I had the distinct pleasure of playing and TOing at our store championship at Dragon's Lair in Austin. Let me first say that this is the most supportive store that I've had a pleasure of working with. They truly care and go out of their way to work with players in setting up good events and ensuring prize support beyond merely the kit.

The central Texas corridor (I-35 runs North/South from Dallas to Austin to San Antonio) has been a hotbed of Armada action in the past year. This has led to an assortment of good players who are willing to travel and support each other. We had 17 total in attendance. This included 7 local to Austin, 1 from just north in Kileen, 1 driving in from Dallas, 2 driving in from Abilene, and six from San Antonio. Quality competition was present. Justin has placed in the top four at worlds in two consecutive years. Tyler matched the winner for points at the San Antonio regional and placed highly at worlds, putting up one of the highest strengths-of-schedules. I won the Dallas regional a year ago, and took 24th at Worlds (though missing one maneuver from completely changing the outcome of one game, which would have catapulted me to 6th). Several other players have won individual store tournaments and placed highly in our regionals. This level of competition is one of the best parts about tournaments in the area.

We also picked a top table and recorded it for later upload. (stay tuned!)

Final standings:

Justin, 25 points

Patrick, 23 points

Ben, 21 points

Ryan, 21 points

Tyler, 20 points

Joseph, 19 points

Ryan, 18 points

Craig, 17 points

Dan, 16 points

Andrew 16 points

Austin 15 points

James, Daniel, Wain, and Adam all at 14 points

Geoff at 11, and John at 7.

Select games: Round-1

I was really pleased with the random pairings, because we had only two games where players from the same area were paired.

Justin's updated Dodonna's Aceholes faced Democratus' Arquitten/Vader swarm, eventually winning a conceded 8 point, 140 MOV.

Patrick faced Andrew in a battle of Imperial squadron lists, winning a very close 6-5

Ben's regenerating Rieekan death pickle faced Geoff's double VSD list for a 10-1

Ryan B, running Jerry VSD, faced John, also for a 10-1

Tyler, playing a very interested take on disposible capacitors on Combat retrofits with Cracken took a 7-4 against James' Overload Pulse Avenger list

Finally, I selected Ryan R's Sloan Imperial list to face Joseph's variant of the Rieekan Aceholes. Aceholes were and will remain an iconic part of the competitive landscape, and I was very eager to see how Ryan, a recent player but with an astute mind and a quick learner, would use Sloan to challenge him. This ended in a 6-5 in Ryan's favor.

Round-2

Since Ryan B and I had both scored 10-1, we were matched in round-2 and moved to the top table. Ryan was running a Jerry VSD with the new toys, the Quasar with Flight controllers and Ruthless Strategists, and a bunch of hull heavy Tie Defenders. I had revised a Rieekan list to include a Pelta Assault with Projection Experts, but the principles were much the same as my old Rieekan list from a year ago. The archetype is perfectly sound with a minor amount of updating in the current competitive landscape. Ryan won the bid flip and choose to go first, probably a mistake because I was able to guarantee the 75 points from Intel Sweep thanks to a VCX and Rieekan. I deployed too far back and too slowly, and only destroyed the Quasar on the luckiest of shots, swinging two accuracies to finish it. I shredded squads with AS fire fairly effectively, but couldn't put the finishing touches on the VSD, all while losing my CR90B, squads, and flotillas. I effectively controlled the game from the first turn, but the score only showed a 7-4 at the end. Ryan is a good player with a great head for the game. This was our 4th or 5th game against each other, and I know its always going to be a challenge.

Justin faced Adam H's Jerry MSU, including the new Quasar, ultimately winning a convincing 10-1 game.

Tyler's Cracken Combat Flotillas faced Wayne's Ackbar TRC90 Swarm, ultimately prevailing for a 9-2.

Round-3

Justin now stood at 18 points, and I had 17 and Tyler had 16. So Justin moved up to the top table. When I rebuilt my Rieekan list, I included one VCX to manipulate token objectives, but the primary goal of the list was to destroy the opponent with ships. The objectives were simply tools to pull them to a specific part of the map where that was possible. I had played a version of this list against a version of Rieekan's Aceholes earlier this year, ultimately losing by 16 points for the 5-6. So the punch was there in the list, and Justin knew this full well. Unfortunately for me, two VCX with Adar Tallon were more than enough to pull the objectives toward him and secure at least a 7-4. He had deployed so that he could pick up the objective and specifically play for the 7-4. This lift my main combat ships out of the engagement. So effectively, he controlled the game from about turn-2 onward. At that point, it was fairly certain he would pick up the objective, kill my VCX, and kill my CR90 (all rolls from Luke--it never took a shield hit). That was just under the 8-3 margin, and the only question was how we'd trade out in squadrons and possibly flotillas. GH was moving in the wrong direction if he was going to kill my stuff, and the end result was he got all of my squads and the Bright Hope, but I flaked 116 points of squads to death. I'm sure that is the only game he's ever played with his GH list in which he lost all of his squads except one. And if there's anything to be learned in the game, it was the power of Flak. This win brought Justin to 25 points. At that point, Tyler would need a 9 to tie and a 10 to surpass Justin. That left me with 21 points and waiting out exactly how the next few games would finish.

On the second table, however, Ryan succeeded in earning a 7-4, ensuring Justin would win the tournament, and bringing himself to 21, the same as me.

Patrick meanwhile scored a dominating 10-1 win against James, in a battle of Imperial fleets, catapulting himself to 23 points and second place. Patrick is a strong player.

Among other interesting results, Ryan R won all three of his games, but at 6-5 wins for 18 total tournament points and 7th place.

Some overall reflections:

We've got a great community. Store Championships are a time for experimentation, and we had a lot of experimentation going on among the players. Not all of this was tied to the new wave. I was experimenting with Shields to Maximum and regeneration. We've got three more Store Championships, all in San Antonio, before the season comes to an end, and I greatly look forward to getting a few more games in. Thanks to all of the players who make this community special and the store for hosting such a splendid event.

Thanks for organizing the day, @Vergilius

It was a well-run tournament with a lot of great people. I'm glad I got to participate - even if my first round did set my hair on fire.

Sounds like it was a lot of fun! Wish I could have made it- I was out of town.

Great well run event as always. Great to see the turnout increasing in Austin and in the summer time no less!

Great competition skill wise to. @Vergilius you have always been a tough matchup because you don't make mistakes in your game which means I have to do just the same for mine!!

That second round against the Ackbar CR90s couldn't have been a more perfect matchup for me.

But nevertheless, I will never, ever, and I repeat ever, run more than 3 identical flotillas again. Combat retrofits my butt. I had to apologize to all my opponents for taking so long. That hurt the noggin.

On 04/08/2017 at 7:00 PM, Parkdaddy said:

That second round against the Ackbar CR90s couldn't have been a more perfect matchup for me.

But nevertheless, I will never, ever, and I repeat ever, run more than 3 identical flotillas again. Combat retrofits my butt. I had to apologize to all my opponents for taking so long. That hurt the noggin.

Was it you running the Combat Retrofit/Disposable Capacitors list? Would you mind taking me through the thinking, if it's not a closely guarded secret?

On 8/8/2017 at 2:41 PM, ManInTheBox said:

Was it you running the Combat Retrofit/Disposable Capacitors list? Would you mind taking me through the thinking, if it's not a closely guarded secret?

Not closely guarded at all. I had 2 very similar lists, but by merely changing the commander between them, they played very differently, but both used the same mass generic squadrons and loads of plink damage.

The list I used had Cracken. The idea was outactivate my opponent by a large margin, trade shots from long range whilst obstructed (greatly increasing the chances of survival for a flotilla), and use that as a buffer to move my ships into survivable positions at medium range. Really hard to do (biggest cause for my headache), but the plink damage was real, and my opponents could definitely feel it.

The other list had Sato. The idea was to set everything onto one target and "box" it in. Sato would increase the overall effectiveness of the plink damage, but greatly reduced my survivability.

Some other thoughts I had on these lists involved points spent versus attack dice gained, taking into account a CF command dial. A combat flotilla could produce 2 black dice at long range under Sato for 27 points (plus squads, but I always use squads so I don't take that cost into account), versus an MC80 doing 2 red and 2+1 black at long range for ~100 points under the same conditions. Multiply the flotilla by 4 and you get 8 black dice, plus activation advantage, plus deployment advantage, plus the availability of fleet support, plus the ability to push many squadrons through relay, all for about the same price as that MC80.

Once it moves to close range, the Mc80 (both variants) gains much more power, but they also become more vulnerable, as do the flotillas. Flotillas can more easily stay out of close range, especially with the activation advantage they inherently come with. It's just hard to get that front arc on target.

From the tournament, I learned that the combat flotillas rarely get a shot that matters on a ship when you're trying to stay alive. It came in handy, for sure, but it was very difficult and taxing to force such a situation to occur.

If someone could git gud with the combat flotillas, they could definitely make that Cracken list into a nightmare. It's hard to table, and can easily play avoidance to secure a 5-6 in a losing match since the points are so spread out throughout the list. The objective play with them is quite horrendous for your opponent, too.