Played in my first Escalation event the other day, was only a small event. This is my final round list;

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Escalation Part 4 (149)

•Captain Jostero (32) - Kihraxz

Expertise (3), Harpoon Missiles (3), Scavenger Crane (1), Vaksai (0), Guidance Chips (0), Munitions Failsafe (0), Vectored Thrusters (1)

Binayre Pirate (14) - Z-95 Headhunter

Dead Man's Switch (2)

Binayre Pirate (14) - Z-95 Headhunter

Dead Man's Switch (2)

Binayre Pirate (14) - Z-95 Headhunter

Dead Man's Switch (2)

Karthakk Pirate (36) - Scurrg H-6 Bomber Extra Munitions (2), Harpoon Missiles (4), •Bomblet Generator (3), •Havoc (0), Long-Range Scanners (0), •R5-P8 (3)

Black Sun Ace (27) - Kihraxz

Deadeye (0), Harpoon Missiles (3), Scavenger Crane (1), Vaksai (0), Guidance Chips (0), Munitions Failsafe (0)

•Sunny Bounder (12) - M3-A "Scyk" Interceptor "Light Scyk" Interceptor (-2)----
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First Round of Combat; Black Sun Ace fire his harpoon. tagging an enemy A-Wing. (A-wings been A-Wings took 1 damage), Captain JoJo Followed up by taggin his mate, the second A-Wing with another harpoon. Pirate fire his harpoon, but the dice god smiled on the first A-Wing all blanks. Zs been Z's got damage onto the K-wing but got pretty banged up themselves in process. (All arcs where a mess from the bumping) Sad times JoJo didn't trigger.

Round 2 of combat - the madness begins. Scrugg drops bomblet (Zs are already died in my mind), Zs do 1 forward. A-Wings come in on a kamikaze run. K-Wing Drops a second bomblet.......all **** breaks lose. Bomblets go off, killing a Z, a Z then kills enemy A-Wing with deadman, which triggers harpoon, kills another Z, Z damages other A-Wing. JoJo fires killing another A-wing, triggering the second harpoon....killing the final Z........triggering a final deadman,

the catastrophic dead man, harpoon, bomblet explosion ended with me only having the Black Ace, the Bomber and a wounded Jostero on board (if memory serves). I happened pretty fast.

Mental note, don't fly dead man Zs in formation, with a bomber.....

Wow! Sounds pretty cool and intense! Those Harpoon Missiles sound pretty neat! Do you think that the Harpoon Missiles are a good upgrade/addition for Missiles?

I would go as far to say they are the best missiles in the game, and that is before you apply the condition.

I will say that after speaking with a few people, they all say same think that the splash damage tends to catch them.

This is mainly because the enemy becomes reckless once tagged with the condition.

Hmmm...ok. Good to know . I was wondering about the condition part of it, but still! I would like to try them out. Thanks for the cool battle report that you gave us, lots of fun to read . God bless.

It's no drama, it's no where near as good as some of the others people upload. I think am gonna start taking some notes. and doing more as i enjoyed this brief dip

The escalation tournament was a lot of fun. My (and all the players', I think) first time trying it.

My squad was also a scummy swarm and consisted of the following ship builds, in varying numbers:

Cartel Marauder, Vaksai, Thread Tracers, Munitions Failsafe, Guidance Chips (all free), Glitterstim = 21pts; Sunny Bounder, light scyk = 12; Cartel Spacers, light scyk = 12; Binayre Pirate = 12.

Round 1, 60pts: 1 Marauder, Sunny Bounder, 2 Spacers vs 1 Delta /x7 Tie Defender + 1 Delta /D Tractor Beam Tie Defender.

60-0 loss. My 4 crummy ships couldn't get damage through fast enough to drop the /D before losing too many ships to finish it off. He rolled well on both defence and offence, but the 2 dice attacks simply couldn't get through.

Round 2, 90 pts: 2 Marauders, SB, 3 Spacers vs Hodgy's Capt Jostero, Sunny Bounder, and 2 Z95s.

A win, although I lost track of the score. Jostero died without firing his missile and we traded Scyks for Z95s. Jostero was too much of a points sink in comparison with my Scyks and couldn't withstand 4 attacks without any focus token. I held my Kihraxzes back, so they weren't surrounded in the first engagement and could shoot from further back. The deadman switches did almost as much damage to his side as they did to me.

Round 3, 120pts: I added 2 Binayre Pirates vs Kanan (with Zeb docked), an A-Wing Prototype, and a Warden with Bomblet but no TLT.

Finally, my swarm was looking dangerous. Kanan melted in 2 rounds of fire, in exchange for 36 pts of rubbish. I then got the K-Wing down to its last hull point when time was called and lost one more ship. Almost all ships on the board were damaged but 52pts of Kanan destroyed won me the game by 4 pts!

Round 4, 150 pts: I added 3 more Pirates...11 ships in all! vs 5 Tie Defenders (3 /D with tractors, 2 /x7s).

This was a rematch from the first round, and I now had the overwhelming firepower to just keep shooting until his green dice failed. 8 ships, all shooting at the same target succeeded when 4 were rubbish. I lost 3 ships in total, albeit including both Kihraxzes, but he only had one hull point left on his last defender when we ran out of time. I think I had a minimum of 6 ships firing at each of his in turn...

I finished 2nd, on MOV, to the Kanan player. Very enjoyable. Thanks to Hodgy for organising the event!

Conclusion: the swarm approach is superb except early on, where it's terrible. I needed something with more firepower instead of 1 decent ship and 3 weak ones in the first round. By the final round, it was fairly unstoppable (although multiple bombs or Assault Missiles/Harpoons might succeed) - and gave me a bit of a headache trying to run some sort of a battle plan!

If I get to play in another, I think I'd go with at least 3 ships with 3 red dice each in the first round, or a durable ace like Poe Dameron (or an x7) along with a wingman. And then add K-Wings, or spam Z95s/Academy Ties/Light Scyks, or something else!

It's no problem @Gilarius , was a great little event. Hoping to run another one in this format next Year.