Lists.

First place with a Whisper with Gunner, ACD, FCS, 2 Scimitar Bombers with Seismic Charges, and 1 Scimitar Bomber with Proton Bomb.

Second place was my list on MoV with 4 Bwings and a z-95 Headhunter in a brute force list.

Third was a Vessery, Echo with ACD and Expose, Shuttle with Tactican. Didnt play this list.

The rest of the Lists were a Horton Salm Ion Cannon, Nera Daniels, Jake Farrel heavily loaded out for all three of them with ordinance and upgrades.

5 Academy Pilots, 2 Scimitar Bombers with Proton Torpedos.

Soontir Fell with Push the Limit, with 2 Push the Limit Saber Interceptors and a naked Saber

Sigma Six.

Game One

I started my series of games against the Sigma Six list. There was a numbering mistake to start the game and it wasn't noticed till the 2nd turn in which left the expensive phantom in a position to joust my list and the other two playing flankers. I lost the bandit for basically nothing. Then his best phantom was left in a position where decloaking was impossible it did its dial and bumped into my block of bwings. A cloaked phantom at range one against that much fire power didn't do well. We basically one for one traded the rest of the game and I ended up with 2 creaky bwings in possession of the board.

This game was won mostly by the fact that it felt like a Battlecruiser trying to punch it out with Battleships. His hits were as hard as mine if not harder, but his glass jaw kept him from surviving long enough to pull out a win. Also we built this redicously tight astroid field, which confused me as his list doesn't want that at all but it hemmed him in badly.

Game Two

I then drew the top table against Horton Salm, Nera Daniels, and Jake Farrel. I set up in my two by two cube on one corner and my headhunter sort of off towards the middle more and he sets up more in the middle. We both soft bank towards each other some and end up just out of range of combat of each other. Except for the Bandit and Jake Farrel who exchange maximum range weapons fire for no hits.

I ladder my cube into this weird long line with a mix of straight speed manuvers and barrel rolls heading into a joust across at Nera and Horton. Nera and Horton both jump 3 forward and collide with my Bandit/each other.I lose my Headhunter's shields and some bwing shields. I leave Horton on three hull and Nera low on shields as well due to some bad arcs. Next turn sees me exchange fire with them at point blank with my rear ships having actions and his not having any.

My full force tries to chase down a well equiped Jake Farrel. It goes poorly as I was rolling average and my opponent rolls a little better than average. I lose a Bwing and a Headhunter in short order. I finally get lucky and he misses a guess and bumps a Bwing, the other two toast him in a (4/3 with focus and target locks versus his 3x2) single volley. Which was bad dice on his part. Hard to keep up a string like that forever though.

Game Three

I draw the Phantom plus 3 Bombers. I set up for a joust against the bombers with my cube/bandit set. I lose the bandit, but his phantom is engaging me in this spot where it doesn't have any good decloaks, and I hem it in with a mass of hard turns. Exposing my flank to the bombers who didn't think I was going to commit that hard I guess. His phantom ends up bumping my bandit (we are like 1.5 range increments from the edge of the board) I think which then dies from his bombers shots. I then K turn or hard turn my whole bwing force back around.

His next move puts him almost on the board edge with a cloaked phantom and the following turn I proceed to K turn or move 2 and then barrel roll into all his elligible decloaks. (his bombers blocking one whole side helped as well) and he is forced to fly off the board. I have 3 hammered Bwings, against 3 relatively fresh bombers. It comes down to a single hit attack that I fail to roll an evade against and he takes a narrow victory. My absolute best case scenario is my one hull bwing survives that round and we both shoot and die in a range one blast. ends up a 100-100 tie and his MOV was higher. Because as good as 4 v 2 with a target lock is, he has 3v1 with a target lock or focus.

I watched Six Sigma dance all over Horton and Friends. When you can SEE two thirds of the opponents dials and then decloak its devastating. It fared much more poorly against lists with more bodies. That may have been a player experience issue as well. Their first game with the list was opening round against me.

Quad Interceptors was a blast to watch dance around the board. However, with no turrets on the field they saw basically best case scenario and still didn't do that well. They beat Six Sigma in a ninja fight where getting in arc was basically the worst thing you could do. They sandwhiched that win between a brutal beat down from Horton and friends ordinance and the shuttle, vessery, and echo list. Echo basically is an uncounterable beast when you have to move first with Interceptors. Soontir held his own but the rest of the list was easily mowed down.

Five Academy Pilots with 2 proton Torpedo bombers, lost a blow out in the first round to Echo, Vessery, and the shuttle. Trading 5 ties for the shuttle wasn't good, and it ended on time. The player dropped out which was kind of unexpected, but with half the lists having phantoms and being that demoralized from SIX attack dice from Echo one shotting TIEs over and over with no return fire I guess I understand.

I didn't watch the match between triple bomber plus Whisper against Echo, Vessery and the Shuttle. But I know that echo went down early and it was complete and total victory with like 3 hits off the bomber build total. It ended basically before my round had started exchanging more than harassing fire.

I feel like our Meta was really weird this month with neither of the YT-1300 players showing up tonight and not a single Decimator or YT2400 in our area yet.

Biggest thing I learned was my list... was not that great against the mass of Phantoms, some good turn zero astroid placement helped a lot, as did being able to move at all the same PS so I could pick how I wanted to bump. I would have had an easier night if there had been some YT1300s or something. Also against a well flown Awing... I just got nibbled to death, and if my opponent had been a good like 1/8th of an inch luckier I wouldn't have killed him. I think that Advanced Sensors or FCS, or PS 4 might have worked a lot better. Also the Bandit basically was my "winning joust maneuver" as Everyone removed it by the first or second turn of combat. I flew him as a disposable 4 forward into grills to cause bumps/bad manuevers.

Hopefully this is a decent read for people.

Sorry I didn't get to watch more of the other games but we had a suprising number of complete wins with no losses happen every round.

Expose on a phantom is a huge risk/reward gamble, but it seems it paid off. Good read, thanks.

Love the bombers. Simply love em.

Besides the fact that VI is better than expose for named phantoms, it's also just not a good upgrade by itself. If he had FCS as well it would be a bit more viable at least.

Yea it would get 6 attack dice at range 1, but with no other action you're gonna average 3 hits/crits. A normal 5 dice attack with a focus would average 4 hits, plus your agility isn't reduced for that round.

Obviously he must have been rolling well above average based on what you said though.