Intro:
I played a couple casual 100 point matches against a friend last month. We played on the official Death Star Playmat. We followed tournament rules. I decided to field an Imperial squad this time; my friend played Scum and Villainy. It had been a while since I have had time to play a match, and even longer since I last wrote up a battle report. There was also a significant delay between the games and actually writing the report, so I will summarize the games.
Squad Discussion:
I wanted to try my hand at an Imperial Control list. For this list, I decided go with both stress and ionization. As I grew up playing the Tie Fighter PC game, I have always been a fan of the Tie Defender. Although I agree with the majority that the Defender is over-costed, it is still one of my favorite ships to fly. I also like flying ships that others write off. I started with two Defenders equipped with Ion Canons. This would grant me the ability to ionize both small and large ships in a single turn. With the remaining points, I needed to find a way to stress them. To do this, I selected the Lambda Shuttle with Tactician and Gunner. This would allow me to throw one or two stress on an enemy ship at range two. The difficulty would be getting targets in that range. I added an Engine Upgrade to give the shuttle some means of actually turning around. Fire-Control System rounded out the build since it synergizes perfectly with Gunner. This also meant that if I threw two stress in one turn, I had a good chance of scoring three hits results as well. The list suffers from low Pilot Skill, but with 22 HP, 12 of which are behind 3 agility, I hoped that the list would last long enough to catch any threats in my control net. The key would be flying the Lambda well.
Delta Squadron Pilot (30)
Ion Cannon (3)
Delta Squadron Pilot (30)
Ion Cannon (3)
Omicron Group Pilot (21)
Fire-Control System (2)
Gunner (5)
Tactician (2)
Engine Upgrade (4)
Total: 100
My friend had been wanting to play Scum and Villainy. He has always been a fan of Y-Wings and was interested in trying out the HWK as well. He selected the squad below:
Dace Bonearm (23)
Calculation (1)
Ion Cannon Turret (5)
Outlaw Tech (2)
Moldy Crow (3)
Kavil (24)
Push the Limit (3)
Blaster Turret (4)
Unhinged Astromech (1)
Engine Upgrade (4)
Syndicate Thug (18)
Ion Cannon Turret (5)
Bomb Loadout (0)
Unhinged Astromech (1)
Seismic Charges (2)
Engine Upgrade (4)
BTL-A4 Y-Wing (0)
Total: 100
After the fight, we discussed ways to improve his squad. Calculation was obviously a waste. He originally thought that he would be able to use it to throw crits with the Ion turret. I suggested removing that and Outlaw Tech and replacing it with Recon Specialist, as he would be able to stack enough focus tokens with the Moldy Crow Title that red maneuvers should not matter.
Battle Report:
We rolled an attack die and I won the initiative bid. Since his Y-Wing had an Engine Upgrade, I decided to give him initiative. I was concerned that the Shuttle would never be able to get a ship in sight if I did not have the option of re-positioning after enemy movement. I quickly learned that this was not the right choice.
My attack plan hinged on the opening joust. The first round of fire saw the shuttle at range three of all targets. The Defenders put one damage on the HWK.
In X-Wing, the difference between bad flying and amazing flying is often mere millimeters. In this case, I flew the shuttle horribly. The round after the opening volley, I barely grazed the side of the asteroid with my shuttle. To make matters worse, I had planned on hard stopping the next turn and blocking two of his ships. Instead, he blocked the shuttle, keeping it on the asteroid for another turn (each of which resulted in damage). By the time the shuttle could move, it had no one in arc. With the exception of one more shot, this remained true for the rest of the match.
Since he did not have to worry about the shuttle, my friend proceeded to focus on one of the Defenders. It did not last long to the combined Ionization and damage.
As the shuttle was several turns away from returning to the action, this essentially left me with one Defender to fight off the three criminals. I managed to redeem myself somewhat, and took out both Dace and the Syndicate Thug before the end. However, the battle was lost the moment I landed the shuttle on the asteroid. Despite a valiant effort, Kavil was easily able to finish off the remaining Defender.
Final Thoughts:
Even with an Engine Upgrade, I could not keep the Lambda in the fight. I obviously need more practice flying, as I missed out on two attack rounds due to landing on the asteroid. That said, I think that this build is not for me. For me, a Lambda needs to have some way to affect the battle during the turns that it has nothing in arc. I have not given up on the albino space whale, but I will not likely fly it in this form again. Maybe someone else can fly the squad and report on how they did.
I have heard a lot of players reject using Ion Cannons with Defenders. They claim the the cost and damage reduction is not worth the Ionization and range three bonus denial. I think the trick is knowing when to use them.
