Well this is my first real after action report. I'm not sure anyone really cares what a 6th place finisher has to say. But here it goes.
You can refer back to the Louisville report to see my exact fleet build. I have been working on a rebel aces build for about a little over a month now. Initially, I ran an MC80 Command Cruiser with an Assault Frigate B, and alot of fighter/bombers and þ Solo. At the March Store Championship at Evansville I ended up playing Jared who won the championship. I got destroyed in the final round after having put together a pretty decent performance in the earlier two matches. From there I started looking at more ships and adding Yavaris into the build. I went through many builds but settled on the 2xCr90B, Yavaris, and Assault Frigate A. My squadrons varied quite a bit but after lots of practice against Nick U. and some feelers I put out to GreenKnight, and the Builds forum. I concluded that Jan, Wedge, and Keyan would be the back bone of my squadrons and fill it out with 2 more B-wings and another vanilla x-wing. (I've run a build with a bunch of Ywings and ran Dutch and Wedge together. I've not had much success with Dutch or Y-wings and thus have stayed away from them since the last disaster.)
The majority of my practice had been against anywhere from 8 to 10 Squadrons of mainly TIE bombers and a couple TIE advanced or Vader Advanced pushed by ISD's with flight controllers, and/or a combination of Gladiator mini carriers.. I've accepted I'd lose my squadrons but needed to TIE up the Bombers long enough to allow Keyan and my B-Wings to do their job.
One of my main concerns and reason why I chose Cr90B's was their cheap cost. I have counted on most players having between 3 and 4 ships. And wanted to do my best to offset the majority of Demolisher builds activation advantage. I knew that if I ran into a "Clonisher" list that I would have to fall back on Rieekan to keep ships alive long enough to punish whatever destroyed one of my ships.
I guess the good news was I didn't run into any of the Raider/Demolisher builds at the tournament. The bad news was I didn't get a chance to play the Raider/Demolisher build to see if my plans would work.
First Round Nick U.
Nick and I play each other about once a week and have been honing our fleets against each other. Nick loves his TIE bomber swarm with Flight controllers. Of all people I did not want us to play against each other.
Nick had Initiative and choose Hyperspace assault. Nick and I haven’t played Hyperspace assault against each other. We discussed this last week and I told him exactly what my plan was. I set aside my assault frigate, Keyan and another B wing. All three objective tokens were placed in front of his deployment of the ISD and Gladiator. My benefit is that I know exactly what Nick is going to set on his ISD for the first three rounds.
Obstacles were fairly spaced out with the space station in the center. The highlight for me was jumping in on round 2, a full round before he expected me too. I deployed in the rear of the ISD and Gladiator with Keyan and B wing threatening both. I put quite a bit of damage on his Raider that had succeeded in tying Jan Ors down out of range of my fighters for two rounds. It escaped with 1 Motti hull left. When the ISD blew up late in the game I got both ships. Meanwhile, I lost Yavaris, and Tantive IV. It all came down to squadrons and keeping the Assault Frigate alive. In the last round we had 5 minutes left. He destroyed Jan Ors I destroyed IG88 and sailed far away from his bombers. End result Nick won… by 3pts. Tournament score 5-5.
(I know you Evansville guys were glad to see Nick U and me destroying each other in the first round. I might be focused on a game but I've got teacher/parent ears. I just don't know who was whispering about it. ;-)
Second match. Ken.
Ken choose to forgo 1st player. He had more squadrons but all were basic versions. I knew with 3 Assault Frigates he would conga line them. I have had a lot of experience with imperial fleets and obstructing the line. I chose his Advanced Gunnery which was the preferable objective for me. I thought I could make my Tantive IV or Jainas light the objective ship and keep it far away from him. We deployed, I set up in the center. At speed 1 with the Assault Frigate. He deployed on my far right literally touching the border marker. I silently cursed to myself. He had me out deployed and could wait to see what else I deployed. So I deployed Yavaris close to the Assault Frigate at speed 1. I deployed the rest of my squadrons as he deployed another ship immediately behind the other ship. Lastly, I set my corvettes to my left with the intent of threatening the rear of his conga line. That’s when I made the error that cost me this game. I thought I “can get free gunnery teams on the Assault Frigate” and made it the objective ship.
Ken conga lined warily along the right side to my benefit as his objective ship in the middle and his more expensive trailing Frigate kept ramming into each other until he finally got both slowed. There was a cards width between the ship and off set just enough that the shield dials were almost touching somewhere on the atomic level.
Overall the fight was in my favor I had Yavaris slow crawling with the fighters surrounding her. Somewhere around round 3 I decided to commit the Assault frigate to the assault on the rear leaving Yavaris to try and block the front of the conga. I never sped up though and ended up nearly losing her to long range fire in turn 6. I Killed about half his squadrons while all he got was Wedge and my X wing. Ken thought b wings were heavy fighters and misjudged his deployment and lost all but one y wing he deployed to kill Yavaris.
Meanwhile my folly was going on at the rear I took a few long range shots at the trailing frigate. Did a little damage to his shields . He had his objective ship getting good double side shots, the trailing ship had side shots and 2 X wings and the a y wing. His first damage to my hull was a critical effect preventing me from regenerating or moving shields to zones with no shields, ouch!. Round 5 I had maneuvered the heavily damaged frigate into the rear of his trailing frigate but he had side and rear shots on me in turn 5 and 6. I also had Jaina’s light in position. I knew the Assault Frigate was lost but miraculously he rolled blanks on all his squadron attacks on it and had to target it with the frigate. It took both shots to kill my ship. Finally he collided with his ship putting the 4th damage on the trailing frigate. Between, Jaina’s light attack and ram and the zombie Assault Frigate double arc shot I killed the trailing ship. Ken won with MOV of 49. Tournament score 4-6.
Round 3: Erik G.
Erik and I have played before in Evansville. We flipped for initiative. I won and chose to go first. Looking through his objectives I saw Superior Positions. He only had 4 TIE’s so I felt comfortable choosing that objective despite running Rieekan. We deployed most of the obstacles on my left and the station was to the far left. I then deployed my fleet from left to right Assault Frigate (speed 1), Yavaris (speed 1), squadrons in the channels in front of both ships, Tantive IV speed 2, and finally Jaina’s light at the edge of the debris field angled into free open space at speed 4. Then Erik deployed his entire fleet to my right in open space headed directly at my flagship. All ships were at top speed. First round I Tantive IV tokened Jaina’s Light and maneuvered her down to speed 2 and hard banked on my last activation back towards the debris field.
The battle was rather one sided once the Raiders ran into the b wing swarm and got both destroyed in one turn. Erik had to navigate into the debris, collided a few times, and ran over debris. I was the only one to score any victory points which almost made up for the loss of Yavaris in round 4. I won with a 233 MoV. I almost finished off his whole fleet in round 6 but I rolled poorly in a long range shot and succeed in only scoring victory points but not the kill as he only had 1 hull left. Tournament points 9-1.
I ended up jumping up to 6th place tied in Tournament Points with Jeff B, who obviously had a better MoV. I believe going into the 3rd round I had been placed at about 11-12th due to where I was playing, table 6.
I was really happy to see 7 of us from the Evansville area show, with 3 of us in the top 8.
It was good to meet Mike, Bryan, Ken and everyone else. I got to catch up with Tom and hope to see him this weekend at a store tournament. I was thankful that Something 2 Do was able to host this tournament it was great not having to travel more than 2hrs to get there. I had contemplated Columbus, Indianapolis, and Independence.
PS: I wish I had taken detailed pictures but I've gotten really bad about taking any pictures at all at tournaments since February.
*edited Misspelling of Yavaris.
Edited by machinebede1