Our store had our first Armada tournament this past weekend, first one I've participated in ever. We had 5 guys and it was a great day of matches, and I ended up winning it! Thought I'd share my experiences and the lists as best I can remember. Apologies if I mistake any details or games run together a little in my mind.
My list:
Faction: Rebel Alliance
Points: 400/400
Commander: General Rieekan
Assault Objective: Most Wanted
Defense Objective: Planetary Ion Cannon
Navigation Objective: Solar Corona
[ flagship ] MC80 Star Cruiser (96 points)
- General Rieekan ( 30 points)
- Mon Karren ( 8 points)
- Walex Blissex ( 5 points)
- Gunnery Team ( 7 points)
- SW 7 Ion Batteries ( 5 points)
= 151 total ship cost
Nebulon-B Escort Frigate (57 points)
- Yavaris ( 5 points)
- Flight Commander ( 3 points)
- Fighter Coordination Team ( 3 points)
= 68 total ship cost
GR-75 Medium Transports (18 points)
- Comms Net ( 2 points)
= 20 total ship cost
GR-75 Medium Transports (18 points)
- Boosted Comms ( 4 points)
- Bomber Command Center ( 8 points)
= 30 total ship cost
1 Ten Numb ( 19 points)
1 Biggs Darklighter ( 19 points)
1 "Dutch" Vander ( 16 points)
1 Wedge Antilles ( 19 points)
3 X-Wing Squadrons ( 39 points)
1 Jan Ors ( 19 points)
Listbuilding:
The main point of the list is securing squadron superiority quickly. Mon Karren and Yvaris provide a nice double-threat and neither one can really be ignored. I tend to setup Mon Karren a little to the side to flank in case Yvaris gets targeted. Despite his nerf, Rieeken is still a very strong commander, and the one I have been most comfortable with. In my experience it's rare to ever need to trigger him multiple times per turn even before the FAQ anyway, although it did come up once for me. The only unusual upgrade I have is Walex Blissex, who is there mainly to give the MC80 some much needed survivability due to its lack of ECM. I sometimes run Lando in his place but I decided I was likely to avoid more damage from two extra usages of a defense token than from Lando's one-time re-roll. Besides, it helps against Sloane, who I would end up running into.
Game 1:
Motti - ISD, Gladiator, Gozanti. Dengar, IG-88, Jendon, Ciena, Valen, some others. Pretty standard loadouts on the ships, and comms-net on the Gozanti.
My opponent took 2nd player. I chose Solar Corona from his objectives and deployed in the center of the table with Yvaris and the two GR-75s facing the station at speed 1, with Mon Karren flanking to my left at speed 2. He deployed his ISD and Gozanti in front of Mon Karren, and his Gladiator facing Yvaris. I kept all my fighters clustered together in front of the carriers. Corona was to my left.
Based on deployment, I was worried about his ISD and Glad catching my Mon Karren in a pincer. I had wanted to flank to the left, around his ISD and Glad, and swing right past the ISD's rear, but I judged it would be at least turn 3 or 4 before I could turn in and my front arc would likely be out of range of anybody until maybe turn 6, if ever. Meanwhile, his ISD and Glad could very easily turn to my right toward Yvaris and my fighter ball by turn 3 if they wanted. So I changed plans.
Turn 1, I change Mon Karren's speed down to 1 and moved ahead straight. If a pincer was going to happen, I'd make sure it happened later in the game so my fighters could have time to gain superiority and help out. His ships were mostly at speed 1 as well, which was fine by me. We both moved our fighters toward each other, keeping them in fairly close balls.
Most turns I activated Mon Karren last, since I had both initiative and activation advantage. He had Ciena, Valen, IG-88 move up aggressively; Jan Ors was targeted down by IG-88 first, before she got to use most of her abilities, but IG88 was killed just afterward. Thanks to Rieeken, I kept Jan on the table and was able to spend one of her tokens on an X-Wing, so not a total waste. I got a crit with Ten Numb and damaged Ciena and Valen with the splash damage. The rest of his fighters died by turn 4 or so and I had only lost Jan and one other fighter. Maybe Ten Numb?
His gladiator was killed by a combination of my fighters bombing it and Mon Karren shooting it. It didn't get to accomplish much. His ISD and Gozanti were able to blockade Mon Karren from flanking to my left, so I pretty much had to fly straight into them and get locked down. His Gozanti went down after 3 turns of ramming me, and I was left in turn 6 with Mon Karren locked with his ISD. My shots brought the ISD down to 1 hull left, and his shots had Mon Karren down to 1 hull. All my other ships were alive and well.
As I had initiative, I thought about ramming him. I wasn't clear how Rieeken interacted with this so asked the TO. We looked at the text of Rieeken that says the ship stays on the table and is not destroyed until the status phase, and we looked at the text from the rulebook that says the game ends immediately when all of the opponent's ships are destroyed. Based on this, he ruled I could ram with Rieeken and keep Mon Karren alive for counting points. Looking at it a couple days later, there is a tournament specific rule that the game shouldn't end until after the status phase and Mon Karren should have died. Wouldn't have altered the winner, but MOV would have changed quite a bit. Either way, a pretty strong victory.
Game 2:
Screed - ISD, Gladiator, Gozanti. Dengar, IG-88, Jendon, and an assortment of other squadrons including Tempest and Saber. ISD had a standard loadout; the Glad was barebones with Demolisher and ACM only.
My memory is hazy on this game for some reason so I do apologize. It was Solar Corona again and I again got initiative. Corona was to the right.
Mon Karren deployed to the left again, with Yvaris and surrounded by the two transports, and the fighter ball in front of them, pretty much like last game. My opponent deployed his glad to the right of my central formation, with the gozanti to the right of that, and the ISD in the corner, so we sort of deployed to diagonal corners.
I turned Mon Karren up to speed 3 and plowed ahead and around some asteroids to come in at him from the left side. His ISD was at speed 2 at the most but had to get around his other ships before it could turn into me from the right edge, which was an important impediment to it approaching my ships quickly.
The fighter game was, again, pretty one-sided. He made the mistake of moving his fighters up to engage me aggressively and kind of piecemeal, leaving me to clear them out with double-tapping alpha strikes from Yvaris before more of his fighters could engage. My fighters got a couple turns attacking his ISD and Gladiator.
I did manage to kill his Gozanti, along with almost all his fighters (he had one or two named fighters that did a great job tying up my fighters from killing his ISD in the final turn). Meanwhile, he killed several fighters and my GR-75 which had bomber command center, and it cost me several important re-rolls against his ISD as well. The ISD survived on like 2 hull remaining. The game ended at Turn 6 in my favor but very close MOV.
Game 3 (finals):
Sloane - ISD, light carrier, raider. Two shuttles, Howlrunner, and a bunch of generic TIEs. ISD had Avenger, raider had Kallus and Flechette torpedoes.
My opponent elected to take initiative. He selected Planetary Ion Cannon. After some confusion on our parts on when the objective tokens are placed on the table (turns out it's BEFORE ship deployment!) he had his ISD deployed to the center-right, with his carrier deployed sideways facing his star destroyer looking to my right, and then his raider on the left of his formation pointing toward me. I had my Mon Karren deployed in the center just to the side of his ISD, facing the station, with the Nebulon and transports off to the left of it. The Ion objective tokens were strewn about the center, but his shuttles moved them far enough out of the way that none of them triggered.
I was worried about this one. Sloane and the Raider were legit threats to my group of unique squadrons. I had Ten Numb and Jan Ors to help deal with generic TIE Swarms, but I had to make the fight happen before the Raider could get into the mix. We also play together often and we are pretty evenly matched so I knew this would be a tough one.
Luckily the squadron fight happened early and right in the center of the table, with my fighters occupying the station and Ten Numb getting a lucky crit on each double-tap in his first activation, which did great damage and led to Howlrunner's early exit from the game. Ten Numb went down shortly after that.
My Mon Karren and his Avenger clashed in the center, and several TIEs and a shuttle got a few shots off at my flagship, Sloane-ing away my redirect quickly and letting Avenger deal severe damage, putting me down to half hull after the first exchange. I shot back, weakening the ISD's shields and dealing some hull damage thanks to the Mon Karren title.
Next turn, he killed Mon Karren. Rieeken to the rescue! Mon Karren stayed on the board and poured two full frontal shots onto both the Raider, who was now in range, and the ISD. The raider was killed outright, and the ISD took a big shot, reducing basically all its shields to zero from a crit. I got off a final ram with Mon Karren as well to deal another facedown damage to the ISD. Rieeken absolutely made his points back from this one exchange.
Finally, my fighters finished off most of his fighters and positioned themselves to start attacking the ISD. They managed to destroy it with several really lucky double-hit results in a row (without needing the bomber command center re-rolls). I ended up losing a transport I think, and several generic X-Wings. The ISD was a fantastic trade for Mon Karren in points, along with the rest of his fighters and Raider, and I won the match.
So I won some acryllic squadron tokens and had a great time. Glad to be able to play some nail-biting games with great players!
Edited by kengou