So the weekend before last there was a tournament at Family Time Games in Indianapolis. Mike McMann set the thing up and I drove up from Birmingham with a few friends to join in on the fun.

Here was my list:

Grand Moff Token

Points: 400/400

[ flagship ] Victory I-Class Star Destroyer (73 points)

- Grand Moff Tarkin ( 38 points)

Victory I-Class Star Destroyer (73 points)

- Boosted Comms ( 4 points)

- Captain Needa ( 2 points)

Victory I-Class Star Destroyer (73 points)

- Boosted Comms ( 4 points)

1 "Mauler" Mithel ( 15 points)

1 Soontir Fel ( 18 points)

1 "Howlrunner" ( 16 points)

1 TIE Advanced Squadron ( 12 points)

1 Major Rhymer ( 16 points)

4 TIE Bomber Squadrons ( 36 points)

1 Dengar ( 20 points)

Here are the foggy (but good!) memories I have of the tournament...

Day One - Game 1 “A Good Start.”

My first opponent was Shawn. Shawn was running an Imperial fleet as well. He had a Demolisher, an ISD and two Raiders. He had no squadrons but I do remember his ships had quad laser turrets. It was the first time I’d ever seen those. Shawn was also at 400 so we rolled for initiative. He won it and chose to go second. (I was really glad seeing that Demo was on his side.)

His objectives were bad for my three VSD fleet so I had to settle for Hyperspace Assault and hope for the best. Of course he chose to put Demolisher on the sidelines. I setup on the left corner while he placed his ISD and raiders pretty much parallel to the first VSD I had to place.

As we rolled forward Shawn made his biggest mistake and set Demolisher into the battle in turn two. This was way too early as my VSDs had yet to pass the objective token. Since I was first player I was able to activate the closest VSD to send bombers and take its first shots at Demolisher. Then it actually was able survive the Gladiator’s barrage. Then next VSDs bombers and shots took out Demolisher.

From there it was really tough for Shawn because he had staggered his approach too much. I was able to bomb and attack each of his remaining ships one at a time. They all fell and I didn’t lose anything. 400-0 for a 10-0. Shaun was very gracious in his defeat and was a true sportsman about the whole thing. I know its tough to hold your composure after that kind of first round loss, but Shawn did.

Day One - Game 2 - “Know Your Objectives.”

My second opponent was John. I was happy to be on the first table. John was running an Ackbar list with three AF Mark IIs and some squadron support (A mixture of Scurrg bombers, YT 1300s and others (Maybe Y Wings?) John had the initiative and quickly chose Superior Positions. I was worried. I had never had someone choose that on this list and I wondered what John had up his sleeve. He setup his whales in a conga line on the top right, not exactly all the way to the edge but close. His squadrons were trailing around the third ship.

I placed my 3 VSDs to the bottom right, realizing that it would take a while for him to bank down to intercept them. As the first turns progressed I used my anti squadron capabilities first. I think I took out all of his squadrons by turn three. Once his squadrons were out of the way, i began to bomb the tail of each whale as it passed with rhymers range, adding a victory token each time. At some point John realized this and thought I should only have two victory tokens, since that’s how much hull damage I had done. I pointed out that it was just damage and the TO agreed. John was distraught. We went through the motions of the game but he was really out of it. He did manage to take out one VSD at the end but it was too little too late. I had too many Superior Positions tokens. I won 305-130 (8-2) without destroying a ship.

Day One - Game 3 - “**** you, Demolisher.”

Riding high off of two straight wins I faced AdmiralYor from the forum for the last match of the day. He was running an Imperial list with a hefty 18 point bid.

I saw it…Demolisher…with engine techs…and intel officer…and expanded launchers…holy crap. He also had an ISD, and two Raiders and two “born to die” TIE fighters.

He chose Precision Strike, and we deployed on the right side of the board. He first brought in Instigator and two TIEs fast and right in front of my VSDs. My first mistake was to focus way to much attention on it. I bombed it and it did die. Then I bombed the other Raider, compounding my mistake. All the while that damned Demolisher was inching in on the left…AND THEN IT HIT ME AND OMG IT KILLED A VSD QUICKER THAN ANYTHING…

I realized I had been foolish even engaging the raiders and should have setup a bomber screen to worry about the Gladiator. He finished off the other VSDs with the combined efforts of his gladiator and ISD. My only saving grace is that by the end I had sent all of my remaining squadrons to where Demolisher was going to end up.

With all of my VSDs gone and Tarkin securely on board an escape pod, he gave the final order to bomb the tar out of that Gladiator. I was able to kill the Demolisher in the final squadron phase, salvaging one point from AdmiralYor.

265-505 (1-9)

Day Two - Game One “It’s a Trap!”

For my third game I played Philip. Philip was running a three AF fleet with Y wings and a Raymus Tantive IV corvette with Ackbar on it. My memory is really foggy on this but I think I was second and he chose contested outpost.

The station was toward the left and we set up as expected. However the corvette was going in the opposite direction. Philip’s strategy was to just send out Ackbar and keep him away from my squadrons. Philip rolled the conga toward the left of the map while I inched slowly forward and bombed the front whale of his line. My anti-squads quickly dispatched his and then I was able to focus on the whales. Slowly but surely they went down one by one with the extended reach of my bombers. By the end he was able to focus on one VSD and take it out but not before I earned some objective tokens and killed the three AFs.

367-77 (9-1)

Day Two - Game Two

By this time after playing so much Armada I had entered a state of “Armada-Delirium”. My last opponent was Nick. Nick was running a Motti fleet with an ISD1, ISD2 and bombers/TIE advanced/Mauler Mithel.

I knew this was going to be ugly…

Nick had initiative and chose Precision Strike. We setup across from each other but at a diagonal, each ready to pounce. The two squadrons massed up very quickly and killed the crap out of each other. By the fourth round most had died except for about four of my bombers and maybe a few of Nick’s.

What had also happened is a hilarious pizza smash up in the middle of the board. Unfortunately for me his ISDs had Gunnery teams and my VSDs did not have a double arc. https://www.dropbox.com/sc/83yl8etf7w3yjh6/AAAyIJBNP16qYQ7d9NZ7dzQQa

By round six I was left with one VSD and Nick’s ISDs had about 12-13 points of damage on them. Nick went first and blew up my last VSD. However, my bombers got the last laugh, shooting last and killing Motti. His destruction meant the other ISD also had enough to go down. Total annihilation.

The problem for me was the objective. Nick was able to put out a lot more extra firepower to amass tokens while I was not. He had a plethora of them and I lost 460-660 (2-8).

I have no idea how I placed but I know it was at least top ten. With the win Nick did win the tournament so I guess I can say I played the winner on the last table.

Lessons learned:

1. Tournaments are fun. I met Quadro, AdmiralYor, and many other folks from the forums. I would have never met them if we didn’t take the chance to drive to Indy. It was well worth the crappy Monday I had afterwards. Shane has such an amazing store and I’m glad I was able to experience it.

2. I play better when I don’t care about the outcome so much. It’s a game and every time I was winning I would think to myself “Oh crap I might have a chance.” Then I would get nervous when I should have just been having fun. Just have fun. It’s a game.

3. Don’t run a crazy 3 VSD-I squadron list and put an Engineering as your last command. If I had just spammed squadrons like I should have I would have killed the last two ISDs (well...BEFORE my last VSD died) and won the last match.

4. Needa was superfluous. I never wanted an evade instead of a redirect. These were wasted points and he has been sent to Darth Vader to apologize.

Points: 400/400

Ahhhh, 400 point fleets, do you guys remember those days? We were so young, so full of enthusiasm, so reckless and ready to take on whatever the world could throw at us.

To be fair 400/400 fleets are extremely viable. It just makes your objectives very important, and you have to have a plan for going second, but it's not like first player is an auto win.

Points: 400/400

Ahhhh, 400 point fleets, do you guys remember those days? We were so young, so full of enthusiasm, so reckless and ready to take on whatever the world could throw at us.

To be fair 400/400 fleets are extremely viable. It just makes your objectives very important, and you have to have a plan for going second, but it's not like first player is an auto win.

It's even true. The infamous build which has thrown the forum into such a tizzy relies on being able to strike without retribution. With Boosted Coms, it's quite possible to put damage on the hull well in advance, even with an interestingly mixed list like Caribbean Ninja's. As he explained in his game against the 2RDR/1GSD/1ISD list, he's quite capable of killing a Raider in one turn, meaning that he might've been able to take down the Gladiator, if he'd been more judicious in planning his attacks. Mind you, I can't criticize, as I've repeatedly made similar mistakes, myself.

With the Demolisher down, it'd just be a matter of Concentrating Fire (not literally, mind you, you'll need those Squadron commands) on the ISD and then taking out the trash Raiders.

(Before any any Raiders Rights Activists come out of the woodwork to tell me that I'm a bad person for hating on the Raider, don't worry, I love the Poor Man's Gladiator as much as the next Imperial. I'm even running one - not very successfully - in the Vassal team tournament.)

Points: 400/400

Ahhhh, 400 point fleets, do you guys remember those days? We were so young, so full of enthusiasm, so reckless and ready to take on whatever the world could throw at us.

Dude, I swear by 400pts. I like to use fleets with a decent ship count (4+) and really horrible objectives for my opponent. As long as you pick the objectives right, and your list doesn't rely on a particular strategy (e.g. Clonisher ) then a 0pt bid is just dandy. I will take first or second any day.

Points: 400/400

Ahhhh, 400 point fleets, do you guys remember those days? We were so young, so full of enthusiasm, so reckless and ready to take on whatever the world could throw at us.

Dude, I swear by 400pts. I like to use fleets with a decent ship count (4+) and really horrible objectives for my opponent. As long as you pick the objectives right, and your list doesn't rely on a particular strategy (e.g. Clonisher ) then a 0pt bid is just dandy. I will take first or second any day.

I agree. Excepting certain extremely skewed lists, going second is fine.

I wanted to run this list for a few reasons:

I ran 400 because I thought my objectives with this list were strong. I still think that's true but it is very funny that it really tears things up when going first. That's because I can almost always alpha a squad heavy list or start bombing a ship heavy list right away. Food for thought. I might drop a bomber.

Also I wanted to try VSDs after that thread awhile back saying how useless they were. Hell I have three of them so I wanted to see what they could do. I was really surprised how well the VSD 1 with boosted Comms worked with Tarkin. After playing many times with it before the tourney, it really does a good job against many lists. (It's now even faced the Ardaedhel crazy sw7 cr90 Rieekan swarm).

My next list will almost certainly have a VSD 1 with boosted Comms hanging back. I really like them.

When building the list did you consider liaisons as a way to provide flexibility??

Yes that's actually a great point. With Tarkin weapons liaisons would be great. However that is at the cost of a bomber. It sounds silly but the difference from 4 to 5 bombers is substantial. I'd rather have the five bombers with no liasons and use Tarkin tokens for flexibility.

Thank you for the write up. I was really curious about this tournament and wish something like this was more close to Arizona. I hope someone took a lot of pictures of the event and posts eventually.

I wanted to run this list for a few reasons:

I ran 400 because I thought my objectives with this list were strong. I still think that's true but it is very funny that it really tears things up when going first. That's because I can almost always alpha a squad heavy list or start bombing a ship heavy list right away. Food for thought. I might drop a bomber.

Also I wanted to try VSDs after that thread awhile back saying how useless they were. Hell I have three of them so I wanted to see what they could do. I was really surprised how well the VSD 1 with boosted Comms worked with Tarkin. After playing many times with it before the tourney, it really does a good job against many lists. (It's now even faced the Ardaedhel crazy sw7 cr90 Rieekan swarm).

My next list will almost certainly have a VSD 1 with boosted Comms hanging back. I really like them.

3 VSD 1's as carrier builds with Tarkin/Dengar/Rhymer ball and some interceptors = fun fun fun

take boosted comms, corruptor, flight controllers and laugh.

Yes that's actually a great point. With Tarkin weapons liaisons would be great. However that is at the cost of a bomber. It sounds silly but the difference from 4 to 5 bombers is substantial. I'd rather have the five bombers with no liasons and use Tarkin tokens for flexibility.

It's also worth noting that your squadrons are your "ISD" here. If you're taking other commands, you're probably getting a bum deal. I think that CB noted that in his write-up.