Last night a few friends and I got together for a little 2v2 space brawl. Since this was the first time we went at wave one, and the first time we did it 2v2, we choose not to use objectives. We also didn't use obstacles, but that was more an oversight than an actual decision. Since all the ships used were ones I bought, there was a considerable amount of time spent simply discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the new ships and some time looking over the various upgrades. We played 400 points split 200 to a player...or we were supposed to. There was some miscommunication.
Rebels wound up with initiative. I didn't do the math here, and I may have missed an upgrade or squadron somewhere on the Imperial side as I reconstruct this from memory.
The Opposition (The Imperials. I may miss something here, but I don't believe so)
Vic 2- Motti, Dominator
Vic 2
Glad 2- Demolisher, ACM's, Engine Techs
Darth Vader
2x TIE Adv
Soontir Fel
1x TIE Interceptor
3x TIE Fighter
Team Awesome (The Rebels. My team)
Space Whale, the one with 3 squadron command- Gallant Heaven, Intel Officer, ECM's, Enhanced Armament, Expanded Hanger, Flight Controllers, Mon Mothma
Neb B Escort- Yavaris, Adar Tallon
Neb B Escort- Salvation, X-17 Turbolasers, Sensor Team
Tycho Celchu
2x A-Wing
Wedge Antilles
Keyan Farlander
2x B-Wing
Setup-
Dominator Vic 2 Demolisher
TIE ADV/Vader TIE INT/FEL TIE FIGHTERS
S A Y B GH A
a a B Tycho
l v K v W
Turn One- On the imperial side, the two victory classes angled in towards rebels at speed 2, Demolisher starts cutting back across towards the Vics, also at speed 2. Rebels move up straight at speed 2, keeping their fighters tight. We wanted the Bwings to be ready for Demolisher, as I suspected that while my friends had seen the offensive potential of Demolisher and ACM's, they were unprepared for what a clustered group of Yavaris supported BWings could do.
Turn 2- Continued creep towards the middle of the board, and all rebel ships cut speed to one. It's starting to become clear that the imperials want to pressure the Space Whale, which is just fine by us, although our Bwings could be in better position. I became concerned that if the Demolisher turns on the speed and swings outside, that she will be able to pressure the heaven a little too far from the bwings for them to get really dangerous, although they should be able to still swing over and get him. Just not close enough to use Yavaris. In the squadron phase, the rebels bring two bwings, Tycho and Wedge up a little and draw an interceptor that wants to tie them up, although it only engages the B's and Tycho. Most of the imperial fighters remain screening the Imperial fleet. It should be noted that there was a disagreement on the other side of the table as to whether they should also bring Fel, and they opt instead to bring in the one TIE Fighter that was in range to engage the B-Wing forward party.
Turn 3- Things get a little more interesting here. Gallant Heaven activates first and pops a squadron command. Tycho attacks the Interceptor he is engaged with and misses on all 4 dice (flight controllers on heaven). He then activates his super dickery and flies off to engage fel, one advanced and vader. Another A-wing is activated and takes 2 damage off the interceptor. Wedge flies over to the engaging TIE Fighter squadron and does him in so fast its practically consensual, and a final Awing is sent after two TIE squadrons flanking the GSD, one shotting one of them with its FController augmented 4 dice. Heaven then is left with a decision to make, two red dice at the demolisher or take a shot at freeing the BWings with one blue. It shoots the blue off into space and flies on at a mere one speed in anxious disappointment.
The imperials then activate the demolisher, who is close enough before moving to take black dice shots from the front to the front of the Gallant Heaven, augmented by a concentrate fire command. Sadly for imps though, two blacks came up blank, none came up crit and there's no Screed to force the ACM trigger. GH down two shields in the front. Demolisher then pulls a very tight maneuver to place his side arc about a millimeter off the Heaven's bow and vomit up some more black dice. Heaven winds up down to 1 shield on the starboard, 2 to port and all out on the bow.
Salvation activates next, taking a three red dice shot at the middle Victory, drawing mostly blanks but getting one damage to their front shields. She then takes her two dice anti squadron armament from the side to that annoying interceptor that was engaging the bwings, freeing them. Moves up one. Middle vic activates, and threads a needle to put three red dice onto the front arc of the Heaven, although after defense tokens all that happens is a damage gets through to the hull. She also misses tycho with her anti squadron blue and moves forward, closing to more serious danger range with the Nebulons.
With the B-Wings now free, its time to spring the trap. Yavaris activates and reveals a squadron command and burns a squadron token. Sadly, only one bwing is able to take advantage of Yavaris' double shot, but the two regular B's and Keyan deal a ton of damage to the back arc of Demolisher, leaving her without shields and with 3 damage into the hull. Tallon toggles Keyan for the squadron phase, and Yavaris fires her front arc into the rear arc of the Gladiator. 2 Damage gets through, but ones a crit that turns up Structural Damage, punching through the extra hull from Motti and removing Demolisher from the battlefield. There was much rejoicing.
The squadron phase was pretty unentertaining for the rebels, having only the re-toggled Keyan left to activate. We put him in front of one of the vics so it could run him over. Then the imperials attempted to put the hurt on Tycho, but although it had exhausted his super dickery armament he still had a few charges of mega ultra douchebagery left. He scattered 3 damage from baron fel, then completely burned his scatter token negating 5 damage from Vader. The other advanced did manage to get a damage into Tycho, but took on in return. Tycho was more or less miserable with the dice, but oh man oh man what a jerk.
Turn 4- It's pretty late into the evening at this point, and it started to look pretty bad for the imps, so I can't remember exactly how this next sequence went. Dominator took an enhanced arm broadside burned through her shields some to take shots at Nebulons that were mostly negated by tokens, only to get obliterated by a yavaris/tallon keyan farlander and front arcs from salvation and yavaris. She was at 9 Hull damage and several crits in when Salvation rammed her for the kill. We called the game after she went down, as the remaining vic was not in postion to put enough points on the board to tip the scales given the losses already suffered.
Post-game takeaways- The imperials suffered in this game from a lack of familiarity with the wave one squadrons and combos, understanding of optimal use of defense tokens, and sub-optimal maneuvering. This will get better as they become more experienced players.
What I was most interested in seeing was the efficacy of the double Nebulon/B-wing Strike team. In this game it was very effective, especially having mon mothma around to increase their ability to negate damage. I didn't get to see how they would hold up against a charging Demolisher because she went after the Whale, but they were very effective jousting a star destroyer. If you do this though, be sure to save some squadron tokens or be ready with the dials to speed out of there. More testing required, and I'm not sure about 300 point games, but I would say favorable results in a skewed environment on this run.
Finally, Tycho is such a jerk. Like wow. Any thoughts or impressions are welcome below, hope you guys enjoyed the report. In the future I will try to include pics.