So I played a local Armada tournament on the weekend that past by and I witnessed a very entertaining match up between a friend of mine and his opponent on Hyperspace assault which has inspired to right up this battle report as a fun story.
Enjoy.
From the bridge of the Dominator, Motti smirked in delight at his own tactical prowess. To his left was Insidious, to his right was Demolisher, to his front an asteroid field and to the rear was the mining colony world of Trakir V. With the planet behind his formation the Rebels had to manoeuvre through the asteroid field and then into the close range of waiting missile brimmed Star Destroyers, all facing outwards from the Dominator to cover every approach angle.
‘Come at me b!%ch!’ murmured Motti. He was referring to Mon Mothma, the Rebel head honcho whose personal battle group had been a thorn in Motti’s Naval career for quite some time now.
‘Contact! Enemy ships approaching in Sector 3-6.’ alerted the sensor team.
‘On screen.’ Motti acknowledged.
The holo screens activated around him. One segment showed the close ups of the ships, the other the tactical grid overview, or mini map as his Nav teams called it.
Motti analysed the Rebel ships and confirmed Jaina’s Light and a generic Assault Frigate B Mark II. He checked the ISS intel reports from Director Isard and noticed that a ship was missing. It was the Paragon. Motti didn’t care, because Mon Mothma was here on that Assault Frigate and he wanted her dead plus he was ready for her ‘secret weapon’.
‘Nav team, log onto the ISS intelligence network and overlay data stream 1433 on the….mini map. Passcode Bravo 11 Charlie.’ he ordered.
Some targeting blips came up on the mini map. These were the locations that Mon Mothma was going to have Paragon enter the field from Hyperspace for a surprise pincer assault as she has done so in the past.
‘I have you now woman!’
He tracked the Rebel ships intently over the next 4 hours, he can tell by their cautious manoeuvring that they could not comprehend an attack solution on his strategic deployment, even the Hyperspace blips was elegantly countered by his formation. The moment was his, he would crush Mon Mothma, become a Grand Moff for his achievements and then he can finally shove it in Tarkin’s smug face!
Suddenly the blips started moving, converging on his formation, two of them were too far from his ships to be a threat, but the one to his portside was slowly moving planet side to the rear of his formation. Motti raised an eyebrow. Surely she wouldn’t send a ship out of hyperspace into atmosphere right? Or would she? A suicidal move that only a handful of ship captains could pull off most of which flew for the Empire. Then he saw it, Mon Mothma and Jaina’s Light accelerated to attack speed and headed for a bee line to his starboard side. It was the classic pincer she has done time again and time again but The Force be damned, this time he was going to catch HER by surprise!
Motti issued his orders. Dominator and Insidious would surround the position that Paragon would come out of hyperspace from and let loose a barrage of missiles from their expanded launcher bays whilst Insidious would hold position just beyond the asteroid belt where Mon Mothma and Jaina’s Light would enter fray, effectively destroying Jaina’s Light and now Mon Mothma would be surrounded. He played the scenario over and over in his head, it was flawless. A maniacal laugh followed as he toiled with the thought of being called “Grand Moff Motti”.
‘Comms, hail their flag ship!‘ he barked.
The comms holo projected Mon Mothma on the main display.
‘Can you hear Mon Mothma?! You’ve lost! The Alliance will crumble under Imperial might and….wait, why are you not on the bridge?’ exclaimed Motti.
His confusion was from the fact that she was transmitting from her private quarters, as the luxurious surroundings fit for a senator in the background indicated.
‘I’m just an observer Admiral Motti and quite frankly I find this engagement quite boring.’ she sleepily replied. Yawning mid-sentence to emphasis her point.
‘Don’t insult me with your politician ways Mon Mothma, for I am Admiral Conan Antonnio Motti. Head of Naval Operations. Master of the Fleet. Scourge of the Rebel Alliance. I will crush you once and for-’
Motti spared a glance at the mini map.
‘Whats that blip doing there?’
Motti’s eyes bulged, his face went ghostly white and he even peed a little. He rushed to the starboard view port with his face pressed hard against the glass just in time to witness his downfall.
Paragon came out of Hyperspace with a compliment of Y-Wings, but not in Trakir V atmosphere but beside the Demolisher. Alarms on the bridge started blaring away, his officers were yelling emergency status updates and distress calls from Insidious played over the comms. But there was nothing Motti could do but watch the Demolisher melt away into space debris from Paragon’s full battery of weapons.
He knew what would come next, the rest of the Rebels would shortly link up with Paragon and with Dominator and Insidious having their rear facing the Rebel gun line they would be lucky to get away, let alone turn and fight.
‘Admiral, Rebel Y-Wings are starting their attack run!’
‘Admiral, we’ve lost our rear deflector shields!’
‘Sir, we’ve lost power to main engines!’
More and more emergency reports came through to him as his ship rocked and trembled with each hit as Motti was left silently pondering, utterly dumbstruck. How? How could you mark and hide a Hyperspace beacon within an asteroid field? Was Paragon hidden in the asteroid field the whole f!$>king time? You’d have to be some kind of tactical geniu-.
The coin finally dropped, he quickly flicked through the ISS intel reports to find the Paragon command roster to confirm the feeling at the bottom of his bowels. The word came up that burned into his eyes, his mind, his very soul. The word boiled up from within him which invoked.
“CREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED!!!”
In summary, his opponent deployed in corner of his deployment zone with his ships fanned out at speed 0 (yeah i know this isnt allowed but it happened and both didnt know). Not wanting to sacrifice a ship for no reason Paragon was held back and my friend started moving the objective markers to get behind his formation. This had a psychological impact on the opponent which resulted in him breaking formation to cover the objective markers and thats when the opportunity came up on Turn 4 for Paragon to enter the field right on top of Demolisher! The rest is history as they say.
Edited by Irokenics