I want to start off by saying that Schmitty ran a smooth efficient tourny which cannot be understated. He was everything you could want in a TO. Second I want to say that everyone I met or played was a great sportsman and had fun regardless of their matches outcome. That aspect adds so much to a tourny scene when everyone around you is a good sportsman. It was also great to be able to put faces to some names.
Also a special shout out to Schmitty for collecting and providing the larger tourny data in this post. Also if you were there and I am miss remembering something please correct my mistake. Also If you were there please share your experience as well!
Now to the details!
We had 18 ( players from all over the PNW and a diverse selection of fleets (Flotillas everywhere not withstanding) to go along with them.
I want to make a point about fleet composition here. I had debated whether to bring this up or not since it will probably sound arrogant or braggy (though it is not my intent) but decided to share it because I think it illustrates an extremely important point about fleet composition at the premier tourny level.
I had not completed this fleet until literally the moment I sat down to fill out my fleet sheet less than 30 minutes before the tourny started. It was nothing I had particularly practiced or theory crafted. It was in fact a bit of a Frankenstein fleet. I took pieces of various fleets I have been playing over the past 18ish months and mashed them together. In other words I played what I knew. Yes I did not have virtually any experience with this in particular fleet, but all of the individual pieces that composed it I was EXTREMELY familiar with. So again not attempting to gloat just want to say when in doubt fly what you know.
My Fleet
Author: Tirion
Faction: Rebel Alliance
Points: 400/400
Commander: General Dodonna
Assault Objective: Most Wanted
Defense Objective: Fleet Ambush
Navigation Objective: Superior Positions
[ flagship ] GR-75 Medium Transports (18 points)
- General Dodonna ( 20 points)
- Bright Hope ( 2 points)
- Toryn Farr ( 7 points)
- Bomber Command Center ( 8 points)
= 55 total ship cost
GR-75 Medium Transports (18 points)
- Comms Net ( 2 points)
= 20 total ship cost
MC30c Torpedo Frigate (63 points)
- Admonition ( 8 points)
- Skilled First Officer ( 1 points)
- Ordnance Experts ( 4 points)
- H9 Turbolasers ( 8 points)
- Assault Proton Torpedoes ( 5 points)
= 89 total ship cost
Nebulon-B Escort Frigate (57 points)
- Yavaris ( 5 points)
- Flight Commander ( 3 points)
- Fighter Coordination Team ( 3 points)
= 68 total ship cost
CR90 Corvette A (44 points)
- Jainas Light ( 2 points)
- Turbolaser Reroute Circuits ( 7 points)
= 53 total ship cost
2 B-Wing Squadrons ( 28 points)
3 Y-Wing Squadrons ( 30 points)
2 YT-1300s ( 26 points)
1 Jan Ors ( 19 points)
1 HWK-290 ( 12 points)
Card view link
Fleet created with Armada Warlords
Quick points - I will not being playing fleet ambush possibly ever again. It was only picked once but it could have possibly lost me the game. Toyrn Farr is kinda stupid good.
To view opponents lists here is Schmitty's amazing data sheet. Sorry I don't want to type it all up.
Round 1
Opponent: Josh
Faction: Imperials
Commander: Tagge
Row on data sheet: 14
ISD
Raider
2X Gozanti
8X Tie Bombers
Rhymer
2X Advanced
Dengar
As were all of my opponents Josh was a great sportsman and a pleasure to play against.
He won the roll off for initiative and chose to go first he chose my fleet ambush. I had put it in the fleet due to my heavy use of bombers with the hope they would be able to stick to a target sooner. This backfired in a big way. Josh placed a flotilla first in the ambush zone, hoping to bait me and boy did it work. I had the intention of admo being my flotilla hunter with its H9s and when I saw that little helpless flotilla already over halfway across the map I saw red and all foresight (no pun intended) went out the window. I placed my admo to the right in a position where in my mind it would destroy the flotilla turn 2 and be on its merry way. Well as the deployments finished my mistake was clear. That flotilla was joined by a second (both had boosted comms and BCC) and more importantly almost all of his bombers. with his ISD and Raider in deployment zone. I had deployed my comms net to the left of admo then BCC followed by Yavaris who was lined up across from his ISD, and finally my TRC90 was on my left flank. All of my squadrons where deployed around Yavaris and the flotillas. Which was the opposite side of all of his.
At the beginning of round 2 admo was missing 6 shields and a defensive token thank to all of the Rhymer bombing thank to my inclusion of Fleet ambush. Exactly who was ambushing who here? Needless to say I wasn't feeling great about my chances. to make matters worse I had failed to double arc the front Gozanti with admo and only had my front arc on it. Luckily it was enough. Admo took more bombing shots and lost all but one of its d tokens and only had three shields left. Nothing else of note really happened that round.
Round 3 is where things got a little interesting. My bombers with Yavaris had begun to hit the ISD while a couple more did damage to his second flotilla. Admo didn't have any close range shots and took a blue side arc shot at his raider that was getting primed to fly in and start laying waste to my bombers. Rolled 2 damage and Josh braced. So the raider took a single front shield damage. Admo slid in behind the ISD limping badly but had clear skies ahead if he could live through the next turn. That would be game changing later on. My TRC90 had moved right in behind the second Gozonti with a double arc primed for the next round. But had a front arc Raider staring it in the face.
To open round 4 Josh wisely had a squadron command with his ISD and hit Admo with bombers which forced all of my D token to be gone and no shields and the ISD easily finished it off. Not wanting to let the gonzanti to get away and hoping maybe I could avoid getting my TRC90 pummeled by Joshes perfectly placed raider I activated Jaina's Light. My front arc had both the raider and Gozanti but i also had the Gozonti with a side are and decided to start there. I had a CF command. The flotilla had zero rear shields and had taken one damage thanks to my bombers earlier. I really needed an accuracy here and my blue delivered and with the magic of TRCs had a double and poof no more flotillas. I felt good about that since it would only increase my activation advatage and he would have some serios issues commanding all of his bombers effectively now. So that left my front arc and CF command all for the Raider. my natural roll was Hit, Hit, Double, Crit, Miss. TRC the miss into a double, but no accuracy and his brace would save him with one hull point but Dodonna to the rescue. was able to fish for the Structural Damage and finish him off just barely. That single damage of shields a turn earlier from Admo ended up being very important. After some extremely fortunate rolls on my part the tables had turned. By the end of the round Yavaris and its bomber friends had really started to pound the ISD and in round five was taken down and due to the lack of command ability the bombers where out of position or tied up, which ended the game with only Admo and no squadrons falling.
This was one of those situations where even though Admo went down and mostly to bombers it can really absorb a lot of bomber dice and drag it out. This really helped distract the bombers for most of the game.
Result: 10-1 MOV 311
Round 2
Opponent: Mikael Hasselstein
Faction: Imperials
Commander: Motti
Row on data sheet: 8
ISD
Demo
2X Gozanti
5X Tie Bombers
Rhymer
2X Advanced
2X Jumpmaster
This is the game I am fuzziest on just an opening disclaimer. Mikael if you see soemthing wrong just let me know! When I looked at his fleet I was worried. He also had a 10 point win in round one and to be honest I don't have a ton of rhymer ball experience, especially in the last year or so (blame WonderBread, 2016 PNW Regional Champ). So the idea of having to face one being pushed by Boosted Comms BCC flotillas again that just 10-1'd, while also taking on Demo and an ISD that was being commanded by a prominent forum member was daunting. I won initiative this game and I have to give Mikael a ton of credit on his fleet design and objective synergy. I had zero good options; Most wanted, I had very little to gain and plenty to lose. Contested Outpost, I virtually zero chance of that gong well for me. Superior Positions, WHile picking htat against a Rhymer ball is never a good option I felt at least with my commitment to bombers and having a TRC90 gave me chance to keep it close, so that was my choice.
I deployed bunched in my right corner, except for my TRC90 which I out on an island closer to the center of the table, at speed 1 wanting to delay as long as possible his opportunity for rear shots. He deployed his fleet across from my fleet in his left corner minus a flotilla that was a little closer to the middle of the table pointed at his left edge.
He rushed Demo in at speed 3 and by round 2 it was in position for me to get an early bombing run on it and strip a couple shields. ALso just as in the last game Rhymer & Friends had done their thing to admo again. I positioned my MC30 to last first it. as everyone else in my fleet crawled froward but I bumped my comms net GR75 with Yavaris and well you know the drill. His sideways pointed Gozonti had straightened out along the edge of the table and was flying toward me while the ISD continued to drsgte torward my rank flank. I had decided at this point that due to the position of my bombers and ships in relation to his ISD that i would be wasting my time trying to destroy it and to try and simply set myself up for late game token grabbing while keeping as much on the table as could. All the while putting extra emphasis on the flottilas and Demo
To open round 3 I took my shots but wasn't able to drop Demo though he was shieldless and had 4 damage, notably he had received a Damaged Engine Crit (I forgot to Dodonna one of two major mistakes I made this game). I had planed to bump to give him 5 hull damage but Motti says no kill for you. He shot back and I survived barely (as admo always does.... at first at least) and he was able to get by me but Damaged Engines gave him the final damage. As far as Admo was concerned though it was all for not as bombers plinked away at my rear racking up 2 tokens and the kill. As always his Demo traded up and I was down in tokens 0-2. The round ended with my bombers getting some damage on a flotilla and making it burn its scatter. but I once again bumped my comms net GR75 with Yavaris..... on the bright side though I had gotten some really solid AA fire from Yavaris and a flotilla. Toryn Farr really shined here giving me many double hits with Yavaris and with the way is squadrons were positioned I was able to hit most of them. But his bombers were ready to start getting tokens off of Yavris next round. The TRC90 was attempting at this point just to get into position to maybe get some late game tokens.The ISD on the other hand was in prime position to lay into Yavaris due to my continued bumping.
Turn 4 is where the game got turned on its head. To open the turn I attempted to drop his first Flotilla with bombers off of a GR75 but failed epicaly. He activated his second Gozonti moving squadrons in to hit Yavaris and get two more tokens.He now had me on tokens 0-4 and was getting ready to hit more. I moved my almost bumped to death flotilla onto the station to heal a damage and another round of bombing took care of the first flotilla and netted me my first tokens. His ISD took a long range shot at Yavaris and was able to lock down my Evade but was only able to hit a couple damage buy this put 2 cards on Yavaris. Things were not looking good for me here. I was down 4 tokens and Admo and about to be Yavaris next round. Yavaris went next and had another spectacular AA turn and all his squadrons were gone except for one jumpmaster in large part to... you guessed it Toryn Farr. but I made a MASSIVE mistake here. I forgot to do my squadron command! My TRC90 was able to get him to exhaust scatter on his flagship flotilla and a couple of my bombers were in position to take some shots to make him burn it. And I got a coule bombers off on the Back of the ISD negligible dame but I got some tokens out of it. We had 7 minutes left so turn 6 was a dream but we would have turn 5.
Turn five opened with a flotilla command which got me the flotilla and two more tokens and that flotilla was out of danger and able to fly away. He went with his ISD and was not able to drop Yavaris and had an engineering damage as he was expecting to be in trouble at that point, but my decision earlier had made that not my focus. He was out of activations and my second flotilla had a movement command to make sure it could navigate away properly. that left my TRC90 and Yavaris. Yavaris failed to drop his final squadron that only had a single hull left but this time i remembered my squadron activation and got 3 more tokens off the back of the ISD. the TRC then took its turn and got me more tokens and I was able to finish off his last jumpaster with a HWK that was in position during the squadron phase.
For the second game all I lost was Admo as it absorbed once again a bunch of bomber shots. Not going for the ISD just focusing on late game tokens ended up working out in the end. But the really hero of this game was Yavaris' AA shots combined with the ridiculousness that is Toryn Farr. This game was extremely close in round four but after 5 I had enough tokens to get the big win. It was an amazing game and one I will remember for a long time. Easily my most stressful game of the day. Mikael was a great sportsman during and especially after the game. (Not to take anything away from Josh as he was too)
Result: 10-1 MOV 314
I will post my finale match tomorrow