Played two games today.
First list:
ISD-2: vader, X-17, boosted comms, ECM, Relentless, Wing Commander, gunnery team
Glad-1: Demolisher, Assault proton torpedoes, engine techs
Dengar
firespray
firespray
firespray
boba fett
rhymer
mauler mithel
Paired up against:
Frigate with Dodonna, X-17, ECM, boosted comms, flight controllers
CR-30 with APT, admonition, something else I forget
CR-30 with APT, the other title, and some other upgrade... ordnance experts? Maybe.
Jan Ors
X-wing
X-wing
Scurrg
Scurrg
Scurrg
We played "Precision strike", I was second player, and he tried to pincer me in with the shrimp while the frigate went through the middle, commanding squadrons mostly the whole way. I sent the fireball to one side to deal with one shrimp - and it did, before it had fired a shot. Our fighters and bombers did quite a dance in the middle of the board, with intel and Mauler playing interesting roles. The gladiator almost got taken down by the scurrg, but it escaped, and then his guppy flew off the board, so we called it.
Game 2: Imperials try a swarm!
My list:
Glad-1, Insidious, APT, Darth Vader
Glad-1, Demolisher, APT, engine techs
Raider-1, Expanded Launchers, Intel Officer
Raider-1, Expanded Launchers, Intel Officer
Firespray
Firespray
Firespray
Rhymer
Dengar
Versus:
Guppy, Ackbar, ECM, XI-7, gunnery team
Guppy, ECM, XI-7, gunnery team
Guppy, ECM, XI-7, gunnery team
Wedge
Dutch
X-wing
A-wing
With a 1 point difference in fleet costs I elected to go first, and chose "Dangerous Territory".
The game consisted of me choosing navigate commands every single turn except one where a raider used a squadron command to sacrifice Dengar into his fighter swarm to give Demolisher a chance to escape and a couple repairs. I had positioned myself so turn 1, Vader, a raider, and demolisher could fly onto obstacles, take some damage, and claim the objectives. Turn 2 vader sped up and grabbed another objective, a raider grabbed an objective on the station and repaired the previous damage it had taken, and while demolisher took a beating, it managed to escape. My second raider had spend a couple turns moving speed 1 until the threat of guppies had passed, then sped up and took an objective nearer to his side of the board. By this time, my fireball was dead and I had only killed one X-wing. So while I had 90 points of objectives, he had killed 90 points of fighters, and I had killed 1 X-wing, leaving the game currently a draw on turn 4 with his guppies closing in on Darth vader and a raider.
Things took a turn for the worst for him, when a guppy flew right next to vader, who was able to take a shot on its side, pop the APT crit that reduced his front shields to zero, and do enough damage to drop the side shields, then move into the guppy's front. Given that I had more ships, I was able to stall-activate until his wounded guppy would fire at medium range, move closer, and get blasted by vader, who would then dance to stay in his front arc again. Finally on turn 5, after the guppy collided with vader for a second hull point of damage, vader blasted it, dealing an APT crit (and nothing else), moved, and on turn 6 activated first and killed it out the rear on a 3-damage blue/black with APT crit before moving away from any other threats.
I was happy with a tie result, but it's fortunate that even in just a couple turns, a gladiator with APT can really dish out some hurt. The idea that a couple lucky pulls (structural damages) and some collisions or an asteroid could down a fully-shielded guppy is pretty eye-opening.
I never really did much with the raiders, and anything I did do was definitely not from the front arcs, so I'm thinking I should drop the expanded launchers on both of them for either a higher first turn bid (it was pretty much the deciding factor in this game, being able to get out of bad situations) or a little beefier fireball, perhaps a fourth firespray or something. I would like to find a way to get all the ships FIGHTING, though. While this was a very tactically challenging game, it felt very boring. I chose the same dial almost the entire game, KNEW that I would HAVE to KEEP choosing the navigate command in order to survive, so it was basically just a lot of flying around and wasn't very exciting in that regard.