For some reason I have put advanced gunnery in the title.......not sure what I was thinking here, this battle is actually minefields:

Rebels (me):

AF2b (Mon Mothma, gunnery team)

Neb-B support (salvation)

CR90b

CR90b

5 A-wing's (in the pictures below the x-wing is pretending to be a fifth A-wing)

Total – 300

Objectives – Most wanted, fire lanes, dangerous territory.

Imperials:

Victory-II (Screed, expanded hangers, flight controllers)

Gladiator-I (Demolisher, Wulff, engine techs, assault missiles)

4 fighters (including Howlrunner)

3 interceptors

1 bomber (Rhymer)

Total - 299

Objectives – Advanced gunnery, contested outpost, minefields.

I was made the first player and went for minefields. Contested outpost forces me to rush in, and even then I wasn’t confident in building and maintaining a lead. I dont really want to know anything about an advanced gunnery demolisher so that was out.....and that leaves minefields......I dont have the long range fire power to blast the gladiator (especially if it hides behind the victory, so the fight is going to happen up close and personal anyway, so it may as well happen without enhancing the empire or giving them free points!

Deployment:

My opponent creates a nice little funnel of mines for me to fly down. The far side of the table is pretty much out of bounds, I could fly down the near side, but if the empire push fast up the centre whatever goes down the flank will be stuck on the other side of the mines from the main fight.......so down the centre we go.

Turn 1:

You may be slightly surprised to see the victory leading the way here.......this is actually our second game. In the first the gladiator came in fast and got destroyed in one turn by the entire fleet, this time it seems to be playing it safe trying to use the to hide behind (somewhat), and force me to spend some fire power on it.

I cant quite remember how the interceptors and A-wings got into that position. Im pretty sure the gladiator sent them in because the victory banked a nav token in the first turn (so these were not fully powered combo-tastic interceptors at this point).

Turn 2:

And lo! Combo-tastic interceptors kill all the A-wings (okay so not quite, but they each destroyed one A-wing each in a single activation). Thankfully the AF2 was able to activate three of the A-wings first and get some early damage on the interceptors, which the CR90's managed to take a couple of flanking pot shots at and finish off.

With the AF2 trundling off to the far side of the picture (while shooting both the victory and gladiator), and the neb-b swooping in from the flank (and shooting at the victory) Im able to force the gladiator to move in before my CR90's, it does its thing and drops the shields of two faces of one of the CR90's and does some hull damage (thank you Mon Mothma!), but it takes a fair beating in return (both CR90's had concentrate fire commands). The CR90's both position themselves for dual arc shots on the gladiator and victory for next turn (moving first, and with twice as many activations makes this so very very easy with a ship as nippy at the CR90).

Turn 3:

The first activation of the turn sees a CR90 with more concentrated fire drop the gladiator. It is subsequently pounced on and killed by the squadrons under the victory's command. The victory delivers a fair slap to the AF2, but its the first serious attack its taken and it has plenty of engineering commands ready so its not in any danger. Over the rest of the turn the victory loses all its shields on all facings and loses half its hull (a glorious 5 damage shot and timely capacitor failure from a concentrating salvation helped a lot in this regard). It actually had to lose its brace token just to stay alive with more than one hull (which would have been risking a double hit crit – the crits were piling up at this point and no double hit had materialised yet).

Turn 4:

More concentrated fire from another dual arc CR90 sees the victory destroyed before the empire get an activation.

Thoughts:

It probably looks like the victory did very little, this wasn’t the case, it was putting constant pressure on the surviving CR90 who had taken a couple of hull damage. Mon Mothma was really saving my bacon in a big way against those medium range double hits! - she also helped negate several fighter attacks – forcing the fighters to come into close range to attack successfully made Rhymer less effective (more squadron command hungry) than he might otherwise have been.

I was also stunned by how lightly I got off in the squadron fight. I was expecting to get well and truly maimed by the legendary 6-dice interceptors that everyone is on about.......and I suppose I did, but getting the jump on them, and then having counter really showed just how brittle they are despite their mighty attack power.

I'm not 100% sure why the interceptors lead the way in against the fighters. I know my opponent was worried about all the A-wings flying in and helping one shot the gladiator again (I had banked squadron commands on the CR90's in the first turn ready for a second turn blitz if the opportunity arose). The A-wings were just out of range of TIE fighter engagement when they moved in (so it had to be the interceptors or Howl if any attack was going to go at them)......not sure what I would have done here I can see the pro's and cons of either choice.

I was delighted with how Mon Mothma helped me out. Its going to be hard to go back to Dodonna now, Mothma just helped so much with the aggressive moves of those CR90b's. They took far more punishment in this game than they have previously. The enhanced armament on the AF2 was handy as well. It allowed it to play the stand off roll much better than previously.......not sure how great that will be against rebels where it might be able to dive into the fray a bit more, an intel officer may work better under those circumstances.

Mon Mothma is the correct choice with multiple Gladiators and Countermeasures on your AF.

Very beautiful space mat by the way.

Mon Mothma is the correct choice with multiple Gladiators and Countermeasures on your AF.

Very beautiful space mat by the way.

Yeah it is. Where'd it come from?

http://www.deepcutstudio.com/category/mats-size-3-x6

They're awesome

Nice report! I like your rebel list at 300, it looks like having all those extra activations really worked well for you.

That's the place.

I was hoping to get a thicker spongy mat (like the fat mats by front line games), but couldn't find any with a design i really liked.

Any tips on making the report better? Is it easy enough to follow?

Any thoughts on the game itself.

I don't know if Mon Mothma is THE choice.....for this fleet she probably is because i dropped all the bombers for A-wings. Really not sure which list i preferred (the other one is in the fleet ambush report further down the forum).

I love mon mothma in evade heavy fleets like this. Really increases the survivability of your ships.

Your report was very easy to follow, I might like it a bit more detailed but concise and to the point like this is never a bad thing. I think your opponent was overly cautious with his Demolisher and in being allowed you to set the tone of the engagement a bit too much. I was also shocked that you got off as light as you did in the squadron battle.

http://www.deepcutstudio.com/category/mats-size-3-x6

They're awesome

Oh yeah, those guys. Haven't tried ordering from the states from them.

I did get a bit lucky with the interceptor fight that’s for sure (one of the A-wing counters landed two hits, and then the CR90 that fired into them with its broadside managed two hits as well). I think the thing that really won me that engagement (or at least caused our mutual destruction) was my opponents fear of the 2^nd turn A-wing strike on the demolisher, this caused him to engage my A’s with his interceptors without a squadron command, and since the AF2 activated first in the next turn with a squadron command I was able to get all three of the A’s to attack the interceptors and then counter them as well (the A’s were outside the strike range of any of the fighters besides Howl).

In the first game we played my opponent was much more aggressive with the demolisher, it leapt forward on the second turn and hit the AF2 hard, but was blasted out of existence by the A’s, both CR90’s (more dual arc shots lol), and the AF2 itself……..I think he was concerned that this would happen again and so engaged under poor conditions with the interceptors to lock the A’s down. The AF2 was left on one hull point after the demolisher pounced, the subsequent collision, and a volley of victory fire in the following turn, but after that it was round the flank of the victory and home free.

In the later stages of the game the imperial fighters were used against capitals, but this was seriously hard work when up against Mon Mothma evades (a full activation of squadrons would score about 1 hit if at close range, and generally nothing at medium).

Noted on the report format. I’ll try going into more detail on the really key bits next time, but keep the detail light on most parts to avoid bogging down. I’m hoping to get one more report done before heading back into the wilderness for another couple of weeks.