I played in a local tournament today. Four rounds, with a ticket to regionals on the line(and some other nice prizes). I was flying:
Fenn Rau (34)
Push the Limit
Autothrusters
Protectorate Title
Talonbane Cobra (35)
Predator
Cloaking Device
Vectored Thrusters
Serissu (30)
Heavy Laser Cannon
Heavy Scyk
Veteran Instincts
Totalling 99 pts.
Round 1:
I versed an Asajj (Ketsu crew), Palob and TLT unhinged Y-wing list. Both myself and my opponent made a huge mistake at the start of the game - I focus with Fenn Rau, intending to shoot Palob at range 1, when I should have target locked (which would have netted me 2 extra damage cards on Palob, killing him outright), and he forgot Laats (on Palob) whom he could have used twice. The net result of this was that the first turn of combat saw Palob killed and Serissu on 1 hull (direct. flipping. hit), and double-stressed on a debri (thanks shadowcaster title).
Serissu died the next turn, but not before pushing 3 damage through on the Y-wing. That marked the start of a long, incredibly drawn out cat-and-mouse game with Asajj, and the TLT-Ywing doing plink attacks from the side. I ended up trading talonbane for the Y-wing at about the 45 minute mark (75 minute games), which left a full health Fenn to face off against asajj with something like shelds gone, but all hull remaining.
At that point, Asajj fell to the superior maneuverability of Fenn (since Asajj had PTL she needed her green 3-turns, which were trumped by my green 2-turns). I think she put one damage on me, give or take. I rolled 3 hits (+crits) a few times, only to be denied by two natural evades and a token. On the final round of the game, with Asajj on 3 hull or so, I went for broke - boost to push range 1, target lock. II roll 5 hits. Asajjj can't roll 2 natural evades, so she goes down.
Win - 100 to 66 points destroyed. A close one.
Round 2:
Round two could have won me the tournament (we didn't have any 4-wing people), but I had to leave 20 minutes into the round for a job interview (yay, real life!). I wanted to joust my Opponent's double IG-88s, and he also wanted to joust. Suffice it to say that in three round of combat, he'd done a few damage to serissu, stripped the shield from talonbane, in return for all the shields stripped from both IG-88s.
My opponent was running a non-standard Veteran Instincts, Accuracy Corrector, Mangler Cannon, Proximity mine build. Unfortunately, he was PS 8 and I was PS 9 with autothrusters. I feel confident that I could have gotten a win here with decent MoV, but oh well. I ended up just taking my half points on the two brobots and living with the loss.
Loss - 150 to 50. A sad loss.
Round 3:
Dengaroo. Yeah, Internet list time. This was a fairly bog-standard Dengaroo (wth the caveat that my opponent flew very well), with the lone exception being Ion torpedoes on Degar instead of Plasmas or protons(apparently he was thinking of swarms. There was a 5-TIE-Striker list, but I never faced it.).
My main mistake was to not fly Fenn straight at Dengar and have at it. Unfortunately, I didn't do this. I did a weird through-the-rocks dance with my ships that would have been great had Dengar not been carrying zuckuss. As it was, I lost Serissu after he did a meagre 1 damage. Talonbane and Fenn danced for a while before getting nailed by Manaroo's Feedback Array. It ended up with Fenn on 1 hull and Talonbane fleeing from a feedback-array-happy Manaroo.
Fenn ended up jousting Dengar, did 4 damage in a single turn, and took no damage in return. This left Dengar on 2 health. The next turn I had a choice - left or right hard-turn with Fenn? I chose left, and I chose poorly. Dengar slooped into position behind me, Zuckussed my evades, and that was the end of Fenn. Talonbane died in the next turn or so to, of all things, a primary weapon shot from Manaroo (2 hits vs 4 agility, and I roll all focuses...). Overall, a very tense game, and my opponent concurred. Next time I face Dengaroo with this list I'll know what to do.
Loss -100 to 29. Close, just not by the numbers.
Round 4:
I versed a double Falco list. Rey and Chewie. But recon specialists on both, and Jan Ors on Chewie (Finn on Rey, naturally). The pity was I moved after both his ships, and Autothrusters + Fenn ability laughs at Rey's out of arc shots. Rey died very quickly, leaving Chewie to face my PS 9 aces alone. I kept Talonbae out of the fight, knowing that without autothrusters there as a very real possibility of him dying and losing me precious MoV. Fenn got behind Chewie, and four rounds of fire burnt him to the ground.
Win - 100 to 30
Result:
I placed 6th out of 9, which was okay, considering I took an auto-loss where I had the edge. I got the nice new swarm tactics alt-art card, some Stormtrooper themed lollies, and a decent bunch of X-wing sleeves and folder pages.
Conclusion:
Fenn was MVP of all four games. If I could, I would take 3 of him in a list. His damage potential is enormous, his maneuverability on par with Soontir Fel, and a decent amount of Hull behind it (4 hull is really hard to one-shot).
Talonbane was like Fenn, but a point dearer and worse in every way. On the one hand, he gets the same AGI4 at range 3, but at range 1 he's a normal, defenseless AGI 2. This along with his very low hull meanns that he can't really do anything on his own - he needs some backup to distract the opponent.
Serissu was next to useless. Despite above-average rolls, he died so rapidly that I never used him to his potential.
In future games, I think I'll swap Talobane and Serissu for a shadowcaster - probably Ketsu, and likely either a TLT y-wing or two Feedback array Z-95s. This'd give me a tanky ship, with some decent filler.