My first epic tournament, at IQ Games in Huddersfield. 7 players. 3 rounds.
My son (9) helped design and fly our list:
2 Gozanti Assualt Carriers, plus 8 Tie Interceptors. Originally, I wanted to use Royal Guards but then I realised that I only had 6 of them, so dropped down to Sabre Squadron pilots. This also freed up a few more points for the Gozantis.
My son wanted Outmanoevre on his 4 interceptors and I preferred Predator but after much dithering we went for Autothrusters on 6 of them and one each with Outmanoevre and Predator. Outmanoevre only made a difference once in 3 games, while Predator worked fairly frequently. Not a big surprise, there.
The Gozantis each had Automated Protocols, docking clamps, a dual laser turret, a backup shield generator, and a WED-15 repair droid plus Bo-Shek on his (yeah, I know: but he did get to Bo-Shek a Raider two turns in a row!) and Captain Needa on mine.
Our battle plan was pretty simple: charge his Gozanti at the biggest threat and try to ram it to death; unload interceptors and hope that our dice rolling was at least average...
Round 1 , vs K. He had brought a C-ROC plus 4 Scyks with mangler cannons or HLC, plus Genesis Red with Harpoons. And 2 IG88s, also with HLCs, and a Concord Dawn Ace. 5 Crackshots.
We deployed in the middle of the board, facing the enemy, with about a ship-length between our Carriers. This turned out to be our undoing: K deployed in the corner, slightly to the right of both of our ships. This meant that my carrier didn't reach the fight until we'd already lost the other, as all of K's ships unloaded lots of cannon fire on it for 2 rounds. We needed both carriers to be right next to one another, plus starting in a corner so we couldn't be out-flanked.
The interceptors did good work, we killed the C-ROC, Serrisu, another Scyk, and the Protectorate. But only had one interceptor and one carrier left when time as called.
Round 2 , vs M. He had an energy Raider, plus 2 Glaive x7 defenders, Capt Jonus and a Gamma Veteran, both with plasma torpedoes and cluster mines, and Mauler Mithel.
We deployed in our right hand corner, side-by-side, facing diagonally (having learned from the previous game) into the board. He deployed his Raider in the middle, facing forwards, with the defenders on the far side, and the other 3 on his right, nearer us. This was a mistake, the defenders didn't get to shoot until both bombers plus Mauler had died and the Raider front was mostly dead and lacking any shots.
We successfully rammed the Raider, using the repair droid to fix half of the damage we took from the ramming; Bo-Shek made the Raider lose energy and fail to clear us. We deployed all 8 interceptors into favourable locations and our dice rolling was a lot better than M's. We lost 5 interceptors in total, and he had one lonely Glaive left when we ran out of time.
This time we learned that putting too many points into a Raider that is facing away from the enemy isn't a good idea. And deploying so half your ships have no shots for half the battle is also bad.
Round 3 , vs A. He hadn't brought any huge ships, boo! Instead, 3 IG88s plus d as crew on Boba Fett, along with Dengar and Fenn Rau. This looked dangerous, because Boba, Fenn, and Dengar have big reputations and multiple IGs are even worse!
We set up in the same, left hand corner. He set up in the far corner, bringing 2 IGs and Fenn forwards and then rightwards over the first 4 rounds whilst slowly advancing the other 3 along his edge towards us. We moved forwards to meet Boba & co, whilst worrying about the rest being able to get behind us. Fortunately, he turned them into our frontal assault as soon as he could. Meanwhile, we'd made a massive traffic jam in and around some rocks. We lost one interceptor before we could shoot, and knocked some shields off Dengar. And then ran over a fully healthy Boba Fett with one carrier (after we'd blocked him backwards along his attempted 3 hard to his original position) and tried to run over an IG88 with the other, but he turned away over a rock to avoid our flight path. Dengar died under a hail of blaster fire without ever using his revenge shots, and Fenn Rau was one-shotted by an interceptor - but not before he killed 2 (one with an Advanced Proton torpedo!) of them.
We then had several rounds where we failed to scratch IGs. One carrier was out of position and did nothing for the rest of the game whilst slowly turning round. And the other was being repeatedly shot by one IG that was behind it. And then we got shots on the IGs with our 3 remaining interceptors whilst the PTL-using IGs couldn't turn around, killing one and getting one more to half points. The damaged carrier finally died in the final round, but 75pts of IGs was still less than our remaining carrier and 3 interceptors. Phew.
We finished 4th, last of 3 players on 2 victories each due to our poor MOV. It was an excellent day of pew-pewing and everyone enjoyed it.
Overall lessons learned :
Deploy together. Don't worry about high point cost aces, they generally fail to kill enough points to win a game. Royal Guards would be better than Sabres though, due to higher PS. 6 is far better than 4. Predator is very good on them, and so is Autothrusters. Co-ordinate from the Gozantis really helps with repositioning or adding an evade or focus to fragile ships after all normal ships have moved. IG88s are superb, but eventually their green dice do fail. Mangler and HL Cannons really hurt and can be better than ordnance because they can fire more often, especially in conjunction with FCS and IG88b's second shot. A second huge ship is good because it's a points fortress, but less useful than more small ships because it's hard to keep it on target.
If I were to fly a similar list, I'd only use one carrier, upgrade the interceptors to Royal Guards with Autothrusters and Predator (not PTL because getting stressed really restricts when you can k-turn, and sometimes you won't know if you're going to want to do that next round), and try to get as many interceptors on the board as possible. WED-15 was useful, being used to remove really bad crits in every game, but could be skipped to get points for the interceptors. Captain Needa never triggered (it's easy enough to space out the rocks, generally, but it was nice to know that I could run over them if I needed to), and Bo'Shek was only there to make my son happy. The Backup Shield Generator and Automated Protocols were used almost every round.