Take the Station

It is a period of Galactic Civil War. As Imperial and Rebel forces clash amid the planets of the Outer Rim, rumors of espionage and infiltration among high-ranking officials lead to chaos on both sides. When your superior officers trace encoded signals back to a small waystation, it falls to you to lead a team of commandos and technicians to the station, seize control of it, and secure its vital intelligence.

The miniatures game of epic space battles in the Star Wars universe, Star Wars™: Armada thrusts you into the role of fleet admiral with either the Galactic Empire or Rebel Alliance. You and your opponent assemble your fleets, command your ships, and battle for the fate of the galaxy.

Now, the developers have added more ammunition to your Armada battles with the introduction of a new multiplayer scenario, Take the Station (pdf, 4.4 MB). While the game's core identity remains firmly rooted in its strategic, head-to-head battles, Take the Station explores new territory, allowing you to enjoy the clashes between capital ships belonging to as many as four different fleets.

An Introduction from the Developers

Why design a multiplayer scenario for Star Wars: Armada? How does your multiplayer experience differ from your classic head-to-head battles? The game's developers address these questions in a short introduction to Take the Station:

"At its heart, Star Wars: Armada will always be a two-player experience. However, when a group of friends gets together, there are times that everyone wants to play the same game, instead of splitting into groups. As fans of many different miniature games, we know that one thing we tend to enjoy are group “megabattles” with multiple participants. And Take the Station was born after we set out to see if the group "megabattle" was something we could introduce to Armada.

"One thing we realized early on was that the alternating ship activation of Armada could, with some minor tweaks, work really well in a game with three or four players. Generally, one of the big problems with a multiplayer game is the downtime as you wait for three other players to finish their turns so that you can go again. However, with each player activating one ship at a time, downtime is substantially reduced. With that in mind, we decided that our first multiplayer scenario would be multiple players competing against each other, not two teams of players working together.

"As we looked deeper into the idea of creating a multiplayer scenario, a few substantial changes stood out.

• First, rotating initiative becomes a must, so that the same player isn’t stuck going fourth every round.
• The scenario is also very different than the usual objectives. We had to design something that would play outside of the normal two player dynamic, so we came up with a scenario where each player had the same goal, but the sooner you accomplished the goal, the greater the reward would be.
• Finally, we decreased the size of each player’s fleet. We wanted to make sure that the playing time for this game wouldn’t balloon substantially, and we also wanted to make sure that all four players had enough room on the game board to maneuver their ships.

"The result is a smaller, fast-paced scenario in which you'll field one or two ships that have to stand alone against multiple foes. In this scenario, you don't find the classic head-to-head engagement between two fleets. Instead, you find a very different experience, and one we hope you enjoy!"

     –Sam Stewart, Michael Gernes, and John Shaffer

Recover the Data

Looking for new ways to enjoy your tactical fleet battles? Download Take the Station, gather your friends, and fight for control of the Outer Rim's most valuable intelligence!

Then, keep your fleet at the ready for more Wave III previews, strategy articles, and other Armada news!