Here's my write up of the Armada regional that was held at Paradox Comics in Fargo North Dakota on Saturday.

http://www.mantorvilleexpress.com/gaming/2016/04/24/aar-fargo-armada-regionals/

Thanks for sharing!

I'd always heard about Paradox when I lived in Bismarck. Never got to make the trek there, unfortunately. Good to see there is an Armada scene in the state.

I'd always heard about Paradox when I lived in Bismarck. Never got to make the trek there, unfortunately. Good to see there is an Armada scene in the state.

Yup! We have two stores in Fargo that run Armada events on occasion. Little Big Wars, and Paradox Comics-N-Cards. We don't have that many players in the area, but it was nice to see some more people travel to the regionals!

I'd always heard about Paradox when I lived in Bismarck. Never got to make the trek there, unfortunately. Good to see there is an Armada scene in the state.

Yup! We have two stores in Fargo that run Armada events on occasion. Little Big Wars, and Paradox Comics-N-Cards. We don't have that many players in the area, but it was nice to see some more people travel to the regionals!

Well I didn't get around to it on the weekend, but since someone else created a thread I'll put my AAR here as well! I apologize for the lack of pictures, I always forget to take any.

9 Players (8 Imperial 1 Rebel). I'm usually a rebel player, but decided to try out my DeMSU list. Ironically the other rebel player said he was considering bringing Imperials as well. I only had a chance to get one practice game in on Vassal, so wasn’t sure if I’d be up to the challenge of using the list correctly. If you want more detailed list information for the other players you can check out the regionals data thread. 3 players used first round bye cards. I chose not to since I wanted to play as much Armada as I could and hoped I might do better than the 8-2 low MoV bye.

My List: 384/400

GSD 1: Screed, Montferrat, APT

GSD 1: Demolisher, Intel Officer, Ordnance Experts, Expanded Launchers, Engine Techs

2x Raider 1: Ordnance Experts, ACM

Raider 1: Ordnance Experts, Instigator

2x Aggressor Assault Fighters

Objectives: Most Wanted, Hyperspace Assault, Intel Sweep

Round 1:

Opponent: Kurt Larson

Rebel list: 400/400

MC80 Command: Rieekan, Advanced Projectors, Leading Shots, Defiance

Neb-B escort: Yavaris

2x TRC90 one with Jaina's Light

Luke, Dutch, Wedge, Tycho, 1x HWK 290

Objectives: Advanced Gunnery, Fire Lanes, Intel Sweep

Kurt was the one rebel player, who off all things was running Rieekan. From the start I was worried that this would result in a really close game, or that Rieekan might prove to much for the DeMSU. I had a lower bid and chose to go first. I took Intel Sweep since Advanced Gunnery and Fire Lanes where definitely out of the question. Kurt had an MC80 Command with Defiance, 2 TRC90s, and Yavaris. Luke, Wedge, Tycho, Dutch, and a HWK 290 rounded out his list.

I deployed spread out, my goal to eliminate Rieekan ASAP. However Defiance which held Rieekan was parallel to my opponents board edge, so I knew it would be a few turns before I could engage. I had Demolisher out to intercept Defiance's front, but while I was still closing one of my raiders had the opportunity to take a last/first shot onto Jaina's Light, which zombified the CR90. Kurt's other CR90 was collecting Intel tokens, while my flagship was doing the same. I hoped to snag the third token with a first activation in a future turn. Yavaris and Instigator were having a standoff, as I slowed to avoid moving into range of the potent bomber force. Tycho had tied up my Agressors, who even with a double arc shot with Confire from Instigator, where unable to take Tycho out in one round. Tycho did go down, but took out an aggressor and left the other at 1 HP. Kurt's bombers moved to intercept Demolisher, trying to get in position for a Yavaris double tap, but I was able to use my activation order to still get a massive volley off on the MC80, stripping most of its shields, and then moving off to its rear arc. However, my activation wasn't without it's sacrifice, since it meant I wasn't activating my flagship to claim the third intel sweep token. Kurt's CR90 went next to claim the points, which then allowed me the time to use my flagship to zombify Defiance and also move away from the Yavaris squadrons.

One of my raiders moved to Yavaris's side at the end of the round, and the double arc took out the Neb-b at the top of the next round since Rieekan had perished. The CR90 objective ship was fleeing, but Demolisher moved to intercept it, and with a volley as the last activation of turn 6, did 7 damage, leaving the CR90 with 1 HP. This resulted in an 8-2 victory for me, with a higher MoV than the bye, so I was happy I made the choice to play! In retrospect, if I think I made a mistake not taking the intel token, since Demolisher did have a fairly decent chance to survive (Luke was just out of Yavaris range, and I was assuming he was in).

Round 2:

Opponent: Dong Lee

Imperial List 399/400

ISD 2: Motti, Flight Controllers, ECM, Needa, Leading Shots, TRC, boosted comms, Avenger

GSD 1: Demolisher, APT, Engine Techs, Montferrat, Ordnance Experts

Rhymer, Dengar, 3x TIE Advanced, Mauler Mithel, 2x Firespray, 1x TIE Bomber

Objectives: Precision Strike, Superior Positions, (Hyperspace??)

Dong had a bye round one, so we faced off this round. I felt very confident going against his 2 ship list, since my activation advantage would be significant. I was a little worried about the bombers, but planned to have Instigator tie them up long enough for Demolisher to make his attack run. I wanted to take out the opposing Demolisher first, and then move on to the ISD. I was first and chose Precision Strike, since I have had good success with it as first player, even against bomber lists. I didn’t want Superior Positions, and since I wanted to kill Demolisher, Hyperspace would have just made it hard for me to attack. My opponent deployed in the corner, facing the outer edge of the board at a 45 degree angle. It looked as though he planned the skirt the edge and keep me from flanking. I deployed my Demolisher to move towards his rear. His Demolisher was the last ship placed due to squadrons, and it went down hugging his ISD.

I was surprised by how aggressively Dong’s Demolisher pushed forwards, and it meant I didn’t have a ship who could easily intercept it early on, so I set one raider to intercept a few turns later, and my Demolisher headed of Avenger. I made a horrible mistake at this point, and let my two aggressors get tied down by Mauler and two Advanceds. I didn’t think it was that big of a deal at first, because for some reason I was thinking Instigator would be enough to keep the bombers from being able to shoot my other ships (silly mistake I realized right as I moved in with Instigator). This resulted in the bomber swarm unloading into Demolisher in the squadron phase. A damage card was dealt, and then flipped. It was structural...The remaining bombers just kept flipping cards, since I could have braced or redirected damage, and structural was pulled 2 more times, leaving Demolisher with 1 HP. This forced me to activate Demolisher first the next round, and I did get my front arc shot after movement onto the ISD, forcing the brace to be burned. However Demolisher went down hard that round. Dong’s Demo had a bad roll against one of my raiders, and then moved around and shot the rear of my flagship, ripping some shields off, and dealing and APT crit….Injured Crew of all things, I lost the evade and it flipped back down. I saw the game start of crumble at this point, but I did my best to put the pressure on.

My raider had now intercepted Dong’s Demo, and with the initial damage some of my other raiders had done with side shots, managed to eat through the shields and deal a crit and another card. Instigator had two rounds of unloading into the Rhymer ball, and this took out Rhymer, an Advanced, a Firespray, and the other TIE bomber. Instigator then activated first the next round and finished off Dong’s Demo, but this activation meant I was unable to activate my flagship who was in close range tucked into the ISD’s side. The remaining squadrons and ISD flipped injured crew twice more, taking both my other defense tokens before I could use them and the ISD rolled the perfect damage (with TRC help) to take out my fully shielded front and remaining hull (2-3 at that point). Then the ISD rolled a 6 damage 1 Acc roll out the front (medium range) to finish off a raider I had mismanuvered the previous round and could escape. Killing my flagship kept his ISD from getting double arced, which would have resulted in a tabling by turn 5 as a closing raider did more damage later, which would have been more than enough to finish off the braceless ISD. As it was, I got 4-6 damage on the ISD by the end of the game, but lost another raider after it received another injured crew as its only damage card, leading to more flipping and point gain and its eventual demise.

Final score was a 1-9 loss for me. I killed Demo, Rhymer, 1x TIE Bomber, 1x Firespray, and 3x TIE Advanced. All I had left was Instigator ironically, since he was supposed to be the sacrifice. I gave up 180 points in VP tokens, and only got 60 myself. My few bad maneuvering choices really cost me, and letting my Aggressors get tied up cost me this one for sure, but man, those crits didn’t help either!!

Round 3:

Opponent: Tony Lavelle

Imperial List: 400/400

2x ISD 2: Identical upgrades with Motti on one. Flight Controllers, XX-9s, Intel Officer, Leading Shots, Boosted comms

7x TIE Advanced

Objectives: Most Wanted, unknown, unknown

I hadn’t played or met Tony before this game, so I wasn’t sure of his skill level, but when I saw Most Wanted with 2 ISDs in his objectives, I figured he might be fairly new (or a devious mastermind!). I don’t rember his other objectives, since I nearly immediately picked MW. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake with my Aggressors this match, and planned to tie down the Advanceds correctly. I expected Tony to choose Demolisher as the objective ship, but he put it on both our flagships instead. I had my flagship speed up and move away from the battlezone as bait. Demo flanked from the other side, and the raiders slow rolled the front to deal with the squads and see if they could force the ISDs to come to them.

Tony used a turn one squadron command to put out his Advanceds as far forward as they could go. They were still in range because of boosted comms, and since I figured he did this since he knew I probably didn’t had any squadron commands of my own. However my Aggressors did kill one Advanced in the turn 1 squadron phase, and tied down a number of others. Surprisingly Tony didn’t use another squadron command that game, and at this point I could tell he was definitely newer to the game than I thought. The ISDs sped up to chase my flagship, and this left Motti’s ISD in close range of two of my unactivated raiders. With MW and ACM they did massive damage before one jumped the ISDs to safety and the other setup to finish Motti top of the next round. This did mean my flagship would take a medium range obstructed shot from the other ISD, but I was confident I could survive. I killed Motti and did survive the shot, taking several damage cards to the hull. I was then able to move off with my flagship, and activated it first again the next round to move it well out of range.

Demolisher started tailing the ISD, and after two rounds of expanded launcher shots the ISD was ready to be finished off the top of round 4. I lost both Aggressorsm but that was all to the 520 points I received, 10-0 for me. I felt bad after that game, since it really is a brutal thing to have Demolisher tailing you and you literally can’t do anything about it. Thanks to Tony for being a good sport about it all!

Tournament wrap up:

So now I was sitting at 19 tournament points, and I figured I was in for 4-5 place depending on how the top games went. It turns out both games had a big winner, which actually pushed me up to 3^rd place overall just displacing Dong who had beat me the round before! The overall winner Ian had 28 tournament points, and second was 25. It was a lot of fun, and I’m glad we had some players travel to join in!

I was definitely surprised by the number of Imperial players. Usually we have about a 50/50 split when we had 4-6 players for our tournaments. I almost wish I had taken my Rieekan Rebel squadron list instead, but it was fun using Demolisher. We had a wide variety of lists, with a 7 raider fleet, another 5 ship DeMSU, but with an ISD! A 4 GSD fleet, and three 2 ship Rhymerballs.

Thoughts on my list:

I wasn’t anticipating many traveling players, and our local meta has minimal bids, so I figured 384 would be low enough. I did get first player all three games, but I’m very glad I didn’t have to face the other DeMSU list since it was sitting at 380. So maybe I need a lower bid, or maybe I don’t. I’ll have to see how I can do with second player, since this bidding war seems to be getting out of hand…

I think while having the 2 Aggressors with rogue was nice, it didn’t fill the need this list has. Yes they killed a few things, but against any squadron list which used commands they went down too fast and could be locked down too easily with only speed 3. I knew they wouldn’t be winning any fights going in, but they still couldn’t do what I wanted and tie things down. I think 4 TIE fighters would have been better. Not only for the extra deployment (which would have helped) but to make Instigator work like it was meant to. I also could make some changes to my flagship. Although having the extra survivability and offense was nice, just using a run-away raider might save me some points to invest in more squadrons or bid.

Well if you got to the end, you have my thanks! Sorry I’m so long winded, I didn’t plan on it being so wordy!