The Magic Deck expansion for Armada is not a full book and I wanted to see how the as yet unreleased factions would be treated going forward regarding this optional set of rules before my first read through. My Elf starter fleet arrived today so here is the breakdown of the Magic Deck for Armada…
Magic Deck – 8 pages – 59 cards – 5060469667157 MGARM110
Base magic cards (across 3 tiers) – 49
Multiple copies of 23 unique cards that are used in any of the faction decks.
Faction / Fleet cards – 10
A unique tier 3 spell for each faction along with the breakdown of base magic spells allowed for that fleet.
Rulebook – 8 pages
The rules cover where the optional magic phase enters into the standard turn, how to cast and attempt dispelling, along with how to manage cards and casters.
Upgrades – 5
Five ship upgrades allowable for every fleet that includes a caster / magic deck.
On first inspection, a lot of care and future-proofing appears to have gone into the magic phase, especially considering that it will not occur unless a player has built their faction’s magic deck and caster into their fleet, much like fliers and fortifications from SA. Each of the factions so far has a 20 card deck defined by the rules, and the individual cards are strong but not overpowered, since generally only one card will be used per turn. The casting values range between 33% and 83% success rates depending on the level of the card and caster, and dispelling successes range between 17% and 50%, again depending on the level of dispel used.
Dispelling can only be performed by a fleet that also includes a caster and magic deck, which I first thought would always favor players who use this expansion, but the cost of your caster easily equals a small or even a medium ship for the fleet. Also, cards can be used for certain rerolls which makes burning through your own deck a real possibility which is also addressed in the rules.
Regarding new factions, from the Elf starter fleet another pair of faction / fleet cards are included that can be used with the Magic expansion to create an Elf deck. Two out of five groups of cards from the expansion that were not fully used for any of the 5 base factions are used for Elves. The Elf base fleet cards do take magic into account in their wording, but do not rely on the phase being used, which looks like their future-proofing is working well.
The only downside out of the entire expansion that I can see is that given the nature of deck construction it isn’t possible to build two separate faction decks for demo games without proxying cards in opaque sleeves. Otherwise, I am glad I picked this up since the decision of whether to include a caster in a fleet is a good, difficult choice.
