I guess I'll go ahead and do my tournament report, as it only took me 90 minutes to get home last night, as opposed to three hours the last time I was down in Marietta for a Regional!
As last time, this was a fantastic event at Giga-Bites. Opened the doors for us a bit early, and then handled the flood of players as well as they possibly could. And it was a bit of a flood. I believe we started the day with 32 players, which meant yet another 4 round tournament! I want to thank Jamie for his work as the TO, it was quite hectic as he got all the tables set up...and then realized that we need another 2 tables...and then another 2! Thanks Jamie, it was an amazing event and I certainly hope everyone had as good a time as I did.
Here's my fleet:
No Idea What to Name This Piece of Junk Fleet
Faction:
Imperial
Points:
398/400
Commander: Admiral Motti
Assault Objective:
Most Wanted
Defense Objective:
Fire Lanes
Navigation Objective:
Superior Positions
[ flagship ]
Gozanti-Class Cruiser
(23 points)
- Admiral Motti (24 points)
Gladiator I
(56 points)
-
Demolisher
(10 points)
- Engine Techs (8 points)
- Expanded Launchers (13 points)
- Ordnance Experts (4 points)
Gozanti-Class Cruiser
(23 points)
- Bomber Command Center (8 points)
Imperial II-Class Star Destroyer
(120 points)
-
Relentless
(3 points)
- Electronic Counter Measures (7 points)
- Boosted Comms (4 points)
- H9 Turbolasers (8 points)
- Gunnery Team (7 points)
4 TIE Bomber Squadrons (36 points)
2 TIE Fighter Squadrons (16 points)
Jumpmaster 5000 (12 points)
Major Rhymer (16 points)
First, some comments about this fleet. I literally have no idea. I don't know what meta call I was making, I don't know what I was trying to counter. I have loved the MSU game since I started playing Armada, so let's run a fleet that's going to get out activated by MSUs, is going to get outbid by a fleet that's truly afraid of a Demo first/last activation, doesn't have a fighter screen to counter enemy bombers, has only one Intel ship to protect it's own bombers... I played around with MSU lists for a week or so before hand, but could only get 2 and a half practice games in, and was really underwhelmed by the fleets I tried. So this is what I settled on. I have no idea why. Total aside, I was talking to a few people I think towards the end of the day and we were discussing the two VSD fleet that won Canadian Nationals and then a slight variant won a recent Canadian Regionals. I think that might have been a good call for me, but I couldn't get myself into a place where I could run without Demo. Anyway, time to move from my ramblings about my fleet to my ramblings about my games! Apologies in advance for everything I mis-remember!
Round 1:
Wayne - Running 2 ISD-Is, and a ton of TIE Interceptors, with Howlrunner and Rhymer.
I knew Wayne from the last Regionals, although I had not played him then, and figured this was going to be a rough match no matter what. I was outbid, and Wayne took 1st player. This would be a theme for the day. He took my Superior Positions objective, and deployed in one corner. I had not the first clue what to do. I might get one volley at long/medium range, then his dual ISDs would eat me up. His Interceptors (with FCT and Howlrunner) would chew through my bombers in about 1.5 round of shooting. I know from experience that a perfectly played Demo can kill an ISD, but needs to have first/last, which, as already discussed, I did not.
So I was a complete wimp. I deployed in the opposite corner from Wayne, and made him come across the entire board to get at me. He circled far out to my right flank, I kept my ships tightly clustered, and hid my bombers behind my ISD and Demo. I was also so freaked out trying to figure out how to get even 1 Superior Positions token that I kept passing the turn back to Wayne after I'd activated my second ship. He kept kindly reminding me that he only had two activations. Which made me feel way worse, because in theory I should have been able to think of something, as already discussed in several places, activation advantage is huge. But he kept his fighters covering a broad arc, his ISD's in supporting positions, and I certainly didn't see any openings at all. I think we got off a few anti-squadron shots in turn 5, and then on turn 6 we actually shot the first real volleys of the game. I managed to knock down some Interceptors, Wayne killed off a bomber and my TIEs and got an objective token from Rhymer shooting Demo as it tried to scoot past his flank, and I think another one from shooting my ISD with an Intercepter. I whiffed on Demo's red dice shot on the rear arc of one ISD, so I didn't get any points from the objective. We totally up points, and I had won by something ridiculous like 7 MOV. So a 6-5 victory by playing insanely conservatively. I guess that's a start? Wayne's a great player and he deserved a better start than me slow rolling for 5 turns... sorry man!
Points: 6
Round 2:
Michael - Running 3 MC30s (Admonition, Foresight, one with Lando, all tricked out as ship murderers), and some flotillas, and some A-wings with Tycho.
My first thought on seeing this list was "Man, that looks fun I kind of wish I knew how to fly a Rebel fleet." Michael made a comment before we started that the fleet was a glass cannon, which it is, but with Admo and Foresight and Mon Mothma as the Admiral, this was going to be a pain. Michael had me outbid, so I was going second again, and this time I was out activated. Michael had picked Most Wanted, and I picked Admonition and my Gozanti with Motti on it. He deployed Admonition with his As on my left flank, while the Lando MC30 and Foresight were on my right flank. The flotillas were in the back field ready to throw squadron commands/act as activation stalls. I had deployed towards the middle of the board, and Demo was on the flank of my ISD. Michael had picked Most Wanted, and I picked Admonition and my Gozanti with Motti on it.
He brought his MC30s in fast, I think they all started at speed 4, so there was no way I could stall to get good bombing runs in. I did get one solid volley in on the Admo as it raced for the rear of my ISD with my bombers, using the Jumpmaster to lock down a few A wings, while my TIEs managed to survive for exactly the length of time I needed (1 round). We both forgot that Mothma could have been used to have Admo cancel the die instead of re-rolling them, which is just one of those things that happens in tournaments. I do think I could have pushed my bombers far enough up to get into black range and therefore make Mothma do exactly what she did in this game, but again, this was a mistake, I would definitely have reminded him if I had realized it. His MC30s got in close, but Admo had been hurt pretty badly by this point, the extra die was key. The key moment was when I did basically the only thing I feel confident with in Armada, which is jumping Demo what feels like half way across the board and killing something. In this case it was the Lando MC30, which took a front arc Demo shot at close range, and even with Lando making me re-roll basically everything, it was enough to kill it. I got Admo with the rear arc of my ISD and the bombers, but Michael murdered Motti with his remaining MC30. When we totaled up MOV, it was enough for a 9-2 victory to me. Michael was an awesome opponent and aside from some very solid rolls from my Demo and ISD, this definitely could have been very different.
Points: 15
Round 3:
Mickey - Running a tricked out Liberty class MC80, an MC30 and a bunch of Flotillas, with generic A-wings and YT-1300s.
Mickey was playing at table 3, and I had a pretty bad feeling about this. He picked my Fire Lanes objective, and I deployed two of them on the right side, and then one far out on the left flank. Mickey agonized for a while about placing the Liberty on the far flank (it was his last deployment, I had just Motti's Gozanti left), which would have locked down that token for him, but would have left his fleet on my right flank badly outgunned by my Demo and ISDs with bomber support. In the end, he deployed the Liberty on my right side, letting me put Motti to basically sit next to the one Fire Lanes token uncontested the entire game. He deployed the Liberty going parallel with his map edge, and then proceeded to demonstrate the power of Comms Net passing tokens, the Liberty navigating, and Madine as his Admiral. Basically at the end of the first turn he had the Liberty swung out on my right flank, and pointing straight at me. Uh-oh. I managed to pick up all three tokens the first 3 turns I believe, and then 2 on the 4th turn, and 1 on the 5th, so I had the objective pretty solidly dominated. Mickey put a bunch of damage on my ISD and had my Demo on one hull point (thanks Motti!) but I managed to dodge out of range after Demo murdered his second MC30 of the day. I also managed to ram a flotilla to death and then at the very end I got an ISD front arc on another flotilla, and popped it. We ran out of time in round 5, I think if we'd made it to round 6 there was a chance it could have killed the ISD. That think was dancing like a CR90 the whole game, I don't think it took more than one long range volley from the ISD, otherwise it arc dodged. Crazy, and a very impressive display of piloting from Mickey. At the end of this game, I'd lost some fighters, but had enough ships killed and objective tokens to take a 9-2 win.
We discussed what would have happened if he'd deployed his Liberty on my left flank, instead of letting me sit Motti there. I really don't know, although my plan for that would have been to just go crashing at max speed into his flotillas and MC30 with my ISD and Demo, while sending my bombers to harass his Liberty. Would have been interesting, for sure. And one of my favorite things about Armada: all the difficult decisions there are to make.
Points: 24
Round 4:
Top Table, where I joined Matt, who would be playing there for his second game in a row. He handed me his fleet list and I was like "Yep, that's the right fleet to be running, I lose."
Mat had 2 AFIIs, an MC30, Ackbar, and ALL THE YT-2400s in the world. Oh, and some Y-Wings too. Yay.
We were both at 398 points, so we flipped for initiative, and Mat won and gave me first player. I picked his Minefields objective, and away we went. He deployed his ships on my left flank in standard Ackbar circling fashion. But that's ok, I knew I'd never make it into range to do anything. I basically stalled for 2 turns, and then started feeding his YTs my TIEs, first fighters and then bombers. Anti-squadron fire plus Rhymer turning into a pseudo fighter ace allowed me to kill a few YTs, but at the end of the game, I don't think any of our ships fired any shots against another ship, and I was down to I think just Rhymer left, versus 2 or 3 YTs dead. I did have a complete screw up with Demo: I was trying to bait the MC30 in, but then one turn got fixated on trying to get a run in on the AFII in the last turn or two of the game, which was stupid. That was never going to be enough to kill it, but a turn 5/6 last/first activation could have definitely killed the MC30. But, I don't know if Mat would have gone for it (probably not) and there's a good chance he'd have zapped Demo with a trailing AFII, or would have redirected his YTs against Demo if I had tried to make that attack run. Anyway, this was over quickly, and was a 5-6 loss for me.
Final Points: 29 - Good enough for 3rd place, which was way more than I was expecting.
Final Thoughts:
Thank you again to Jamie for running a great tournament!
Congrats to Mat and Gene on being the only two undefeateds in Swiss, and huge congrats to Mat on his Regionals win. Great meta choice, and when we talked after our game, it seemed like he had answers lined up for just about everything.
Great bunch of people as always, many of whom traveled a decent distance to get there. Hopefully everyone got home safely!
I really do love Armada. I wasn't feeling nearly as good about my fleet as I was last Regionals, for the reasons described above. But it sure is fun to push plastic spaceships around the table. I need to do that more!
On that topic, as has already been discussed, it would be great if Regionals could be spread out a little more. I saw that the NC Regionals was pretty well attended, it would have been neat to be able to make it to both.
Thanks to everyone who made this a great day of Armada.