As
@CyborgNinja
pointed out a couple of days ago, Cardboard Gaming had their store championship this past weekend. It was 3 rounds, and as usual I decided to take some pictures. Unfortunately I only took one picture at the beginning and one at the end. It was a Contested Outpost match against some Rebels. I ended up winning 6-5, although it felt like a larger margin until the points were calculated since I only lost my fighters and 1 Raider, and took out all but one of my opponent's ships. I don't really think the 1 objective token difference between us was the deciding factor either. Oh well.
The second round was against an Imperial player running what I dreaded... Decimators. And not only were they Decimators (4 of them), but they were being held in an ISD with Rapid Launch Bays. I knew this was going to be a near impossible task to win, but I was going to give it a go. The opponent was also running a Raider, Gozanti, and Demo. The mission was Planetary Ion Cannon, and after setup I was feeling confident I could do some damage before his Demo came into play.
End of turn 1, I'm trying to be patient and let his ISD get out of position so I can smack it with my Gladiators.
End of turn 2. My Raider on the right took a damage card from the Ion cannon, and I know it's about to get stomped by the ISD. I'm trying to stay away from his Demo, and the only other targets I have at this point are the Raider and Gozanti, which you can see me going for.
End of turn 3. The Raider did not die. Somehow it survived the ISD and 2 Decimators. The other 2 Decimators took out 2 of my TIE stands. At this point I'm not feeling very confident of the Gozanti's chances to survive. I've also managed to not kill his ships even though I had decent shots on them.
End of turn 4. We both killed a Gozanti. I also somehow managed to not kill any of his squadrons, while losing several more TIE stands.
I didn't take any more pictures after that, but I recall it going horribly wrong after that, losing more ships to his Decimators, and my other Gozanti to a front arc ISD shot (as you can see above). 3-8 loss.
The final round was very frustrating. It was a self-professed new player with little to no experience, running a list other players had helped him create when he arrived, without proper cards, and a lack of knowledge on most of the rules. He then left after round 1 because he ended up with a bye for round 2, but came back as round 2 was finishing up asking if he could play the final round. Combining that with his refusal to put his ship and upgrade cards on the area we had put to the side of our board, lack of playing supplies (dice, etc) while just reaching across and grabbing my stuff, and his constant fiddling with his command stacks, I honestly threw in the towel after the second or third turn. He was running Jerjerrod with an ISD, 2 Victory 1 with DTT, 2 Gozanti with Comms Net, Mauler and a generic TIE. We played Opening Salvo.
Deployment. I was feeling pretty good at this point, with my Gladiators in a great position to do an end run and just wipe out his Victory SDs with little trouble.
End of turn 1. The Jerjerrod moving has started.
End of turn 2. The command stacks (as you can see) are being moved around on the table and are getting mixed up already. It's also difficult to keep track of what ship has what upgrades and who's already activated, etc.
End of 3. Both of my Raiders died (I'm still not exactly sure how the one on the right did), but I'm lined up for some very nice shots in the next turn on his Victory SDs. As you can see, command dials are all over the place.
End of 4. I managed to kill a Victory, my Gladiators are either obstructed or out of his front arcs, and I'm very confident I'm about to kill them. The one at the top of the picture is Insidious, who hasn't shot yet so still has his objective token. I've gotten pretty irritated with the match at this point, as we're 1:45 or so into it and have just barely managed 4 turns.
That was the last picture I took. After that, Demo somehow didn't kill the (already damaged) Victory, even after having 2 arcs plus ramming. The Victory meanwhile took a side and rear shot at Insidious killing it. Then the Victory moved off, leaving the ISD with an unobstructed front shot at Demo, killing it. His Gozantis and ISD managed to kill my TIE fighters with anti-squadron shots, leaving me with just my Flotilla, which went up to speed 4 and left. The final kick was my opponent refusing to call the game at the end of 5, wanting to try and kill my (undamaged) Gozanti. You can see in the last picture that my opponent has finally moved his command dials off the board to where his ship cards were, but everything was still behind him and very difficult to see. I understand newer players will be interested in the games, and I don't fault that, but it leads to frustration when you're having to teach your opponent the game during a tournament.
Edited by emsgoof
