I participated in my first regionals event earlier today. I picked up the game shortly after Christmas last year, mainly because my son pointed the game out to me while were taking advantage of the post-Christmas sales, and I figured that I would end up buying IA sooner or later.
Anyway, today was my first regionals event. My list was as follows:
- Alliance Rangers
- Alliance Rangers
- E Rebel Troopers
- Alliance Smuggler
- Gideon Argus
- R2-D2
- C-3P0
- Rebel High Command
- Balance of the Force
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[40 points]
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Assassinate
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Element of Surprise
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Grenadier
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Hard to Hit
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Heart of Freedom
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Heightened Reflexes
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Planning
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Positioning Advantage
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Primary Target
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Reinforcements x2
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Single Purpose
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Take Initiative
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Tools for the Job
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Urgency
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[18 points; 15 cards]
Round 1 was a bye due to uneven numbers. Great, I'll take a win by default, no problem!
Round two was against a younger player. He'd been playing the game quite a bit longer than what I have, but I figured that his approach to building a list was more for theme/theatrics rather than effectiveness. He played Darth Vader, 2x Jet Troopers, an E-Web Engineer, and a group of regular Storm Troopers. It wasn't a hard-fought win for me but it was a good confidence booster. All I lost that game was two Rangers, and a Rebel Trooper.
My second game was against the player who'd eventually win the day with a 4-0 record. He played Jabba, Vinto, Shyla, Greedo, 2x E Gamorrean Guards, and Devious Scheme. I got an early lead after making short work of Vinto, getting a few good hits on the Dianoga (my opponent got in the last hit though), and eliminating one Gamorrean Guard, but I was then overwhelmed by the remaining Gamorrean Guards whose ability to re-roll a red attack dice meant that they were make mince meat out of my Troopers, R2-D2, and Rangers. I lost that one 40-24. Some sucky dice rolling didn't help my cause either, but c'est la vie!
My third game was against a Jedi Luke team. This one came down to the last shot. Jedi Luke was all that my opponent had left, and my final activation for the round was a group of Rangers. Scores were 30-37 points in my opponent's favour at this stage. I had one of those Rangers with 1 health point remaining, so I knew I had to block line of fire to him so that Luke couldn't deflect to eliminate him prior to me taking Luke out. Fortunately I had a pretty good hand benefiting my Rangers at the time. With a focused Ranger, I used Assassinate, Positioning Advantage, Heightened Reflexes, and Tools for the Job. I had to shoot at point blank range to prevent Luke deflecting the last 1 damage needed to remove the Ranger almost dead, so I needed a good roll. Luke at this stage had already taken 4 damage.
Luke played Parry to effectively block my Positioning Advantage, but I didn't have to worry about Luke dodging the attack thanks to Heightened Reflexes. The attack roll (two blue, one green, and one red) warranted 7 damage. Assassinate gave that +3, and I spent a surge to deal +2 (the other surge was blocked) for 12 damage all up. Luke's built-in damage block reduced that to 11 so Luke was down to only one health point remaining. It was up to the Ranger that had taken 4 damage already to finish the job. I asked the judge over the clarify what the timing was when dealing damage and Luke deflecting damage back to me (I knew he'd deflect back to the near-dead Ranger to get the 3 points he needed for victory), and I was assured that if I managed to do enough damage to eliminate Luke, I'd be awarded the victory points before Luke's deflection eliminated the Ranger.
With that near-dead Ranger I managed to get five squares away to take advantage of a re-roll if needed. I had to roll well enough to get passed Luke's built in damage and surge reduction. Fortunately I didn't need a re-roll as I rolled 1dmg/1surge on both dice, which meant that Luke was effectively negating one of them, but the other went through and I surged for +2 dmg for good measure. Luke was eliminated and that assured me victory. It was a clutch shot. I was thrilled, but I felt for my opponent; the game really could have gone either way. He forgot significant things like Luke being focused and forgetting to roll that extra green attack die, and I forgot about things like putting Hidden tokens on my Rangers when they eliminating a target, so it wasn't the most fluent game but it just goes to show how crucial remembering everything is.
I finished up with a record of 3-1 which was enough to earn me second place overall. I was hoping for a good showing and I would have been happy with a top 4 finish. That said, being my first major event, I was happy just to be taking part and went in wanting to have fun, and to learn more about the game. Second best player in the region (for now); I'm pretty stoked with that!
Edited by Spitty81