Armada strategy

Everything that wins classic sea battle still wins Armada: sensible placement, hunting on parity, and finishing a wounded ship before wandering off. What the weapons add is a second question on every turn — not just where to fire, but with what.

Spend the stock, but at the right moment

An unused weapon is worth nothing at the end. It is easy to save the torpedoes "for later" and lose with both still in hand. At the same time, most of the weapons are strongest early, on a board you know little about, and weaker late, when your chart is full of marks. So the default is to spend them in the first half of the game, each where it does the most.

The torpedo: long lines of unknown water

A torpedo passes over everything you have already marked and stops at the first deck it meets, clearing all the unmarked water on the way. That makes it best early, down a long line you have not touched.

At the start about a fifth of the board is ship, so an untouched line of ten squares usually holds a deck somewhere. The torpedo finds the first one, and the hit earns another turn like any other. Even when it finds nothing, it has marked a whole line as water — ten squares of information for one move, which no plain shot can match.

Only the water before the first deck is revealed; whatever lies beyond it stays unknown. So launch it from the side you know least about.

A torpedo is also useful along the line through a hit, when you do not yet know which way the ship runs. It either strikes the wounded ship's next deck, which answers the question and keeps the turn, or crosses past it into open water, which tells you the ship lies the other way — unless another ship stands in its path first, where it stops, which is still a hit.

Late in the game, when most lines are largely marked, a torpedo is little more than a plain shot.

The air strike: into fresh water only

Five shells land on five of the nine squares, and a shell that falls on a square already fired at is lost. That one rule decides where an air strike belongs.

In a fresh, unexplored 3×3 square, roughly a fifth of the squares hold a deck at the start, so five shells average about one hit — and any hit keeps the turn. Into a square that is half marked, about half the shells are thrown away. Beside a wreck, where the ring has already closed several squares, it is worse still.

So fire air strikes where your chart is blank, away from the rings of sunk ships.

The radar: once, and remember it

The radar is the only weapon that shows you exactly where things are, and you get one. It takes the whole turn and marks nothing, so its value lies entirely in the turn that follows.

Aim it at a square with nine unknown squares. A square already marked is one it tells you nothing new about.

Use it when you have no wounded ship to finish. With a hit on the board and its neighbours still open, the radar would cost you the turn you should be spending on the kill.

Then fire at what it showed. On your next turn you know which squares are decks, so take them with plain shots — each hit keeps the turn, so you can often take several in a row. An air strike into the same square wastes what you know: its shells go wherever the game sends them.

Fix it in your head. The picture lasts about three seconds and does not come back, not even on a reload. Say the squares to yourself — "E6, E7, H4" — before it fades.

When your opponent's radar sweeps your waters, you see its beam go round once, and then nothing marks the spot. You cannot move anything, but you have learned two things: they know what is in that square, and they have no radar left. Remember which square it was, as they will.

Finishing wounded ships

Once you have a hit, finish the ship with plain shots, as in the classic game: the squares next door, then along the line. Every hit keeps the turn. A air strike cannot be aimed at the one square you need, and a torpedo is worth spending here only to settle which way the ship runs.

Placing your fleet

The classic advice still holds. Do not crowd your ships into a corner and leave a suspicious empty middle. Keep the boats in open water, where a methodical hunt reaches them last. And avoid the predictable edges: everybody lines the border, and everybody's opponent knows it.

The torpedo adds something new. Nothing on a line is safe from a torpedo along it: it reaches the first deck wherever that sits. So think about what a torpedo would give away rather than how to hide from one.

A ship that stands alone on its row is found by a single torpedo along that row, from either end. If your ships crowd near one edge, a torpedo from that edge strikes almost at once — and one from the other side crosses a long stretch of empty water, showing your opponent exactly where your fleet is not. Spread across the board, your ships make every line a mixed one, where a torpedo finds something but clears only a short run of water getting there.

Mind the clock

At a friend's table you have 15 seconds a move, and when they run out the game fires a plain shot at random for you. Aiming a weapon takes longer than a click, so decide what you mean to do while your opponent is moving.