Sell me on ACTA: Noble Armada

[Pavic]

I am a first time poster looking at my first Mongoose product, but I am having some doubts about taking the dive.

First and foremost, I was not sure whether to put this in General or the ACTA: Noble Armada section, but given the content of the post, I felt the overall conversation would likely be more general than Noble Armada specific. How is that you ask, especially when the title is about selling me on Noble Armada? Well, let me tell you....

I have been tabletop gaming for over 15 years now, primarily Warhammer Fantasy, though I have dabbled in 40K, Battlefleet Gothic, and Malifaux. I have always loved spaceship combat, and I loved Battlefleet Gothic, but as GW does, this game has essentially been thrown under the bus as a "specialist" game. Now I am looking for a game to scratch my itch, and Noble Armada is currently the front runner, with Firestorm Armada close behind. However, I have some doubts about Noble Armada, so I am bringing them to the folks who should know best.

First, with the approach of ATCA: Star Fleet, I have to say I am absolutely terrified that all support for Noble Armada will simply dry up, let alone the player base, which does not seem to be especially large at this time. There are simply a ton of Star Fleet fans out there and the game will without a doubt be more profitable than Noble Armada. While I see that Mongoose has a nice list of upcoming releases for Noble Armada, it would be easy to simply slow up the support for Noble Armada and wind it down completely. This has of course happened in the past with B5, but having been an avid fan of Decipher's Star Wars CCG, I have been on the losing side of a license fight before, and I imagine that this is simply what occurred with B5 despite Mongoose's best intentions. So, assuming that Star Fleet is as successful as I imagine, what are the chances that Noble Armada will simply fade away? Are there any significant licensing issue for Noble Armada that could crop up in a few years time? On a side note, I have zero interest in Star Fleet. I want my fighters and carriers, not just a bunch of cruisers.

Second, I have just seen a lot of anger at Mongoose over how ACTA: B5 was handled. While I don't think this is Mongoose's fault, from what I can tell it has basically stopped anyone from investing in Noble Armada, even though on multiple boards people have commented that the rules are much better and the game is solid. However, many of these angry people have also indicated that they will dive into Star Fleet, even though Mongoose is involved, which only strengthens my belief the Star Fleet will come out ahead and Noble Armada will fall. So, in terms of players, how widespread is Noble Armada? Could I walk into a gaming store in most major US cities and find the game? I realize that this is not exactly fair to ask and might not really be something that can be answered, but if folks can just mention where there gaming group is located, it might relieve some of my fears.

Lastly, Firestorm Armada is the runner up for me at the moment. I don't like the ships as much, and I hate all the damn tokens that appear to be required, but that won't stop me from making FA my space combat game if I think Noble Armada won't stick around.

So now it is up to you folks. Tell me why I should buy in to Noble Armada and subsequently pull in all of my gaming friends.

 

[Nerroth]

Funny you mention fighters and carriers; they have been a big point of divergence between two of the games that ACtA:SF has to draw from setting-wise.

In Star Fleet Battles, there is a wide range of carriers (and gunboat tenders) for several empires; and a range of metal miniatures to support at least some of them. In Federation Commander, there are no "true" carriers; only one Alpha Octant power (the Hydran Kingdom) uses any sort of fighter type, and even then only because they operate a hybrid carrier doctrine as standard. (There may one day be a "Borders of Madness" product which will allow for limited carrier operations in the FC system, but BoM items will be strictly divided from "vanilla" FC in terms of what will be considered part of the main game.)

So far, the Starmada conversion of the Star Fleet Universe follows the FC way of doing things; it's not been confirmed whether or not there will be a carrier module for that engine (though one could imagine that carrier operations would be more straightforward there than in SFB).

If ACtA:SF will also follow the FC model for the foreseeable, the same will be true here; though, one day, if the demand is there at some point, who knows?

(In saying that, I would strongly suspect that there would be many who would not want to see carriers or gunboat tenders brought into A Call to Arms. For my own part, I'm on the fence about whether or not it would be a good idea... but then, it's likely to be a long time before we actually get to such a point.)

 

[Gabrielee]

Interesting..

 

[godsgopher]

Ugg...

I really don't like this question, possibly because it so closely resembles my own personal concerns for the game. I'm currently Invested to the hilt in Noble Armada. Its built on a very solid mechanic that has been well tested. However the game is a little bland at the moment, but this is due to the fact the game is less than six months old as far as release date goes. There are five additional fleets planned one of which has been released, one will be announced in just a few more days and the other three will follow between now and December.

Support will follow the players naturally. But I'm seriously afraid that ACTA's: Star Fleet is going to stomp it to death before it reaches its first birthday with size fourteen boots! Its not that NA is in anyway a bad game, but lets not kid ourselves here, very few people have ever heard of Noble Armada. But most of us over the age of thirty know what Star Trek is, and a whole new generation is starting to figure it out!

So it comes down to this...

NA is a cheap game 30$ U.S. will get you a very nice little fleet. You can pick up the Rulebook or use a friends and your in the game. Its fun and dramatic.

Star Fleet, will be a smash hit regardless, there will be more people playing it, more people talking about it, and much much more support for it in the long run.

So you decide.

Consequently about all the crap Mongoose has gotten over B5, they supported the game for over five years. Everyone who wanted it bought it. Everyone who sat on the fence and waited lost out. I still play it with a friend, I still love it. But the bottom line is, five years is a long long time in the gaming industry. If Mongoose had owned the rights to B5 they would still be supporting it, but it didn't belong to them they had to pay for the privilege and it wasn't cheap. Noble Armada and Star Fleet are properties of two pretty small gaming companies, I don't know for sure but its not unreasonable that the cost of the two put together don't equal the B5 license cost. So I'm guessing there going to be here for a bit.

 

[Poi]

Buzizng around the table with Klingons and Romulans or ships I don't recognise?

Easy choice for me. If the SFB rules weren't such a brick, I'd have bought into that years ago.

 

[Burger]

I don't really get why people are angry at Mongoose over B5. They made a decision to stop producing it because it wasn't financially viable. They gave plenty of notice that they were stopping production to allow people to buy any minis they wanted, and even sold off their remaining stock cheap. Mongoose are a company. If anyone expects any company to keep producing a product at a loss with no hope of an upturn in the future, then I think they need to come back to the real world.

Buzizng around the table with Klingons and Romulans or ships I don't recognise?

Easy choice for me.

Same here.
Have to say due to the cheapness and smaller size of the NA minis though, I am quite tempted to pick up some Al Malik or Decados, to use as my Gorn fleet :lol:

 

[godsgopher]

Actually that is one of Noble Armada's great strengths. Its one of the absolutely cheapest Miniature games to buy into.

For Thirty Bucks...

Noble Armada: You get a small very playable fleet that needs no addition to be effective.

Games Workshop: 1 box of 10 space marines, or 10 Fantasy miniature. Now if you have about three hundred more bucks you can get something playable in a very very small game.
Infinity the Game: 3 Beautiful figurines (Almost enough to play with).
Heavy Gear: 3 gears, very detailed, but nothing playable.
Flames of War: Infantry Platoon or Three Tanks, useful but not playable.
Battletech: 1 mech with 10$ change. Not playable.

Honestly your just not going to get much of any kind of game for 30$ Noble Armada is the first one I can recall that's playable at 30$

 

[Iron Domokun]

At this stage, nobody knows what's going to happen...

It could go three ways, or even more.

1. AcTA: STFU is a cuckoo and NA starves.
2. No effect. They attract different players and each grows on its own.
3. AcTA: STFU introduces more players and attracts more attention to the AcTA game engine, and by extension Knobbly Armada & the Fading Suns setting.

I think 3. is a real possibility. AcTA is a well-known and established game engine even if AcTA: NA is not a well-established edition of the game. The extra sound and fury from a Trek version of AcTA gets the attention of ex-B5 AcTA players who didn't know that their favourite space combat game was back in a new incarnation. Some of them will end up playing NA. Some will play AcTA:SF. Some will play both. Some will pull out their old Bab 5 minis and play the game borrowing from the updated rules. I know that when Federation Commander was first coming out, Steve Cole was convinced that Star Fleet Battles (the game of the phone-book rulebook) would die. Instead, SFB sales increased. Why? Because ex-SFBers who didn't know the game was still around came back to the fold. I'm pretty sure that Klingon Armada has not negatively affected Majestic 12's sales for its other versions of its game. For any game, more exposure = more gamers.

 

[Burger]

AcTA: STFU

... :lol: ...

 

[shotgun-toting chipmunk]

Agreed... :lol: ...

 

[godsgopher]

Iron you make some very good points that I had not previously considered, thank you.

 

[Ben2]

I have to agree with Iron Domokun. ACTA:STFU will bring in a lot of new gamers to ACTA, and drag back in a lot of the B5/B5W crowd, as well as sell models to general modelling enthusiasts.

ACTA:NA is very much like Mighty Armies. You get a complete force in a box. You add additional units to it, and dreadnoughts are the most expensive thing, but with a fleet box you have everything you need to play and a decent variety. It's an easy point of entry.

The rules are very tight, and I wouldn't be surprised if at some point there was another spin off of this edition of ACTA into another background or a historical period.

The rules are solid, the minis are good and cheap, the amount you need to buy to get into the game is small, even the mega deal with the rulebook and all the fleet boxes is cheaper than a 1000 point GW force.

Given the economy is currently floating face down in the pool ACTA:NA is exactly the sort of product Mongoose need to have, something that you can get into cheaply and then expand.

I only intended to get one fleet box. I've now got three and I'm waiting on a couple of ship blisters. I'll probably get another couple of fleet boxes when I get paid and see if I can find someone selling blisters online to pick a couple of things up. Al-Malik and Kurgan next for me, and Matt, where's that Grand Cruiser?

 

[BFalcon]

I have to admit, I was disappointed to have missed ACTA: B5 - A guy in my EVE Online corp (Charles Burger I think his name was) tried to get me into it, but I put it off - I was out of work at the time and was having problems finding enough to keep playing EVE, let alone buying into a new game...

Now it's too late... but do I blame Mongoose? No, why should I? I chose to delay and they took the (wise) decision to drop the game on financial grounds... perfectly understandable, IMO. It was my fault that I didn't get into it in time.

The prospects of getting into ACTA: SFU is a lot better, even if Mongoose later drop the line... why? Because I'm pretty sure that ADB would carry the miniatures on, rather than abandon their main line, so you can be sure that you'll be able to get miniatures for it even after the official line was dropped by Mongoose (if they ever do).

As for the outcome, I can see it being a general stalemate - there'll be some who decide to play Noble Armada and then decide to try the new SFU rules and may stay - there'll be others who decide to try the new rules and come over from SFU... there may also be others who see it on the shelf and decide that they want to play a ST game and get hooked on both that way - but overall, I think it'll act as a slight introduction to the other ACTA lines... i know that I'm looking at VAS now as a direct result of discussions about ACTA: SFU (it was discussion about torpedos that did it).

So it works, but I think SFU will top out NA as the introduction game to the rest, but I'll be happy if I'm proven wrong.

 

[BFalcon]

I have to agree with Iron Domokun. ACTA:STFU will bring in a lot of new gamers to ACTA, and drag back in a lot of the B5/B5W crowd, as well as sell models to general modelling enthusiasts.

ACTA:NA is very much like Mighty Armies. You get a complete force in a box. You add additional units to it, and dreadnoughts are the most expensive thing, but with a fleet box you have everything you need to play and a decent variety. It's an easy point of entry.

The rules are very tight, and I wouldn't be surprised if at some point there was another spin off of this edition of ACTA into another background or a historical period.

The rules are solid, the minis are good and cheap, the amount you need to buy to get into the game is small, even the mega deal with the rulebook and all the fleet boxes is cheaper than a 1000 point GW force.

Given the economy is currently floating face down in the pool ACTA:NA is exactly the sort of product Mongoose need to have, something that you can get into cheaply and then expand.

I only intended to get one fleet box. I've now got three and I'm waiting on a couple of ship blisters. I'll probably get another couple of fleet boxes when I get paid and see if I can find someone selling blisters online to pick a couple of things up. Al-Malik and Kurgan next for me, and Matt, where's that Grand Cruiser?

Ben: I know the feeling - if I was still working, I'd have snapped up at least one fleet box by now, if not all of them... but then I've already got more minis than I could paint in a year, even if I did concentrate on them...

 

[Nerroth]

For my part, I'm pretty sold on the Fading Suns setting at this point, but I'm still not sure what fleet I'd want to plump for in ACtA:NA... assuming there are any other gamers in Toronto who actually play the game, that is.

Maybe I'll have a better sense of what I'd wnat to go for once Fleets of the Fading Suns is out; I'm guessing that, once that book is out, it might be easier to offer the system to new player groups (since there's be more variety, in terms of technologies as well as in numbers of navies, to go around).

We'll see...

 

[Soulmage]

A little reality check here people:

NA is going to die on the vine with the release of ST.

Mongoose might make attempts to keep it going for a while with the occasional new release, but the reality is the money is in ST and they have to follow the money. A lot of NA players will switch to ST making it even less profitable for them to continue development of the line, which never really took off the way they wanted it to anyway.

If you're a big fan of NA, nobody is going to take away your rulebooks or anything, so you'll be fine to continue playing. . . but there are only a handful of new releases in the future of that setting.

By the end of 2012 NA will be pretty much dead.

Normally I wouldn't even comment on this since I don't care one way or the other about NA, but reading some of these posts I thought maybe I could keep the self-delusion from going to far. This being the internet and all, more likely I'll just get flamed.

 

[Greg Smith]

Whatever happened to Fading Suns 3rd edition?

 

[MongooseMatt]

If you're a big fan of NA, nobody is going to take away your rulebooks or anything, so you'll be fine to continue playing. . . but there are only a handful of new releases in the future of that setting.

Well, it kinda depends on you chaps.

We fully intend to support NA throughout 2012 (in fact, there is a full page advert for it in Star Fleet, potentially bringing it to a larger audience), and we'll be doing several 'joint' projects with SF and NA (no, not mixing the games together ) in mind.

We have quite a few new ships lined up, which will start appearing over the next couple of months, Sand is going to be designing a new one tomorrow, and there are at least three fleets we haven't touched yet.

In short, keep playing (and, ahem, buying ), and we'll keep this game going for as long as you like.

It certainly has fans here at Mongoose - we are playing a campaign right now and, frankly, my Hazat fleet rocks

 

[MongooseMatt]

Whatever happened to Fading Suns 3rd edition?

Slated for Gen Con 2012 - when we know, you'll know!

 

[Greg Smith]

On the subject of buying, does anywhere stock individual ships? I am painting my Li Halan fleet and wanted a cruiser, but couldn't find anywhere that stocked them.