I played in a Wave 3/4 release tournament today, and it was a good time! We had six players. Four were locals (pasewi and myself being the only forum lurkers) and two people from out of town - Danno (or Dan-O, or Dan O?) and Paul (pt109). To encourage people to include Wave 3/4 ships, we had a slight rules modification. You could earn five additional fleet points if you included at least one wave 3 ship, at least one wave 4 ship, and used one of the new commanders. In all, you could add up to 15 points to your list. So if you see some wonky points totals, that's why!

First, here's what I fielded:

Faction: Rebel Alliance

Points: 413/415

Commander: General Madine

Assault Objective: Most Wanted
Defense Objective: Contested Outpost
Navigation Objective: Intel Sweep

MC80 Star Cruiser (96 points)
- Gunnery Team ( 7 points)
- Leading Shots ( 4 points)
= 107 total ship cost

MC80 Star Cruiser (96 points)
- Gunnery Team ( 7 points)
- Leading Shots ( 4 points)
= 107 total ship cost

[ flagship ] CR90 Corvette A (44 points)
- General Madine ( 30 points)
- Jainas Light ( 2 points)
- Turbolaser Reroute Circuits ( 7 points)
= 83 total ship cost

GR-75 Medium Transports (18 points)
- Leia Organa ( 3 points)
- Comms Net ( 2 points)
= 23 total ship cost

GR-75 Medium Transports (18 points)
- Bright Hope ( 2 points)
- Toryn Farr ( 7 points)
- Jamming Field ( 2 points)
= 29 total ship cost

4 YT-2400s ( 64 points)

The strategy is pretty straightforward. The MC80s dance around and Gunnery Teams into the enemy, trying to avoid front arcs and getting trapped. The CR90 tries to stay out of trouble and snipe some shots off here and there. The transports back the rest of the fleet.

Round one saw me up against Danno (Dan-O/Dan O). We weren't exactly sure how to interpret Jamming Field, and since I was TO I turned the decision over to the other players. The general opinion leaned toward following the Effects and Timing guideline that you can choose whether to resolve upgrade cards unless otherwise stated, since the Jamming Fields do not include "must" in the rule description. But as sort of a halfway, we played it that if I did not count my own attacks as Obstructed, any Counter dice in response to the attack would also not be obstructed.

I didn't write down Danno's list, but I think it was along these lines:

Neb-B

- Salvation

- TRCs

4 x CR90s

- TRCs

2 x GR-75 Medium Transports

6 x A-Wings

General Rieekan

He had the low bid and chose to go first, then picked Intel Sweep for the mission.

Deployment

The objective tokens were zig-zagged through the middle of the table. He chose a TRC90 as his objective ship (positioned far left). I selected the GR-75 with Leia (positioned far left).

Turn One

His objective ship and a pair of A-Wings swept forward. My YT-2400s pounced and took both of them out (it took three of them to kill one, and then the fourth one-shotted the other A-Wings). Those paying attention may notice that my CR90 didn't move very far, because I crashed it into my Liberty like a jackass.

Turn Two

Death didn't wait very long. The double Braces on a Liberty are nice, but not when you're taking fire from five ships with TRCs and reducing three damage to two. I did manage to pop his objective ship in the exchange, as well as swapping my first YT for another A-Wing squadron. He captured one objective, and my GR-75s were sitting pretty on a second token.

Turns Three and Four

So I missed a picture after the third turn, but here's what the end game looked like. My flagship tried to break off and avoid the CR90 swarm, but the one you can see bottom right chased after Madine. Danno's Neb-B circled around on an escape vector. My Liberty dropped it to one hull point, then took a Gunnery Team shot to eliminate one of his transports. The MC80 tried to ram the Neb to death, but ended about a millimeter short. My YTs dropped two more A-Wing squadrons, and the final YT swung around to finish off the Nebulon. Round four saw Danno's pursuit CR90 finish of Madine and the Liberty popped a final CR90 (the one sitting right in front of it). I lost my Bright Hope GR-75 along the way, but whether it was Turn 3 or 4 I can't remember.

End of the game saw a victory in my favor of around 80ish victory points for a 7-4. Intel Sweep made a huge difference here, otherwise it would have been a slight 6-5.

Ultimately, I loved the maneuverability of the MC80s. Without even pushing too hard, my surviving Liberty crossed the board and did a complete 180 in four turns. But their double Braces want to take a few powerful shots, and those TRC90s just stripped them down to nothing.

Also, my brain is mush right now, so Danno, if you see an errors, please correct me!

Round Two I was up against Paul (pt109). Jamming Field didn't matter, since he ran an all-ship list. Again, going from memory I believe he had:

ISD-I

- Ordnance Experts

- Intel Officer

- XI-7

- Something Else (Skilled First Officer?)

Interdictor Suppression variant

- Targeting Scramblers

- Something Else (?)

Interdictor Combat variant

- Interdictor

- Targeting Scramblers

- Grav Shift Reroute

Gozanti Cruisers

- Comms Net

Gozanti Cruisers

- Admiral Motti

Deployment

Paul had low bid and chose to go first, selecting Contest Outpost (yay for me). I did my best to scatter the obstacles due to Grav Shift Reroute, but knew I was kind of screwed when it came to the station. As expected, he pulled the station nice and close to his ISD. I foolishly deployed my CR90 first, meaning Paul could safely place Motti waaaaaaaaaay in the far left corner to be ignored all game. On the bright side, I used my YTs to draw out most of his remaining deployments.

Turn One

Nothing surprising here. We moved forward. I realized that maneuvering my CR90 around the right side of the ISD probably wouldn't end well, so I had the brilliant idea of cutting across my entire battleline. Seriously, I don't play maneuverable fleets too often! With no other target, my YTs jumped on the ISD. Even with two Targeting Scramblers, I pushed through four damage (their lethality would not end there). Paul easily held the station.

Turn Two

Thanks to Madine and spammed Nav commands, my CR90 managed to squeak through without blocking or overlapping anyone. With tied activation numbers, I drew Paul's ships forward far enough that my Libertys could start firing. I also managed to overlap an asteroid with my super maneuverable GR-75 and flip Structural Damage. . .so that was fun. My YTs now switched to help focus down the combat Interdictor, and again despite Scramblers struck for another four damage. Man I wish those things had Bomber. . .

Turn Three

Concentrated fire managed to drop the combat interdictor. With only one hull remaining, my CR90 broke off for open space. Well, Motti was over there, but I was never going to get to him. My Liberty took a serious pounding from the ISD and remaining interdictor, but managed to limp away with a few points of hull left. My YTs swung in for another round of four damage. For those keeping score, that's twelve hits on twelve shots with four forced re-rolls.

End of Game

Bright Hope didn't make it. But after suffering two points of self-inflicted damage, that was a foregone conclusion. My other ships all managed to survive, though. And try as I might, I just couldn't kill that second interdictor. It remained on the table with a single hull point. My Liberty vented its frustrations on Paul's Gozanti, though. And my YTs made their only miss of the game.

I don't remember the final points, but it was a 6-5 for me. Paul earned 80pts from the station, and I wasn't going to argue with his ISD.

But man, those Libertys are maneuverable with Madine! There were a few times that I thought my ships had no good maneuvering options until I played with the maneuver tool a bit. Turns out those things can be sneaky with two or three extra clicks of Yaw.

My round three opponent was Patrick. I believe his list was along these lines:

VSD-I

- Q7 Tractor Beam

- Admiral Konstantine

VSD-I

- Q7 Tractor Beam

Interdictor Suppression variant

- Interdictor

- Targeting Scrambler

- G7-X Grav Well Projector

- Something Else

Gozanti Cruisers

- Suppressor

- Something (Comms Net?)

Gozanti Cruisers

- Agent Kallus

- Repair Crews

TIE Bomber

Firespray

TIE Advanced

Major Rhymer

Deployment

Patrick was low bid, and chose to go first with Contested Outpost. Again I spread the obstacles about, because I misread his cards and thought he had Grav Shift Reroute. Instead, he dropped the G7-X right in front of the station. I figured, "Eh, I'm spamming Nav commands anyway," and plopped my Libertys right on that som'*****.

Turn One

My Libertys started lumbering forward. I knew I'd have two turns before Patrick reached the station, so I made sure to get there turn one. He flung his squadrons forward and took some shots at my ships. My YTs swept in and dropped the Advanced and the Firespray.

Turn Two

Again going second allowed me to draw Patrick's ships forward into range of the Libertys. Some Gunnery Teams fire stripped the front shields off of the leftmost VSD and the Interdictor. I started ignoring his squadrons with my YTs to focus on the ships. And my CR90 managed to unload into a Gozanti but fail to do any real damage. And the maneuverability on the GR-75 was very nice, getting Bright Hope out of a very sticky situation in front of the two Gozantis. Both my Liberty and Patrick's VSD were in range of the station, so no one controlled it this turn.

Turn Three

Now we had a major slugfest. I finished off the leftmost VSD, but my Libertys took a pounding in return. IIRC, the YTs had to swing around behind the VSD to push through those last points of damage. I also dropped one of the Gozantis, and the remaining one overlapped my left Liberty, which will be crucial later. Konstantine had fun messing around with my speed, but there was little to be done about the Libertys, since we were already at point blank range. The Interdictor managed to sneak within range of the station, swinging control over to Patrick.

Turns Four and Five

And thus comes the turns where five ships explode. Again I skipped a turn for pictures. The Libertys traded blows with the VSD and Interdictor. There were two things that allowed my rightmost Liberty to survive as long as it did - one, the VSD was a hair out of double-arcing it, and two, Patrick was hammered with a craptacular roll (three blank Black dice, and, IIRC, two blank reds). Outside of that, the Liberty on the left was so beaten up that the Interdictor finished it off. My YTs swung over to the Gozanti and rolled another perfect four damage to kill it (Patrick discarded his spent Scatter, so three damage). Then, end of turn four, the YTs zipped back across the battlefield to hammer home a final perfect four round of shooting to barely drop the VSD.

I don't remember the point total, but it was an 8-3 victory because Patrick destroyed my two biggest ships and gained twenty points from holding the station more than I did.

First and foremost, a shoutout to the YT-2400 pilots. They were the real MVPs today. They finished off at least four ships, two of them at absolutely critical moments (Danno's Neb in Round One and Patrick's VSD in Round Three). And the combination of Jamming Field (depending on how the eventual FAQ goes) and Toryn Far is pretty nice, although it's tricky to keep them in Toryn range while not exposing Bright Hope to enemy ship fire.

Overall, I enjoyed this list. Coming from my squadron- and VSD-heavy background, maneuvering was. . .very different. But with Madine, those Libertys can dance around something fierce. The tricky part is that they both want plenty of room to maneuver, but they also want to focus down on the same target. They don't throw massive amounts of damage per shot and they can't go toe-to-toe with an ISD. But if you have them close together, its hard not to restrict the movement they really want. I'll have to experiment with them in a non-Madine list, but given their wonky maneuver template, I think the occasional extra click or two from Madine helps them really shine.

The GR-75 with Leia and Comms Net is definitely something I would take again, too. I didn't face Slicer Tools, which is why I included Leia in the list, but having Comms net to hand out Nav tokens on the Libertys just made them insanely slippery.

The Toryn Far/Jamming Field GR-75 is what I'd be most likely to drop to bring this list down below 400. As much as it would pain me to do it, there's simply nowhere else to cut without sacrificing some list integrity. The only other option would be to drop a YT and use them simply to tie up bombers. At least I'd keep that fifth activation.

And it was a great day, too. Fun opponents. So many new lists. Every fleet I faced had at least two new ships, and of the six participants, five had new ships in their lists. It definitely felt like a different game. But that just might have been the complete lack of Demolisher or serious Rhymerballs.

If there's one single takeway, it's this - spam Nav commands with MC80 Libertys. All day. Every day.

Looking good.

*conducts Lord of Tubs summoning spell, bathtub with 6 kinds of bath enhancing products and the sacrifice of a VSD*

Come to us o lord of Tubs and bless us with your wrinkle enhanced wisdom!

Looking good.

*conducts Lord of Tubs summoning spell, bathtub with 6 kinds of bath enhancing products and the sacrifice of a VSD*

Come to us o lord of Tubs and bless us with your wrinkle enhanced wisdom!

What are you blabbing about???

Btw, nice batrep, I just had my first game today myself with the new toys.

Thanks! I'm liking the new Rebel ships. I was tempted to run Imperials, but my list would have been very similar to Paul's, so I'm glad I didn't.

Oh, and another final thought - Contested Outpost is pretty terrible for this list. My two Command 3 ships want to move, so they can't hold a station. But any other Yellow objective would be a waste. Fleet Ambush is terrible. Hyperspace Assault would be wasted. And Fire Lanes would just be. . .tricky. And potential hand a LOT of points to my opponent.

Maybe I should try Contested Outpost again, but with the station in the center of the board?

Looking good.

*conducts Lord of Tubs summoning spell, bathtub with 6 kinds of bath enhancing products and the sacrifice of a VSD*

Come to us o lord of Tubs and bless us with your wrinkle enhanced wisdom!

What are you blabbing about???

Btw, nice batrep, I just had my first game today myself with the new toys.

You should listen to Intensify Forward Firepower. Good podcast and Versch is on it and is also the Lord of Tubs.

Nice write up, was a good read.

Nadine and Liberty is a disgusting as I thought it would be, back when we got the preview.

I have a couple of Summer Kit Tournaments coming up near me, and for the life of me I just cannot muster my usual enthusiasm for building Imperials. It might be time for me to give the Rebels a try out.

PT, when are you giving up on dual interdictors? I dont see what they offer.

Sounds like a good time! I'd have come to MA if I could. Was busy setting up for a party that's going to get thunderstormed out today, unfortunately.

Well that's a bummer! I'll be hosting plenty of events in the future, though. Definitely a quarterly tournament and hopefully we can run a Store Championship (if we haven't missed the application deadline). I would say we have about six locals who would likely turn out for a tournament, so any people driving it would be very welcome! And although it can be a schlep, our LGS (Off the Wall) is about two minutes off of I-91, so it's very easy to get to.

Well that's a bummer! I'll be hosting plenty of events in the future, though. Definitely a quarterly tournament and hopefully we can run a Store Championship (if we haven't missed the application deadline). I would say we have about six locals who would likely turn out for a tournament, so any people driving it would be very welcome! And although it can be a schlep, our LGS (Off the Wall) is about two minutes off of I-91, so it's very easy to get to.

There is no Store Championships for 2016... After Worlds, we launch straight back into Regionals... Those places which held Regionals last year, if they received no complaints, and were willing, were awarded them a second time, to be resolved by March...

After Star Wars Worlds in May, then there will be Store Championships again.l Given usual timeframes, I would expect Stores to need to put Nominations in sometime in January-February for Store Championships 2017

PT, when are you giving up on dual interdictors? I dont see what they offer.

Well, dual targeting scramblers do work (and can do wonders on black dice) and GSR is nice mission-wise.

Thanks to Reegsk and other Event Planners and TOs for making efforts towards our enjoyment of the hobby.

It was fun to play with some new face and with some old...no old as is Obi Wan old but old as in I have seen them before 'oh no not again /smh'...ok ok I'm jk there.

Guys, the hobby won't grow unless we play the game in open view of other gamers. That means at your Local Game Store, not your home. We also need to collaboratively cross share our events with nuetral social media outlets like Facebook and such. The more eyes on the hobby, the better the turn out at events and the more we will attract.

@reegsk It is interesting to me that at least in your AFF games I didnt see any heavy squadron builds or any Demo/Rhymer combos. Were there any heavy squadron builds there?

BTW, nice write up.

@reegsk It is interesting to me that at least in your AFF games I didnt see any heavy squadron builds or any Demo/Rhymer combos. Were there any heavy squadron builds there?

BTW, nice write up.

No heavy squadron builds that I saw. (That reminds me: we should define 'Heavy Squadron' builds either meaning high points cost or high model count.)

Players wanted to play with the new stuff. The new stuff (Flotillas) chip away at the points. Including a sizeable chunk into squadrons makes your fleet look like it doesn't have the muscle it used to.

Things will shift to and fro for a bit until people test and sample things. Heavy squadron builds won't go away.

Versch hit it. There were no heavy squadron builds. I think he had the highest count at six, but we were about the same in points (his 66 to my 64). Another player had 4 squadrons around 50ish points.

And I definitely agree with the point about spreading the hobby. The biggest thing about this game is that it's easily recognizable. I've had lots of people stop by my table on a gaming night just to glance at it. Striking up a conversation might see another new player in your area. This tournament was only six people, but it would have been four if it hadn't been posted here and on Facebook.

I think the bigger metros are better for spreading the game. You've typically have more players of game and have more stores to spread the love.

I was lucky to get two 'utes to try a demo yesterday and both seem to want it for Christmas. So I agree being out in the store helps grow interest. It's worthwhile to play there if you're lucky to have a store.

PT, when are you giving up on dual interdictors? I dont see what they offer.

Well, dual targeting scramblers do work (and can do wonders on black dice) and GSR is nice mission-wise.

I can see that being great, but then combo it with low hull ships rather than an isd as the double scramblers will absorb a lot of damage.

I am unsure of these builds. Prove me wrong sometime.

@reegsk It is interesting to me that at least in your AFF games I didnt see any heavy squadron builds or any Demo/Rhymer combos. Were there any heavy squadron builds there?

BTW, nice write up.

No heavy squadron builds that I saw. (That reminds me: we should define 'Heavy Squadron' builds either meaning high points cost or high model count.)

Players wanted to play with the new stuff. The new stuff (Flotillas) chip away at the points. Including a sizeable chunk into squadrons makes your fleet look like it doesn't have the muscle it used to.

Things will shift to and fro for a bit until people test and sample things. Heavy squadron builds won't go away.

My definition of heavy squadrons is 100+ points invested in them.

@reegsk It is interesting to me that at least in your AFF games I didnt see any heavy squadron builds or any Demo/Rhymer combos. Were there any heavy squadron builds there?

BTW, nice write up.

No heavy squadron builds that I saw. (That reminds me: we should define 'Heavy Squadron' builds either meaning high points cost or high model count.)

Players wanted to play with the new stuff. The new stuff (Flotillas) chip away at the points. Including a sizeable chunk into squadrons makes your fleet look like it doesn't have the muscle it used to.

Things will shift to and fro for a bit until people test and sample things. Heavy squadron builds won't go away.

My definition of heavy squadrons is 100+ points invested in them.

Do points counted in ship upgrades meant to maximize squadron output count towards that number, or we talking strictly stands?

@reegsk It is interesting to me that at least in your AFF games I didnt see any heavy squadron builds or any Demo/Rhymer combos. Were there any heavy squadron builds there?

BTW, nice write up.

No heavy squadron builds that I saw. (That reminds me: we should define 'Heavy Squadron' builds either meaning high points cost or high model count.)

Players wanted to play with the new stuff. The new stuff (Flotillas) chip away at the points. Including a sizeable chunk into squadrons makes your fleet look like it doesn't have the muscle it used to.

Things will shift to and fro for a bit until people test and sample things. Heavy squadron builds won't go away.

My definition of heavy squadrons is 100+ points invested in them.

Do points counted in ship upgrades meant to maximize squadron output count towards that number, or we talking strictly stands?

I was thinking points invested in squadrons themselves but you make a good point.

We could go back and forth all day on this but I personally dont think upgrades in general make up for pure numbers or points in squadrons. Especially when you run named squadrons.

I would also posit that ten TIEs would be squadron heavy, even though it's only 80pts. I don't think there's a hard and fast definition, more of a general "if there are a lot of stands or a lot of points invested in it."

In any event, this particular day saw few squadrons and few points invested there. It was either some dedication to an anti-bomber screen, or a light bomber wing.