Still stuck at home on your own, unable to play games with friends? Thankfully, companies have solo variants for many of their games. And Mantic is adding to the list by posting solo rules for Armada.
Although some countries are now out of lockdown (or are on the roadmap to come out of lockdown), we realise that it’s still tough to get in face-to-face gaming at the moment.
If you’ve been following the Mantic Blog for a while, you should have hopefully seen our previous guide to solo play with Mantic products. One product missing from that guide was Armada. Well, all that is about to change!
With the two-player starter set now back in stock and the Empire of Dust fleet on the horizon, we’re delighted to release solo gaming rules for Armada. This fantastic guide was created by Armada Rules Committee member Jon Gunns and can be downloaded here.
WHAT’S IN THE RULES?
Solo wargaming can never replace playing against a live opponent and will not be to everybody’s taste. It does, however, offer the opportunity to familiarise players with the rules, trial different fleet builds and practise tactics. During a time of Covid lockdown, solo gaming may also offer the only opportunity for some players to get their new fleets onto the gaming table.
The guide is divided into 2 parts:
- Part 1 contains 2 stand-alone objective-based solo gaming scenarios.
- Part 2 contains generic rules covering actions by enemy ships in ‘kill’ scenarios. These rules can be used in any scenario involving kill missions but a number of scenarios are included as well as suggested enemy fleets. A reference sheet covering enemy ship actions during their activations is included at the rear.
The scenarios are designed to be played at 250 points on a 4’ x 4’ table but suggestions are included for playing 150 point games on smaller tables. Should players wish to increase the difficulty of the games, each scenario has suggestions for how to do this.
The enemy in each scenario is limited in its actions and is fairly predictable. It would be easy to design a fleet to win a specific scenario. However, each scenario is different and requires different skills to succeed and it is suggested that players design their fleet without knowing which scenario they will face and then select the scenario randomly.
Beware! Because of the limitations of the fairly predictable enemy, success against this foe is one thing, fighting the living is something else. Owing to the constraints of the system, it may be possible for players to predict how the enemy fleet will react and devise specific tactics to capitalise on these constraints by devising specialise tactics to win games. While this is a legitimate tactic to win games, players may prefer to play without deliberately exploiting the weaknesses of the system in order to avoid developing ‘bad habits’ that will let them down when facing a live opponent.