Armageddon: success or Failure?

[Locutus9956]

oh I've avoided commenting on the typoes up to now but somone else has taken the first shot, so here we go onto the bandwagon!

Mongoose the quality of the game itself and its popularity are one matter and down to personaly prefference really (the same with the miniatures) but this is getting ridiculous.

You CANNOT spend almost a YEAR developing a product and relase it riddle with typoes and mistakes. I wouldnt have the NERVE to even think of charging people money for such amatuerish efforts.

I love call to arms despite its various faults but you really should do better in terms of quality control if you expect to be taken seriously as proffessional publishers. Mongoose books have become practically legendary for their poor proofreading and number of typoes.

There... said it, sorry for the rant but its been a long day and Im just getting a bit fed up of paying and waiting for nigh on a year only to find the product effectively not finished properly....

 

[Davesaint]

Overall, I have to say I was very disappointed. Frankly speaking there are many wasted pages in the EA update. I mean did you really have to print the Hyperion 3 times when it doesn't change it's stats between ages?

Ship Opinions:
The Marathon is cool, but it makes the Omega worthless.

The Whitestar Gunship is pointless for a war level ship. There is no reason to buy it when you would always take the Carrier instead.

The Whitestar Fighter is Busted.

The Armageddon level ships are not worth buying over 2 War Level ships.

The G'vrann makes the Bintak pointless

Rules Opinions:
I like the new fighter rule.
I am hot and cold on the new stealth rules

There are other rules in the FAQ that completely contridict what Mongoose has ruled in the rulemaster section of the forum, such as the rule for speed reduction crits with a crippled ship.

Overall, not worth the $25 I spent on it.

Dave

 

[Nightmares about Minbari]

Firstly, not voting yet because I've not read the book. It comes in Wednesday, so might have more to say then.

Second. I consider poor proof reading to be a much more forgivable flaw in a games company than either being run by accountants who squeeze every last penny out of the players, or bad games design that produces games that are unplayable. So let them have gorrilla typists, it's better than the other options, and no games company is going to be perfect.

Third. I will definitely be getting the book as I'm not going to be put off by the ranting of people who haven't bought it but still claim to know it's not worth buying.

 

[Triggy]

OK, I own the book and have played more than a few games with it (and believe playing some games with Armageddon should be a prerequisite to voting here). The rules changes are almost universally great. The new lists are again almost entirely spot on (with the exception of about one ship in each list).

The only bits I really don't like are the under-crewing of several ships that would have been easy to spot with a little more playtesting and the reverting to SFoS stats for a few particular ships such as the Avioki, G'Quan and Sulust.

Overall a success but not total one.

 

[JayRaider]

I like the new rules updates.
Delighted to see the ancients.
Happy that the Vorlons/Shadows have gotten a makeover, but i have not played with them yet, so a change for good or bad, i cannot tell.

The rest of the book i'm not interested in.

Overall, a minor disappointment.

 

[Hash]

I voted that for the, "it's just a game one". To be honest some of the tweaks are fun (I love the point splitting stuff - 1 Armageddon point FTW!) but for the most part they just change the way the game is played, slight changes to balance....hasn't really altered my enjoyment of the game one way or the other.

Still, am glad I have a copy

 

[Voronesh]

I love the rule changers overall.

The Armageddon lvl needs some work....

and quite a few of the new models do not cut it. Thats where my dissapointment actually comes from, not the book but the accompanying models.

 

[Silvereye]

I haven't seen the book yet, so I ma holding fire on making a decision until I have it in front of me and have played a few games.

 

[Flogus]

I've not voted yet (not bought the book yet) but I have a negative feeling. Armageddon open a new door (big ships) but it still don't solve main problems like 'broken' profiles.

The Priority Levels system was a good idea, but I think it's now time to switch to an 'Army Points' system. Else, how to solve the Orestes / Marathon (both at Battle level) incoherancy ?

 

[Karhedron]

Overall slightly disappointed. The changes to Fighters, Stealth and the Vorlons/Shadows are welcome but not a major change.

For me, the comparative weakness of most of the Armageddon level ships is a real hindrance. Worse, I think the EA have come off very poorly with the new fleet lists. Their 2 competent War level ships have been inexplicably bumped up to armageddon level. This was a totally unneccassary change considering the Warlock was already one of the weaker War level ships in SFOS terms.

Now we are left with the feeble choice between the massively underpowered Command Omega or a very large carrier which is only nice if you have a true love of Thunderbolts (Yes LBH, I am loking at you). To make matters worse, the promise of boosting the Omega to match its iconic status consisted of a paltry 2 extra dice to its broadside guns. Not impressed. Still, at least if we play 3rd age we can ignore it in favour of the superior Marathon. :roll:

The EA was already one of the more challenging lists at higher levels. I feel it was totally uneccessary to nerf it further. Overall I am afraid the bad in Armageddon outweighs the good. I can only hope that they learn from their mistakes when the time comes to do 2nd edition.

 

[lastbesthope]

Ship viewers from burger, LBH, and Cherns fab new cards let us look at the new ships.

Just to clarify, my online Shipviewer has not yet been upgraded to Armageddon stats.

It would also be a more valid poll, if only people who've got or at least seen the book and played a few games with the new rules, voted! Like I said, until I'd actually played a few games, I thought the changes had totally screwed up the game. But now I think it is much better than before (even though my main race received a hefty nerf).

Hear hear!

My only beef with Armageddon so far are the typos and the small no of things not considered in terms of knock on effects (Cost of characters on War Level ships, do the EM war now use Early EA, that sort of thing)

LBH

 

[Celisasu]

From what I'm seeing, generally the rules updates are good. The problem being that the ship updates have returned us to the days of certain ships being vastly too powerful and other ships being far too weak. I'm looking at the Sagitarius here especially but some other ships to a lesser degree. It's also fallen back to the old "we balanced it by unbalancing each fleet at different PRs" which contrary to what some say is not balance. When I can look at a fleet and know that as long as my opponent isn't an idiot he has an automatic win, something is wrong.

So at this point I see Armageddon as a marginal failure. I'll probably just use the old tournament list with a modified version of the Shadow Hunter and Sagitarius. Nobody will play the Armageddon bigatures anyways so it's not like anyone will lose anything.

 

[Triggy]

To make matters worse, the promise of boosting the Omega to match its iconic status consisted of a paltry 2 extra dice to its broadside guns. Not impressed.

And it got 8 extra damage points. That's an entire 20% extra! Seems to make sense to me now as a very solid Battle level ship

 

[Hans Olo]

Well, personally i stick with Pmos that the Armageddon ships are not powerful enough.
The rule changes are nice but that's it. After waiting so long i would have expected something more.

 

[H]

Ship viewers from burger, LBH, and Cherns fab new cards let us look at the new ships.

Just to clarify, my online Shipviewer has not yet been upgraded to Armageddon stats.

It would also be a more valid poll, if only people who've got or at least seen the book and played a few games with the new rules, voted! Like I said, until I'd actually played a few games, I thought the changes had totally screwed up the game. But now I think it is much better than before (even though my main race received a hefty nerf).

Hear hear!

My only beef with Armageddon so far are the typos and the small no of things not considered in terms of knock on effects (Cost of characters on War Level ships, do the EM war now use Early EA, that sort of thing)

LBH

Yeah, but I assume your'e gonna, and it would be rude to miss you out.

 

[lastbesthope]

Yeah, but I assume your'e gonna, and it would be rude to miss you out.

Oh indeed I'm gonna, I just don't want people PMing me telling me my stats are wrong for Armageddon while I'm still working on that version of the viewer.

Believe me, the new version will be a step above the others in terms of content.

LBH

 

[katadder]

When I can look at a fleet and know that as long as my opponent isn't an idiot he has an automatic win, something is wrong.

only fleet i can think of that would apply to is the 10 sagi fleet.

 

[Chernobyl]

Overall I think its a good book. I think the rule changes are good, I think some things could stand a little better explanation, and there's a whole section of model beauty shots that really aren't essential. I suppose its a little lean, for a hardcover. I think the typos are annoying, still, and that after the ruckus raised after Sky full of stars this could have been better executed, if not paid more attention to. Still, people shouldn't expect it to be SFOS, it not. Its not a whole book of fleets. Its an update.

Chernobyl

 

[Celisasu]

When I can look at a fleet and know that as long as my opponent isn't an idiot he has an automatic win, something is wrong.

only fleet i can think of that would apply to is the 10 sagi fleet.

Or Minbari at Patrol level.

Or a fighter heavy fleet when you're playing Vree(now that they can't use those anti-fighter guns until after the fighters have blown up those delicious low damage, low hull ships).

A couple of other situations aren't quite so one sided but they are situations where a player with a certain fleet will have a very noticable(although not as brutal as the three examples named) advantage over the other player meaning that the second player will need to play far far better than the first.

 

[Locutus9956]

Well I still dont think theres anything major wrong with the actual game, sure it aint perfect but I do think Armageddon IS an improvement nonetheless.

And as for the typoes not its not the worst thing ever and Id rather have it than financial gittishness like a certain other GAMES company that WORKs in SHOPs....

BUT the point is that its such an easy little thing to correct by just having one or two people proof read the books properly, surely theres time to do that before release, Id even bet quite a few people on the forums would be willing to do the proofreading for free (in exchange for a prerelease copy of the book or something (I know I would )). It's not a fatal flaw an I WILL still buy the books it's just sad that it doesn't even surprise me when I find massive errors all over the place

And to be honest its not like Mongoose are the cheapest games out there by a long way, sure they dont charge as much as that OTHER company I oh so subtly hinted at earlier but theyre not THAT cheap either and for the kind of money we're paying I really don't think its too much to ask for quality in the products we pay for.