Last Tuesday I played an Epic Dog fight with my friend. He played imperials and I played rebels, including my beloved CR-90. It was an interesting game, though it didn't go well for him. The game gave me a chance to play my experiment Stressinator build for the CR-90. My list:
Stressinator and the Ion Guys (299 pts)
- CR-90 Fore
- Quad Laser Cannon
- Quad Laser Cannon
- Slicer Tools
- Tactician
- CR-90 Aft
- Quad Laser Cannon
- Tibanna Gas Supplies
- Tactician
- Gold Squadron Pilot
- Ion Cannon Turret
- Gold Squadron Pilot
- Ion Cannon Turret
- Roark Garnet
- Ion Cannon Turret
- Blue Squadron Pilot
- Rookie Pilot
- Rookie Pilot
- Rookie Pilot
- Rookie Pilot
the goal of this squad was to use the CR-90 to stress out ~3 enemies per turn, and then use the golds and Roark to ionize them, effectively neutering them for a couple of turns and making them very vulnerable to getting stomped on by my Tantive. This was a very experimental build that did alot that I'd never done before. I had no long range ability beyond the Primary which would have no dice modifying it, so it would be a crap shoot. I was most nervous about the lack of Engineering Team, which I've never gone without.
His squad was very different and I don't remember all the details but basically it was this:
- Captain Jonus
- Boba Fett
- Kath Scarlet
- Krasis Trelix
- Bounty Hunter
- Captain Kagi
All the firesprays had HLCs, proton bombs, gunner, and engine. Kagi had HLC and sensor jammer (which is really annoying for the CR-90 since it can't focus). Jonus was mostly naked (I think he had a stealth device or something) and only existed to buff the others.
Obviously, the point of his squad was to come in heavy and just HLC everything to death. I was really nervous honestly. HLCs are the bane of...well just about everything, but especially the Tantive. Add to that the fact that all 5 could be almost TL+F each turn (ships do focus, and make use of Jonus' TL-lite ability), and that those HLCs were on really hard to kill ships, all of which fired before the bulk of my forces...yeah I was nervous. To make matters worse, most of his ships required 2 ion tokens to be ionized, which seriously nerfed the usefulness of my battle plan. The only saving grace was that the squad was pretty small. Still, he could easily take out 2 ships per turn if the defense dice went squirrelly for me.
I'd recently read Hothie's great battle report about hsi CR-90 experience, so I took his astroid building idea and made myself a "kill zone" in which to lure him into. I'd done something similar in an epic game I played a while ago and it worked well to give me the advantage. This turned out to be one of the most influencial aspects of the game. I deployed my ships inside that area facing out at an angle. He then completely threw me off by deploying directly accross from me.
His plan was to rush in to keep me from gathering energy. He also was hoping that by setting up close, he would avoid the game going too long since we only had ~2.5 hours to play. This turned out to not work so well for him. As you can see in the picture, the asteroids left him very little room to move his ships, and the fact that they were large made things worse. This initial deployment set the stage for the entire game. My deployment wasn't too great either, I'll note, as it forced me to make sure I didn't run over my own ships. You can't see it well, but there is an asteroid just behind the tantive that got in the way of deploying on the tantive's open side.
In the first round, my guys all made the fastest, farthest bank they could, trying to get far enough in front of the Tantive to not get run over but still be able to turn into the fight next turn by turning or banking. They all focussed except my B-Wing which was stressed. Then his bountry hunter (in the front on the right) went staight and landed dead in the middle of the asteroids. Roark just went forward 3 since I didn't think he could get past the tantive, and I knew that he would be a prime target so I wanted to keep him in the back.
After this came the rest of the imperials, and that's when things started going bad. The forward left fire spray (Krassis) went forward matching the bounty hunter but landed on the asteroid with the merest bit of the corner of its base. He didn't roll damage but that was just beginning of his woes. The rest of his guys moved without incident, and finally my tantive moved, a simple two forward. My original plan had been bolt out at the gate to get in range fast, but I was unable to do so due to my bad initial positioning. I allocated energy to my forward Quads, made a terrible joke about triceps (get it, Quads? Triceps? Hah! I'm hilarious!) and waited.
Then came the combat phase. Unfortunately for the imperials, only the bounty hunter and the bomber could fire on anything. Krassis had a great shot on the tantive, but was busy chilling on an asteroid. On the other hand most of my squad had shots. I boosted the Tantive, but it didn't do much good since it was too far to use anything but the primary. I spent an energy to boost the primary and fired at Jonus, but wiffed. BH fired at the HWK doing two damage, taking out the shield. Jonus was a non-issue. I was able to ionize Krassis with my Y-Wings and with the rest of my force put some serious hurt onto the bounty hunter.
Round Two I planned to use my ships to block most of his force, banking my y-wings left, and moving my Xs and B forward a hair hoping to block the BH with the X in the front. His BH though did something I didn't expect: It did a 3 turn out (darn that rear firing arc), landing just in front of the asteroid but not on it. Roark just drifted forward, and then the rest of his ships moved and things went down hill. Krassis was ionized which set off a chain reaction of terribleness for him. As he drifted one forward, he landed on yet another asteroid. Boba, smartly took a 3 bank and collided with my y-wing but avoided landing on the asteroid though he did going through (rolled no damage). Jonus just moved a bit forward, then boosted to the left landing smack in the middle of all my guys. Kath Scarlet moved forward, just barely landing in the middle of the asteroids without hitting them. Unfortunately, Kagi was blocked badly. First by my Ys then by Boba, resulting in him landing squarely on an asteroid. Again, no damage rolled, and believe it or not he was still really useful. Finally the Tantive moved, and I found that since I didn't have the engineering team, I was more free to do banks since there was no energy lost by doing a 1 bank instead of a 2 forward. He was close to the action and finally able to fire. He reinforced and then tried to target lock...only to realize that I would have to target Kagi instead of one of the already damage ships. I was unhappy with this. In fact, Kagi effectively ruined all TLs for me for the rest of the game, so he was definately the MVP, greatly diminishing the effectiveness of my attacks. So I went ahead and TL'd him anyway out of spite.
In combat phase, I boosted Tantive with Roark and put a crit on Jonus. Nothing major, just gave him a stress. Oh joy. I also used my quads on Boba and gave him some stress which actually was pretty nice. Jonus and the Kath killed Roark, but I retaliated by killing the BH. My Ys ionized Krassis again. At this point we both knew what was going to happen to him (collide with tantive and land on the asteroid again).
Here's the end result of round 2:
Round three started with my Ys going three bank and forward 4 to clear out of the way of everyone else. the banking one went through an asteroid, and other was stressed. Oh well. One X wing moved 3 bank and collided with the shuttle, the rest just drifted forward hoping to collide with Kath and Jonus. Krassis drifted, hit the tantive for damage, and then landed on the asteroid again. Jonus for his part just moved green forward to clear his stress (which I was disappointed by as I wanted to use Slicer tools on him), Kath just hit everything, Kagi just ran into things again, and boba dropped a proton bomb hitting my Ys and the shuttle before running away from the tantive. Finally the tantive did a 1 bank to the left running over Krassis and just barely missing boba. Tantive hit boba with slicer tools. With Roark and the BH gone, he fired all his ships before me, but without actions he only destroyed an X-Wing and damaged the B-Wing. In return, he lost Jonus and Kath.
At this point, the game was really over, as his best ship (the fire spray) had about 4 stress on it, and the only other ship he had was a shuttle, but we played it out to the end (hey, the dice may be favorable). Boba just booked it out of there getting as far away from the Tantive as possible, while he pushed forward with his shuttle, hoping to get behind the tantive and get some hits in. I sent one of my Xs to tail the shuttle, and the others with my B to hunt Boba, while my Ys did their best to get back into the thick of it.
In the end though it was a foregone conclusion. Both the shuttle and Boba died (the shuttle had about 5 stress tokens on it after the final shot).
Analysis
I really really like my stressinator Tantive. I might go ahead and try it with 3 tacticians. Being able to deal out that many stress tokens each round serious hampers your oppenent. The best part is I don't actually have to even hit them. If I were fully loaded on energy and missing, I could actually hit 6 ships with stress in one turn. Slicer tools wasn't terribly useful this game, but I imagine in a game with more ships, and smaller ships, it would be very helpful for getting that one extra damage on a ship and it pretty much guarentees that the opponent will put a premium on getting rid of that stress, lest they take damage with it.
Over all I'm please with this list, and I look forward to trying it again a more numerous foe, to see how it handles.
