from your initial pool. If line of sight passes through one of the targets hull zone lines, then you cannot attack that hull zone at all - another hull zone is in the way!
**Then, to attack, you first roll the initial dice pool - the dice printed on your card, plus any added by effects that modify your "battery armament", such as Expanded Armaments. If this would be no dice - either because the target was out of range of your dice, or because obstruction removed all your dice, then you cannot attack - the target is too far! When firing against squadrons, your ship does not use its hull zone's normal dice, but instead uses its AA value (which is the same for all hull zones). This still counts as firing from a particular arc for that turn, but unlike shooting at a ship, you roll your AA dice as a separate attack against ''every'' enemy squadron within arc and range. 
**After the initial dice are rolled, the attacker resolves any effects that take effect "while attacking", such as adding a die via a Concentrate Fire dial or Admiral Ackbar, or re-rolling dice using Leading Shots. The attacker can spend any Accuracy icons to lock down the opponents defense tokens. (Note - attacker can do these in any order, such as spending Accuracy icons before re-rolling the pool using Veteran Gunners, potentially then spending new Accuracy icons).
**After the attacker is done modifying the dice pool, the target gets to spend any defense tokens not targeted by accuracies to mitigate the damage - flipping green tokens to red (exhausted), or discarding exhausted tokens altogether. Tokens unexhaust at the end of every round - but discarded tokens are gone for the rest of the game!
**After defense tokens are spent, but before any damage is taken, the attacker has the opportunity to resolve a critical effect. To do so, there must be at least one critical hit in the pool. The crit die is ''not'' removed from the pool, and having multiple crits doesn't enable multiple critical effects - only one critical effect can be resolved per attack, regardless of the number of critical hits rolled. All ships (and squadrons with Bomber) have the same critical effect by default - "if the defender is dealt at least one damage card by this attack, deal the first damage card faceup" - with others available via upgrade cards or squadron ace abilities.
**Finally, the defender suffers any damage, one point at a time, either onto the shields or as damage cards onto the hull. 

[[File:ArmadaDefenses.png|300px|right]]
*Both ships and squadrons can possess defense tokens. The defender can only spend one of a given type of defense token per attack, and a specific defense token may only be spent once per attack.
**'''Brace''' - Halve the damage in the damage pool, rounding up.
**'''Redirect''' - You may take some (or all) of the damage on an adjacent hull zone, up to that hull zone's remaining shield value.
**'''Evade''' - The first defense token to be errata'd as of Armada 1.5. If the attack is at long range, cancel one die. If at medium or close range, force a re-roll on one die instead. If the ship is of a larger size class than you, you can opt to discard the token outright to force the effect on an additional die (2 discards at long, 2 rerolls at mid-close). Furthermore, the debut of the Onager introduced extreme range, where evade tokens can now cancel two dice outright. Note the timing - if an evade removes the only crit from the pool, then the attacker cannot resolve a critical effect. 
**'''Scatter''' - Cancel all attack dice. As with evade, this prevents the attacker from resolving a critical effect.
**'''Contain''' - The attacker cannot resolve the ''default'' critical effect.
**'''Salvo''' - After resolving damage, you can return fire on the attacker with your ship's printed rear hull dice battery (or perform a single flak response if the attacker was a squadron). This retaliatory attack cannot be activated by the Counter keyword, the Onager's Ignition attack, or another Salvo token, but can still be triggered if your ship would otherwise be destroyed in the attack. Furthermore, you cannot add any additional dice to the attack pool or perform any critical effects other than the default.

*Like most of the other FFG Star Wars games, the system comes with its own unique dice. In Armada, the dice faces feature:
**'''Blank''' - a miss.
**'''Hit''' - add a point of damage to the damage pool.
**'''Accuracy''' - the attacker gets to prevent the defender from using one of their defense tokens. Multiple accuracies can lock down multiple defense tokens.
**'''Critical Hit''' - add a point of damage to the damage pool, and allow the attacker to resolve a critical effect. Note that unless otherwise stated, only ships and bombers can score critical hits, and only onto ships - otherwise it offers no effect and doesn't add any damage.

[[File:ArmadaDice.png|200px|right]]
*There are three colors of dice - all three are D8s, but each features a different combination of faces and have a different range:
**'''Black dice''' (ordnance) have the shortest range and are the most deadly, with four hits, two faces with a hit ''and'' a crit, and two blanks. 
**'''Blue dice''' (ion cannons) are medium ranged and are the most accurate, with four hits, two crits, two accuracies, and ''no'' blanks. 
**'''Red dice''' (turbolasers) have the longest range but are the most variable, with two hits, one ''double'' hit, two crits, one accuracy, and two blanks.
*Damage is taken first onto any shields, and then onto the hull. Normal damage is taken as face-down cards drawn from a damage deck, but some effects - including the default critical effect - cause face-up cards. Face-up damage cards carry a negative effect that persists until indicated by the card, or until the card is repaired by the player. Once a ship has a number of face-up and face-down damage cards equal to its hull value, it's destroyed.

====Determine Course====
[[File:ArmadaShipMovement.jpg|thumb|300px|right|At speed 3, a Nebulon B can make at most 0, 1, and then 2 clicks of the maneuver tool.]] 
*After attacks have been resolved, the ship executes a maneuver. If the ship has a Navigate dial, or spends a Navigate token, it may change its speed by 1. Place the maneuver tool beside the ship, rotating the yaw at various distances, up to your current speed, based upon the yaw values in your ship's maneuver chart. Note that you can ''only'' pre-measure with the maneuver tool during this step! You cannot execute a maneuver that would cause you to overlap the maneuver tool (except if caused by a ram). Once you've made your decision, slot the maneuver tool into the ship's base - at that point, your decision becomes final, and you must execute it. Place your ship's base into the maneuver tool at the corresponding speed - if your maneuver would cause your ship to overlap another, it moves back to the previous notch and both ships take a face-down damage card (if it would still overlap at the previous notch, it continues to back up, potentially such that it doesn't move at all - and only the ''closest'' of any overlapped ships receives damage). If the ship overlaps friendly or enemy squadrons, the opposing player places them anywhere in base contact with the ship. Finally, if any part of the ship's base - excluding shield dials - is outside of the play area, that ship is immediately destroyed.

===Squadron Phase===
*Any squadrons that were not already activated by squadron commands activate, but by default they can only move ''or'' attack. The first player activates two squadrons, then second player, until all squadrons have activated. Squadrons can only attack at range 1 regardless of the dice in their pool, and can move up to their maximum speed in any direction.

===Status Phase===
*Basically a clean-up stage - you reset your ships' and squadrons' exhausted (but not discarded!) defense tokens, unexhaust any upgrade cards, and resolve any upgrade effects with this timing (eg, dead ships kept alive by Rieekan).

==Fleet Building==
[[File:ArmadaUpgrades.png|right|300x300px]]
Every fleet ''must'' have exactly one "flagship" - a ship equipped with your Commander, a unique character leading your fleet and granting a fleet-wide effect. Any ship other than a Flotilla can serve as your flagship. 

Each ship can equip one Title upgrade (for example, turning a generic MC80 into Admiral Ackbar's ''Home One'') and/or your Commander, plus a variety of other upgrades depending on the upgrade icons on its ship card. You can equip no upgrades, or as many as you have slots, and you can take as few or as many ships as you want (to a minimum of one, your flagship). There are at least two variants of each ship model, with different point costs, dice, Squadron values, or upgrade slots. Unique cards, usually characters like Darth Vader but sometimes upgrades like the Interdictor's Grav-Shift Reroute, are indicated by a dot next to their name and can only be taken once per fleet - so you can't have Darth Vader as your Commander ''and'' field Darth Vader's TIE Advanced at the same time, or field both Officer ''and'' Commander Leia. The same upgrade can't be taken more than once on the same ship, and a ship can have at most one upgrade with the "Modification" keyword.

You cannot spend more than a third of the match's point limit on squadrons, rounding up, and can only take one named, defense token-carrying "ace" squadron per 100 fleet points of the agreed total for each fleet.  For most games, played at 400 points, this means you can take at most 134 points worth of squadrons and a maximum of four aces. You can take none, or up to your squadrons point cap; taking multiple generic squadrons and/or unique aces - such as a "Red Squadron" wing of Wedge Antilles/Luke Skywalker/Biggs Darklighter, or simply 8 groups of TIE Fighters.

[[File:ArmadaObjectives.png|right|150x150px]]

Finally, every fleet has to select one each from three types, of ''objectives'' - Assault, Defense, and Navigation. Every game is played using one of the players' chosen objectives. During setup, the player with the lower points value chooses who goes first, giving incentive to "bidding" by intentionally taking fewer than max points to try and guarantee being first (or second) player. First player always activates first in the ship and squadron phases, [[Go|granting a significant advantage]]. To counteract this, ''the first player has to choose one of the second player's three objectives to play that game'', with most objectives granting the second player a large advantage - but moreover, giving second player the ability to bring objectives uniquely suited to his list.