Had some free time this afternoon so met a pal for a game to try out some edits to my Imperial list after it's last tournament performance.
He asked if he could try out a Raddus list, which I happily agreed to, since my luck will have him show up a week before our regional tournament here. He ended up fielding 2x AF2, Admonition, Garels Honor, and 4 generic X-Wings against my ISD, Demo, Raider, Gozanti 4 Defender Screed list. I opted for 1st player, and chose his Opening Salvo over Ion Cannon or Superior Positions.
Im trying out Imgur for the first time here, so please be patient. I forgot a picture of deployment, but got one after I had made my first activation, the Gozanti.
As you can see, his MC30 is being held in reserve (Admonition, ACM, Ord Experts), and Raddus is on the black AF2.
End of turn 1.
To start turn 2, I (foolishly) activated the Raider to try and tag some X-Wings with its Flechette Torpedoes at the start of turn 3. It's an error I make often enough that I have to force myself to NOT over-extend the Raider, and instead keep it in close to the fleet! It died to fire from the two Assault Frigates.
At the start of turn 3, my opponent dropped Admonition in, I moved Demo up but thought keeping it at speed 3 would have it just outside short range on the MC30. It wasn't, and was dual arced to boot! It also died, but did some damage to the grey AF2 in the process.
I still had my objective tokens for the Gozanti and ISD, which I made use of this turn. First, the Gozanti shot 3 dice at the grey Assault Frigate, and stripped a shield or two away. More importantly however, it survived the return fire from the AF at short range, and triggered Suppressors ability to flip the AF brace token, setting it up for this shot from Avenger:
Yes, the AF died, but more importantly I still had my Boarding Troopers available to me.
At the end of the turn I was faced with a dillema for my next turn. Use Boarding Troopers on Admonition, to guarantee its destruction, or hope I had good dice rolls. I did not want to face a dual arc from an ACM MC30. As a side note, you can see the Defenders were chewing up the X-Wings, even with a few really good rolls from the X-Wings.
I ended up using the Boarding Troopers, and Admonition died, even after throwing away a token to cancel out a double hit. The X-Wings were finally destroyed and I still had 3 of my Defenders left to help with trying to kill the AF that Raddus was hiding aboard. I couldn't turn sharply enough to keep the AF in my front arc so I was goin to need all the help I could get.
It ended up with both ships damaged and the bombers not having helped put enough damage through, although I knew it had been a long shot.
So what did I learn. Well, I liked the tweaks I made, replacing Instigator with Suppressor really helped out. Dropping Stele to a generic also didn't seem to do any harm, since the Defenders and the Raider are just there primarily for anti-squadron duty. I made the mistake and proved again to myself to keep my fleet close together instead of rushing ahead piecemeal, and to look at ALL enemy ships when plotting a maneuver- if I had dropped Demo down to speed 2, it likely would have survived the MC30 as it would have been at medium range instead. It was a fun game, with an ~85 point Imperial victory.