VGGG Gencon Special cannot beat a smart Rebel Squadron list at 300. It will be outbid, play the Rebels carefully chosen missions, be out deployed, then outmaneuvered.

I love that so many Gencon special lists with no imagination were beaten by a Rebel Squadron player WITH the insight to ignore the general "squadrons suck" concensus and school the WORLD on the true nature of the force.

Perhaps 'upgrade light' is the true meta?

Personally I don't buy into this overall meta idea too much, it seems like the meta is the lazy approach to list building?

"Meta" is a perfectly genuine thing overall. However, there isn't really enough variety to apply it to Armada at this point.

VGGG Gencon Special cannot beat a smart Rebel Squadron list at 300. It will be outbid, play the Rebels carefully chosen missions, be out deployed, then outmaneuvered.

I love that so many Gencon special lists with no imagination were beaten by a Rebel Squadron player WITH the insight to ignore the general "squadrons suck" concensus and school the WORLD on the true nature of the force.

Francisco beat himself.

VGGG Gencon Special cannot beat a smart Rebel Squadron list at 300. It will be outbid, play the Rebels carefully chosen missions, be out deployed, then outmaneuvered.

I love that so many Gencon special lists with no imagination were beaten by a Rebel Squadron player WITH the insight to ignore the general "squadrons suck" concensus and school the WORLD on the true nature of the force.

Francisco beat himself.

Absolutely. Thx for the answer on the standing before the final match. In light of this, its even more strange how he played this. However, cameras, spectators, pressure and the general "a lot of things can happen" qualify my statement.

"Meta" is a perfectly genuine thing overall. However, there isn't really enough variety to apply it to Armada at this point.

Very true. Much better that you assemble a fleet that fits your play style, and learn to fly it well against different builds, in all the missions. That will have much more impact than any particular list.

And it won't take more than....6 months to a year? Just enough time for a wave or two to disrupt what you know. Darn you FFG!

I think he was stuck in the "Go large or go home" minded set. Many people have said that getting the 8 point bye dooms you to losing the tournoment. True, no, but the way alot of people think? Yes.

Francisco set up like his opponent wouldn't be happy with an "OK" 8 point win, and would try to table him. He forgot that all his opponent needed was an 8 point win, or 7 points if this "MOV" thing was close enough. 75 points for the mission is a 7 point win. The mission + 63 points for a GSD, gets an 8 point win, even at the loss of 4 A-wings.

VGGG Gencon Special cannot beat a smart Rebel Squadron list at 300. It will be outbid, play the Rebels carefully chosen missions, be out deployed, then outmaneuvered.

I love that so many Gencon special lists with no imagination were beaten by a Rebel Squadron player WITH the insight to ignore the general "squadrons suck" concensus and school the WORLD on the true nature of the force.

Francisco beat himself.

Easy for us to say, and certainly the deployment is easy to criticise, but just thinking....

The Imperials as best I can see were at a heavy disadvantage going second. Gladiators need first activation, otherwise Demolisher has to do all the heavy lifting.

There were two "strings" of objective tokens in play, the one that the rebels got and the one leading into the imperial deployment zone. But lets say the Imperials deployed a ship out wide to cover the rebel left hand objective "string" to intercept the corvette.

Given the geometry of the battle, you would have seen the entire rebel fleet taking on a lone gladiator. If the Imperials put the VSD over there also, the rebels would even have had the option of hooking right and killing the two glads covering the imperial objectives.

I just think, given the lists and the objective/deployment order/initiative considerations, its hard to come up with a particularly convincing battle plan for the imps in this scenario as long as the rebel player was playing well, which clearly was the case.

Its very much a counterpoint to the "All ship - don't care what objective it is just roll forward and table him" doctrine that has been a feature of wave 1.

Good question, why would the Imp deploy on his far right? That's a worse plan than placing his whole fleet on the far left at speed 2.

He should have placed the bulk of his fleet in the center moving at max. Maybe place the GSDob on the left to do the sweep. If the AFKs go for the lone GSD, good., The rest of your fleet is set up to take them from the rear and the GSDob should do some damage before it goes down.

Good question, why would the Imp deploy on his far right? That's a worse plan than placing his whole fleet on the far left at speed 2.

He should have placed the bulk of his fleet in the center moving at max. Maybe place the GSDob on the left to do the sweep. If the AFKs go for the lone GSD, good., The rest of your fleet is set up to take them from the rear and the GSDob should do some damage before it goes down.

I thought about doing something like this (the center deployment, that is)--but in hindsight, of course, so that sort of defeats the purpose. The clearest rout to victory with a black dice list is to table the opponent's fleet, and the Garm CR-90 was going to pose the greatest obstacle to that objective, with its fast speed (no engine techs on the glads), so jumping on it early with Demolisher and letting the other ships handle the AFIIs seems like the optimal play. But again, this is all hindsight, and even if Demolisher jumped on the vette early, there's no guarantee it would have gone down before it sped out of black dice range.

On the flip side, the imperial player started the match at the top of the standings (and had won a national championship), so I'm sure he has far more skill with his list than I do (even after playing four rounds leading up to that one). The list match-up was a tough draw, and just seemed to snowball from there.

Not hindsight, I was shocked in real time as I watched him place.

The only reason I can think of, is he assumed the Rebel would come to him.