So I just won a recent IA tournament with a 9 activation Imperial list. I'm planning on taking it to Regionals, but I was wondering if anyone with more experience using Officer/Royal Guard spam had any words of wisdom?

The recent tournament was three rounds, I faced Vader in only a single round. I won, but he still has me worried.

So I just won a recent IA tournament with a 9 activation Imperial list. I'm planning on taking it to Regionals, but I was wondering if anyone with more experience using Officer/Royal Guard spam had any words of wisdom?

The recent tournament was three rounds, I faced Vader in only a single round. I won, but he still has me worried.

If you are looking for advice on the Vader match up you have 2 choices - Kill everything but Vader and win the mission, or focus primarily on Vader and steamroll.

Obviously if you go for the former, you want to kill his RG/Officers/Stormies in that order. The Probes chew up the RG really fast, so early on they will be most important. From there its just a big keep-away game where you abuse whatever you have left to outmaneuver Vader.

Your best tools for killing Vader are the Royal Guards and the Elite Probes. In a perfect world, you can position your fluff units (like the stormies/Officers) so he has to kill those and give you focused RGs. It is possible to kill Vader in 2 turns this way. Sometimes you will simply dodge with the Officers and really frustrate him. I have personally killed him halfway through turn 2 before. Probes + a couple RG hit him turn 1 and then Probes and a few focus RG turn 2. The Vader list folds if Vader dies this way. It also helps to prioritize stunning Vader with RG if you are going for this, since you can frequently limit how much he can kill in return.

9Act is tough for any Vader build to beat since they are down 2 activations at minimum. It is worse if you force them to have init or they only bought 6 or less deployment cards.