Stellar Armada is a small and pretty simple game. Professor and I played several games. We each had a card which represented our ship, tokens to place on the card, and dice. Each ship has Engines, Repair Systems, Energy Beams, Missile Launchers, Missiles, Shields, and a Reactor. The goal is to destroy your opponent’s Reactor using Energy Beams and Missiles.
Each turn you have energy equal to your Reactor’s status. You begin with 6. At the beginning of the game it makes sense to divide your energy between your Engines and your weapons. Each point you put into your Engines makes it more difficult for your opponent to hit you. If I put 3 energy into my Engines, that means my opponent has to roll a 5 or 6 for weapons in order to hit me. That still leaves me 3 energy to use to fire my own weapons. If you have damaged systems, you might want to use your Energy to repair them (your Reactor can’t be repaired). I usually went after Professor’s Missile Launchers, so he had to spend points to repair those in order to use them.
We had a little trouble keeping track of how many points we put into Engines, so we ended up using extra dice for that.
This game relies heavily on luck. Amazingly the dice didn’t hate me, and I often rolled high on my attacks. This meant Professor was often spending his energy on repairs, and if I managed to damage his Reactor, he was working with fewer and fewer energy points. In that respect the game can be frustrating. There’s not much you can do with 2 energy points. I’m not sure this one will see a lot of play, and we’re unlikely to pull it out again unless we have 4 players.
It’s a very quick game. We played several games in under 30 min, so it’s definitely good if you don’t have a lot of time.