Wow, what a day. We, unfortunately, only had 4 people today. The community where I am is still rather small, but loyal. We each paid $20 to the shop to help cover the cost of the kit. It was worth it.
That said, I went in today with high hopes. I ran double whale, one with paragon, and a strong big for option to take second player. Worked out in the long run, but definitely not at the beginning.
My first match went...ok. He came at me with a gladiator, VSD, and Rhymer ball with two supporting T/F and Fel. Did not fair very well. He won with an MOV of 56. Only got 4 tourney points out of that one.
Second match went horribly wrong. I got stuck in an impossible scenario. He locked down one of my frigates so I couldn't move him and kept bumping the frigate in front, each round taking a hull damage. I was all sorts of out of position then, with him destroying my other frigate and then finishing me off with a ram from his other frigate. Was a very, very bad game. I managed to kill enough fighters to get at least 1 tournament point.
So now, I'm sitting at 5 tournament points with one game to go. I face my third opponent. The only way I even have a remote chance to get into the final game is to table my opponent without losing too much, or at least get enough points that I get a 9 point win. It's going to be tough, however a way of light shined my way. My opponent chose Advanced gunnery. The one thing you don't want to choose giving Paragon free reign. He was running two gladiators, a VSD, 2 T/F and 2 T/I. I chose paragon as the obvious choice for my objective ship, and he chose his gladiator with demolisher on it. His deployment left him with my two frigates facing down his naked gladiator and his VSD all the way on the other side of the map. 2nd round in he realized the error of his ways. My squadrons made quick work on his, and the proceeded to have a field day with the plain gladiator . One gladiator down in one round of firing with Paragon finishing it off rather easily. Now two ships to go. He starts playing smarter with his demolisher and is able to get some good shots off with it. Eats through most of my shields on my carrier, but is moving too fast at movement 3 and blows through trying to get a back arc shot. Too far away. Next round, the ISD finally comes into range, and we start trading shots. By round 5, I've got the VSD down to 1 shield remaining on the opposite side of the ship from where my two frigates are firing onto. I end up getting through 4 hull damage to his ship with the combination of my carrier, fighters, and first shot from Paragon. Now is the final shot. This is round 5. If I don't kill his VSD, his VSD will go first next round, finishing off one of my frigates as it only has two hull left and no shields, and only an evade token left. If the VSD doesn't die, my chances at getting into the final go out the window with it.
His VSD has no shields to redirect to, but has a brace token, and I pulled a concentrate fire dial. Like every good paragon user does, I held onto it for the second shot. This is where the beginning of the end of the mathematical improbability begins to take effect. I'm only at long range, so I have no blue dice available. I have to roll enough damage to get through, and roll an accuracy to lock down the brace. I roll 3 reds and a black, holding the concentrate fire dial to see what the rolls come up as. I believe there is only one accuracy facing on the red, but I could be wrong, but I know there aren't more than 2. I roll the dice. I roll 3 crits and no accuracy. This isn't good. For this to happen, I need to have 4 damage, so the only way for that to happen at this point is to roll an accuracy, and only the red die can do it, and even then, I have to hope he pulls a double damage crit. So, let's do the match, a 1/8 chance (if only 1 accuracy) to hope to get a 17% change to pull a structural damage card. I go for gold. I roll another red die. Holy crap! It came up accuracy. I lock down the brace. Now he has to pull the crit. He pulls the crit, and HOLY CRAP! It's the structural damage card. I killed the VSD!
I had an MOV high enough for a 9 point game. That was round 5. His other ship was so far out of range that we would have had no shots in round 6, so we called it there.
Now, to see where that put me in the standings. I got 9 points for this win. My opponent got 1. At the end of this match, we tallied the points, and I ended up tied for 2nd, and with the opponent I just fought. Now we have to go to MOV for the tie breaker. Because of the crazy amount of points on this win, I ended up blowing his MOV out of the water by a good 100 points. WOW, I just pulled off an improbable scenario to come into the final.
The rest is history. My opponent took Imperial for the last match, I took rebels building up Forsight and Defiance and General Reiken. I also made the list with a decent enough initiative bid, and my opponent ended up taking Advanced Gunnery on me. Big mistake. The frigate cleaned up the small stuff, and the Defiance pretty much single handedly took down the ISD in two rounds while managing to stay at Range 3 whenever my opponent had the fire. I believe my last round of firing had a collective 17 damage over both attacks, all on the front hull.
I ended up in first place with a shiny new MC80 in my hand. Now I get to see if I can do it all over again tomorrow at another tourney. WOW. What a day.
. On the whole though, I did roll pretty hot throughout the tournament.
Yeah, I'm not going to be a general for Napoleon anytime soon...