So today I was lucky enough to play in one of our seasonal tournaments at the Compleat Strategist in NYC. First of all, I want to lead off by once again saying thank you to the venue for hosting us and to Mike for running the tournament - good space, good people, everything was done quite well. We had a smaller crowd than Sullust (big shock), but still some strong players.
As to the play itself, I brought the following list as I'm trying to force myself to play with a variety of things before Regionals:
In Garm's Way
Assault Frigate Mark II B - Garm Bel Iblis, XI7 Turbolasers, Gunnery Team
Assault Frigate Mark II A - Paragon, XI7 Turbolasers, Advanced Projectors
Nebulon B Escort Frigate - Yavaris
CR90A Corellian Corvette - Turbolaser Reroute Circuits
3x Y-Wing
1x X-Wing
Tycho
Jan Ors
Objectives: Advanced Gunnery, Fire Lanes, Dangerous Terrain
Game 1:
My first game was against Avi, our winner from the NYC store championship. He brought a 2x ISD Christmas Tree list with Ozzel, a pretty healthy smattering of very annoying squadrons (Vader, Soontir, Mithel, etc.), and was the first player for our game. He picked Fire Lanes, and I set up the tokens in a string across the board (one lower left, one lower middle, one lower right).
Our setup looked like this:
Notice the corvette in the lower left of the first image? That sucker spent all game on the far side of the map, hanging out and partying in a slow circle around the Fire Lanes token. I knew when I was setting up that Avi having only two ships meant there would be a weak spot somewhere, and the weak spot was at the CR90. That Corvette alone was responsible for 6 of my Fire Lanes tokens (we will come back to that later).
On the right hand side of the board, chaos happened. I broke both of the AF2s towards the right hand side of the board/picture, so they could gang up on that fire lanes token, and Yavaris dropped to speed 1 and crept up the middle. Avi went after the frigates, and both ISDs banked in to take them on.
Three turns of fire were exchanged (the ISDs primarily went after the Garm Bel Iblis frigate, which was spamming repair commands after firing off a single squadron command), in which neither Frigate was killed thanks to liberal usage of repair commands and cowardice, but after an ISD overlapped some squadrons, Yavaris had its opening and Y-Wing double-taps obliterated one of the ISDs. Paragon also managed a double shot out the back/rear arcs to strip the shields prior to that, but the deciding factor of the exchange was Yavaris slipping off to the side and then unloading. With that said, by the end of the game, the Imperials had vengeance against the rebel squadrons, but there were no ships down as the two assault frigates flew back across the board to the left.
Oh, and the fire lanes tokens? The rebels won that exchange 10-5, with the CR90 circling a single token accounting for 75 points (as it once captured the middle token as well) despite firing zero shots the entire game.
Final Score: 8-2 Win, 166 MoV
Game 2:
My second game was against Matt, who had been my final game in the previous store championship. He was again running his Ackbar fleet, which consisted of an MC80 with all the trimmings, two AF2s (one outfitted as a carrier with flight controllers and one as the gunboat), and 2x A-Wings and Tycho. I was again second player, and Matt took the gamble of picking Advanced Gunnery to get the gunnery teams for his MC80. I picked Paragon as my objective ship.
Our deployment was something I *should* have taken a picture of, but after moving a handful of ships on turn one, it looked like this:
Right side:
Left side:
In these pictures, you might astutely note that Paragon has already lined up what is likely to be a pretty solid shot on the Assault Frigate passing across its bow. That AF2 died the next turn for precisely this reason, and the split deployment which was intended to lure me into splitting my own forces (as Matt revealed after the game) failed spectacularly.
Which brings me to this: I've never found splitting ships to be a good idea unless you have control over whether they engage or not. I will do it with CR90s at times for objective reasons (see game 1!), but beyond that, it hasn't always been a winning strategy. In this game, it wasn't, as after destroying the one ship, I was able to roll down the flank and also take down the MC80 in a hail of fire from Paragon, Yavaris (along with the Y-Wing buddies), and the Assault Frigate. Yet again, the CR90 did not fire a single shot this game, as the Ackbar MC80 was capable of killing it in a single volley and it was more useful to me in order to stall for activations than it was to throw it in and get it killed.
The early loss of one Assault Frigate crippled Matt's strategy overall, as the MC80 was broken shortly after, and then the lone frigate drifted away as my fleet sailed past. Overall, it was the first two turns of 2x AF and 1x Neb B pounding on a single AF that lost it, as well as the loss of the objective ship MC80 with Ackbar.
Final Score: 9-1 Win, 336 MoV
Game 3:
Mike was my third opponent on the day, and also a very skilled player. I've faced off against him before, and it's never an easy matchup, as he rarely makes mistakes that one can exploit.
His list today was another 2x ISD (with Vader and Devastator, interestingly) christmas tree list, with a huge spam of TIE fighters and Boba Fett. I was yet again the 2nd player, and Mike picked Dangerous Terrain (in my opinion, the best pick for this kind of list and what Avi should have picked in our first game). Our setup ended like this:
Yes, that is the second time on the day the corvette was put on objective duty on the far side of the board (though, in this case, because I deployed it on the far side as my first ship to see if I could get Mike to split up his ISDs - no dice).
This game was something of a comedy of poor rolling early. We both approached cautiously, and in doing so, fired off a lot of squadrons at each other (the X-wing bit it almost immediately) and did very little damage to ships. In the first two rounds, Mike running over debris was the damage dealing MVP. The corvette, however, quietly picked up the two tokens it had been tasked with.
On turn 3, all hell broke loose. Devastator moved forward first and totally whiffed at Paragon, who then activated, returned fire, and dropped virtually every shield as well as a crit. The follow up was Yavaris with a bombing run (the Y-wings were locked up immediately after), and then Garm's ship. At the end of the turn, Devastator had 3 hull and no shields, as well as only a contain token left, and Garm's AF2 was down to no shields on the side and 3 hull. However, Yavaris, with one Y-wing unaccounted for, was sitting directly in front of Devastator. The Corvette even shot at something for the first time in the tournament!
Mike went first, activated Devastator, and with one of the greatest rolls in the history of Armada, managed exactly 2 accuracy and 8 damage, smoking Yavaris before it could activate. Garm's ship then ran away, repairing as it did, before the other ISD could fire at it. Paragon then activated, fired twice, and... whiffed. No damage on two shots! The Y-wing clipped Devastator for only one damage, and then was locked up. The ship snuck away, limping horribly, as our fleets went past each other. At this point, I knew I would have to circle back and risk some pretty badly damaged ships, which wasn't in my favor without some luck given that Mike was first player and could keep running away, so I instead plinked squadrons and sucked up five of the dangerous terrain tokens as our ships disengaged and flew in opposite directions.
Final Score: 4-6 Loss (a 7-3 win if Paragon had managed to do even two points of damage...) with Mike having a 41 point MoV
Overall, my first two results were still strong enough that I won the tournament despite the narrow loss in the final game, as Mike had been 5 points behind me, and the next closest was 6 points back (and did not manage a crushing 10-0 win).
Some observations:
- Garm is subtle but strong; I'm pretty sure he's not for everyone and I can see why MM is more popular as her strengths are obvious. There are a lot of little things that can happen with him which I think people underestimate. One of them is always starting the Nebs and AF2s at speed 2 (since I already have Nav tokens) with a Nav command on turn 1. This means if the ship is staying at 2, or jumping to 3 or 1, my opponent won't know until after I activate it. Along with the ability to play the corvette first, this means I can often disguise my strategy even after deployment and through turn 1.
- Squadrons can seriously be a thing; the more I play them, the more I like them in wave 2. I think the lack of intel in wave 1 really limited the ability to play squadrons effectively as an anti-ship tool outside of the A-Wing (thanks to the raw speed and alpha strike ability), but now that the Y-wings can shake free until Jan is dead in a list like the one I ran today, Yavaris is really a lot more threatening by just having 20-30 points of squadrons with it. Same goes for Rhymer with intel on the Imperial side, etc. It's something you have to plan for.
- ISDs are very strong, but two of them with nothing else puts you at an activation disadvantage. It didn't bite Mike as hard as it could have (thanks partially to him obliterating Yavaris in a single shot, and partially thanks to my rolling like a chump on the turn), but Avi lost his first game largely on the back of just being repeatedly pummeled by faster, smaller ships that he couldn't get away from.
- 2 blue die AA fire is no joke. I shredded several TIEs today.
Enjoy!