Morning All,
Following will be a BR on the 5 player SC that occurred this past weekend.
I won with a total of 23 tournament points and I was using the following "Making VSDs Great Again" fleet:
ISD II: gunnery teams, ECM, Avenger, Motti, Leading shots, intel officer
VSD II: Minister Tua, ECM, gunnery teams, disposable capacitors, leading shots
2x Gozanti class cruisers (23 point version) and repair crews
Fighters: jumpmaster 5000, mauler mithel, TIE advanced, TIE fighters 2x
Round 1 Contested Outpost = Opponent was James (please forgive me if I get names / fleets wrong). He had a somewhat similar list to mine but our upgrades and fighters were different. I believe he had the following
ISD II, VSD II, Raider I, Gozanti; Fighters = snipe interceptor, female interceptor unique, valon rudor TF. I cannot remember the upgrades he had on the ships, but I do remember each ship had blast doors instead of ECM. That became a factor in the game.
Realistically James had a good opening position. He was able to take the first two objective tokens as I came in to maneuver my ISD to get out of his ISDs front arc. During this process his raider pretty much got obliterated as our fighters became engaged. Originally I had an extra tie fighter in this list but dropped it to put leading shots on my ISD and VSD. This became a huge factor as I concentrated fire for most of the game, and due to leading shots was hitting with 6-9 damage per attack with my ISD. Disposable capacitors was HUGE from my VSD. This helped me strip shields from my opponents ISD and VSD while my ISD flanked at speed 3. Our fighters duked it out but due to the jumpmaster and mithel combo, I lost my advanced and a TF while he lost his 3 squads. At the end of the game his gozanti was left alive and I think the only thing I lost was one gozanti in addition to my two squads. With the way the tokens played out, after I got some as well, it was a 10-1 victory for me. James was a good player to play against. The game literally came down to me constantly blocking his brace and my leading shots re-rolls just became to much to deal with.
Round 2 Contested Outpost = Opponent was Donovan with the only rebel fleet in event: He had the mon karren liberty (only use one defense token when being attacked by it), a CR90 B, a flotilla with repair crews and an assault frigate. Fighters were heavy with hera, xwing, rogue xwing, 2 z95s, corran horn, and green squad awing. Admiral was Dodanna
Needless to say my fighters got absolutely wrecked this game and they all died with barely doing anything to his fighters. My gozantis however, are apparently excellent anti squad gunners as they took out 4 of his fighters pretty much on their own. Rewinding back to the opening of the game; both of our fleets flew in quickly at max speed. ISD was able to one shot the corvette as it was attempting to contest the station and flank me. VSD was able to again deal damage to both heavy ships as my fighters temporarily blocked his fighter ball and died in a hail of dice. My ISD, using navigate commands, was able to get side shots on the Liberty and deal heavy damage to the AF. VSD and ISD combined fire to blow through the AF as the VSD rammed it to kill it off. Intel officer stripped the flotilla of its scatter and the VSD killed it with a rear shot the next turn. Liberty, nearly flew off the board but managed to survive the game. Ended up being an 8-3 victory for me and I was 2 points away from a 9-2.
Round 3 Minefields = Opponent was Jacob with his 3 ISD I with gunnery teams and Motti. This was intimidating, it isn't easy to crack through and the game was literally a slugfest. Going into this game I had 18 points and the next closest player had 12. I had to get at least 5 points to assure a victory if Robert got a 10-1. I screwed up maneuvering and the final round in this game badly. First, we charged at each other with collision sirens wailing and recreated a certain scene from Empire Strikes Back...I took out his Avenger ISD I where again disposable capacitors and leading shots on both ships gave me insane amounts of damage. Nine damage came in from my ISD and I was able to block braces again and again. I hit one mine while Jacob hit two with his flanking ISD Motti which shrugged off the damage. I eventually took out another ISD I but all of my ships were heavily damaged at this point. Unfortunately the angle of my VSD blocked my ISD from moving and Jacob killed it due to this. My VSD was getting repaired like mad from the gozantis but at the start of the final round I Made a HUGE blunder. I had one gozanti left, my 5 fighters and the VSD, against Jacob's Motti ISD. I activated my gozanti first to repair my damaged VSD, this was insanely stupid due to the positioning of my VSD and range from the ISD. If I had activated my VSD first, I would have been outside of long range. Well, I did not do that and I paid for it. Jacob rolled exactly what he needed to kill the ship. I ended up taking a 5-6 loss, but I had the 23 points I needed. Robert ended up with a 9-2 win, so I slipped by with 2 tournament points ahead of him for the win.
Everyone was a good sport and seemed to have a good time. We all came away with a lot of stuff and will hopefully meet up for another SC next month with some additional players. The thing I like about Armada compared to some of the other Star Wars FFG games is this: I have never gone to an event and seen anyone running the EXACT same list. I was at another SC earlier this month with 9 players and no one ran anything similar. This 5 player event pretty much went the exact same way. Depending on the objective each player picks, this radically influences fleet builds in my opinion. I enjoy playing Armada because it so varied compared to X-wing and IA for the past year and a half. A lot of X-wing players run the same lists at events (I made top 8 back in 2015 at a regional and the next year at a 60+ person event at least 14 people had the exact same list and MOST of you can figure out what that was). IA seems to be scum heavy at the moment with some figures straight up being useless, however I enjoy the campaign aspect of IA way more than skirmish.
I'm looking forward to the next Armada wave and seeing the varied fleets everyone will make with Thrawn and Raddus.