Neopets Armada

Neopets Armada is a game where you move ships around a grid. You play against a real person, and the person with more ships when the game ends is the winner. If you manage to win enough games, Armada can reward you with this shiny trophy

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Playing Guide

Armada is a strategy game, and it’s one of the three Multiplayer games on Neopets. To play a game, you have to sign up for the Monthly Competition the month before you play (if you sign up in November, you’ll play in December). On the first day of the month, you will be given an opponent, and the two of you have one week to finish the game. If the game isn’t over in time, then you both lose. If you lose a game, then you’re out of the competition for the rest of the month.

 

When you finally start a game of Armada, you’ll see a board with four groups of ships in the four corners of the board, with an island in the center. (That island is just there for decoration and to block some spaces; you don’t get anything special if you, say, surround it completely.) Two of the groups of ships are black, and the other two are red. The game randomly assigns you a colour of ship, and when it is your turn, you can move a ship. Moving ships can cause new ships to be created on the board, and when enough ships have been created to fill every space on the board, the game is over.

 

Moving Ships

 

In Armada, there are two types of moves that you can execute with your ships:

Adjacent: Just click on your ship and then a square right next to it. If you move your ship to any of the eight squares surrounding it, then a ship will spawn in the spot where you moved it – BUT the original ship will stay in the same square that it was in before. This effectively creates a new ship. Without making this move, the game would never end, because this is the only move that creates a new ship.

Jump: If you click on your ship and then a space two squares away, your ship will jump to that spot. This move is different from the Adjacent move in that your ship moves one space further (obviously), and a new ship isn’t created.

 

When you move your ship next to one or more of your opponent’s ships, those ships will change to your colour. So, if you have black ships, and you move it into a space that’s right next to two red ships, those red ships will turn black and become yours. This is the main way of increasing your total number of ships, which is what you need to do in order to win the game.

 

Strategy

 

When you start a game, you should take one of your groups of ships and form a blockade with them, using the Adjacent move.

 

5_burg1-7182288This is what you start with if you’re using black ships.

 

5_burg2-6822704This is what the same corner would look like after forming a good blockade.

 

It’s your choice as to whether you want to build a blockade on both groups of ships. Personally, I only build one. Once you’re satisfied with your defenses, you can start attacking; I like to take one of the outside ships of a group and start moving toward one of your opponent’s groups. Use the Adjacent move, and don’t make a straight line. If you’re moving south to attack, move southeast one turn, and southwest the next turn. Southeast, southwest, and repeat until you reach them. The particular ins and outs of this game are very hard to learn with just reading; practice will help you immensely.

 

Final Notes

 

Like the other multiplayer games on Neopets, Armada is very glitchy. For example, you’re supposed to have one match every week until you lose; every time that I’ve been in the monthly competition lately, I won the first game and then never got into any other games until one of the last days of the month. Once, I was able to win the first game, and the game that I was given in the last week, but I still didn’t get a trophy, even though I should have since I won two games.

Also, you used to be able to play casual games with random people in the multiplayer lobby; that’s broken too. It takes a month or two to learn how to play well because of this. Basically, this game is really messed up. That’s really unfortunate, because it’s actually pretty fun.

 

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