This is the first Miniatures type game I have purchased, and I feel I made an excellent choice.

First let's look at the feel and appearance. The actual miniatures are gorgeous. The Captial ships look like perfect replicas of the models used for the movies, well the Nebulon-B and Corvette since the Victory-class does not appear in the movies. Even the starfighters, which aren't painted, have all of the recognizable features such as the X-wings' astromech. The punch outs are also rather nice with crisp clean artwork, and when you punch them out there aren't any nubs left behind. And the punch-outs fit very well with the plastic stands.

The game is designed so that the two sides are asymmetrical and you have to adapt your strategies to make best use of your faction's strengths while covering their weaknesses. Rebel capital ships are quick and adapt quickly to new situations but possess low firepower and health while the Imperial Victory-class is the exact opposite. Imperial TIE fighters are the fastest pieces in the game but are weak unless they are kept clumped together while the Rebel X-wings have firepower. And to keep things really interesting you have the option of upgrading your ships to make them more powerful, as well as choose commanders (Moff Tarkin and Luke Skywalker are in the starter set), give the ships a name card, and select a fighter squadron to have "Ace" status that further adds abilities and command options.

But choose wisely. Each ship, squadron, and upgrade is worth a set amount of points and your fleet's total points can't add up to more than 300. Will you field a small yet powerful force or will you choose to sweep the field with sheer numbers

Playing through the rounds is a little difficult at first, but as with most games it gets easier once you get a bit of practice and begin remember what to do when.

My one real complaint, and this is a very minor thing, is that the starter set does not come with any form of play-mat to use. It wouldn't really had anything except for visual appeal and making it a bit easier to mark the boundaries of games.

To start off, me and the girlfriend got this game back in April, and since then now own every single ship and extra this game had to offer!

Armada is a wonderful break from other board games and miniature based table top games.
It's a fully enthralling look into large scale, Star Wars space combat. With 4 factions to choose from (This box containing Rebel and Empire factions) 34 large fleet ships and a plethora of upgrade and crew cards, no two battles will ever feels the same!

Players start by fielding a fleet of ships and take turns maneuvering, firing weapons, activating abilities and crew members and commanding small squads of X-wings, Y-wings, TIE fighters, etc.
While the large ships and many numbers may look daunting, the game is super easy to learn and offers hours and hours of play.

If you have played the smaller scale game X-wing, your gonna feel right at home.
The turns are fairly similar and ships and squadrons work fairly the same, with everything just on a larger scale.

A great game for any fan of Star Wars, table top games, space combat or people looking to get into the board game hobby!

The box was far larger than anticipated, and much heavier as well. For anyone that has played the X-Wing Fighters game, the contents should not be a surprise. Three large, lovingly detailed models, and a mountain of thick cardboard for punch out the rest of the pieces. Over all the models are of excellent quality, worthy of being displayed on a shelf by themselves, but sturdy enough to handle some swooshing around while making ship noises. The rest of the pieces are the standard cardboard affairs, which were nice quality although some pieces did not punch out all that cleanly. Putting together all of the little dials and pieces got to be a bit mind numbing, but was worth it in the end. The shining piece was the ship movement pieces. Works very well to accurately and precisely guide your ships, and operation is smooth and fluid. Much better then curved cardboard!

The game itself is fairly easy to learn, but it may take a few trial games to get up to speed, even if you are familiar with X Wing, as there is a lot more going on, especially with the wings of fighters. Instructions are a bit lacking in detail in some areas, but not enough that you can piece it all together while playing. Also requires a significant amount of table space(3' x 3' per the rules, plan for more) and a good time investment. For a tactical strategy/Star Wars fan this game is a perfect fit. If you're only one of those, you may find it lacking in some areas, but overall I am very pleased with this, and it will make it into my rotation of play much more often.

This game had great depth and wonderful potential to only get better with the expansions. I love the old Games Workshop Battlefleet gothic but since it's a dead game it's hard to find people to play. Star wars armada has filled that void in my gaming life.

Over all buy it. Great game.

Pros: Good depth, quality capital ship, quality over all product (game pieces, game accessories ect.) Really fun

Cons: The rules are not always clear and somewhat scattered. Read below.

Full review
This box set does leave you lacking in terms of the size game you can play but it's a starter set so that's to be expected. I have 2 box sets which gives me 300 pts per side which is the size game that armada is recommended to be played at. This will hold me over until the expansions come out later this year. This my only gripe is the poor way the rules are presented to us. You have a get started book which has rules and does an excellent job of explaining how to put everything together and how to set up your first game. It even goes as far to suggest the settings for the command dials, then nothing. It's the perfect set up for a demo round or anything but nothing. It continues on with the next mission set up with out explaining a lot of the rules, just giving you the broad strokes. The second book of rules you get is a quick reference rules book. This book is great in the fact it does full in the blanks of the other book and goes into greater detail on some rules but you will find yourself going back and forth between the two book & even this leaves you with some gray areas in the rules. But don't let this dissuade you from playing this game. I just wanted to be honest. The is still easy to pick up on and any rules issues will be FAQ but until than a quick Google search to see how the gaming community playing works. Or you solve them with the old "what is the spirit rule/game."

Love the fact that it's much more accesible than WH. Models are painted and well detailed and the prices are not over-the-top deluxe-premium like the GW products.