The Fantasy Flight Game Center up in Roseville hosted a store ‘Imperator’ tournament on Jan 2nd and here’s my little write up.
Having recently bought the Star Wars Armada game and only having played it a few times with the game group down here in Rochester, I felt it was time to go see how it plays at the tournament level not to mention get a good on the spot education on the rules.
First, the Fantasy Flight Game Center is located right next door to the offices of Fantasy Flight Games. The store is it’s own brand of awesome, being part restaurant (and I mean a GOOD restaurant), part retail (it’s not huge, it’s mostly FFG stuff but still everything they make) and play space. LOTS of play space. The day I was there, every game table was taken. Then there is a whole space dedicated to special events and that’s where the tournament was. We had 24 players and we only used up maybe 1/3rd of the room for the tournament. That’s crazy amazing in itself.
Since I play mostly historical stuff I did check to see what they had for 6×4 boards and terrain for being able to play here. 6×4 boards they have but 15mm/28mm terrain… not so much.
So for my tournament force I put together Motti as my admiral, a class I Imperial Star Destroyer with XI7 turbo lasers, a class I Gladiator with demolisher and Ordnance Experts, and 2 class II Gladiators (one with Insidious) with Rhymer, Howlrunner, Soontir Fel and one squadron of TIE interceptors. Pretty much a big experiment, but for a first go I was more going to play and gain experience then have grand visions of being super competitive.
Setting up for the first game I faced a rebel force of made up of Home One, 2 Nebs, an Assault Frigate and 4 A-wing fighters. We played the Minefield scenario which was deployed largely across my front so I had to pick a flank to move and attack through. I didn’t want to split my force so ended up putting my Glads followed by the ISD into a battle line with the intent of doing a largish circle.
Well… it was a somewhat ok plan but it didn’t play well and I ended up colliding with some of my own ships in the beginning. Should have formed the line a little bit more uniform but o well. 
I was ended up losing Glads fairly fast with them being largely out of position to be super effective. They did however help my fighters plink away at the A-wings and I ended up taking most all of them out.
I did also take out a Neb but otherwise, it was a 3-7 loss (102 vs 224). Lots of lessons learned!
Second game I played Tony who was an all around awesome guy. We had an Imperial on Imperial match. Somewhat similar forces tho his was an Imperial Star Destroyer class II, a few more fighters, a Gladiator and the Imperial Raider.
For the scenario we played the Contested Battlestation. As fate would have it I would end up grabbing 2 victory tokens and Tony 1. With my capital ships it was more easy for me to pick up victory tokens and hold the station. In addition, our ISDs would go nose to nose but I’d ended up winning as my class I had more black dice when at close range and with decent rolls and Motti as well, I was able to win the boxing match. The loss of the ISD and his raider, lead to me gaining lots of points.
Here is the last turn with his Glad on the station and my fighters nibbling at his rear. I ended up taking out I think all of his fighters to boot.
In the end an 8-2 (348 vs 184) victory for me.
The last game I guess I didn’t take any pictures of which is really too bad. It was another learning match that I lost 3-7 (60 vs 245). We played dangerous territory. The fellow I played had lots of squadrons and I just couldn’t handle them. While all my Gladiators survived my ISD basically got taken out by copious B-Wings, X-Wings, and rebel heros. I had my ISD on my left flank and it basically shielded the rest of my force. Given the loss of my ISD tho, very hard to make up that loss of points. I did knock a good number of rebel heros and fighters down to 1 but given their numbers it was easy to disengage and avoid the point loss.
All in all, a mighty fun day. I didn’t get to stay around for the free swag as I was under time pressure to get back home. They didn’t have a prize table setup so hard to say if there was something. I imagine I probably was in the bottom 3rd but doesn’t appear that they post results anywhere so who knows.