The last Massing at Sullust

By chilligan, in Star Wars: Armada

Posted at

So this weekend we finally had our Massing at Sullust. It was delayed one week because of shipping and another due to Essen spiel.

Although not a big group, we had a lot of fun with Sullust and we also agreed to play the final 400pt round which I understand some shops didn't.

I took the following list:

AF Mk IIB + Raymus Antilles + Advanced Projectors + Paragon

AF Mk IIB + Dodonna + Gunnery Team + Enhanced Armament

CR90 A + Enhanced Armament

Tycho Celchu
2x B-wing squadron

-- 297 points

Advanced Gunnery
Hyperspace Assault
Superior Positions


I chose this list because I've been favouring Nebulons much less these days. I have come to the conclusion that Nebs put you at a disadvantage during deployment because you have to place them perfectly for them to do anything. And I rarely run more than one corvette, so 2 AF 1 CR90 it was!

Paragon is my favourite title, but in this build I choose to spread the upgrades a bit, letting the Paragon get most of the damage and putting Dodonna in safer positions to shoot side volleys at multiple targets. The corvette flanks and annoys people. B-wings are mostly area denial for ships, but I also expected to shoot once or twice with them per game. Tycho is there to help against fighter screens.

Advanced Gunnery was a no-brainer, I am pretty sure nobody would pick it against a Paragon list. Hyperspace Assault gives me the opportunity to use the B-wings properly.

Superior Positions was the objective most people picked, and it is superb. First of all I get a solid deployment setup. I can get a LOT of points with the CR90 or with the squadrons. If he has no fighter screen, we're talking ~10 tokens. If he has a fighter screen and manages to stop the B-wings, I can still activate Tycho with squadron commands. With speed 5, he's sure to get a shot on the rear arc of some ship. Overall a fine objective to play with my list.


My local community isn't too big, we had 6 people playing. 4 Imperials 2 Rebels. I will preface this by saying I had attended a wedding party the night before (the kind that didn't end at 4am when I left), so I was quite hung-over and my memory of exact upgrades in lists is a bit fuzzy. I remember staring in the first game for 5-10 minutes at the board (we played Superior Positions) before I deployed. Luckily it went much faster after that, but I am grateful that my opponents were ok with me putting shields to full in the middle of the 2nd round after forgetting to reset them between games.

My first opponent, Octav, had:

VSD-I with Screed
VSD-II XI-7
Gladiator-I Demolisher, Engine Techs, Assault Concussion Missiles

2x TIE Fighters.

I'm forgetting one or two upgrades but he won the bid and chose to be first player. He chose Superior Positions and deployed in a corner facing the middle with speed 1 on the VSDs and a speed 2 or 3 on the Glad.

I setup my CR90 to go around the edge of the board and get behind him, while the guppies were in offset formation (Paragon slightly behind Dodonna and closer to my opponent). The plan was to "cross the T" with the guppies and get behind him with the CR90. The plan was doomed to fail as I realized that on turn 2, his Gladiator was in a great position to kill my CR90 on the following activation. In other similar games I would run with it and hope the corvette survives but this position was especially bad so I decided to alter the plan. I turned the CR90 towards my ships and squadrons hoping it will survive and draw out the Gladiator forward. He use two activations in a row to get close to me and got a good volley in and took it down (fortunately only a single arc, that being the difference from the initial plan). B-wings also punched the Demolisher around a bit. Tycho was already behind it from a bump, scored a point the moved away to engage the two TIE Fighters (squadron command from the CR90). The CR90 hit the Glad a bit and then ran away. It would stay out the battle for the rest of the game on 2HP no shields. Distracting the Gladiator then making Tycho engage both his TIE Fighters was good enough.

Meanwhile Paragon and Dodonna exchanged shots with his VSDs, putting some good damage on Screed, with Dodonna taking most of the damage between my guppies. The Gladiator chose to make the most of its chase of the corvette and went for Dodonna. Of course I expected damage on Paragon, which was closer to my opponent, so all of my Repair commands were on the other guppy. The B's were now doing damage on whichever VSD they could, prioritizing the scoring of points over actual damage. As I passed the VSDs, Screed was on 2 hull, Dodonna was badly hurt, the B-wings were no longer in position to fire and I had no more squadron commands. Demolisher was still on Dodonna's tail and he was only out of shields. Dodonna blasted Screed by firing over the other VSD and this dropped the Demolisher's damage output significantly, since he couldn't get any more dice modification after that. Octav took a pretty big risk at one point to get in a position where he could fire two good shots at Dodonna, which weren't enough. He drove off the board. Objective points were pretty equal and I got a 9-1. Would have been a 7-3 if he had better dice after losing Screed.


My second opponent, Andrei:

3 x VSD-II Gunnery Team /w Motti

He also chose Superior Positions, and deployed in the same corner, putting VSDs at 45 degrees from each other, in a fan. I half expected him to stop on turn 1. I had the same deployment because I was confident I could get the Corvette to do some magic this game. What it did was even better because he chose to "block" the corvette with one of his VSDs, hoping to get a front fire arc on it. Instead of doing that, I got in that VSDs side arc and delayed the Corvette's activation until after his, so he only got one side arc. 4 dice with Concentrate Fire, he still got the Corvette to 2HP!

The guppies made short work of Motti when combined with the squadrons, and the second VSD fell quickly as well. I was not able to get the 3rd VSD, but I had 9-10 victory tokens, so it was enough for a 10-0.

My third opponent, Bogdan:

AF MK II A XI7 (?)
AF Mk II B, Dodonna, Expanded Hangar Bay, Flight Controllers, Adar Tallon, Electronic Coutermeasures (?)

Luke, Dutch, Keyan, B-wing, X-wing

I'm forgetting an upgrade, but it wasn't relevant to the game. He picked to go first and chose my Hyperspace Assault. I put all my squadrons and Paragon, and sprung on him turn 3. He had speed 1 on both of his guppies (close together), fighters slightly ahead. With combined navigate and commands, the first thing he did when I jumped behind him was to go to speed 3. Chasing when you're the second player isn't fun. I tried to stop both of his guppies by ramming the first one with my non-hyperspace guppy, but to no avail. I gave up on the chase and settled with trying to kill squadrons. I killed Luke and a B-wing, he killed all my squadrons. In the end he had Dutch at 1HP, but he won by 8 points, which is a 5-5.

So with 24 points I was in first place and got to pick sides and chose the Rebel side. The Imperial player in 2nd place was my first opponent. I had the advantage of already having a list prepared:

MC80 Command Cruiser + Ackbar
AF MK II B + Gunnery Team (x2!!)
MC30c Scout Frigate
HanSolo

Objectives: Advanced Gunnery, Fire Lanes, Dangerous Territorry.

Advanced Gunnery gives Gunnery to Ackbar, nobody will pick that! I was also confident on fire lanes because I had a lot of long range dice and Dangerous Territorry was the "meh" objective, since I thought the others put me at a disadvantage.

He had a list with:
ISD-II with advanced projectors and gunnery team, Heavy Turbolasers, Captain Needa
VSD-I ACM + XI7
Raider-II
Glad - Demolisher with ACM and Engine Techs.
Jumpmaster5000
Admiral Screed on one of the star destroyers

And I'm getting a lot fuzzier on the upgrades. The ISD-II was pimped out though, at the expense of squadrons.

We played Dangerous Territorry.

Deployment was the first weird thing. We used a lot more of the board than I thought we would. He put the Gladiator and the ISD on one side and the VSD and the Raider on the other. I had the MC30 and the MC80 opposite of his ISD, and the guppies between the two Imperial groups. My MC80 was deployed first, facing the edge of the board, speed 2. It was, in fact, a trap! I planned to get into good positions with the guppies and hammer with those 5 red dice. Which I did! It wasn't a super tight Ackbar slash, but they did fire on the VSD and the ISD at the same time. And before I did that, I could shoot the Raider and the VSD with Gunnery Teams. The Raider got away with 1 HP, but the VSD-I didn't.

On the other side the Gladiator didn't even get a change to shoot at the MC30 with black dice. The ISD-II killed it with a high-accuracy roll at medium range. It has plenty of shields, but no redirects allowed means it's dead. The MC80 also took a beating that turn (lost shields on one hull zone) because of Gunnery Teams. The ISD was full speed ahead at this point, Octav was pretty tired and wanted to see how badly the front arc can damage the Mon Calamari. He went right by the MC80 after shooting one more and was going to go off the board the following turn. The MC80 had lost 2 more hull zones worth of shields from the second attack and one more from the incoming Gladiator, which was also going to go off the board the following turn. So, in fact, Ackbar now had a side arc on the Gladiator (front right), with a side arc on the ISD (rear left). Eight dice on each side, and both ships were dead, instead of being allowed to fly off the board!

It was almost a full wipe, but we were all tired at this point and there were severe underestimations of firepower in play. Ackbar is truly a beast. My only regret is not getting to see the MC30 fire, but at least I saw Han! He was quite good, always chipping at the ISD. I took home the MC80, and I left Octav the ISD.

Overall I had a blast, fun games! Although I am getting a bit tired of playing Superior Positions (had 5 games in a row).

Edited by chilligan
Posted at

Hmm, interesting.

Dovetailing on the squadrons debate, it looks like your local scene is pretty poor on bringing squadrons, with the exception of your last opponent. He seems to have done quite well, given that you were proving to be the strongest player at the tournament.

Your rebel list was very similar to what I faced in the Final Round of the only Sullust event that I attended with a Final Round. I brought 3 GSDs in addition to the ISD, the Raider and the throw-away Jumpmaster. In that game, I threw my GSDs at the MC80's nose, black-dicing and boxing it until it died. (The GSDs also died, but it was their duty to serve the Emperor in such a way).

I'm not sure I read what objective was chosen for the Final Round in your write up.

Posted at

My local scene is all about token squadrons. I bring a little bit more, and sporadically give them some squadron commands. I don't like having a dedicated carrier with the wave1 ships, it seems like I'm putting too many points into squadrons. With this setup, if they do a good job, great! If not, meh, not many points were wasted. My opinion will definitely change with the arrival of a good dedicated carrier for the rebels and with rogue squadrons.

The gladiator did exactly that, he dived in to box me in. But there was a tiny corner on its side arc from my own side arc, so it evaporated.

We played Dangerous Territorry. He got 3 objectives, I got 2. He commited to getting the objectives, I just had a plan that included jumping on those obstacles. He took some damage on the Gladiator, which was good.

Posted at

A few corrections, in the first game I had H9 turbolasers together with Screed on the VSD I.

The list for the final round had Avenger (which I either forgot to use, or never had the chance to) and Screed on the ISD (beside the other upgrades listed). The Victory I only had XI7 (no ACM), while the Raider had Impetous and Overload Pulse, but never got to fire against anything all game. And I ran out of points, so the Gladiator was missing the Engine Techs and only had Demolisher + ACM.

All in all, it was my first Armada tournament and a great day all around. It started out quite badly with my game against Andrei (chilligan) and I thought I had no chance at the finals after the 1-9. The Demolisher not getting any crits from I think 10 black dice (Screed was dead by then) against a Frigate with 2 hull points remaining and no rear shields was really depressing. Then, in my second match I drew 4 structural damage cards on my VSD I with Screed, and ended up winning only 6-4 instead of 7-3 or 8-2 against a similar list to mine (VicI-VicII-Demolisher-2TIEs/Screed). I was 5th out of 6 before the third round, but somehow a 9-1 win in the last round combined with 5-5 results in the other two games got me to second place for the completely unexpected final. Getting the ISD was an amazing bonus.

What I learned:

- A Gladiator with Engine Techs is more likely to fly off the table than one without if you spam navigate commands and don't pay attention.

- Intel Sweep is a very nice objective to pick as first player if your opponent brought it. In both my 2nd and 3rd games I knew exactly where my opponent's Gladiator was going and my second opponent was really surprised when I killed his Demolisher with my Demolisher second turn (having the ability to bump it twice almost guaranteed it). On the other hand, I chose my VSD II as the objective ship in both games and just rolled ahead for the easy points.

- Ackbar is unbelievable - I really didn't expect the kind of firepower he can bring to the table. A perfect roll from the MC80 can demolish almost any ship, and even a Motti ISD can probably be crippled in two rounds of shooting. Makes going after it suicide for any light ship like the Demolisher unless you can avoid the side arcs.

- In the final game it was late enough that I ignored all tactics and just went full speed ahead. The right choice would have been sending the ISD after the assault frigates and ignoring the MC80 which was deployed parallel to the long board edge and would have needed at least 4 turns to get into blue range otherwise.

- I really want to buy the MC30 even if I don't play rebels - Assault Proton Torpedoes seem more reliable than ACMs in damaging something with shields and Ordnance Experts will never leave my Demolisher once I have the card.

- No opinion on the Raider as I deployed it badly. Seems like a fun ship but I have to play with it some more to say for sure.

- I'm sorry I didn't take the tractor beams, but I forgot about them. It would have been fun to play with them.

- I want to try a 2VSD - ISD list (with Motti or Vader). Should look amazing on the table.

Posted at

Glad to have you here! You should definitely share your repaints in another thread or in this one!

I'm sure I made some mistakes while remembering the lists, I wasn't in tip-top shape and I focused as much as I could on each game, not on remembering.Tthe differences between game 1 and 2 were especially difficult to recall, since I had the same positions playing against 2 VSDs, while in one game there was the extra Demolisher, and in another there was a stray VSD.