Adepticon! Part 2: Armada Tournament

Back to back posts!

This year I did some minor convincing and got no less than seven friends to sign up to play Mantic's Armada this year at Adepticon. I didn't need to do much cajoling because they saw how absolutely fun it was to play when they swung by last year while I was playing. It's a super fun and simple rules/deep tactics kind of game, and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to shout "Yarrr, run out the guns!" and push around fantasy sailing ships on the high seas. It uses d10s for good variation in shooting and attacking and overall is just awesome. Play it.

This year the tournament had a lot of participants and tables, and I told everyone that stopped by my table or in my vicinity that they need to go demo the game at Mantic's booth. The majority I would see later walking away with armfuls of resin ships to play and I was excited. I did this Thursday night, Friday during the tournament, and Friday night when we got together again for another 4-player free for all, because we couldn't get enough. Maybe I should be a Pathfinder...

What did I bring to the tournament? Orcs!

My 200 point list consisted of the following:

Smasher - veteran crew, morax, brew of strength, orc grappling hooks

Smasher - regular crew, morguns, war drums, Yinn Greythunder, orc grappling hooks

Blood Runner - regular crew, sturdy construction

Blood Runner - inexperienced crew, sturdy construction

Rabble - regular crew

Rabble - inexperienced crew

Players playing boaty boat games!

Game 1: In Hot Water

Ah, round 1 vs my good friend Caleb Bailey again, just like last year! He decided to not bring the Dwarves again and instead brought some Orcs, just like me!

He had a Smasher with Yinn Greythunder, Hammerfist, Blood Runner, two Bomb boats and a Rabble, with various upgrades. 

I set up my five sailors on one half and closer to me, while he did the same on the other side. I then sent my objective takers (the Blood Runners and the Rabbles) to pick up the sailors, and my Smashers to go steal and destroy what they could.

I sent my objective grabbing team to go start doing their job, with only an enemy Blood Runner set to annoy them. Meanwhile my big ships pushed hard on the left. He did the same, pushing nearly everything to get those sailors, though his bomb boats stayed steady to lob some rounds at me (only one hit). His Smasher swept across my bow and raked one of my Smashers for some decent damage, however, since he went first that turn I was able to respond doubly in kind:

My Smasher in the rear rake pounded it for a devastating 70 damage, leaving the one in the front arc just needing to do 5 damage, which it easily did with the x2+1 rake. The two sailors it had picked up dropped in the water, and the ship that just fired picked one up. How convenient!

In later turns, many of my ships went off the edge of the board and came back on at fresh angles to attack anew. He wasn't able to overcome my advantage at this point though, so I pulled away a 7-3 Victory!

Game 2: Plant the Flag 

Round 2 I was paired with Adam Ballard wielding a very strong Empire of Dust fleet.

Monolith - regular crew, balefire, additional broadside (IDW), boarding nets, ocarina of korgaan

Khopeshii - veteran crew, fire oil

Dust Chaser - inexperienced crew

Dust Chaser - inexperienced crew

Dust Chaser - inexperienced crew

Slave Squadron - inexperienced crew

It was a chase to the other islands! We set up and off we went! 

Early on he sent his Dust Chasers to get in my way, but Ramming is fun so I did what I could there. I didn't take any more pictures here-on, kinda forgot. So I was holding my own decently, and I was set to do a couple of point blank prow rakes on his monolith in the middle of the table. He activated first and set my shooty Smasher on fire on just the first hit. I really wanted to get this rake off, so I risked it and naturally rolled a friggin 1, detonating half of my killing power. After that it was downhill for me and I soon lost my other Smasher to overwhelming firepower. He overestimated his ships' speeds and sent too many off the table at the wrong time at least, resulting in a minor win for him, 5-3.

Game 3: X Marks the Spot

Well, I guess I got bumped all the way down to the bottom table since I only had 10 points. That's okay, I got to play a pleasant German known as Volker Jacobsen and his Dwarves.

His list was nice and simple:

Dreadnought - regular crew

Orc's Bane - regular crew

Fury - regular crew

Thunderer - regular crew

Hunter - regular crew

In this scenario, like all others, all the islands were teeny tiny, which wasn't fun. Just like in the first game, I sent my Smashers to make a mess of my opponent's objective plans on my right, while my objective grabbers went to the other island on my left.

My Smashers surged forward around the island on the right, collecting treasure as they went. They then blasted and boarded their way through the Hunter, Fury, and Orc's Bane in just two turns. On the left though, my small ships had to play cat and mouse with the Dreadnought and Thunderer, hugging the island as best they could while just raking in the treasure points. They eventually escaped though it was a very close thing (one Blood Runner was carrying 16 treasures alone and just 2 damage from needing a Nerve test). Then end result was a solid victory, 36-4!

I finished 2-1 with 46 victory points, in 5th place out of 23 players. Not bad, and indeed a finish I'm happy with! But most importantly:

 Hooray, they liked my paint job and themed display board!

Afterwards we all went out for dinner and shared excited stories about the cool things we did. And then we went to play again! This lasted late into the night again, and I caught even more friends so we all jammed for a while, while drinks were mixed and enjoyed and stuff blew up. Plus we convinced like 3-4 more people to check out the demo the next day. Win!

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more Adepticon action!